The Ferryman Institute by Colin Gigl Page A

passed, there was a chance he’d end up with a more cooperative and understanding spirit. In theory, it could work. The only downside rested in the whole violating-one-of-the-Institute’s-most-sacrosanct-laws bit.
    That’s how Cartwright had described the idea when Charlie pressed him on the topic several years ago. They’d been camped out on the Mediterranean Sea at the time, tucked away among the rocky shores near a small Italian sea town, watching as the water rose and fell like a living thing, each small wave plowing ahead toward points undefined.
    â€œMind you, my good fellow, that I am no authority on thetopic. However, there’s a reason it is considered one of the three cardinal rules of the Institute, second only in severity to interfering with a subject’s death. I will admit, I don’t quite remember all the finer points, but if the Ferryman Institute’s existence was ever exposed, the repercussions would be . . . hmm, how to phrase it . . .”
    Charlie had been tapping his Ferryman Key lightly on the slick rock next to him, tink -ing away in some atonal rhythm. “Would be sang to the tune of ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’?”
    â€œPrecisely!” Cartwright had said with a clap. “A potential human-extinction-level event, I believe is the recognized terminology.”
    â€œBut that’s what I don’t get. If humanity knew about the Ferryman Institute and Ferrymen in general, wouldn’t that make our jobs easier? Kind of prepare them for when they finally kick their respective buckets?”
    Charlie remembered Cartwright smiling in that cryptic way he sometimes did, that half grin that suggested he knew something Charlie didn’t. “Ah, but you forget something rather important in all this.”
    Charlie asked the obvious follow-up— What? —with his eyes.
    â€œHuman nature, Charles. If the Institute were revealed to the world, the world would try to take advantage, and even then I believe I am rather understating it. There are two types of men in this world, my dear friend: those who fear death, and liars. We Ferrymen succeed because, at a human’s most vulnerable moment, when the soul is very literally bared to the world, we are there. We are comfort. We are hope. But if you remove that weapon from our arsenal, we are disadvantaged. Compromised, if you will. That would make us a liability, and Death does not employ liabilities.”
    With a final tink , Charlie had ceased tapping his key. “Butwe’re not exactly the only organization in the soul business,” he said, which was true. With 114 people dying every minute, that meant more than enough croaking for groups competing with the Ferryman Institute to have their death cake and eat it, too. “Couldn’t they just take a bigger slice of the pie?”
    â€œThey could, but I feel confident in saying it would be an exercise in futility. The Ferryman Institute is a soul-processing behemoth—the original and most successful. The other organizations would be overrun in short order by the sheer mathematics. And when that last group should fall . . .” Cartwright had leaned back against the rocks, his eyes suddenly looking across the water at something Charlie couldn’t see. “. . . so, too, I fear, does the curtain fall on humanity. Which is why, my friend, we must always ensure the play goes on.”
    Back on that desolate stretch of road, Charlie sat unmoving, staring as his key lay freely on the hood of the miraculously still-running car. The last words Cartwright had said filled his ears like the roar of an oncoming train. While the stranger he knew only as Maria ticked inexorably toward her death, Charlie arrived at a somewhat startling realization, one he hadn’t expected.
    Right then, he simply did not give a fuck about the rules.
    Yes, not a solitary, itty-bitty, quark-sized