Ferryman to The Wail

In the spirit of the prompt this is unedited, so please forgive the rough edges...

Content warning: swearing, description of gender-based violence

I wonder if Charon ever wanted a chat with his punters. Punters, geddit?

That's what they call me, you see. I didn't geddit myself at first, but then I looked it up online, and I said, ‘you got me there,’ and I was proud because Charon was cooler than Tommy Tofu. I’m not a vegan or nothing, they just called me that at school ‘cause I ent got no flavour of my own, just take on whatever’s around me. I hated Tommy Tofu but I had to pretend to like it ‘cause everybody laughed and then it stuck faster than hot chewing gum under a desk.

You have to joke about it, you see, or they get you.

Calvin was the first one to call me Charon. The ferryman of dead souls, over the river to the underworld. He knows about Charon because he’s more than savvy, he’s got booksmarts, like he was actually listening in class instead of trying to launch rubbers off a bendy ruler into your mate’s head, or trying to get your teacher to say the words ‘ice bank mice elf’ without realising. There’s not many like him amongst our lot and I think he must’ve just been born with like the anti-ADHD or something but he says he hated school and it’s all audiobooks and that I should really try them. Especially with all the driving I do.

The car door opens and she gets in. I say she, I can’t know for sure right away on account of it’s pitch black and there’s a sack on her head, but I’ll find out ‘cause she’ll probably talk. I have a mask on too but mine’s a balaclava - I hate it ‘cause it’s hot and it makes me feel like nobody, but Calvin says that’s the point. I asked him whether that has to be the point even in summer and he says well what would the ferryman do? And I'm thick as two planks but even I know the ferryman does whatever Calvin wants.

She’s calm and that usually means they've swallowed whole the story they've been fed, so she probably reckons she’s going home. She sits in the middle, weird but I’m not going to stop her, feels for the belt and, even with hands tied, straps herself in.

Aaron, who's been escorting her, leans into the doorframe.

‘This is your driver, Charon,’ he says. ‘E don't look like much - ha - but there's no safer pair of hands behind the wheel. ‘E'll take you where you need to be.’

His wink is so big, so loud, it practically clatters down like the broken blinds in my nan's lounge. He does it every time and I'm sure they hear him.

‘Going to Mornington Avenue,’ he said, slaps the car, and throws the door shut.

We ent going to Mornington Avenue. This car has one destination and it’s The Wail. The Wail is a valley out in the country where the wind beats the trees sideways. Always been called The Wail since I was a kid, summat to do with the way the wind howls through the valleys, but probably just ‘cause people have been getting killed there since one man could whack another one over the head with a club. Calvin told me once they used to string up witches there. I dunno exactly what goes on today - I take them, I drop them, I drive home.

I start the engine. There’s a voice from the back.

‘Some sick joke,’ she says, with a scoff like she’s making fun. ‘Charon, ferryman of the dead to the underworld.’

Ah, fuck. It’s always harder when they know. I’m shocked - what’re the chances? - and I’m pissing mad with Aaron for being so bloody obvious.

‘I acted scared so they wouldn’t put my lights out, but I’m not scared.’

I look at her hands and they aren’t even twisting up, like some of them do, and her back is straight as the stare she’s giving me in the rear view mirror. Summat in her voice is familiar but mostly I’m just relieved that I don’t recognise her ‘cause you never know who’s gonna be in the back any more.

I’m not much of a talker, y’know, but it’s still hard not to say anything to them. But that’s the rules. Can’t say a single word, no matter what they say or do. Just gotta sit there and take it all in.

‘I know you’re taking me to The Wail,’ she says.

I hold my tongue.

‘How long’s the journey?’ she asks. She’d have been driven to a secret house and have no idea where she was.

I bite my tongue.

I’ve always held true to the commandment. Thou shalt not talk. I’ve only regretted it once.

But I couldn’t have done anything then, anyway.

‘You can nod to me, that way you never said a word,’ she says. ‘That way you can tell your master you never talked.’ She says master like one of them snakes that spits poison.

I don’t move.

‘Twenty minutes?’ she says.

I don’t move.

‘Less?’

I make the smallest movement known to man, more like a twitch than a nod - I tell myself it was just a twitch.

‘Ten?’

Another twitch.

‘Shit,’ she said, shoulders slumping. ‘Take the long route if there is one.’

This news seems to have made her more agitated. I watch her knee begin to bounce even though she looks all stiff.

‘Maybe you know me,’ she says. ‘My name’s Rei.’

We’ve been travelling as fast as the speed limit allows, but when she lets that one slip I put my foot on the brakes, just a little tap.

Yeah, I’ve heard of a Rei. Kinda. I don’t let on, though. Never met her, just a friend of a friend… well, former friend, used to tell stories about her.

‘Maybe you don’t know me,’ she says. ‘I guess I have to assume you don’t. ‘They probably told you I was another snitch, didn’t they?’

I don’t need to nod for that one ‘cause we both know the answer.

‘Load of snitches these days, isn’t there?’ she says. ‘I wonder what you think about them?’

This is weird. Usually the ones that figure it out try begging, pleading - going on and on and on about how they didn’t do it. Trying to bribe me. Getting angry at me, saying all sorts about my mum.

There’s summat in her voice that’s hard to describe, like it should be gentle, it’s soft and high, but there’s two sounds in it - the sing but also the scrape of a knife on the sharpener.

‘Don’t have long,’ she says. ‘This is an important one. I need an answer for this one, okay?’

She leans forward, elbows together, hands in prayer.

‘Did you drive Jodie out here?’

Not a soul out here on the roads tonight, apart from the deer that you gotta watch out for, jumping out of the woods. I’m slowing down, no one to see me do it, no one tracking me - crawling into the hills of The Wail.

I nod. She bows her head. Takes a deep breath in.

‘She say anything?’ she asks.

I shake my head.

Nah, she hadn’t said a word. I think back to the sack-headed rag doll they’d lain in the back of my car last week. Course, I didn’t know who it was. Aaron made a real show of being gentle when he strapped her in.

‘She’s asleep,’ he said. ‘Go easy, make sure she stays that way.’

I dunno why I believed it, but even so, it could have been true. Never know, will I? And why should I even care, I knew where I was driving her.

I always find out who they are, afterwards, even if they don't say it on the journey. Comes out on the local news, campaigning groups make a lot of noise about The Disappeared, more and more as time goes on. Family always saying the same, no my mum’d never snitch... There ent been so much noise for Jodie though, what with her being Calvin’s girlfriend an’ all.

Even before I got called Charon, Jodie’d always called me Tommy. Just Tommy.

I would’ve broken the commandment just to say goodbye.

‘Jodie never would’ve snitched on Calvin,’ said Rei. ‘She just wanted to leave him. But that’s even more dangerous than snitching on a man like that.’

She leaves a gap like she’s expecting me to say something, and I almost do, it’s instinctive - but I can’t, and I just press my lips shut, like it’ll keep all the questions in.

She carries on.

‘It was always me she ran to,’ she says. ‘Loved her so much I would’ve done anything to keep her safe.’

Don’t feel right about the whole thing, not since I found out about Jodie. Didn’t seem like her to snitch. Everyone was too scared to say they were sad or anything - Calvin was losing his mind, he was proper sketch. Kept on and on about what a bitch she was, betraying him, kept coming up with all this evidence about what she’d done, he’s been on about it all week and the more he says, the more it feels - I just didn’t want to hear no more about it.

It was Jodie who’d mentioned her mate Rei - but when I think about it, never to Calvin’s face. She never said much when Calvin was around.

‘I don’t know how you feel about that,’ she says, still speaking slow like she’s just dropped a glass an’ she’s trying to tiptoe away. ‘But in my eyes, I haven’t done anything wrong, just for giving Jodie a safe place. I’m not even in the game. Do you think I should die?’

Inside my head is scrambled, like a computer when you ask it to do too many things. It's been like this all week, like I can’t stop my brain going tap, tap, tap like through photo memories of Jodie, and she’s calling out to me, by my name and just my name. On the outside, I’m very still.

‘I guess maybe you don’t think it’s Charon’s place to judge,’ says Rei, and she shifts about on her seat. ‘How about I tell you a different story about yourself?’

She puts her hand near my headrest, by my shoulder, almost touching me.

‘You’re not Charon,’ she says. ‘You’re the Huntsman. The one in Snow White. The one who takes her to the forest, and then he lets her go. Because he knows that she’s innocent.’

Her voice, soft and sharp, makes it sound like a fairytale and a threat.

She has so little time left, but she leaves a silence, the metallic ring of her voice sounding through it.

When I speak, my voice comes out in a whisper, like I’m scared someone will hear even though I know that’s stupid.

‘They’d know.’

‘You hit a deer,’ she says, still careful with her words. ‘You thought it damaged the car. You got out to look, kill the deer, whatever. You saw me jump out and run into the forest. You think I must have fucking sonar because somehow I got through the trees with a fucking sack on my head. Then you couldn't find me in the darkness so you went to get help. Geddit?’

I still say nothing.

‘How many more people have to die before you make a difference, Huntsman?’

They can probably hear us coming now - those that are waiting for her there. The thick wool.of the balaclava presses in on my face, the one I have to wear, even though I'm driving the dead. Those are the rules. I see a rag doll they're pretending is asleep. I hear a knife being sharpened. This time it feels like I'm a passenger too, across the river and under the world, we just keep going down, and down - and it’s like an unhinged mouth, and it’s gaping and open like it’s gonna be sick, and I’m gonna be sick, and we go - towards the darkness of The Wail.