I first learned about the ghost ferry from the Billy twins. They weren’t both named Billy. One was William and the other Drew or Leopold or something else entirely. But you couldn’t tell them apart. William and Leopold or Franklin had exactly the same freckles, and the same black waves behind each ear, and the same slouchy shoulders in a Salish Sea kayak. So we called them both Billy. Neither wanted more in public.

Billy or Billy first mentioned the ferry during training. I assumed it was another tease. They mentioned it like a shipwreck or a myth or a paddler missing on the water. Only, I wasn’t invited to the search. So I forgot the ferry until we trained on Jones Island. Out there, in the state park, nobody talked about much else. You might be laying out tablecloths and tents for guests in the grassy South Cove, and Billy would call: ‘Any sign of that haunted ferry yet, Maple?’ Or, as I hurried towards the gravel beached kayaks to get more pesto, a passing Billy would whisper: ‘Mind, Douglas, you don’t leave your hatches open on a ferry night.’ Right then they still called me the names of Washington trees to help me learn. And these first trips I only assisted Billy or Billy, rather than taking out paddlers all alone, so there were many times when I forgot a stove component or left the rain tarp at the shop. Then Billy would sadly inform me, ‘The dead ferry captain will not be pleased to hear about this, Madrona.’

I finally saw the ferry on a solo guide for a YMCA group. That night, Billy and Billy both had their own trips. So I wasn’t on Jones alone. Not at first. I arrived at the South Cove late, after afternoon at least, with Billy and Billy both up on the beach teasing me about missing the incoming tide. In the orange glow one said, ‘Living ferry already stopped by nearly an hour ago, Hemlock. Better start dinner for the dead.’ The other Billy warned that all agate crystals on Jones were long stolen today. Stolen by ferry ghosts, past and future. Obviously neither helped me prepare camp. I struggled through unloading the kayaks with the chaperones in the twilight. And I scraped burnt curry off the cast iron to serve the kids for dinner. I wrongly instructed the teenage counselors about a sunset hike to the West Side. Wrong at least in that, when I finally finished stripping my cast iron with a soapy wire scrubber in the Sound, I couldn’t find my troupe on the bluffs. Their tents were all empty in the South Cove. In fact, as I hurried from the South site to Billy’s in the North Cove and Billy’s by the West, I discovered myself alone on Jones Island. No soul rustled or passed on the darkening trails. Not a fire lit any point. My camp was still abandoned. The evergreen trees went quiet and hollow turning blue to black while I dried my dishes and hid the last of the leftover curry in my hatches—hid it from the deer and the racoons wandering like specters through the dark. I gathered wood for a fire. Almost lit it, almost radioed the coastguard even, with no phone service and a bunch kids lost in the hanging moss. Except, before I could completely lose myself in panic, a light arrived from the south.

The glowing ferry drifted in off the Orcas Island route, missing Wasp Pass and wandering up past Yellow to the South Cove. It was a smaller boat, smaller than the Yakima or Chelan. More like maybe the Tilikum: lit high in checkered windows but not too high against the shadowed islands behind it. A yellow aura or mist hung around the upper decks. And the great metal craft floated in shallower than it should have in the South Cove, gliding above smooth water and extending out a long walkway from the main cabin while I watched from the bank. No cars parked on the bottom deck. Nobody walked on or off. But before the craft could leave me to the empty island, I scurried down through the driftwood and up towards the cloudy windows of the main deck. Billy and Billy waited by the front door.

They were Billy but they weren’t Billy, since at first I recognized them both leaned against the rail and drinking together in a familiar way. But when they rose to greet me, both men wore evening jackets and their smiling faces were older, like fathers or like Billy after twenty more summers of sun. Their eyes were closed.

“You’re late, Gary Oak.”

“Not here, Billy,” said the one on the right. “Her name is Marigold here.”

“Right you’re right, Billy. My apologies, miss Marigold.”

I asked Billy or Billy if they had seen the kids from my trip—the two chaperones also but mainly the kids. They turned to each other, both still with clenched eyes, and shrugged no. Then Billy led me inside, groping blindly to open a door unlike most ferry doors. The frame gleamed like polished wood, and inside thick carpets spread from wall to wall. The front seating area held a long bar with glassware and bottles of mezcal and whiskey up on shelves. But rather than a bartender, I noticed other guides—Delilah, Nicky, and Romanov to start—reaching over to pour drinks or mixing cocktails as if they owned the boat. There was an authority and command in the way they moved. Their shut eyes never slowed their hands. Many other groups stood by the frosted windows or sat in leather benches with banjos and guitars. I recognized them as guides from other companies or a few regulars who we sometimes saw paddling alone on the water. Except everyone looked older. They all bent a little. This view troubled me, even Billy and Billy chattering along with wrinkled sockets and silver whisps streaking their hair, especially with my children still missing from Jones Island. Finally, Billy spun close to my face. He seemed to understand my confusion, and patting up my arm, he placed into my hand a random drink from the bar. It tasted like whiskey ginger and was cooled by frozen agate crystals.

While I sipped it, I watched the other Billy by the door. Sarah’s hand rested on his shoulder rather than his leg, as it had all summer, and now a wedding ring looped around one finger. They looked at one another the same as I sometimes saw them that spring at bars in town, alone and together on the boat. Others began to dance, poorly and not together so much as with the music. It was camp fiddle music. But it sounded all right with the rumble of the ferry underneath. I almost pulled my Billy in to join them. But before that, I asked him about the kids again—told him mine were missing since just after dinner. Billy smiled, almost a grimace with his clenched lids. Then he led me to the top deck, where ferries usually hold a diner.

It was cool and open up there, and someone had planted a perfect grassy lawn underneath an open sky of stars. We stood together beside a clump of tents. Most of the fabric hung quiet and empty on poles, but a few tent flies glowed with headlamps inside. Some mumbles drifted out. And on the far side of the lawn, two teenagers lay without a tent, their sleeping bags zipped together and fingers up pointing at the silvery specks and clouds streaming over our boat. I first recognized them by their glasses, the stylish owl-rims of the two YMCA leaders on my trip. Their eyelids hung open but lacked sockets. All I could see was darkness beneath their brows.

“But what about the actual kids?” I whispered. “Those are the adults.”

Billy frowned at that.  He stood a little longer by the tents, his hair gusting up in bunches, and then he leaned close to my ear so nobody could hear:

“These are their ghosts.”

We waited with the wind, not so much the blowing from the ferry as the breeze that always passes through the islands, especially in an open field.

Then Billy led me down to the back deck where the kids all stood against the rails watching our wake. They bent much more with age. Their faces creased and sunk deep enough to be unrecognizable, except perhaps the girl who paddled with me that day. She turned when we walked out and smiled as much as she could with the weight of her cheeks. One boy held the same gnarled stick that he played with on the beach. His hands now shook in arthritic clutches. But at least he and the others could see me clearly. The faces of the old children remained intact, their young eyes open and watery bright in the eerie yellow light.

“Why do they seem so old?” I asked Billy.

He shook his head.

“Since they’re still alive.”

I started.

“How do you mean?”

Billy didn’t reply. He listened to them whisper and limp around the area; Billy cocking his sightless head, until the mystery didn’t bother me so much. Then Billy took my arm and we slipped back to the warmth. Billy brought me tea on a velvet couch. It was the kind where you fill a metal chamber with leaf instead of a bag. I drank little, sipping and snoozing, peaking up sometimes at the sightless guides dancing or whispering by the windows.

Billy woke me before dawn. The ferry had stopped again at Jones Island. I could tell by the smell of the trees and the quiet. Everyone was sleeping in couches and rocking chairs inside the ferry, and the fireplace had burned to embers. Billy walked me to the ramp. We were both too tired to talk then, so he kissed my cheek and waved, smiling beneath closed eyes while a faint teal glow bloomed behind him in the East. I nodded and followed the ramp—crossed the still abandoned lawn to my tent and squeezed into my sleeping bag without another thought until I woke the morning proper. Crows cawed outside. And the long, summer sun heated all.

Laying there, I wondered if I imagined the ferry. But when I climbed out of my tent the South Cove still felt empty. None of the other tents rustled or steamed, and the fire pit was cold. The same panic from the night before lit in me again, deeper with the memory of all the blind faces, so I hurried across to Billy in the North Cove. That site was full.

Billy—and it was the young Billy with pure black hair—Billy stood behind a camp stove. He flipped eggs on a cast iron. His guests lingered around a bright fire or sat with blustery tea and coffee in the shadows of the taller trees. When Billy saw me, he smiled and beckoned me over, blue eyes shining. He asked if I met any ghosts on my first ride aboard the Jones Island ferry. I wasn’t laughing.

“Have you seen the kids from my trip, Billy?”

He grinned as if included in a joke but sort of scrunched the skin above his eyes.

“I thought you were looking for ghosts, Alder.”

“Come on Billy quit it. I lost the YMCA group just after dinner last night.”

Billy thought about that while nudging a crispy fried egg. He pointed the spatula down towards a group of older adults walking together, stooping, and kneeling on the beach. One used a familiar, twisted piece of driftwood to support himself.

“I told you the kids were gone last night,” Billy said. “Lost before they even found you. But you… Well before you forget the ferry, and the other guides, and everything you thought you saw last night, you should talk to them, Marigold.”

I looked from the pack of adults back to Billy shaking that spatula, but his gaze had turned to the bacon sizzling and snapping beside the eggs. He looked sadder, somehow. Eventually, when I didn’t speak, Billy added:

“They’re looking for agate crystals to thank you for the trip and for letting them explore alone last night, kid. They said they never found you again after the tasty curry.”

Originally published in Pumpernickel House; Issue II, The Black Door ($3).

eBook ($1)