Whispers at the Midnight Ferry

The first time Eli saw her, the fog was so thick he couldn’t see the dock’s end. Midnight runs on the Baybridge Ferry were usually empty except for a few drunks, shift workers, or sleepless souls. But that night, a girl in a cream-colored coat stood at the edge of the gangway, hands clasped like she was praying.

She didn’t have a ticket.

“End of the line,” Eli called, his voice echoing over the water. “No more crossings after this.”

She looked up. Her eyes were the pale gray of driftwood. “That’s fine,” she said, stepping aboard.

The ferry’s deck boards creaked under her boots. Eli’s first mate, Tanner, raised an eyebrow at Eli but said nothing. They’d both seen enough strange things in twenty years of running the ferry to know when not to ask questions.

By the time they pushed off, the fog had thickened into a wet woolen curtain. The ferry’s engine hummed low, steady. Eli kept one eye on the compass and one on the passenger. She leaned against the railing, staring into the black water.

“Storm coming,” Tanner muttered. “Barometer’s tanking.”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “We’ll hug the channel.”

A gull’s cry echoed, distant and lonely. The girl didn’t flinch.

“Where you headed?” Eli finally asked.

She turned, her coat’s hem fluttering like pale wings. “Somewhere quiet.”

“That’s all of Cedar Isle after midnight,” he said. “You got family there?”

“Not exactly.”

She smiled faintly. There was a tiredness in her face that didn’t match her age—she couldn’t be more than twenty.

Halfway across the channel, the foghorn moaned low. Tanner went below to check the bilge pump, leaving Eli alone at the wheel.

The girl stepped into the wheelhouse without knocking.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” Eli said. “Crew only.”

She tilted her head. “Does it still take twenty-two minutes to cross?”

“Depends on the current,” he said automatically.

“That’s what my father used to say.” She touched the brass railing around the wheelhouse window. “He died here.”

Eli’s hand froze on the throttle. “What?”

“Right out there,” she said softly, pointing into the fog. “On the water.”

Eli swallowed. “Sorry to hear that.”

“You were there.”

He turned sharply. “I—what?”

“You were there,” she said again. “You were the one who pulled him from the water. Ten years ago.”

He stared at her. He had pulled a man from the channel ten years back. A fishing boat had capsized in a squall; he and Tanner had fought to drag one survivor aboard. But the man hadn’t made it. No one had ever claimed the body.

“You can’t…” Eli shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

The girl’s gray eyes met his. “His name was Jonah Carrick.”

He remembered the ID on the waterlogged wallet. Jonah Carrick. Age forty-eight. Address on Cedar Isle.

“I’m his daughter,” she said.

“That man didn’t have a daughter,” Eli whispered. “I read the papers. No next of kin.”

Her gaze was steady. “Not yet.”

The ferry rolled gently under them. Outside, the fog grew brighter, as if lit from within.

Tanner burst into the wheelhouse. “Eli,” he said urgently. “You better see this.”

They stepped onto the deck. The fog had parted in a perfect corridor, and ahead lay a dock that shouldn’t exist. Not the Cedar Isle dock—a different one, lined with lanterns burning with cold blue flame.

“What the hell…” Tanner muttered.

The girl stepped forward. “We’re almost there.”

“Almost where?” Eli demanded.

She turned to him. “You’ve been carrying ghosts across this channel for years without knowing. Tonight you get to see.”

Tanner backed away, making the sign of the cross. “This is bad, Eli.”

But Eli couldn’t look away. The dock drew nearer, its planks slick with some shimmering liquid, its pilings sunk into water that looked too deep, too dark.

The girl reached into her coat and pulled out a brass token, old and weathered. “He said you’d remember this.”

Eli took it. It was a ferry token from before the war, stamped 1912. His grandfather had run the ferry then.

“How—”

The girl smiled. “It’s been in my family for a long time. Every captain keeps it.”

The ferry shuddered, engines faltering.

Eli spun toward the throttle, but it was stuck. The girl touched his arm. “It’s okay. This is where you stop.”

“No,” Eli said, panic rising. “This ferry’s going back to Cedar Isle. I’m not—”

“Not yet,” she said. “But soon.”

Her gray eyes flicked to the black water. “Do you hear them?”

At first he thought it was the engine. Then he heard voices—whispers rising from beneath the surface, layered and countless.

He stumbled back. “What is this place?”

“The crossing,” she said simply.

The ferry kissed the strange dock with a sound like a sigh. The girl stepped off without looking back.

“Wait!” Eli called. “Who are you really?”

She paused, half-turned, her coat fluttering in an unseen wind. “You’ll know when it’s your turn,” she said. “Thank you for carrying him.”

She walked up the dock and disappeared into the blue light.

The fog slammed shut like a door.

Eli found himself staring at the Cedar Isle dock, the real one, dull and empty under sodium streetlights. The engines hummed normally. Tanner gripped the railing, pale.

“Did that just—”

“I don’t know,” Eli said, his voice hoarse. “Tie us up.”

On the deck where the girl had stood lay the brass token, glinting faintly.

He picked it up, feeling its impossible weight.

Somewhere out in the fog, a gull cried again, but this time the sound carried a whisper he couldn’t quite catch.