So Cold the River

“What do you mean?”

Josiah turned and looked out the window, out into that sun-filled day.

“Time’s come to make us some real money, Danny. Time’s come.”

16

AN HOUR AFTER ERIC played the video, he was still staring at the wreckage that remained from his camera, trying to understand what in the hell was going on, when his cell phone began to ring.

It was Claire. Calling him even though he’d told her he would not be available for a few weeks. He held the phone in his hand but didn’t answer. He could not talk to her now, not in this state. A minute after it stopped ringing he checked the message, and the sound of her voice broke something loose inside him, made his shoulders sag and his eyes close.

“I know you’re in Indiana,” she said, “but I just wanted to check on you. I was thinking of you…. You can call if you want. If not, I understand. But I’d like to know you’re all right.”

A week ago, he’d have bristled. Check on me? Like to know if I’m all right? Why would I not be? Just because you’re not here, I’m not going to be okay? Today, though, sitting on the hotel room floor surrounded by his broken camera, he couldn’t muster that response. Instead, he called her back.

She answered. First ring.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey. You got my message?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Well, I didn’t want to bother you. It’s just that you hadn’t really said anything about where you were going or when you might be back, so—”

“It’s fine. I should have explained more. I’m sorry.”

She was quiet for a moment, as if the phrase had surprised her. Probably it had.

“Are you okay?” she said. “You sound a little off.”

“I’ve been… Claire, I’m seeing things.”

“What do you mean, you’re—”

“Things that aren’t there,” he said, and there was something thick in the back of his throat.

Silence, and he braced himself for the scorn and the ridicule she’d have to levy now, the accusations. Instead he heard a door swing shut and latch and then a metallic clatter that he recognized so well—she’d tossed her car keys into the ceramic dish she kept on the table by the door. She’d been going out, and now she stopped.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

He talked for about twenty minutes, gave her more detail than he’d planned, recalled every word Campbell Bradford had said about the cold river, described the train right down to the gravel vibrating under his feet and the furious storm cloud that came from its stack. Through it all, she listened.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said when he was through recounting the story of the man in the boxcar. “But it’s not booze and it’s not pills and it’s not—”

“I believe you.”

He hesitated. Said, “What?”

“I believe that it’s not booze or pills,” she said. “Because this has happened before. You’ve had visions like this before.”

“Not like this,” he said. “You’re thinking of that time in the mountains, but—”

“That’s one of them, but there were others. Remember the Infiniti?”

That stopped him. Shit, how could he have forgotten about the Infiniti? Maybe because he’d wanted to.

They’d been looking for a new car for Claire, back in California when things were good and the job offers were rolling in, and had gone to an Infiniti dealership to test-drive a red G35 coupe she’d liked. The car was brand-new, and she hadn’t wanted to spend that kind of money, but Eric was feeling cocky and flush and insisting cash wasn’t an issue. So they’d taken the car out, the two of them in front and a paunchy salesman with effeminate hands wedged into the back, jabbering on about the car’s amazing and apparently endless features: navigation, climate control, heated seats, pedicures, tranquilizers, a hand that came right out from under the dash and powdered your balls when you needed it. His voice was grating on Eric, but Claire was driving and it was her car to choose anyhow, so Eric had leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment.

He swore, even hours later, that he’d heard metal tear. He believed that in his heart. He’d heard the jagged, agonized rip of metal from metal, a sound that belonged at junkyards or disaster sites, and jerked up in his seat and opened his eyes to see the windshield splintered and spider-webbed, turned to Claire and saw ribbons of blood spreading across her forehead and over her lips and down her chin as her neck sagged lifelessly to the right.

He’d gotten out some sort of gasp or grunt or shout and Claire had hit the brakes and turned to him as the guy in back finally shut up, and then Eric had blinked and the freeway spun around him and then he focused again and could see that they were all fine, that the car was intact and the windshield was whole and Claire’s face was smooth and tan and blood-free.

The excuse he manufactured at the time—something about a sudden stomach cramp—had satisfied the salesman but not Claire, and when they got back to the lot she pulled him aside and asked him what was wrong. All he’d said: Don’t you even think about buying this car. He couldn’t tell her any more than that, couldn’t describe the way her face had looked in that terrible flash.

Five days later, she’d brought him a copy of the Times as he drank coffee at the kitchen table, dropped it in front of him and pointed to an article detailing how a music executive’s daughter had wrapped her fresh-off-the-lot Infiniti G35 around a utility pole, doing about a hundred and ten. The car was red and had just been purchased from Martin Infiniti, the same dealership they’d visited. Eric had finally told her, told her what she already knew. Then he’d tried to convince her it could easily be a different car.

“I actually forgot about that,” he told her now. “But even that can’t touch what I’ve been seeing lately, Claire. That conversation with the old man, and then the train… they felt real. During those moments, they were absolutely real.”

“But in the past you’ve had psychic—”

“Oh, stop, I don’t want to hear that word.”

“In the past you’ve had odd visions—better?—that have been very real, too. You’ve been able to connect objects or places with things that had happened or were going to happen. So why wouldn’t you believe this is similar?”

“This is so much more intense…”

“And those other experiences were from outside contact,” she said. “You ingested that water, Eric. You put it inside you.”

“The water.”

“Of course. Don’t you think that’s what you’re reacting to?”

Actually, I suspected your dad’s camera. Had to beat the thing to death, in fact. How’s that for a logical reaction?

“I haven’t really had time to consider it yet,” he said. “But that trip to see the old man in the hospital, that was days after I first tasted the water. Seems like a long time for a drug to stay in your system.”

“It’s not a drug, Eric. It’s you.”

“What?”

“You’re connecting to it, just like you have to things before. The car, the old Indian camp in the mountains, things like that. And I’m not surprised you think this experience is stronger, more intense, because those were just things you looked at. This stuff, you consumed.”

They talked for a while longer, and it was amazing how much better he felt after he finally hung up with her. Claire had not only accepted his version of what was going on but had also offered a memory that validated it. Sane