Wait for the Fourth Ferry

The ferry terminal on the outer quay is a place of transit and noise, but there is a specific kind of silence that settles in the late-night departure lounge—the kind that makes you want to count your fingers. I was trying to catch the last jetfoil to Hong Kong for a meeting I couldn't afford to miss. The digital display over Gate 3 was acting up—it kept flickering between 'Boarding' and the number 444.

In Macau, three fours is a scream, not a number. The old man sitting next to me, his hands wrapped around a tiffin box that smelled of old lilies, leaned over. 'Wait for the fourth ferry, son,' he whispered. 'If the number repeats three times, the gate is open for those who aren't traveling with luggage. Those who are just... traveling.'

I looked at my watch. The fourth ferry wasn't for another two hours. I ignored him and scanned my ticket. The turnstile let out a high, metallic shriek as I passed through, a sound that felt like it was trying to peel the skin off my ears and replace it with static.

The ferry was waiting, but the windows were tinted so dark they looked like slabs of obsidian. I stepped onto the deck and realized I was the only passenger. The interior was lit by a single, flickering emergency bulb that cast long, distorted shadows that didn't match the chairs they came from. The air smelled of salt and ozone.

As the engines started, the vibration didn't feel like a boat moving through water. It felt like the floor was being dragged over dry gravel and bone. I looked out the window. We weren't in the Pearl River Delta. We were moving through a vast, grey plain of silt, with thousands of identical ferries beached in the distance, their hulls rusted through and their decks crowded with silent, grey figures.

The cabin door opened, and a steward stepped out. He was wearing the company uniform, but his face was a smooth, featureless mask of skin, save for a small, vertical slit where a mouth should be. He held out a tray with a single cup of black tea that didn't steam. 'We've been waiting for a fresh passenger,' he said, his voice coming from the vibration in my own teeth. 'The crossing takes as long as you have memories left to pay with. We accept childhood first.'

I realized then that the ferry wasn't going to Hong Kong. It was a collection vessel for the lost and the impatient. I didn't drink the tea. I ran for the emergency exit, ignoring the steward's reaching, multi-jointed hands, and threw myself into the grey silt as the boat continued its dry, grinding crawl.

I woke up on the floor of the departure lounge, my clothes caked in a fine, grey dust that smelled of the deep sea and old bone. The terminal was empty. The display over Gate 3 now showed 5:00 a.m. and the first ferry of the morning. My watch had stopped at 4:44.

I never made it to that meeting. Now, whenever I travel, I count the boarding numbers twice. And if I see a 4, I sit down and wait for the sun to come up. Because I can still feel that grey silt under my fingernails, and I can't remember the name of my first school.