The Ferryman Institute by Colin Gigl

Then, in the middle of the page, where Dirkley usually provided a wealth of information, a word was quickly scrawled out in huge letters: MARIA. Underlined twice, then circled.
    Charlie shook his head in wonder. Even for Dirkley, it was impressive. The more agitated a person was before their passing, the more erratic their last memories would be. Moreover, the memory feed was probably just about washed out by the time Dirkley even got to it. How Dirkley had managed to come up with a name, Charlie couldn’t even begin to guess, but now he had something. Granted, it wasn’t much, but a name—even just a first name—at least gave him a shot. Charlie unexpectedly noticed more words appearing on the page. He held his phone over them.
    Sorry, but that’s all I’ve got. Feed is too far gone. Smalling made it back safely. You do the same.
    â€”Dirkley
    Charlie put away the phone and the form. First name will have to do, then , he thought. He considered looking at his watch, but his internal clock told him with relative certainty that there was only about a minute left before he came face-to-face with the spirit of Maria and he didn’t want to waste another second. As if the woman could read his mind, she let out a piercing howl. Her body rocked perceptibly on the car, though the scream was quieter and shorter in duration than her previous one. He could hear her crying now, slowly, softly.
    His eyes settled on her and her broken body. And then, just like that, the idea was in his head.
    His feet carried him quietly across the road. As he walked, his right hand instinctively reached for the Ferryman Key stored inside his jacket, just to be sure it was still there. He stood in front of the car, marveling at the completely decimated state of the hood. Then, he carefully took a seat on it next to the woman named Maria.
    She was whimpering now, her breath coming in quick, ragged spurts. A hacking, weak cough disrupted her breathing pattern, and it wasn’t hard to see why—having passed through the windshield, she had a large shard of glass embedded in her chest, just above her sternum. Also, given how dramatically her head had twisted ( The Exorcist immediately jumped to Charlie’s mind), it was pretty obvious she’d broken her neck. She faced away from him, looking off into the dense forest, and he was glad for it. As it was, the scene before him would have been enough to keep him well stocked in nightmares for quite a while (had he needed to sleep, which, given that he was going on two and a half centuries without so much as a power nap, either made it patently obvious he didn’t need to or explained why he was cranky all the time). No need to make it even worse.
    There was something that was bothering Charlie, however. Mainly, his own head. His instincts were telling him to make a play that, for the first time in his career, he was hesitant over. It was risky. Very risky. But when had his gut ever let him down?
    Quietly, sitting next to a woman on the verge of death, Charlie did something he’d never done before—he reached inside his jacket, pulled out his Ferryman Key, and placed it neatly on the hood.
    The Ferryman Key was a wondrous thing: it allowed a Ferryman to reach destinations all over the globe almost instantly, it opened the door to an assignment’s afterlife, and it made the possessor completely invisible to humans. It was the linchpin of Ferryman secrecy, the key (for lack of a better word) to keeping mankind blissfully ignorant of the Institute’s existence. Charlie didn’t know how it worked, only that it did. Now that he’d removed his key, however, it meant that anyone—human or spirit—would be aware of his presence.
    Charlie, as was often the case, opted for a very loose interpretation of the word plan . Without his key, the assignment ( Maria, her name is Maria ) would be able to hear him. If he could calm her down enough before she