The Ferry Incident
2064 Words
Evelyn Mercer
***** Two Hours After Leaving Seattle Memorial Hospital *****
The rain hadn’t stopped.
Seattle looked drowned.
Streetlights blurred gold across wet roads while people rushed past with umbrellas and tired faces. Normal people. People buying coffee. Complaining about traffic. Texting their friends.
Meanwhile I had leukemia, blood in my lungs, and a demon following me around because I made one terrible drunken wish.
Life was humiliating sometimes.
I stood outside the hospital entrance pulling my coat tighter around myself while Mina argued beside me.
“You are not going home alone.”
“I literally live alone.”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it.”
“I’m tired, Mina.”
“That’s exactly why I’m worried!”
People passed us quickly through the rain.
Nobody looked at Kairen standing nearby.
Not directly.
Their eyes slid away from him instinctively.
Like the human brain refused to focus on something dangerous for too long.
He stood beneath the hospital awning with one hand in his coat pocket.
Still.
Silent.
Watching traffic.
Not me.
Never me.
Like this entire situation was an inconvenience he wanted finished quickly.
Mina suddenly lowered her voice.
“…Why does he keep staring at everything like he hates humanity?”
“I can hear you,” Kairen said calmly.
Mina jumped slightly.
“I wasn’t hiding it.”
He looked at her once.
That was enough to shut her up for three whole seconds.
A personal record.
I rubbed my chest tiredly.
The medication from the hospital dulled the pain slightly, but breathing still felt wrong. Heavy.
Like my lungs were slowly forgetting their job.
Mina noticed immediately.
“You’re pale again.”
“I’ve always been pale.”
“You look corpse pale.”
“Very comforting wording. Thank you.”
“I’m serious, Eve.”
“I know.”
The silence after that hurt more than the coughing.
Mina looked exhausted.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Like every time she looked at me now, she remembered there was an expiration date attached to my body.
I hated that look.
Kairen suddenly spoke.
“She should not stand in the rain.”
I blinked.
Mina blinked harder.
“…Was that concern?” she asked suspiciously.
“No,” he replied immediately.
Honestly, that felt more believable.
A ferry horn echoed loudly from the docks nearby.
Mina looked toward the waterfront.
“Oh crap.”
“What?”
“My car’s still at the apartment. I took the ferry this morning because parking downtown sucks.”
I groaned quietly.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No ferries. Ferries feel like floating hospitals.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It makes emotional sense.”
Mina grabbed my arm before I could protest more.
“It’s a twenty-minute ride.”
“People die on boats.”
“People die everywhere.”
“Comforting.”
Another ferry horn sounded through the rain.
Kairen looked toward the water slowly.
Something about his expression changed slightly.
Not emotion.
Attention.
Sharp.
Focused.
Like hearing something distant.
I noticed immediately.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said.
Which obviously meant something.
Mina sighed dramatically.
“Please just come with me so I know you get home safely.”
I looked between her and the rain pouring across the city.
Then at Kairen.
Still standing there like an expensive threat.
“You’re coming too?” I asked him.
“I was instructed to ensure you survive long enough to complete the contract.”
“That’s the rudest possible way to say yes.”
“It was accurate.”
Mina frowned again.
“What contract?”
Neither of us answered.
That somehow made it worse.
***** Twenty Minutes Later — Seattle Ferry Terminal *****
The ferry was crowded.
Wet coats.
Coffee cups.
Tourists.
Business people staring at phones.
A little girl crying because her balloon escaped into the rain.
Normal.
Everything kept feeling normal right before something horrible happened lately.
I hated that pattern.
Mina stayed close beside me while we boarded.
Kairen walked behind us.
People moved unconsciously out of his path.
Nobody seemed aware they were doing it.
A man accidentally bumped shoulders with him near the entrance.
The man immediately froze.
Turned pale.
Then walked away quickly without apologizing.
Kairen didn’t react.
I looked at him.
“You do realize people act weird around you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it?”
“That is sufficient.”
Infuriating.
The ferry doors shut behind us heavily.
Wind rattled the windows.
Rain hammered the deck outside.
Mina guided me toward seats near the middle section.
“You’re sitting.”
“I can stand.”
“You almost collapsed in a bookstore today.”
“That was one time.”
“It was today.”
Fair point.
I dropped into the seat with a quiet sigh.
Pain pulsed through my ribs instantly.
Kairen remained standing nearby.
Motionless.
Hands in his pockets.
Watching the ferry slowly pull away from the docks.
The second Seattle began fading behind us, my chest tightened strangely.
Not physically.
Something else.
Like pressure building inside the air itself.
I frowned slightly.
“You feel it too?”
The question left my mouth before I realized I’d spoken.
Kairen looked down at me slowly.
“Yes.”
Mina looked between us.
“You guys are seriously starting to freak me out.”
The lights flickered overhead.
Passengers noticed this time.
A few people glanced upward.
The ferry groaned loudly beneath our feet.
Then everything went dark.
Screams erupted instantly.
The engine died.
The entire ferry jerked violently sideways.
Someone hit the floor hard nearby.
Coffee spilled everywhere.
A child started crying.
Emergency red lights flickered dimly overhead.
My stomach dropped.
“What the hell was that?” Mina whispered.
Outside the windows, the ocean looked wrong.
Too dark.
Like ink swallowing the water.
The ferry drifted silently.
No engine.
No movement.
No sound except rain.
Then every phone on the ferry died at once.
A woman near the front laughed suddenly.
Loud.
Broken.
“I told him not to leave…”
Everyone turned toward her.
She stared at nothing.
Tears streaming down her face.
A man nearby suddenly started screaming at someone who wasn’t there.
Another passenger dropped to his knees covering his ears.
Confusion spread instantly.
Fear right behind it.
“What’s happening?” Mina asked quietly.
Kairen’s expression hardened.
“The barrier is thinning.”
“That means absolutely nothing to me.”
He ignored her.
Of course he did.
The lights flickered again.
Then the hallucinations started.
A teenager suddenly sobbed beside the windows.
“No no no please wake up wake up…”
An older man whispered repeatedly:
“I didn’t mean to hit her…”
A woman clawed at her own arms screaming about spiders that weren’t there.
The ferry dissolved into chaos within seconds.
Panic spread fast.
Too fast.
I stood suddenly.
Bad idea.
Pain hit immediately.
The room tilted slightly.
Mina grabbed my arm.
“Eve.”
“I’m fine.”
Lie.
Kairen looked around the ferry carefully.
Calculating.
Cold.
Controlled.
Like he was deciding how much humanity he could tolerate before intervening.
Then someone grabbed my wrist violently.
I gasped.
A terrified woman stared directly at me.
“You see them too, don’t you?!”
Her nails dug into my skin.
“There’s people in the water!”
Everyone near the windows turned instantly.
I did too.
And my blood went cold.
Figures stood beneath the ocean surface.
Dozens of them.
Motionless.
Looking up.
Human shapes drowned beneath black water.
Watching the ferry.
Watching me.
The woman screamed.
Passengers rushed backward.
Someone slammed into a window hard enough to c***k it.
Water leaked inside slowly.
Panic exploded.
Then the hallucination hit me.
Hard.
The ferry disappeared.
The noise disappeared.
Everything disappeared.
And suddenly I was somewhere else.
***** Hallucination *****
Hospital lights.
White ceiling.
Beeping machines.
Cold.
So cold.
I looked down slowly.
Thin arms.
Bruised skin.
IV lines.
No visitors.
No flowers.
No voices.
Just machines counting down the end of my life.
My chest tightened violently.
No.
No no no….
A nurse walked past the room without looking at me.
Another patient laughed somewhere far away.
Nobody came inside.
Nobody noticed me.
Days passed.
I could feel them passing.
Alone.
Completely alone.
My breathing became weaker.
Slower.
The heart monitor kept beeping.
Steady.
Steady.
Steady.
Then flatlined.
And nobody came.
Terror hit me so violently I couldn’t breathe.
Not the dying part.
The loneliness.
The silence after.
Being forgotten that easily.
Tears burned my eyes instantly.
“No…”
The hospital room darkened slowly.
Black water began flooding beneath the bed.
Something massive moved underneath it.
A voice echoed through the room.
Ancient.
Hungry.
> “This is what waits for you.”
The water reached my legs.
Cold hands grabbed my ankles beneath the bed.
I screamed.
Then another voice cut through the nightmare calmly.
Sharp enough to split it apart.
“Evelyn.”
Everything shattered instantly.
Kairen Vale
***** Drifting Ferry — Puget Sound *****
The Hollow Realm was touching the human world.
Too early.
That was impossible.
Passengers screamed around me while shadows spread across the ferry floor unnaturally.
The humans could not fully perceive what was happening.
Their minds translated despair into memory.
Fear into hallucination.
Weak creatures.
The Hollow King was probing the barrier.
Testing it.
And the girl who summoned me sat at the center of it all shaking from visions of her own death.
Annoying.
I looked toward Evelyn.
She stared at nothing.
Breathing unevenly.
Tears running silently down her face.
The shadows around her feet moved differently than the others.
Interested.
That was bad.
Very bad.
A c***k split across one ferry window.
Black water pushed inward.
Passengers screamed louder.
The veil was collapsing faster.
If the ferry sank now, dozens would die.
Possibly Evelyn too.
And if she died before making a true wish.
The contract would remain incomplete.
I stepped toward her slowly.
A shadow creature rose halfway through the flooded floor nearby.
Passengers couldn’t fully see it.
Only the feeling of wrongness.
Its mouth opened too wide.
It reached toward Evelyn.
I crushed its skull beneath my hand instantly.
The creature dissolved into smoke.
Humans nearby recoiled anyway.
Instinct.
They sensed death standing too close.
Mina grabbed Evelyn desperately.
“Eve! Look at me!”
Evelyn didn’t respond.
The Hollow King’s influence deepened.
The ferry lights burst overhead one by one.
Darkness swallowed the cabin.
Screaming.
Crying.
Prayers.
Pathetic.
I looked toward the black ocean outside.
Then upward.
The Higher Realm would notice if I intervened directly.
That rule existed for a reason.
Forbidden power damaged the balance between worlds.
But if Evelyn died now, the consequences would become far worse.
I made the decision instantly.
The ferry shook violently again.
Passengers collapsed screaming as shadows climbed the walls.
Then I released my power.
Silence hit first.
Heavy.
Absolute.
Every light on the ferry exploded simultaneously.
Black markings spread briefly beneath my feet.
Gold light burned through the darkness in sharp lines.
The shadows shrieked.
The ocean itself recoiled.
Passengers froze in terror without understanding why.
I raised one hand slowly.
The entire ferry stopped moving.
Completely.
Even the waves paused.
The Hollow creatures dissolved instantly beneath the pressure.
Erased.
Gone.
The black water surrounding the ferry peeled backward unnaturally.
Like something enormous beneath the ocean had just stepped away from me.
Good.
It recognized me.
Evelyn gasped suddenly behind me.
The hallucination released her.
Emergency lights flickered back on weakly.
Passengers looked around in confusion.
Disoriented.
Forgetting already.
Human minds protected themselves that way.
Useful creatures.
I lowered my hand.
Pain burned sharpl
y beneath my ribs.
Forbidden power always demanded payment.
The ferry engines suddenly restarted.
Lights stabilized.
People blinked around the cabin like waking from a nightmare.
Someone nervously laughed.
Another passenger checked their phone in confusion.
The hallucinations vanished almost completely.
Mina held Evelyn tightly beside the seats.
Evelyn stared at me.
Breathing hard.
Fear still visible in her face.
Not of the creatures.
Of me.
Reasonable.
Then I felt it.
A presence.
Watching.
Ancient.
Cold.
I slowly lifted my gaze toward the rain-covered ferry windows.
For one brief second.
A figure stood outside on the black ocean surface.
Tall.
Motionless.
Wrapped in pale robes.
The Archivist.
The Higher Realm had witnessed everything.
- Writer
