Title: The Ferryman
Author: Amy Neftzger
Genre: Fantasy
Publication: October 7th, 2014 by Fog Ink
Publishing
Like most large career moves, this one happened by accident.
Karen spent a lot of time planning what she was going to do with her life, but
Fate had other plans for her, as she often does for most of us. Karen just happened
to rob the wrong grave.
As a single mother who's struggling to make ends meet, Karen
stumbles into the worst job on earth: transporting souls into the afterlife. To
make matters worse, she is contractually bound to continue the job indefinitely,
and her difficult employer is none other than Fate. It doesn t take long for
Karen to learn that Fate may be fashionable, but she's also
heartless.
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Excerpt
Episode
One
The Ferryman
Is a Woman
Karen studied the coffin
she had just uncovered. The lid, once a shiny lacquered surface, was now
partially decayed and fell apart as Karen pried it off. Bits of wood turned to
dust in her hands as she worked diligently to make an opening. Her arms were
tired from digging and the fatigue made it more difficult to be gentle with the
rotting wood. She paused to shake her arms vigorously and relax the tension in
her muscles and upper body. As she breathed in the chilly night air, she could
smell her own sweat mixed with the fragrance of the rich earth and decaying
wood. She took a few more deep breaths and turned back to the task of opening
the grave. She worked patiently to handle the lid with care and managed to
remove a large chunk that was nearly a third of the entire lid. Through the
hole she had made she saw the top half of a well-dressed skeleton.
The grave was on the edge
of the cemetery in a neglected corner that looked as if it could be part of the
adjoining land. The gravestone had fallen over years ago and weathered so much
that it looked like an ordinary limestone rock. A few days earlier when Karen
recognized that it was actually a grave, she decided to rob it. She was hoping
that no one had gotten to it before
her.
This particular plot
was an older grave from a time when individuals placed ancient coins over the
eye sockets of the corpse, although the coins weren’t ancient when they were buried.
Most of these graves had already been robbed, but due to the location and lack
of distinct marking or some other mystical reason, this one had gone unnoticed
by robbers until now. It was almost as if the grave had been hidden until the
right person came along. Karen wasn’t the typical grave robber, and perhaps the
corpse found this attractive. Regardless of how the grave had remained
unspoiled for so many years, Karen was the one who finally opened the casket
and plucked up the coins. It was at that moment that Fate
appeared.
“You have three days to
finish the task,” someone said as soon as Karen had snatched the coins and a
few other small trinkets from the corpse. Karen jumped when she heard the
voice. It had a rich, mellow tone and resonated with authority. Karen turned
around and briefly thought about running, but she decided to stay put when she
saw a woman staring her down. The woman had come out of nowhere and appeared to
be alone.
The woman was, if
nothing else, fashionable. She was very fit, toned but not bulky in stature,
and wore clothes of the finest quality. Her boots were Italian leather and the
jacket and pants looked like something from a Chanel
boutique.
Karen slowly put the coins
into her pocket, along with the gold watch she had taken from the breast pocket
of the skeleton’s suit, and addressed the woman. Other people might have felt
intimidated by the situation. Karen was ready to
fight.
“What task?” Karen demanded. “Who are you?” A pocket of
night air brushed past and gave her a chill as she waited for an answer.
However, she would not let her discomfort
show.
“I am Fate, of course. You
took the coins intended for the Ferryman. The work is now yours. You’re hired.”
The woman stood with one hand on her hip as she spoke with
confidence.
“To do what?” Karen glanced
around to see if anyone else was nearby. Surely Fate was not alone in the
graveyard at three in the morning. Karen had chosen the time based on her
experience of when graveyards were most empty. She’d learned a lot since she
started grave robbing and knew that the time between when the bars close and
the coffee shops open are the most vacant hours of the
night.
“This gentleman paid for
safe passage to the next life. Your job is to get him there,” Fate explained.
“And you’re already late.”
The novelty of the
situation wasn’t lost on Karen. She knew the legend of the Ferryman and about
how people would be buried with coins on their eyes or lips to pay for a
successful journey into the afterlife. She also knew that there were very few
graves left where the gold coins were still in place. Karen was unlucky enough
to find and rob this particular grave when Fate was nearby and looking for
someone to do her bidding. Fate probably just liked the look of Karen. There
were few women strong or daring enough to rob graves, and that probably worked
in Karen’s favor. She was also physically strong for a woman her size and had a
determined appearance in the way she carried herself as she moved. Whatever it
was, something had attracted Fate, and once Fate has her eye on you there’s no
getting away. Of course, Fate always has a way of putting someone into a
situation and then leaving, which is what she did with Karen. Some people would
call this poor management. Others call it being
smart.
Fate abruptly vanished
and Karen saw the ghost that had been standing behind Fate. He was dressed in a
black suit with a starched white shirt, a black vest and red tie. His shoes
were polished and glowed. He certainly seemed less solid than everything else
in the graveyard. Looking at him made Karen’s eyes water, as if she was
watching heat coming from a flame. Everything about him was wavy and unstable.
He took a step forward.
“I’m
Jerome Brown,” the ghost said politely. “Managing partner of Smith and Brown
Trading Goods. I ran the general store in town.” When Karen didn’t respond
after a few moments he continued, “What’s your
name?”
“Karen Irving.” She
looked from the coffin to the ghost and then around the
graveyard.
“So you’re the one who’s
going to take me?” the ghost asked
hopefully.
“I don’t know,” Karen
replied. She wiped her forehead with her hand, smearing a small amount of dirt
onto her face as she did so. “I don’t know where to take you.” She remembered
her son, Claude. She shouldn’t have left him home alone, but he was a sound
sleeper and the house was locked. She thought she’d be gone for a couple of
hours when she left. Now it looked like it would be a bit
longer.
“That lady called you ‘The
Ferryman.’”
“I’m not.” Karen carefully
pushed the pieces of the coffin lid shut again and climbed out of the
grave.
“She looked like she knew
what she was talking about.”
“Who?” Karen asked, unsure
if the ghost had seen everything that she had. She began kicking some of the
loose dirt onto the grave. She was starting to feel cold and the activity
helped warm her up a bit.
“The bossy one. She just
left.” The ghost pointed to where Fate had been
standing.
“So, she was real,” Karen
said more to herself than to the ghost. Of course, the ghost could have also
been a dream. Anything was
possible.
“Yep.”
“And you’re real?” Karen
shoveled a few piles of dark brown earth onto the coffin lid. If she had more
work to do before morning, she wouldn’t have time to put things back properly,
but she wanted to do something. She hated the thought of leaving the coffin
completely exposed. Besides, the feeling of the wooden shovel in her hands was
reassuring to her. She was, after all, talking with a ghost. Shoveling seemed
to help her feel a bit more normal about the
situation.
“As real as you. Maybe
mores so, since I’ve been around
longer.”
“How long have you been
here?”
“I don’t know. You just
stole my watch,” he said with a
shrug.
“This watch hasn’t worked
for at least a century,” Karen replied as she stopped shoveling. She reached
into her pocket to pull out the timepiece for a better look. The gold felt soft
compared to a modern watch, and she knew it was high quality. She opened and
closed it a few times. The hinges were stiff but still moved even though the
hands had stopped. Perhaps it just needed a good winding, but there was no time
for that now.
“That explains a lot,” he
replied. “I never went anywhere because I thought I had plenty of
time.”
“What
am I supposed to do?” Karen asked, ignoring his last statement. She threw down
the shovel and looked squarely at the ghost. “You put those coins on your eyes.
She said it was payment for the Ferryman. What does it mean?” She knew the
legend, but she didn’t understand how or why she was supposed to get involved
in the process.
“I didn't put those coins
on my eyes. My daughter did that to help me into the next life. You’re supposed
to carry me across the river. That’s what a ferryman does. He takes passengers
across the river.”
“The river?” Karen asked.
It sounded silly to her, but she knew where the river was located. It wasn’t
terribly far and the guy didn’t look very heavy. After all, how heavy could a
ghost be? It’s mostly air — or some other floaty stuff. If all she had to do was
to get him to the other side of the river, she could do that and be back home
in an hour before her son woke
up.
Getting the ghost into the
car was awkward for Karen. After she had placed her shovel and other tools in
the trunk, she opened the passenger door and watched him float inside. She
wasn’t sure if he was able to manage the door handle, but once he was inside,
his translucent fingers began exploring the interior components. At first Karen
reached down for the seatbelt to secure the ghost, but then she changed her
mind as she realized that it might not work. First of all, he wasn’t made up of
firm matter and if an accident took place he was likely to pass right through
the belt, anyway. More importantly, safety wouldn’t be a primary concern for
someone who was already dead. She slammed the passenger door and ran back to
her seat to start the car. The ghost giggled when the engine roared to
life.
Jerome enjoyed the ride in
her car, which was a completely new experience since he’d died before cars were
invented. He was a real chatterbox, too. He kept talking about how much the
town had changed, and he repeatedly asked her to slow down so he could get a
better look at things. Karen ignored him and kept driving. Whatever weirdness
was going on needed to be done before Claude awoke in the
morning.
Karen drove quickly
toward the center of town and over the large expansion bridge to the other side
of the river. All the while, the ghost asked her questions about everything he
had never seen before and what these new things were called. She gruffly
responded to his questions, enduring the roughness of the ride in her haste to
complete the job and get back to living her life. As soon as the bridge ended
and she reached the other side she turned to look at the
ghost.
“Shouldn’t you be
gone?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t
that your job?” he
asked.
“You’re on the other side
of the river.” She paused to think about the situation and then added, “Perhaps
you need to step out of the car and onto the ground to touch the earth on this
side.” So that’s what he did, after struggling with trying to figure out how to
open the car door. Once it opened, he marveled at the mechanics of the electric
safety locks, listening to the clicking noise it made each time he pressed the
button. Karen finally urged him to get moving and out of the car. She looked
hopefully at the ghost as he made his way out of the car, but the ghost simply
continued to talk about how things on this side of the river had changed just
as much as they had on the other side. “This is wrong,” Karen sighed.
“You’re telling me!” the
ghost exclaimed. “Electric lights. This black stuff on the roads
—”
“Asphalt,”
Karen interjected.
“Ass
fault. What a funny name!” he said with a smile in his voice. “Ass fault,” he
said slowly, listening to the sounds of the words as he pronounced them, “and
cars with radios. This is all so fascinating. I don’t think I should have died
at all. It seems as if life has become wonderful while I’ve been in the
grave.”
“Perhaps you need to walk
over the bridge,” Karen suggested. “Maybe the car interfered with the
process.”
“Do you think so?” he
asked. “Although, I’m not in a hurry now because I really like what I see, and
I wouldn’t mind exploring more of the
town.”
“I’d love to show you the
town, but I have someplace I need to be,” Karen replied. She thought again
about Claude.
“You don’t have anywhere
else to be,” the ghost replied. “I think you’re supposed to be here. Isn’t this
your job?”
“This isn’t my regular job.
I work for the cable company.”
“A telegraph operator?
You’re a very talented woman, I see.”
Karen dismissed his
comments as the ravings of a simple-minded ghost from an earlier time period.
She wasn’t enjoying this job, but she didn’t enjoy most of the others she’d
had. Few people do. There’s something about a thing being called “work” that
makes it automatically unpleasant. Although, some more adventurous types who
came across a two-hundred-year-old ghost might think to ask a few questions
about what life was like all those years ago. Someone else might be scared or
might be curious about what it feels like to be a ghost. Karen, however, was
short on sleep and long on worrying about her son, and she was too baffled by
the weird situation to enjoy any of
it.
She still wondered how she
had stumbled into the odd situation. She had never planned on robbing graves
and had only resorted to the activity out of desperation. At one time she had
been a successful college student when she became pregnant. Claude’s father
abandoned her before Claude was born, and then Karen struggled for several
years to support her son. She had been fired from or quit a series of different
jobs over the course of about five years. These jobs ended for various reasons,
but most had to do with Karen’s obligations to Claude. Whenever his asthma was
acting up or the scheduled babysitter didn’t arrive, Karen was forced to stay
home and this made her appear unreliable to her employers. She had no extended
family and no partner to help her with the
baby.
She struggled financially
for a long time and was eventually evicted from her small yellow house with a
white picket fence for not being able to pay her rent. One frustration led to
another and one day, while walking past the graveyard, she felt herself envying
the inhabitants because they didn’t have any problems. It was then she realized
that the individuals in the cemetery didn’t have the needs that a living person
had and, therefore, had little use for the things buried with them. That night
she robbed her first grave. It wasn’t what she wanted to do. It was a job with
a flexible schedule and an occasional large payoff. She had never dreamed that
Fate would get involved.
“Let’s try walking over the
bridge,” she suggested as she started down the
sidewalk.
“You walk, I’ll float,”
Jerome replied with a chuckle. “I’m just trying to lighten things up,” he said
after Karen didn’t respond to his
joke.
“Sorry,” she replied
politely, “I’m just a little low on sleep right now. I only slept four hours
before I got up to head to the
graveyard.”
“To rob my grave,” he
replied with emphasis.
“I wasn’t planning to rob
your grave. It just worked out that
way.”
“And here we
are.”
“Stop finishing my
sentences. We’re not telling a
story.”
“Aren’t we?” Jerome smiled,
as if having his grave robbed was the best thing that had ever happened to
him.
“No. We’re not together in
this.”
“You’re the one who entered
my grave without permission.”
“Look,”
she said, frustrated, “I didn’t plan on this. I wasn’t looking for it. I’m sure
you weren’t looking for me.” Karen turned her head to look at the water. There
was a constant lapping noise and slightly fishy smell coming from it. Normally
these things would be soothing, but things were different
tonight.
“Actually I was —
”
“You were looking for
someone else,” she replied.
“I was avoiding other
people,” he explained as they reached the top of the bridge and continued their
descent down to the other side. “I didn’t like the looks of those other grave
robbers. You were the first woman who’s noticed me in years and I thought you
were beautiful.”
“Are you
flirting?”
“If I were alive, perhaps,”
he replied, “but as it is, I don’t think we could be more than friends.” He
continued to ask questions about new roads and buildings until they reached the
other side. Instead of answering him, Karen thought about Claude’s smooth, dark
hair and how peaceful he looked when he slept, and she wished she was at home
with him at that moment so that she could kiss the top of his head. She had
never meant to have a child so young. She was planning to get her career
started first, and it had been difficult ever since he was born. She wouldn't
trade him for her career now. She loved the way his whole face and body laughed
when he thought something was funny. He engaged in life and didn’t worry about
the things she did, and this helped her to remember what was really important
in her life. Even though they were poor and she struggled to keep him fed and
clothed, he brought her joy. She felt as if his simple presence in her life
added more than the responsibility of parenting took from
her.
“Are you listening?” Jerome
asked. He had noticed that her mind had been wandering. “You’re not much of a
Ferryman, are you? You can’t even handle one
passenger.”
“We’ve crossed the river
again. Shouldn’t you be gone?” Karen
huffed.
“If you were doing your
job, I would be.”
“Look, I’m new at this.
I’ve never done it before so please don’t insult me,” she said, feeling very
tired. The lack of sleep and physical effort of digging up the grave were
finally taking a toll on her. Instead, she quietly thought about everything she
had ever heard about the Ferryman and tried to come up with something that he
was supposed to do that she hadn’t done
yet.
She remembered that the
Ferryman carried his passengers in a boat so that they could cross the river
Styx and reach the underworld. Perhaps she needed a floating vessel so that the
ghost could be a passenger, but then she recalled that she had taken the ghost
in her car. It was pretty much the same thing, except that one went across
water and one rode over a bridge. Then she wondered if she should somehow try
to physically carry the ghost across the river.
“STOP AND LISTEN!” Jerome
shouted. “You’re not listening to me! No one has ever listened to me! Not my
wife or children or anyone! I spent my whole life talking without being
heard.”
“And a good part of your
death, it seems,” Karen replied with a dismissive tone. She was still in
thought about how to be rid of the ghost.
“You’re not listening now.
You never even asked my name. I had to tell
you.”
“I’m sorry,” Karen said
after a brief pause, and she meant
it.
For the next hour Karen
didn’t talk or think about herself or her needs. Instead, she asked Jerome to
tell her about himself, and she listened. Karen sat on the cold brick wall at
the edge of the walkway that led over the river and she listened, because that
was what Jerome needed the most. He just needed someone to
listen.
He told her his life story
and what he had been thinking about while he was alone in that grave for the
past two-hundred years. He had a wife named Elizabeth and four children, all
girls. He adored his family but often felt outnumbered and overwhelmed by the
presence of women. He was also the managing partner of the only store within 50
miles and knew most of the community. The other business partner, Elias Smith,
spent most of his time locating inexpensive trading goods in other cities and
shipping them to the store. Jerome had been the one who sold these goods to the
community, so he knew everyone in town and also knew their problems. There had
been no local tavern with a sympathetic barkeep, and a conversation with Jerome
when the store was empty was as good as therapy for the residents. He spent
most of his life listening to other people’s problems and needs. He had been a
friend to everyone but often felt lonely.
When he finally appeared to
have run out of words she said, “Well, Jerome Brown, it’s time for you to cross
the river.” She didn’t know how she knew it would work this time, but she was
certain that when Mr. Brown set foot on the other side that his soul would
finally go to rest. And it did.
As soon as Jerome stepped
off the bridge, his translucent form vanished from the bottom upwards. He tried
to say goodbye to Karen as his legs disappeared, but he was gone before the words
left his lips.
“That wasn’t too bad,”
Karen said to herself as she stared into the empty space where the ghost had
stood.
“I gave you an easy one to
start with,” Fate said. Karen jumped when she heard the voice and turned to see
Fate wearing a three piece pinstriped suit, which still managed to appear very
feminine on her.
“I thought I was paid to
carry him across the river. The job is done. I’m going back to my
life.”
“You accepted the pay, so
you’re the new Ferryman. It’s a full-time job with plenty of customers, and
you’re not done until I let you go,” Fate said. “And don’t try to get fired by slacking
off or doing a bad job. It doesn’t work that way.” Karen’s first instinct was
to challenge Fate, but she wisely decided that this was neither the place nor
the time. She needed to get
home.
“Why me?” Karen asked
Fate.
“It takes a woman to get a
job done right. Some men can’t even die properly without the help of a woman.”
She looked away as if she had said all that needed to be said, and Karen knew
enough not to push for more. Instead, she addressed what she really wanted to
know.
“I got him where he needs
to be. I did my job. I want my life back,” Karen
said.
“You’re not done,” Fate
replied. “You’re done when I’m done with you.”
“When will that be?” Karen
asked, angry and confused.
“I’ll let you know,” Fate
replied and vanished.
Karen knew that Fate would
return, but she didn’t know where or when. No one does. All Karen knew was that
this was the beginning, but of what she didn’t know. As she returned to her car
and headed home to check on Claude, she realized that the river was a metaphor.
It was never a physical river that Jerome needed to cross. That’s why the
crossing had been so difficult. She also understood that while death knew no
gender bias, Fate did. While the weight of this last realization intrigued
Karen, it also instilled a sense of alarm in her about her future and she felt
as if the bridge she was driving over was giving out beneath her, allowing her
to tumble into the rapidly moving river below.
About Amy
Amy Neftzger began writing and publishing for various
journals in 1995. Her first fiction book, a collection of short stories called
Conversations With the Moon, was published in 2003. Her writing style in this
book contained elements of romance and whimsy mixed with more literary passages
that engaged audiences. She followed this release with picture book for children called All That The
Dog Eve Wanted, which is a story about a dog seeking approval from his owner, a
little boy named Cole. The book was designed to to introduce children to jazz
music and comes with a jazz CD sampler. Curriculum was also developed to be
used along with the book in elementary school classrooms and is available on
the publisher’s website here.
Often being praised for her abilities with
wordplay, she has continued to publish fantasy books for middle grade/ young
adult readers and literary pieces that sometimes lean more towards the genre of
magical realism. She continues to write nonfiction as well as assist other
writers and artists in developing their craft through individual mentoring,
leading discussion groups, and classes.
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