So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  “I feel like I should get sick,” he said.

  “Brother,” Kellen said, “you already are. And there isn’t a doctor alive that’s going to know how to treat it, either.”

  “What about the other bottle? Anne’s bottle.”

  “Typical mineral content. Nothing special at all.”

  “Not that shows up in a lab test, at least,” Eric said.

  A few drops of rain fell around them as they stood and looked at each other.

  “Wonder whose blood it was,” Eric said.

  “Yeah,” Kellen said. “I’m a bit curious about that myself.”

  52

  JOSIAH WAS STANDING WITH his nose almost to the glass, staring out at the storm like a child. When he stepped back and looked at it from the right angle he could still see Campbell sitting there watching him, his face perfectly aligned with the silhouette Josiah had drawn in his blood. Campbell hadn’t spoken in some time, but Josiah hoped he’d been pleased by the gesture, the only thing Josiah had been able to think of that would show his loyalty, show that he would indeed listen, would indeed do the necessary work. He’d brought Campbell into this world, at least to the point that the old woman could see him, and he’d done it with his own blood. Surely Campbell saw that as indicative of respect. Of loyalty.

  Now he couldn’t see Campbell, though, because he’d stepped too close to the glass. Couldn’t help himself—the storm was doing something strange. There was a massive cloud taking shape ahead of them now, shaped almost exactly like an anvil. It advanced slowly but steadily and seemed to carry both threat and calm at the same time. Like you could flip a coin and if it came up heads, the cloud would pass on by, or maybe offer a gentle shower. Came up tails, though, and God help you. God help you.

  “You see the bubble?”

  He twisted and stared back at the old woman, baffled both that she’d spoken at all and by what she’d said.

  “Top of that big cloud,” she said, nodding, “the one you’re looking at that’s shaped like an anvil? It’s all flat across the top except for one part. You see it there? Looks like a little bubble up on top?”

  He didn’t know why he would bother with this talk, but he couldn’t help himself. He said, “Yeah, I see it.”

  “That’s called an overshooting top.”

  Great, he wanted to say, now pardon me, but I don’t give two shits, old woman, but no words left his lips. He was staring at the cloud and thinking she was wrong. That aberration across the top of the anvil didn’t look like a bubble. It looked like a dome.

  “What’s it mean?” he said.

  “Will take a few minutes for me to know. But it’ll be the part that tells the tale. You see how the rest of that cloud is all hard-edged? Could be some serious weather in there. But that bubble just formed. If it goes away soon, this one’s no real bother. If it stays on for more than ten minutes, then we could have a gully-washer headed our way.”

  “How many minutes has it been?”

  “Six,” she said. “Six so far.”

  Anne wished Josiah would stand back from the window, stop blocking her view. This thing rolling in was on the verge of being something special, something dangerous, and she needed to see it clearly. Instead he just stood there with his face to the window as the minutes ticked by and the storm front advanced.

  She leaned to the left and looked around him, studying the cloud and trying to remember all of the signs she needed to remember. The bubble on top of the anvil formation was holding steady. That meant the updraft was strong. The storm was being fed. The body of the cloud had a soft cauliflower appearance but its edges were firm and distinct and that meant…

  A shrill ringing broke the silence that had grown in the house, and Josiah gave a startled jerk before reaching into his pocket and retrieving a cell phone.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “Speak loud, boy. Where in hell you been? You didn’t lose them, did you?”

  Josiah bristled at the response, and when he said, “They looking ’round my property?” his voice was softer than it had been and drove a chill through Anne. She willed herself to try and ignore the words, focus on the storm again.

  Josiah shifted away from his spot at the window then, and when he did, Anne saw what she’d been missing, knew that the cloud edges were no longer important. Josiah’s body had blocked the development of a new feature from her eyes. A lower formation, trailing beneath that bubble, long tapering wisps like an old man’s beard. It was called a—

  “What do they think they’re doing?” Josiah hissed. “What are they doing in those woods?”

  —wall cloud, and it was pulling in the rain-cooled surface air, sucking in that moisture and feeding it to the updraft. The tips were spinning, as if unseen hands were twisting the end of the beard. Behind the wall cloud—

  “You got a knife on you? Then go back down there and put an end to that Porsche’s tires, Danny. All of them. Then you sit tight. I’m headed your way.”

  —amidst all that purple and gray was a slot of bright white. Downdraft. It slid out of the dark clouds and dropped toward the earth, cutting right through the blood silhouette Josiah Bradford had drawn on her window. The white light seemed to turn those dark red eyes into a shimmering black.

  Josiah Bradford disconnected the phone and lowered it slowly, put it back in his pocket. He’d just removed his hand again when the air split into a wailing all around them. At the sound, he lunged for his gun.

  “Don’t need that,” Anne said. “It’s not the police. It’s the tornado siren.”

  Part Five

  THE GULF

  53

  ERIC STOOD IN SILENCE and stared back at Kellen as the wind bent the treetops and tore leaves loose and spun them into the air.

  “If your experience has more to do with the blood and less with the water,” Kellen said, “maybe we’re wasting our time up here.”

  He didn’t answer. Kellen said, “Maybe finding that spring isn’t worth anything, is what I’m saying. If there’s nothing about the water itself—”

  “There’s something special about the water,” Eric said. “I think it was the balance to his blood. The counter.”

  A steady rain was falling now, and he wiped the moisture off his forehead and turned away from Kellen, looked into the windswept trees. His head throbbed and his hands shook. The agony was approaching again, the fruit of poisoned water, of a dead man’s wrath, and he had nothing left to fight it with. The hell of it was that the sorrowful sense of defeat had little to do with fear of what was coming. No, it was the understanding of what would not be coming: a continuation of the story, an eerie insight into that hidden world, and the glory it could have brought him. He could see the foolishness of his idea now. All thoughts of the fame that would surround his strange gifts were bullshit; he’d have been a fifteen-minute tabloid freak show, a washed-up almost-was who drank a bottle of old blood and fancied himself a psychic.

  “A counter?” Kellen said.

  Eric nodded. “Everything changed with Anne’s water, with the water that didn’t have blood in it. The story it was showing me was a warning.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what I did,” Eric said. “I brought him back.”

  Campbell Bradford. His spirit, his ghost, his evil—pick your term, Eric Shaw had returned it to the valley, and the water allowed him to see that, caught his body with agonized cravings and forced him to drink more so it could force him to see more. He hadn’t understood in time, though. Somewhere along the line he’d lost all sense of purpose entirely, had begun to fantasize about what the water could do for him, to think of it as a gift instead of what it really was: a warning.

  “Now they’ve stopped,” Kellen said. “Right? The visions are done.”

  “Yeah. They’ve stopped.” Eric was thinking of the blood in the bottle and the way Campbell Bradford had looked right at him last night and said, I’m getting stronger.

  There was a reason the visions had stopped. The
past was not where it belonged anymore. The past was here.

  Josiah needed that siren to stop. Damn thing was chewing into his brain, disrupting his focus, which needed to be on Danny’s message.

  Wesley Chapel Gulf. That’s where Shaw was right now. In the sacred spot of Josiah’s boyhood. It made not a lick of sense but still felt as purely right as anything he’d ever heard. Of course that’s where they’d gone. Of course. There’d been something at work here for a while, something he couldn’t get his head around, and now he understood that it was time to stop trying. Let the chips fall. Stop trying to figure out the house rules—there were none, at least not any he’d ever understand. Wasn’t his place to lay plans now, was his place to listen to those that had been laid for him.

  All you got to do is listen…

  Yes, that was all. He was told that hours ago and still he’d been fighting it, making his own plans, trusting himself. Just listen, that was all he needed to do. He had a guide now, a hand in the darkness, and he wanted to listen but that frigging siren kept shrieking and screaming…

  “Shut up!” he howled, tightening his hand on the gun as if he could put a few shells into the air and silence it all, silence the whole damn world.

  “Won’t stop till the cloud passes over,” Anne McKinney said. “There’s rotation in that cloud. Could touch down.”

  “A tornado?” he said. “A tornado’s coming here?”

  “Won’t be here. Going to be well over our heads if it touches down. But it may hit the towns. It may hit the hotels.”

  She said this as if it were the very definition of horror.

  Josiah said, “I hope the son of a bitch does. I hope it spins right into the damned dome and leaves nothing but a pile of glass and stone behind.”

  The idea thrilled him, drew him to the window. He looked off to the east as if he might actually be able to see the place.

  I ought to be the one to take it down, he thought. No damn storm—me.

  “You don’t think I could do it, do you?” he said. “Well, I got a truck full of dynamite parked out back would do the job. Bet your ass it’d do the job.”

  Anne didn’t answer, and he blinked and shook his head and tried to get his mind back to the task before him. He had to force his mind back to that fact time and time again, like a man trying to cross the deck of a ship that was forever tilting him in one direction and then another. Never mind this pissing contest with some old bitch, he had to get moving. That required a decision on what to do with her, though. He stared at her and pondered as the window glass rattled in its frame beside him. Best tie her up. Problem with that was she was in front of the big window, visible to anyone who stopped by. There was a basement in the house. With no phone to use, she could holler her lungs out down there and never be heard. Tie her up and stick her ass down there.

  He crossed the living room and pulled open one door, found it went to a bathroom, then tried a second and saw the steep wooden steps leading down into the dark, smelled the moisture. Yes, that would do fine. He’d get her to walk down there before he bound her, make things easier to handle.

  He was just about to tell her to stand up when he heard a car door slam.

  He crossed to the window fast, stared out into the rain, and saw the car that had pulled in. Not police, but a Toyota sedan, unfamiliar to him. The driver’s door opened and a tall, dark-haired woman stepped out, holding her arms up to shield herself from the rain. She ran out of sight, headed for the porch. For the front door.

  “Who’s here?” Anne McKinney said.

  “Not a word, bitch,” Josiah said. “Not a word. You speak, our visitor gets shot. It’ll be your choice.” Then he lifted the shotgun and walked out of the living room and down to the front door. He hadn’t even made it there before the doorbell rang. He pulled the door open, keeping the gun in his left hand and using the door to screen it from sight.

  The woman didn’t give any real start or indication that she was expecting someone other than Josiah. She just said, “I hope I have the right address. I’m looking for Anne McKinney?”

  She was even better-looking up close, the sort of woman Josiah wouldn’t be able to hit on until he was at least ten beers into the night because the odds were so great she’d shoot him down, and Josiah didn’t take rejection well. Raven-colored hair with some shine to it, damn near flawless face, body that would catch plenty of looks despite being a little on the skinny side. While Josiah studied her, she turned and looked over her shoulder at the howling storm and said, “Is that a tornado siren?”

  “Yes,” Josiah said. “And you best come inside quick.”

  “You don’t think I can make it back to the hotel if I hurry? I just stopped by to pick up a few bottles of water from Anne.”

  A few bottles of water. He hadn’t been certain of her relevance until now, but this brought a smile to his face that was no longer forced, as authentic and genuine a grin as he’d had in some time, and he said, “Oh, you’re picking them up for Mr. Shaw?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll get them for you, but come inside and visit with Mrs. McKinney until the siren stops. It’s the only safe thing to do. I insist.”

  She took one last, hesitant look back at her car, and right then a good-size branch pulled down from one of the trees in the yard and broke into pieces on the ground. She turned away, said, “I guess I’d better,” and then stepped inside.

  He had the door closed before she noticed the gun.

  54

  ANNE COULDN’T SEE THE front door from where she sat, and the wind and siren kept her from making out the words, but the sound of the unknown woman’s voice, gentle and kind, put a sickness through her so powerful she moved her hands to her stomach. It was a feeling she’d had only a time or two in her life, the last coming when they swung the ambulance doors shut with Harold inside and assured her that it wasn’t over yet, even though everybody knew that it was.

  A minute later the stranger was standing there in the living room, a beautiful dark-haired woman with panicked eyes. Anne tried to meet those eyes and convey some sort of apology, but Josiah was shoving her over to the chair by the window and telling her there were two barrels to his gun, plenty to go around.

  He had her sit in the old straight-backed sewing chair that Anne had upholstered herself some years back, then grabbed the duct tape he’d carried in originally and cut off a strip. She started to resist but he lifted the shotgun and pointed it at Anne and said, “You fight, that old bitch gets shot. Go on and test me. Go on.”

  The woman gave Anne a long look, one that lifted tears to Anne’s eyes, and then she let Josiah tape her wrists together. Anne just stared back helplessly. The panic she’d done such a fine job of fighting when she’d been alone with Josiah was coming on strong, and she could feel it in her heart and stomach and nerves, everything going fast and jangly now, the way the wind chimes blew in a strong storm.

  “Old Lucas will be answering phone calls now,” Josiah was saying as he cut off more tape and wrapped it in circles around her forearms, pinning them together. “Yes, he’ll take caution in his tone this time around.”

  Lucas? Who on earth was Lucas? “I don’t know Lucas,” the new woman said.

  “Bullshit! You’re his whore of a wife, sent people down here to spy on my home and ask questions of my family—”

  “That’s not who I am.”

  He struck her. It was an open-handed slap that raised a white imprint on her check but no blood, and the sound of flesh on flesh took Anne’s breath from her lungs and sent the tears spilling free. Not in my home, she thought. Oh, no, not in my home…

  “There won’t be any more lies!” Josiah bellowed. Anne was mentally begging the other woman for silence—Josiah had been peaceable enough when he was agreed with—but instead she ignored the slap and objected again.

  “I’m not who you think I—”

  There was a second slap, and Anne gave a little shout, but the new woman was not moved to
silence.

  “I’m Eric’s wife—Eric Shaw’s. That’s who I am! I don’t know anything about Lucas Bradford. Neither does he. We’re both just trying to—”

  This time he passed on the slap, choosing instead to take the woman’s hair in his fist and jerk it sideways. She gave a cry of pain and then the chair had overbalanced and she was on her side on the floor, still talking.

  “We’re just trying to get away from here while the police figure out what’s going on. I don’t know Lucas Bradford! Do you understand that? I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t care about me. I’m nothing to him.”

  Josiah dipped sideways and came up with Anne’s kitchen knife in his hand, snatched it from her end table and held it at waist level with the blade pointed out.

  “Josiah, no!” Anne shouted. “Not in my home, don’t you harm anyone in my home.”

  He froze. She was taken aback, hadn’t expected any reaction, but he stopped his assault completely and swiveled his head to face her.

  “I’ll ask you not to use that name any longer,” he said. “If you’d like my attention, you can call for Campbell. Understand?”

  Anne didn’t know what to say. She just stared at him with her mouth agape, and he turned from her, dropped to one knee, and took a handful of the woman’s hair again and used it to lift her head, moved the blade toward her throat, and Anne could look no more, squeezed her eyes shut as warm tears beaded over the lids and chased wrinkles down her cheeks.

  “Look in my purse,” the woman on the floor said in a ragged voice. “If you’re going to kill me, you ought to at least know who I am.”

  For a long moment Anne didn’t hear a sound, and she was fleetingly afraid that he’d made a silent slice with the knife, leaving the poor woman bleeding her life out on Anne’s living room floor. Then she heard the boards creak as he rose and opened her eyes to see him crossing the floor to where a leather purse lay on its side, a lipstick and cell phone dumped out of it already. Josiah grabbed it and turned it upside down and a cloud of papers, coins, and cosmetics fluttered out and clattered onto the floor. In the center, landing with a dull, heavy thump, was a wallet. Josiah flung the purse at the wall and scooped the wallet up, tore the clasp open and flicked through it. For a long time, he stood staring in silence. Then he snapped the wallet shut and stared at the woman in the overturned chair.