It’s not a dream.

On the banks of a broad, roiling river, Janine Hartschorn turned in a wild circle, searching for a familiar landmark, anything that might jog her memory, help her figure out where she was and how she had gotten here. Failing that, she’d have been happy to simply find a path that led away from the rushing water, a path to somewhere-anywhere-else.

But Janine couldn’t see a damn thing.

A thick, damp mist enshrouded her and spread its tendrils through the trees and across the river. If she looked straight up, she could see a few breaks in the fog, but she tried not to pay attention to them. If she did, she would have to think about the stars. The night sky seemed somehow closer here, wherever here was, and the stars that punctured the darkness were red like scarlet tears against the face of the night.

Or wounds.

They might have been wounds.

Something brushed past her in the mist. Janine gasped and turned quickly to peer deeper into the damp shroud around her, but she could see nothing. A branch, perhaps. It might only have been a branch, yearning toward her under the press of the wind. But there was no wind.

Her breathing quickened, yet each breath was more shallow. Her eyes shifted in sudden spasms of paranoia as she gazed around her at each swirl of fog. Out there, within the cloud that lingered upon the marshy ground that squelched beneath her feet, someone watched her. Suddenly Janine was seven years old again and her older brother and his friends had led her into the wood behind their house and left her, like Hansel and Gretel’s parents. They crouched snickering behind trees as she called out into the sunless forest.

She called out now. Hello? Who’s there?

Of course there was no answer. They would not confess their presence. The mist had texture, shadows within shadows, and she imagined she saw figures there, that she was being watched not by one but by many, and that they were all people who knew her. People who knew that every step forward put her in peril and yet urged her on regardless. She did not trust them, those shades and specters.

I’m sorry, she said, though she could not have said why. I can’t stay here. Can’t be with you. I have to-have to go. Janine’s skin was moist with the condensation in the air, but her skin prickled as though she were draped in rough, heavy wool. Her feet had sunk so deeply into the mire that she found it difficult to move them. She struggled against the muck that entrapped her and her heart began to beat faster. Once again she felt like a child, held against her will but capable only of whining and lashing out for her freedom.

Please, she whispered.

Tears like melting ice dripped down her cheeks, stinging her flesh. The taunting specters who lingered just beyond her vision only made her feel more lonely. More alone. Again she struggled to free her feet. With a sound like helium leaking from a balloon, she tore her right foot from the sucking mud, leaving one brown sandal behind. The other foot came loose more easily now, so that she wore only one shoe.

Get your bearings, Janine, she told herself. And get out.

Paranoia dissipated, but fear remained. It felt as though the fog around her had infiltrated her mind but was now clearing. Janine forced her breathing to slow, took long hitching breaths and managed to calm her body down. Her heartbeat still resounded through her body, but slower now, not hammering against the cavern of her chest.

The water. She had to get away from the water.

Whatever was coming for her, haunting her in this dreadful, claustrophobic territory, it was coming across the water. Retreat was her only option. Overwhelmed by the desire to distance herself immediately from the muddy shores of the fog-enshrouded river, Janine turned and blindly walked into the mist. The ground beneath her feet still squelched with dampness and the bank did not seem to rise up before her as she had expected.

The sounds of the river receded slightly behind her, and the wind rustled the leaves of the trees as she moved into denser wood. Branches swayed and seemed to dip across her path as if they were sentries warning her to turn back. But Janine did not turn back.

The prickling of her skin began to subside, the dread to recede from her heart. Even the mist seemed thinner around her and the air blowing through the trees smelled fresh, without what she now realized was the fetid scent blowing off the river.

At last the ground seemed firm beneath her feet, one bare and one still shod in white leather and rubber. With a ponderous sigh of relief, Janine looked down to see that, even with the mist she had begun to follow a path through the wood. Stones and roots jutted from the path and yet it seemed familiar to her.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a child she had once been recognized that this was the path home.

I was lost, she thought. Lost. Now I want to go home.

With a smile and a shake of her head, Janine picked up her pace, unmindful of the hazards that might lay along the path for her one bare foot. A stubbed toe or a twisted ankle were a fair price for a bit of extra speed, for a single minute less time spent in this dark and dreary wood.

Her smile evaporated. Something was not right.

Janine stopped and peered through the mist all around, more angry now than afraid. There were still eyes upon her, figures lingering just beyond her vision in the mist, watching her plight. She ignored them, for she was almost home. Their presence had become almost familiar now, like the mist itself, the trees around her, and the sound of the river.

The river.

It’s not behind me anymore.

Somehow the sound of the river had migrated. It was off to her left now, rushing past rocks and burbling along the marshy shore. Once again, her breath came too fast and her heart began to skim along far too quickly. Janine shook her head and took a step backward. She cast a glance back the way she had come but knew it would be foolhardy to reverse direction. Only the river lay back that way . . . and whatever it was that was coming for her.

Pulling at her.

Yes, she thought. That was the feeling she had been struggling to identify. The foreboding that filled her was not merely the presence of the thing but a kind of magnetic draw that seemed to drag at her limbs as she moved. She felt it pulling to her from the water, pulling her in.

Grimly determined, Janine pressed on. She had barely walked a dozen feet further into the mist when her bare foot touched soft, damp earth that squished between her toes. With a whimper she looked down and saw that the firm ground of the path had given way to mire again. Hesitant, she nevertheless continued, her single sandal and bare foot making almost obscene noises in the mire.

It turned, that’s all. It will turn again. I’m on a path. It must lead away from the river eventually.

But a moment later she stepped forward and her right leg plunged to the knee in blood-warm water and she stumbled and nearly fell face first into the river.

The path turned, that’s all.

Holding her breath, Janine took a step back . . . and found herself impossibly deeper than she had been a moment earlier. She spun around, searching through the mist for the shore, but the river rushed all around her now and she could feel it pulling at her. The water had reached her waist and she felt its undercurrents caressing her skin, tracing the lines of her legs. It felt as though something tugged on her under there, and she batted at the water around her.

Coins jangled in the loose pockets of her skirt, where the fabric had begun to float up around her. Janine frowned.

Out in the river, something moved through the water. A light appeared, tiny but growing larger, cutting toward her across the suddenly calm surface of the river.

No, Janine whispered.

Her limbs felt heavy and cold despite the warmth of the water. A single step back and she only plunged deeper, nearly fell into the river and found herself turned ‘round, facing the light again. Metal clanked against wood and the light seemed to swing from side to side and it grew nearer.

It was a boat. Narrower than a rowboat and roughly the length of a canoe, it came on toward her with a flickering lantern hung from its prow. No sail, no oars, nor even any rudder that she could see. The darkened figure that stood at the fore of the tiny boat made no effort to propel the vessel nor navigate its course.

Janine bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood, and she tasted its copper tang in her mouth. Her insides had stopped churning with fear and become instead a hard-packed core of ice and stone. A step in any direction would only plunge her deeper, bring her further into the river. She could not escape him.

Come for her was the Ferryman.

How she knew this was a mystery to her, but she did not question it. Inescapable fact loomed before her on the rippling surface of the river. Through the clearing mist she could see him now, draped in a scarlet hood and robe, a golden sash about his narrow waist. Beneath the hood his countenance was hidden, yet she imagined some horror beneath, some grotesque visage with burning eyes in skeletal orbits.

The lantern clanked against the wooden boat. The light cast by the flame within skittered insect-like across the swirl of the river. Janine stood frozen, watching the Ferryman come. He had stood as if hewn from granite upon the prow of the vessel but now reached up with narrow hands, thinly tapered fingers, and pulled back the cowl that had hidden his face.

Janine gasped, suddenly remembering to breathe.

The Ferryman’s flesh was pale and marbled and offset by his eyes, orbs of blackest indigo set into his thin face as if each of his pupils were its own full and devastating eclipse. His dark hair hung to his shoulders and his beard was lush, though pulled to a point some seven inches below his chin and bound with a metal ring.

Not the grotesque she had feared. But chilling just the same.

The ferry drifted to a stop perhaps a foot from where she stood, an island to herself in the river, and floated no further but instead remained there as if hovering just above the water.

The eclipsed stars that were the eyes of the ashen creature turned upon her, and Janine felt for the first time that perhaps its desire for her to accompany it, to accompany him, might not be an end to things but a beginning. Yet even as the thought dawned upon her, she also felt a new magnetism tugging at her from behind. Some other force had touched her, and it was powerful indeed.

She gazed across the river, squinted to see the land from which the Ferryman had come, but she could see nothing.

The slim, dreadful figure upon the ferry held out its right hand, palm up. It gazed down upon her and it made its single demand in a voice that seemed to ripple with the flow of the river.

The coins.

Janine shook her head. Any hesitation was gone. No, she said, barely a whisper at first but then more powerfully. No.

The Ferryman narrowed its gaze, the burning rims of fire around the black centers of its eyes disappearing now to leave only wells of darkness there.

The coins. More insistent.

Nausea roiled in Janine’s gut and bile rose in her throat. She choked it down and took a step backward . . . and did not slip deeper into the river. Another step, and she knew she was moving closer to the shore, though she dared not turn her back on the Ferryman.

The coins? A question now, accompanied by an expression that might have been amusement.

Janine snaked a hand into the sodden pocket of her skirt and withdrew three silver coins. With a powerful snap of her arm, she tossed them out across the river as though she were skimming stones. But they did not skim. They sliced the water’s surface and then sunk quickly below.

The Ferryman’s expression changed instantly. Fury rippled across his white stone features and his eyes went wide, revealing the twin suns behind the eclipsed irises. The flared and seemed about to burn her.

She ran. With great effort she surged up out of the water onto the muddy banks of the river.

A tug from behind and Janine turned one final time.

The Ferryman had not moved. He only stood in the prow of the ship glaring at her. In one arm he held a squalling bundle wrapped in white cloth close against his slender form.

Janine tripped. She went down face first into the sucking mire and it covered her face, pushed up her nostrils and into her mouth and she found she could not breath. Nor could she see. The mist and the filth that covered her eyes had made her effectively blind. She tore wildly at her face, at her mouth, struggling to take a breath. Even just a single breath.

Her chest burned with the need for air, lungs felt as if they were about to explode.

I’m going to die, she thought.

Then, simply, no.

Janine gasped. Air. Sweet Jesus, air.

Her eyes fluttered open.

Doctors, nurses, machines, sterile whiteness and you’re going to be all right, Miss Hartschorn. Just relax now, you’re going to be all right.

The baby? What about the baby? That was her voice, her rasping, raw-throated voice.

The sad faces of the nurses.

The doctor glances away.