The Way Home

Limited Serial - Part Three (Conclusion)

Welcome, all! This is a limited serial set on Ferris Island.

If you haven’t already, catch up on Part One and Part Two before continuing!

NOTE: While this story does stand fully on its own, characters in this story can be found in the following tales, for those interested in learning more:

• Ivy & Ixos (currently in our Archive)

• The Last Resort (free to read)

• The Uninvited Guest (free to read)

If you like this story, and you want to see more like it, please let me know with a like, comment, share, or restack!

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Photo by Quentin Lagache on Unsplash

As a balmy California wind whipped past his seaward cheek, deep brown from long summer days spent outside, Jake thought for a moment that he heard the sound of a calling animal—goats, maybe or sheep—before the quiet filled back in. The waves roared against the rocks below, constant. The night had cooled the sweet chaparral-covered hills nearby and a sliver of moon hung low over the cloudless August horizon as Jake and his friends climbed the jagged cliffside in the dark, the stone still sun-warm under their palms and sandaled feet.

Above him, Ty led the way as the only one wearing a headlamp. Jake followed, the mischief and illegality of it all filling him toes-up like a thrill. Behind him, Harrison carried the six-pack of beer in one lackadaisical hand, dangling from its plastic yokes, and the cans bumped against each other with every step. Nate brought up the rear, cursing the sharp stones and vowing to lose his shit if he encountered a snake. The lights of Orange County glittered all down the coastline, but out here all was dark. 

They didn’t have long for this. Ty’s brother would be back soon to pick them up in the beach parking lot after he was done partying in town with his college buddies. 

It was now or never. 

At the top of the cliff, the four stood for a minute or two doubled-over and panting, laughing, amazed, teasing each other for being out of breath. They had done this plenty of times in the daylight, but never at night. Jake could feel the height instead of seeing it, the breath off the waves as they struck the rocks below, spray flying upward. He shivered with excitement. 

Ty had taken the six-pack from Harrison, illuminating the cans with his headlamp, pulling one out of its yoke for himself. He acted like he had done it a million times before, but Jake knew better. This was new. They were fourteen, and high school was weeks away. They wanted the days to move faster, to bring the schoolyear closer. They would have given anything. Stealing a six-pack from Harrison’s dad’s mini-fridge and climbing to the top of the world? A worthy ritual, a sacrifice to ancient gods of time.  

They each took a beer, and there was the sound of aluminum popping and the hiss of escaping carbonation in the gloom, Ty’s headlamp like a furtive beacon, slipping this way and that. Jake opened his beer with a crack, took a sip. It was horrible and it was wonderful, the burn and bitter, the way it blew on a pile of embers in the lungs, smoke rising. 

Jake coughed. The boys laughed. He didn’t want to take another sip. But the others were going back for more. He didn’t want to be the only one. 

The deeper into the cans they got, the funnier everything was, and the less the world wanted to stay upright. 

They had been standing on the clifftop for what seemed like ages, drinking and telling stupid jokes and talking about how excited they were for high school to start, when someone—Nate, maybe—said, “Jake, are you gonna be sick? The beer is making Masoe sick. He’s gonna hurl.”

And Jake shook his head—although he did feel nauseous, but he wasn’t about to tell them that—and he said, “no” out loud, because in the dark, no one could tell he was shaking his head. 

“You’re gonna hurl,” and it was Nate, and Jake had never really liked Nate, but he felt like he had to because Ty liked him, and he had always wanted to be like Ty ever since elementary school. “What a pussy.”

Jake felt his cheeks go cold, bloodless, the beer churning in his stomach. “No, I’m not. Shut up, Nate. I’m fine.”

But this time, the eye of Ty’s headlamp had fallen on him, and he knew that the others were laughing. 

“Prove it then, Masoe,” said Ty. “I dare you to jump.”

The escalation caught Jake off-guard, and Harrison and Nate both burst into horrified hysterics tinged with buzzed laughter. Over the years they had come out here plenty of times with Ty’s brother in the bright summer daylight, watching him jump from the cliffs into the clear blue water. There was a way to do it, if you were careful and you knew where to stand. A certain spot. They had even done it themselves for the first time, this summer. Jake had taken to it. He found he enjoyed the height, the freefall. The feeling of plunging into certain death, emerging impossibly alive.

But never at night. There was only height, and black space, and the stone under his feet, and the half-full can in his hand quickly warming under his fingers. 

“I’m not going to jump,” he said. “That would be stupid. I could die.”

“Then you’re a pussy.” 

It was Ty who said it, this time. Ty, whose opinion Jake actually cared about. Ty was going to play high school football, and Jake was going to do it, too. They would be teammates, best friends. He was sure that if he followed Ty, high school would be the best four years of his life. He had been so sure. 

“I’m not going to jump,” he said, and his voice suddenly sounded really small, and the cliff suddenly felt miles taller. A mountain. 

“What, Masoe, are you scared?” Harrison said. “Gonna piss yourself?”

“Gonna call Mommy?” Nate added. 

But it was Ty who dealt the final blow, his lips invisible under the beam of his headlamp but his tone that of judgment, final. Quiet as a snake, sliding through grass. 

“He won’t do it. He’s too scared.”

Jake blinked in the harsh light, trapped like an animal. He knew that if he backed out now, the next four years would be hell. Everyone would know. Ty would make sure of it. Jake would never live it down. 

He shakily knelt and set the beer can on the uneven ground, and it immediately tipped over and spilled the remaining contents out across the stone, rolling loudly down the slope. When Jake stood back up, Harrison and Nate were still laughing, but Ty had become strangely solicitous. 

“Over there,” he said, pointing the headlamp to the spot where Jake would have to jump. There was a hint of admiration in his voice, something even more intoxicating than the drink. “That’s the spot. Look out for the rocks at the bottom.”

“You guys suck,” Jake said, but it felt hollow, and he was pretty sure no one heard him over Harrison and Nate’s drunken tittering. He followed the beam of the headlamp to the edge, recognizing the shape of the place, the worn-down spot where adventure tourists and thrillseekers like Ty’s brother always stood to prepare for their dive. He had stood here before, himself. But beyond the edge, there was nothing. Just darkness, utter darkness, as if he was perched at the very end of the world. 

Jake stood in the spot, swaying just a little. He tried to remember the way he had jumped in the daylight; there was plenty of space, down there. Rocks, sure, but plenty of space, if he jumped right, and deep water to catch him. He would be fine.  

The beer made him brave, softened the edges of his fear.

A small breeze, a warning, fluttered past his ear, carrying the bleating of distant sheep, a mad song. The thought occurred to him, absurd: There aren’t any sheep around here… 

But it was only a fleeting thought. His feet left the cliff and it went wrong immediately, sandal toe catching on an unseen outcropping, angling him askew. He plummeted through space in seconds, hitting the roiling water sideways. 

Like the empty beer can, lifeless.   

*******

Lost. Lost. 

Jake stumbled heavily through the woods, feet catching on the salal and spring-thick salmonberry canes bristling with thorns, as he tried and failed to rid himself of the sound. It had never been this loud, before, not in all the months he had suffered through it back in Orange County. It was like someone had turned up the television volume in a neighboring apartment, garbled and raucous, crisscrossing voices and laughter. Unintelligible. Inescapable. 

He felt his own mouth forming the words “no, no, no” over and over, but could barely hear himself over the voices. 

Why here? Why here?

He thought it was over. He thought it was fixed. Ferris Island was supposed to be a new start.

There were things in the trees, shapes in the gloom. One minute a house or cabin or shed was visible through the branches, lamplight dancing like the promise of rescue, then it was gone. The forms of people in strange clothes, dogs, livestock, fluttered to and fro, paying Jake no attention at all, minding their own business. The forest was thick with ghostly life, and yet Jake was alone. 

Jake found himself sobbing as he plodded forward. He was so sure he was fixed, that all of this was behind him. Months of therapy, ineffective medications, his mom’s final desperate plan to save him…and then, when it was all over, their move away from California. To start over, away from the painful memories.

But it had followed them. And it had evolved into something worse.  

The thought of his mom was like a punch to the gut, and he doubled over to his knees, shoulders heaving. 

How could I do this to her? 

Spirits passed around him, the voices tuning in and out like radio signals, conversational nonsense. The occasional scream, a child’s cry, the baying of a hound, the shriek of a horse.

Jake curled into himself in the underbrush, a sorrowful boulder, hands clasped over his ears, hot tears spilling into the sweet-smelling fir duff and leaf litter under his cheek. Ready to be reclaimed by the earth, to disappear. 

I just wanted to disappear…to be normal…to be invisible…

But then he felt a soft touch on his shoulder, and his skin went cold. He squeezed his hands over his ears, closed his eyes tightly. 

“Go away,” he whispered, frantic. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

“Jake?”

The voice sliced through the garbled mess; it was a person right here, right now. Not a ghost. Jake loosened his hands just a bit. 

“Jake, it’s me.”

He turned to look up. Ivy was kneeling beside him in the salal, resting her hand gently on his back. 

“Let’s get out of the trees,” she said, with quiet urgency. “Can you stand?”

He didn’t know how to answer her. So with her other hand, she reached out and took one of his, gripping it tightly. 

“I’ve got you, Jake. Follow me.”

*******

They didn’t speak again until they were out of the trees.

Jake let Ivy lead him, like she had when they first met earlier that day—it felt a whole lifetime ago—through the trees perpendicular to the path they had both come in from. Straight to the beach. 

The voices followed them, the shapes flitting around them. Ivy seemed not to notice. Her steps are steady and certain. When they broke through the treeline to the beach, Jake took a deep breath in the light, leaving the oppressive darkness behind him. The voices still seeped in and out, but the light helped. And so did Ivy’s hand holding his hand, anchoring him in place. 

The waves whispered against the pebble beach as they walked east along the shoreline back toward Seavend. As if through a fog, Jake heard Ivy speaking, explaining that their phones wouldn’t work here, this close to Mothwood, so they would need to hurry back. 

“We don’t want anyone to worry,” she said. 

Jake nodded distantly, focusing on the warmth of her palm in his. 

After a pause, Ivy turned to him and said, “Why did you run away from us?”

Jake licked his dry lips, sighed. When he spoke again, his voice was raspy from crying; he didn’t even recognize himself. He sounded older. Sadder.  

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you guys.”

Ivy gave his hand a little squeeze. “I’m sorry, too. I guess…I pushed you into something you weren’t ready for. I was only thinking of myself. That wasn’t cool.”

Jake glanced at the water, marveling that the same water could be so blue in Orange County and so gray here, slick silver. And so dark at night, a vast invisible void. 

“Last summer, back in California, my friends dared me to jump off a cliff. At night.”

He heard the words come out before he was ready to say them. But Ivy listened, gaze on the pebbles before them, steps never faltering. 

He continued. “We were…well, we were being stupid. I’m actually not sure what happened, because I don’t remember hitting the water. I washed up on the beach the next morning where someone found me, and I was in the hospital for a few days. And then, when I got out, something had…happened to me. I could hear these…voices. In my head.” 

He braced, but Ivy made no sign of confusion. So he pressed on. 

“My mom thought it was, like, a trauma thing? Or a mental illness, like, schizophrenia, or something. So I went to therapists and psychiatrists and stuff, and took some medicine. But it just got worse. I wasn’t doing well in school. I would zone out, or yell when it got to be too much, or…yeah. I tried to play football, but I couldn’t, because I couldn’t pay attention. My friends didn’t want to be around me. Teachers were scared of me. It was…”

Jake sighed. Ivy gave his hand another small squeeze, asked, “Did the voices stop?”

“Yeah, after my mom…um…do you promise you won’t be weirded out?”

“Takes a lot to weird me out,” Ivy said, giving him a smile that made his stomach flutter. “I thought I proved that, by now.”

Jake nodded, and said, “My mom is probably the smartest person I know, and one of the bravest. But she kinda ran out of ideas for how to help me. So, she had me…exorcised. Like by a priest. And that worked, for a while. We thought it was done. I felt normal, after that. But by then, the whole exorcism thing got shared online by someone at school, and our address got doxxed, so we needed to leave. We moved here to get away. But…”

“It came back.” Ivy finished the thought, considering something for a moment. “You know…I hear stuff, too. Not as bad as what you’re talking about, but like…a whisper. A nudge, here and there. Like I told you on the dock, I just get these feelings, and sometimes it really does seem like someone is telling me something. Do you think…whatever happened to you on the cliff, it made you…open? To hearing stuff that most people can’t hear?”

Jake huffed a quiet laugh, without humor. “I mean…yeah. That’s the problem.”

“No, not voices in your head. But ghosts, maybe. Or something else. I don’t know.” Ivy shrugged. “Maybe there’s a way you can use it. Maybe it’s a gift.”

Jake glanced over her head at the dark line of the woods where the flickering shapes of people were still visible, the humming of voices and animals calling as an ever-present tone. “Doesn’t feel like a gift.”

“A lot of gifts don’t, at first. My mom told me that. But you only realize how good they are later, when you figure out how to use what you’ve been given.”

Jake considered this. For the longest time, he had thought of the voices as a curse. The idea that they might have a use—any use at all—had genuinely never occurred to him. 

They crested a rise in the beach and the dock where the whole thing had started bloomed into view ahead, and beyond it the town of Seavend clung to the hillside like barnacles on a ship's hull. Ivy’s phone pinged with texts, the cell service returning as Mothwood receded into the background. 

“The good news,” Ivy said, pulling out her phone, “is that while you figure it out, you’ll have good friends who can help you. Because we really do get it. You don't scare us.”

Jake looked down at her, this girl called Ivy in her oversized green sweater and her nut-brown hair and her strange unflappable attitude. And the voices seemed to dull and dim a little, when he thought about being less alone, about sharing this unusual burden with someone else. Someone who understands. With Ivy, with her friends, with anyone else who would listen. Perhaps there would be no cure, but peace? Purpose? For the first time since last summer, those felt within his grasp.

What a moment, what a wild thing, to stand at a great height over dark waves and find himself holding her hand.  

Ivy’s phone buzzed and she answered it, meeting Jake’s eyes as she did so with a soft smile. A lighthouse over the rough sea, calming slowly under a pale Pacific dusk.  

“Hey, Bailey,” she said. “Yeah, he’s with me. Don’t worry. We’re nearly home.”

Thank you for reading!

For another limited serial set on Ferris Island, check out: