The case, my coffin, my transporter, whatever it was, was not going to be any further help, I could tell. I was standing outside in darkness – it felt like the middle of the night, somehow, though I couldn’t be sure – but I could see enough to know that the case was dead. There was a tiny black screen on its side that looked like it may have displayed something useful at one point, but it was shut down now. The thing had no warmth, no hum.

I knew I had been asleep in that thing for many, many years. I could feel it, somehow. I couldn’t explain it then, and still can’t now, but – I felt the way I would feel after waking from a long dream. Very long, this time. And that case must have been made to keep me alive; and it was certainly turned off now.

The dead black screen helped prod me onward. Had the case been making any sounds, or showing any life; or if I could have remembered where I had come from in it, or where I was – then I might have sat there and waited for some next step. But I had nothing, so I felt I had to just move. I was in the dark in a strange place.

There were fallen leaves around and I used them to wipe off the gel which covered my body, and which I’d been lying in. This took some time, and didn’t leave me feeling very clean, but I got it all off except what was in my hair.

I was stranded in a stretch of woods. Maybe I should have gathered yet more leaves, piled them up, and bedded down until dawn. The night was not particularly warm, for one thing; I would have been warmer underneath a leaf pile than wandering around naked. But I wanted to move out of there. And anyway I wasn’t tired at all. I just felt like I had been asleep for – again, a very long time.

As I was going to step away I noticed a small bundle of branches, bearing white blooms, on the ground on the other side of the case. It looked like it must have fallen off the lid, when it opened. There were no other blooms like them around that I could see.

I picked them up. The branches had been tied together with twine. So someone must have been around that case, and very recently; but maybe not right before it opened, necessarily, because the blooms were dry. They were something like a hydrangea, still white but not new.

I carried them with me, I don’t know why. I guess I thought that if someone felt they were important enough to leave on that case, I should hang onto them. I certainly had no other possessions crowding them out.

A dim light that came down into the woods through the largely bare trees, although I couldn’t see the moon. The ground was clear and I walked in a direction that seemed just slightly less dark than the rest. There were fallen branches, and mud beneath the carpet of leaves.

Eventually the silent wood did begin to thin. Soon I was able to smell water – the rot of a marsh – further ahead.

The woods gave way to an open area leading down to a shore. Along the bank there were bare trunks of trees, and stumps. I kept thinking that some or others of them were people; the forms and shadows played tricks. It was not hard to think that these were stranded travelers, longing to cross the water.

I turned to my left, and kept walking. The marsh cleared and gave way to deeper water, a slow-moving river. It was wide, but I could see the far shore.

There were no sounds; no splashes from fish, no water birds. I imagined I would be there until daylight and looked for a spot to lie back down.

But then I made out a boat, low in the water. Slowly it came across, straight to me. It was long, and flat; it reminded me of depictions I had seen of several Roman river barges which had been discovered –

Discovered? When? I realized I couldn’t remember.

– but it reminded me of those; but smaller. A long, flat platform on the dark water.

It held, I saw, a single man, standing tall and holding a pole or a long paddle.

He seemed to see me, but lowered the pole into the water in order to stop. He stayed at a distance and, as far as I could tell, faced me silently. I raised my arm in greeting, with no result. I lowered it.

Eventually he raised the pole again and approached closer. He came up to within maybe twenty yards.

“Traveler,” he said. It was a greeting, but his voice seemed sharp. I got the impression he didn’t think I belonged there. And I suppose I did not, as a naked stranger carrying nothing but a bouquet of dry blooms.

“Yes,” I said. “I have just – found myself here. I need help. I’m alone.”

“You are not well prepared for this trip.”

“No, I’m not,” I said, looking down at myself stupidly, as if I were going to see something new. “I – woke up in the woods back there.”

“And you have nothing but that bough.”

“That’s right.”

I added:

“I don’t know why I’m carrying it.”

“Well then,” he answered. “I suppose I may take you.”

“Where to?”

“To help. The other side.”

He just stayed there motionless for another minute or two, oddly, but then he did finally put his weight on the pole and close the distance to me.

His boat had a very shallow draft and I was able to walk out into the water just a bit – which was useful, actually, in washing off the mud I had picked up on the walk – and then step up and in. The ferryman waited for me, keeping both hands on the pole to hold the boat in place. He didn’t step toward me.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“What time is it?” I asked him, once aboard.

“We seldom speak of time here,” he said. “It is time to – cross the river. To be on the other side. For a passenger of mine.”

He poled off. The quiet river was slow and shallow, and he was able to push us along and not end up too far downstream.

He took the flat boat across the water, nearly to the shore, but we did not land. Once there he turned to the right and followed the edge for some distance. We were moving downstream, now, and he no longer had to push us along. He only guided the boat to keep it straight as we drifted.

To our left the riverbank rose up to fields with clumps of trees. Everything I saw was in black, or grays. Somehow this all seemed darker than night. Or not darker; just, not night. The darkness was different.

On that shore I could see tall grasses very gently waving back and forth in a slight breeze. They were barely silvered, just barely, so I could see them, although there was still no moon. I saw no stars, either.

Then I noticed, in the distance, up on that land, people. There were crowds of them.

And now that I saw them I could hear some quiet speech. The talk was far away, and difficult to hear, but it sounded – discontent. It was as if the people were snapping at each other.

“What is this?” I asked the boatman. “Who are those people?”

“People on the outskirts,” he said. “I don’t believe you will be a part of that gathering.”

“But who are they?”

“The disconsolate. Some for a reason, some not. Some of them bear blame which should never have been levied upon them. Some wait for others, although they may not see them for – a time. And some have lived in such anger for so long that they cannot escape it.”

“I am not understanding where I am,” I said.

“You are not anywhere, yet. Your landing is still ahead.”

The land on our left, as we passed it by, sometimes rose, and sometimes fell; was studded at some points with trees, and copses of trees, but in other areas was just the waving grass; but all along, there were masses of these people, standing there in the darkness and carrying on their apparent hard conversations. They were now closer to the shore, and I could hear occasional phrases:

“– behind my back – ”

“– I didn’t need anyone – ”

“– I could see that he had never – ”

Now I noticed that the sky was lightening, although I could see no obvious sign of a sunrise, just as I had not been able to see the moon. We continued, rounding a bend that was bordered by trees that looked to be mangroves. As we passed them I saw, on higher ground, a single form standing.

There was no mass of people around him; just one person. And he was close enough that I could see it was a man.

The ferryman leaned on his pole to shove us toward the bank.

“Are we stopping here?” I asked.

“This is someone for you to speak to,” he said. “Wait, I will get closer than that. Right up to shore.”

Now I realized I had not needed to wade through the water to get to the boat, its draft was so slight, and the ferryman had probably thought I was a fool for doing so. He did bring the prow to the bank, and I stepped out.

The man up on higher ground started walking down toward me.

He looked familiar; part memory, part mirror.

It was my father.

I walked up to him, closing the distance. I saw that he was crying; I was, too.

I put my arms around him;

But there was nothing to hold. They passed through his image. I tried again, knowing it would fail.

“Dad.”

He looked at me, but didn’t try to touch me.

“Are you here, or not?”

“I’m here,” he said. “As much as I’m anywhere. You made it. For a moment.”

He had died a few years ago; or what seemed just a few years ago, from what I could remember. He’d had cancer, and had not made it to seventy. But now he looked good; the way he had looked before we knew he was sick. He had lines on the sides of his eyes, but they looked like smile lines, not worry lines.

He wasn’t completely smooth-shaven. His beard had been rough and thick, and he’d always had a hard time keeping his face smooth.

I asked:

“How long have you been here?”

“It’s hard to say, Perry. I feel like I just arrived. But time passes quickly here.”

“Is Mom here?”

“Not yet.”

“She must be coming, though?”

“I’m sure she is.”

“You’re not – stuck with all those bickering people, are you?”

“No,” he said. He smiled. “I don’t choose to be with them. It’s not hard to avoid them.”

“They ask for that?”

“I’m afraid they do. Tell me – what is new? Out there in the world?”

“I – I don’t know much,” I said. “I don’t know how much time has passed, but I think I’ve missed a lot of it myself. I’ve been in a case, I’ve been asleep.”

He didn’t seem to be understanding me. His face looked blank, and I was afraid I would lose him.

“Ara is good, Jennifer is good,” I said. “From the last I remember. Ara is – her own person now. She was four when you left.”

“Yes.”

“I wish you could see her. She’s like Jen. Like Mom. She’ll make us all proud.”

“And our work?”

“It was going well, Dad. I don’t know how long ago I stopped. I think something – ” and I had to pause. “I think something may have gone wrong. I feel something. I can’t know, for sure.”

“But you were a scientist. A man of science.” And with that, he raised his hands to rest them on my shoulders. They sat there, but I didn’t feel them.

Then the ferryman spoke, his sharp voice again that would carry across water:

“We cannot stay.”

My father kept his eyes on me, and gave just a very slight shake of his head.

“You can’t stay here, Perry. Not yet.”

“But I’ll come back?”

“Yes. Sometime. After your mother.”

He pulled his hands off my shoulders, lowered his arms. He took two steps back.

“Perry Doran,” the ferryman said. “You cannot stay.”

I walked down the slope and back into the boat. My father watched me; neither of us said anything. I felt that no more words belonged in this place.

The ferryman poled off, again downstream. Further along the river, past a few more banks that protruded into the water, I saw that there was a white arch. That’s where the ferryman was taking me; it was obvious. It was my gateway to – whatever was next. Whatever had to come next.