Latest / All the Horror Podcast / The Last Ferry Home

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The Last Ferry Home · All the Horror Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to All The Horror Podcast, a chilling space where
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: nightmares come to life and the shadows whisper their secrets.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I am Lawrence, your guide through the eerie, the unexplained,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and the downright terrifying. Tonight, we cross dark water together.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Every coastal town has a last ferry home that one
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: tired commuter's catch, half asleep, trusting the route they have
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: ridden a hundred times. But what? If the ferry keeps
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: its own schedule? What? If some crossings only happen once,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and the fare is higher than the ticket says? See
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: dim the lights, hold your breath. and prepare for a
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: journey into the unknown. This is All The Horror Podcast,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: where fear is our favorite story. Tonight, the last ferry home.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: My name is Daniel Reyes, and I have ridden the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: 940 ferry from Harrow Point to Callaway Harbor four nights
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a week, for six years. I am a nurse. Night shift.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: The crossing takes 25 minutes, and I know every one
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: of them by heart. The horn at departure. The girls
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: giving up halfway across. The harbour lights, resolving out of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the dark like embers. I could make that crossing in
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: my sleep. And most nights, I nearly do it. That
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Tuesday in October was different only in small ways, the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: way bad nights always begin. My shift ran late. A
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: patient coded at eight, and we lost him at half past,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and the paperwork ate another hour, and by the time
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I reached Harrow Point, the terminal was empty, except for
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: old Pabbers behind the glass. who sold me my ticket,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: without looking up. The clock above his window said 9.41.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I remember, thinking I had missed it. But the horn
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: sounded as I stepped onto the pier, and the ferry
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: was there, gangway down, lights on. I almost did not board.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Something about the boat looked wrong in a way I
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: could not name until later. The paint, maybe. The Harrow
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Queen is white with a green stripe. This boat looked
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: white with a green stripe. The nameboard on the bow
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: read Harrow Queen. Everything checked out, everything was fine. I
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: told myself that, all the way up the gangway. And
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the gangway did not creak the way it usually creaks.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: And I told myself that was fine too. There were
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: eleven other passengers. I counted without meaning to. The way
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: you do when a space feels emptier than it should.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Eleven people. Scattered across a car deck built for two hundred.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: No cars. That was the first thing I should have
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: paid attention to. The 940 always carries cars. Delivery vans
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: coming back empty. A taxi or two. That night, the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: deck was bare metal, wet with something that was not rain,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: because it had not rained. I sat inside, upstairs, in
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: my usual seat, by the port side window. Third row,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: from the front. The seats were the right seats. The
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: vending machine hummed the right. Hum. An old woman sat
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: across the aisle from me, the only passenger close enough
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: to talk to. Wrapped in a grey coat despite the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: warm cabin, holding a paper ticket in both hands like
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a prayer card. She smiled at me, the tired smile
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of a fellow night traveller, And she said, you work
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the late one too. It was not a question. I nodded.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: She said, my daughter meets me at Calloway. Every Tuesday,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: she waits by the rail with the blue scarf. You
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: will see her. And then she looked down at her
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: ticket and her smile went away. And she said, very quietly,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: this does not say Calloway. I leaned over. Her ticket,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: green ink on white card, read Harrow Point to Graymire.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: On one way, I told her it was a misprint,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: that Pops was half asleep, that these things happen. She nodded,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: but she folded the ticket in half, and then in
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: half again, until it was small enough to hide in
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: her fist. and she did not open her hand again
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: for the rest of the crossing. I have thought about
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: that woman, every day. Since. I never saw her get off,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: at Grey Mire, or at Caddaway. She was simply not
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: there when I woke, and I have no explanation for that,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and I am done looking for one. But the timetable
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: card above the door... The little laminated card with the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: crossings printed on it. Showed sailings. I did not recognize.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Harrow Point to Calloway Harbor, yes, but also Harrow Point
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: to Graymire. Harrow Point to St. Hollow. Harrow Point? Afipa?
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I had never heard of any of those places. I
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: stared at that card for a long time. And then
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I laughed at myself. Quietly. Because night shift does things
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: to your eyes. And I looked out the window instead.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: The horn sounded. We pulled away from Harrow Point at 9.46,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and the terminal lights slid past, and Pabst was standing
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: in the doorway of the ticket office, watching us go.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Which he never does. And his face, in the sodium light,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: looked like the face of a man watching something he
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: cannot stop. 25 minutes. I set my phone timer the
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: way I always do, leaned my head against the cold window,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: and closed my eyes. I woke to silence. Not the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: engine slowing. Not the bump of the dock. Silence. Total
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and wrong silence. the way silence is rung at sea.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: The engine had stopped. The vending machine had stopped humming.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I could hear water lapping against the hole and nothing else.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And my phone said 10.31, which meant we had been
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: underway for 45 minutes on a 25-minute crossing. I sat up.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: The cabin was empty. All eleven passengers. Gone. The lights
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: were on, the timetable card was still above the door,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and outside the window there was fog. Thick, grey fog
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: pressed against the glass like something with weight, and through it,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: far off, a single green harbour light blinking in a
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: rhythm I did not know. Harbour's blinking patterns you learn.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: The way you learn. Faces. Calloway Harbour blinks twice. Pauses.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Blinks twice. This light blinked three times. Steady. Patient. Wrong.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I went down to the car deck. Auntie? I called out.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: My voice came back to me flat. Absorbed, as if
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the fog ate sound the way snow does. I walked
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: to the bow, and the deck was still wet with
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that not rain. And the nameboard? I checked. I had
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: to check. Still red Harold Bween. But the paint beneath it,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: where the light caught it, was not white. It was grey.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: The grey of old teeth. and the stripe was not green.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I will not tell you what colour it was. Eh,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: you would not believe me, and it does not matter,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: because by then, the fog had opened ahead of us
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: like a curtain, and there was the harbour, and it
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: was not Callow. Way. Harbour. The town on the shore
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: had street lamps. I could see them through the thinning fog.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: A crooked row of orange lights climbing a hill. There
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: was a church spire. There were houses with lit windows.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: It looked, in every way that matters at night, from
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the water. Like a town. And the sign on the dock.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: when we drifted close enough to read it, said Grey
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Mire in white letters on green boards. And beneath it,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: in smaller letters, POPULATION NINE HUNDRED. No one tied us up.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: The ferry nosed against the pilings and stopped, and the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: gangway was already down. And I stood on that deck
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: for a long time, doing the arithmetic of a tired man.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I had fallen asleep. The ferry had been diverted. Fog,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: some emergency, some harbour I had never heard of because
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I am a nurse, not a sailor. There would be
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: an office. A phone, the way home. The arithmetic worked.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: The earth-mantic always works. Right up until it does not,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I walked down the gangway into Greymere. The air smelled
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: of brine and wood smoke, and something sweet underneath, like
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: fruit left too long in a bowl. The dock planks
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: were new. That struck me as odd. Everything else about
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the place looked weathered, salt-eaten, a hundred years old. But
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the dock planks were pale and fresh, and they were wet,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: and my shoes made no sound on them at all,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: which I noticed, the way you notice things in dreams,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: filed away for later, never examined. I mean, that's going
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: all for the first light of the mess. I... think...
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: The street climbed from the dock between rows of houses.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And every window was lit. Every single one. Warm yellow light.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: And there was not a soul in sight. No cars.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: No dogs. No television flicker. Just the lamps buzzing overhead.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: And my own breathing. And, far up the hill, the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: church bell beginning to ring. It rang eleven times. My
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: phone said 10.40. I checked twice. The bell rang 11 times,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: slow and certain, and then the town held its breath.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I knocked on the first door with a lit window.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Number 4. Harbour Street. No answer. I knocked on number 6.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Number 8. The doors were warm. I want you to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: understand that The doors were warm to the touch, like
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: something on the other side was standing very close, breathing
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: on the wood. But no one opened, and no floorboards creaked.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: And when I pressed my ear to the door of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: number eight, I heard, very faintly, water lapping. Water. Inside
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: a house. on a hill above a harbour lapping the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: way it laps against a hull that was when I
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: ran not bravely back to the ferry I ran uphill
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: toward the church because the lit windows had begun going
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: out behind me one by one in order from the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: dock upward like someone walking the street with a snuffer.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And I understood, with the total clarity of terror, that
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: whatever was putting out those lights was coming up the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: hill behind me. Think, and the church was the only
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: building with its door open The church was full, every
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: pew occupied. Men, women, children, all facing forward, all perfectly still.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And every one of them I saw as I stumbled
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: down the aisle was wet. Hair plastered, clothes dark and dripping,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: puddles spreading on the stone floor beneath the pews. The
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: sweet smell, the fruit smell. was stronger here, and under it,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: the brine. And the congregation did not turn, did not blink,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: did not breathe, as far as I could tell. And
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: at the front of the church, where the altar should
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: have been, there was a timetable board, and on it,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: in chalk, in a neat hand, the crossings. Hey! How
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it went to Graymeier, Graymire to St. Hollow, St. Hollow
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: to Vesper, and at the bottom underline twice, last ferry
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: departs 11.15, all passengers must be aboard. 11.15. The bell
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: had rung 11, but before I ran, I did one
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: thing I wish I had not done. There was a
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: book on a stand beside the timetable board, a heavy
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: ledger bound in something dark and cracked, and it lay open,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and a pen rested in its crease, still wet. The
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: page was a list of names in different hands, hundreds
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: of them, columns going back years, decades. And at the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: bottom of the page, in handwriting, I recognized with a
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: horror that stopped my heart. Because it was my own handwriting.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: The hurried scrawl I use on patient charts was my name.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Daniel Reyes. And beside it, half-formed, the ink still glistening,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: The beginning of a second word. I could not read it.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I still cannot read it in my memory, though I
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: have tried a thousand times. It might have been an A.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: It might have been the start of a sure. I
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: slammed the book shut, and the sound it made was
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: not the sound of paper and binding. It was the
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: sound of a door closing. somewhere in the church, somewhere close.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: The congregation had not moved, not one head had turned.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: But every puddle on the stone floor had spread wider,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: and the water was touching my shoes, and it was cold,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: so cold it burned. I did not wait to do
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the arithmetic. I went back down the aisle, out of
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the church, down the hill, past the dark windows, all
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: of them dark now, past number 8, with its warm door,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and the lights were going out in the street lamps too,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: ahead of me, the darkness rolling downhill toward the dark,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: like weather, and behind me, from every house, from every
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: dark window. I heard it, knocking, patient, rhythmic, like knuckles
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: on wood, like doors being knocked from the inside. The
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: ferry was waiting. The gamway was up. I screamed. I
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: am not ashamed to tell you. I screamed at that
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: boat with everything in me. And the gangway came down. Slow. Considerate.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: The way you would lower something for a man you pity.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And I ran up it. And it creaked. Oh God.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: It creaked the right way. The Harrow Queen Creek. I
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: knew in my bones. And. The moment my feet hit
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the deck the horn sounded. And we pulled away from Graymeyer.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And the dock, the whole town, the hill, the church,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: folded itself into the fog like something being put away.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Ten passengers were back in the cabin, sitting exactly where
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: they had been, as if they had never left. The
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: seat across the aisle was empty. The old woman with
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the folded ticket was gone, and so was her grey coat,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and so was everything, as if she had never been
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: there at all, except I could still see the crease
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in the seat cushion where she had sat, and I
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: can see it now, every night, every crossing, that crease.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: as if I were the only one who had gone
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: ashore perhaps I was I stood in the doorway dripping
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: fog and shaking and none of them looked at me
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and I was glad I sat in my seat third row,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: port side window, and the timetable card above the door
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: showed only the one crossing now, Harrow Point, to Callaway Harbour,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: 25 minutes. As it always had, as it always would.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: We ducked at Callaway Harbour at 11.02. The gulls, the embers,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the bunk of the pilings, everything right, everything normal. I
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: look for the daughter by the rail, the blue scarf.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: There was no one waiting. There never is. On the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: lake crossing. I do not know who the old woman
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: was meeting. I know she never arrived. I walked down
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the gangway on legs that barely held me, and I
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: did not look back at the boat, not once. And
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I drove home, and I sat in my kitchen until
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: sunrise with every light in the house on. And I
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: told myself it was a dream. Night shift. Exhaustion. Grief, maybe.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: For the patient we lost at half past eight. The
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: arithmetic worked. The arithmetic always works. Until Thursday. My next
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: night shift. Same ferry. 9.40. perhaps behind the glass, and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: when he slid my ticket through, he held onto it
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: for a moment, and he looked at me, really looked
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: at me, for the first time in six years, and
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: he said, You gots off a grey-mire, didn't you? Not
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: a question. And before I could answer, before I could
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: deny it, he said, They counted you, Daniel. The town
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: counts everyone who steps onto the dock. Population 900. It
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: was 8.99 on Tuesday morning. I keep the log. I
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: have kept the log for 31 years. I asked him
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: what that meant. I am a practical man. I asked
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: him what that meant and what I was supposed to
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: do about it. He let go of the ticket. He said,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: You ride free now. That is the arrangement. You got off,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and you got back on. And that almost never happens,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and the line honors it. You will never pay for
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: this crossing again. But, Daniel... He leaned close to the glass.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: His breath folded. Never fall asleep on the 9.40 again.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: If you sleep, it stops. That is when it stops.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: And next time, the gangway might not come back down
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: for you. Next time, you might be in time for
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the 11.15, and everyone in Greymire is always in time
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: for the 11.15. That is why the town is so quiet.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: they all just waiting for their ferry I ride the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: 944 nights a week I've not slept on it since
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I sit in the third row port side window and
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I watched the timetable card and I counted the passengers
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and some nights there are 11 and some nights there
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: are 12 And on the nights there are twelve, I
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: do not look at the twelfth passenger. I look at
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the window, I look at the dark water, and I
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: stay awake. God help me, I stay awake, because last Tuesday,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: on the crossing home, the fog came in early, and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the engine note changed. The way it changes when the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: boat is slowing for a dock that is not on
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: any chart. And the timetable card flittered. Just for a second.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And I saw it. Harrow Point to Greer Meyer. And
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: beneath it, in chalk white letters on the laminated card,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: two words that were not there before. See. You. And
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: so Daniel rides the 940 still, awake. Always awake. Counting
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: passengers who may or may not be there. The last
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: ferry home. It runs every night. It always has room.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: And the fare, my friends, the fare is only collected
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: from those who sleep. Check your own crossings. Count your
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: fellow passengers. And if the timetable shows a harbour you
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: have never heard of, stay in your seat. Keep your
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: eyes open. And, whatever you do, do not get off
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: at Greymire. This is Lawrence. reminding you that some journeys
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: only go one way. Sleep if you dare, but never
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: on the 940. Until next time, keep the lights on.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: This is All The Horror Podcast, where fear is our
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: favourite story.