Free Ferryman by Claire McFall

of what he might say, but determined to hear it nonetheless.
    “I was…” Tristan’s voice trembled and died. How to say it? “I was waiting for you.”
    Her eyebrows puckered together in confusion, but she didn’t speak and he was glad of that. It seemed easier for Tristan to get the words out without hearing her voice. He refused to do her the disservice of not looking in her eyes, though.
    “You weren’t the only one to walk away from the crash, Dylan.” His voice had dropped to a whisper, as if he could lessen the blow by turning down the volume. “You were the only one not to.”
    The words were spoken clearly, but they seemed to float in Dylan’s brain, refusing to settle into meaning. She tore her eyes away from his in an attempt to process what he was telling her, staring at a broken tile on the floor.
    Tristan shifted uncomfortably beside her, waiting for a reaction. A full minute passed, then another. She didn’t move. Only the occasional tremor of her lips stopped her from being a statue.
    “I’m sorry, Dylan,” he added, not as an afterthought, but sincerely. Although he didn’t understand the reason, he hated inflicting pain on her, wished he could take it back. But there was no undoing what had been done. These things were set in stone. He did not have the power to change them, and it would be wrong to do so even if he could. It was not his place to play God. He watched her blink twice, saw the realisation settle into her being. Any second now the flood of emotion would begin. He hardly dared to breathe, waiting on tenterhooks. He was afraid of her tears.
    She surprised him.
    “I’m dead?” she asked finally.
    He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Expecting an outpouring of anguish, he lifted his arms out towards her. However, she remained oddly calm. She nodded and sighed, then smiled a tiny smile to herself.
    “I think maybe I already knew, somewhere.”
    No, that wasn’t quite right, Dylan thought. She hadn’t
known
… but somewhere deep down, her subconscious had been keeping tabs on all the things that were wrong, all the things that just didn’t add up. Things that were too weird, too strange to be real life. And though she couldn’t explain why, she felt no terror at finally acknowledging the truth. Only relief.
    She thought about never seeing Joan or Katie again, of never meeting her father and enjoying the relationship they might have had, of never having a career, a marriage, children. She felt sadness tug at her heartstrings, but overshadowing these mournful thoughts was a sense of inner peace. If it was true, and she knew in her bones that it was, then it was done and unchangeable. She was still here, she was still her, and that was something to be thankful for.
    “Where am I?” she asked quietly.
    “The wasteland,” Tristan replied. She looked up at him, waiting for more. “It’s the land between worlds. You have to cross it. Everyone does. Their own personal wilderness. A place to discover the truth that you have died and come to terms with it.”
    “And those things?” Dylan gestured towards the window. “What are they?”
    Although the noise had gone, Dylan was sure that the strange creatures had not left. They were simply waiting, biding their time and hoping for another opportunity to attack.
    “Demons, I guess you’d call them. Scavengers, wraiths. They try to snatch souls during the crossing. The closer we get to the other side, the worse the attacks will become as their desperation grows.”
    “What do they do?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
    Tristan shrugged, unwilling to answer.
    “Tell me,” she pressed. It was important to know, to be prepared. She didn’t want to be in the dark any more.
    He sighed. “
If
they catch you, which they won’t, then they pull you under. The ones that they’ve caught, we never see again.”
    “And once you’re under?” Dylan raised a questioning eyebrow.
    “I don’t know exactly,” Tristan