So Cold the River

but the walls of this room and the furniture and the shadows, seeing no dead men in train cars filled with water. This I can take. This I can bear.

When the nausea caught him in full stride, he made it to the bathroom before vomiting, taking that as a comfort until the second wave hit and drove away what little strength he had left.

Let it come, he thought savagely as he lay with his cheek on the cool tile and a string of spit hanging from his lip. Let it come with the best it has, because I’m not drinking that water, won’t take a sip.

The sickness returned, even though his body was empty, and then came again, and by the end, he could no longer lift himself from the floor, racked by vicious dry heaves that seemed to spread his ribs even while squeezing his organs, the headache a crescendo and his conviction a memory.

The visions were bad, yes, but these withdrawal effects, they could kill him.

His mind went to Kellen’s suggestion, the words floating through his pain-fogged mind as he lay on the floor: Things get worse tonight, try her bottle before you go back to yours.

Anne’s bottle was on the desk, looking as normal as could be. It had been when he last saw it, at least. That had been on his way to the bathroom, and who knew how much time had passed since then. Maybe five hours, maybe fifteen minutes. He really couldn’t say.

He couldn’t stand. Managed only to get to his hands and knees, wobbling and bumping against the door frame, spit hanging from his mouth, a human pantomime of a rabid dog. He crawled forward, felt the tile change to carpet under his hands, and went left, toward the desk. He blinked hard and his vision cleared and he became aware of a glow from the top of the desk, a pale white luminescence that seemed like a guiding light.

He pulled up then and came to an abrupt stop, the rabid dog told to heel.

The light was coming from the bottle. Alyssa Bradford’s bottle. It offered a faint glow that seemed to come not from within it so much as from an electricity that clung to the outside, a sort of Saint Elmo’s fire.

Drink it.

No, no. Don’t drink it. The whole point, the reason for this absurd suffering, was to avoid taking any more of that water.

Things get worse tonight, try her bottle before yours.

Yes, her bottle. It wasn’t glowing, wasn’t covered in frost, looked entirely normal. He pulled himself over to the desk and reached for it, and when he did, his hand went to the glowing bottle first, and some part of him wanted that one desperately. He stopped himself, though, shifted his hand to Anne McKinney’s bottle, and got his fingers around it, brought it down. His breath was coming fast and uneven again, and he opened the bottle quickly and brought it to his mouth and drank.

It was hideous stuff. The sulfuric taste and smell were overpowering, and he got only two swallows down before he had to pull away. He gagged again, sagging back against the legs of the desk, and then he waited.

“Work,” he mumbled, running the tip of his tongue over lips that had gone dry and cracked. “Work.”

But he was sure it wouldn’t. The water his body desired so desperately was in the other bottle, the one putting off that faint glow and gathering ice in a seventy-degree room. This version, this sane version, would do nothing.

Then his breathing began to steady. That was the first perceptible change; he could fill his lungs once again. A few minutes after that, he felt the nausea subside, and then the headache dulled and he was on his feet again, splashing cold water on his face from the bathroom sink. He stood there with hands braced on the counter and lifted his face and stared into the mirror.

It was working. Anne’s water. What did that tell him? Well, for one thing, the Pluto Water was involved in whatever was happening to him, was part of it. Part. He couldn’t believe it was the sole cause, because Anne’s water didn’t have any of the same bizarre properties as Alyssa Bradford’s. And yet it had quelled the agony that came from Alyssa’s water. Whatever had been put into his system seemed satisfied now. Content.

As if it had just been fed.

How he’d slept so long on a rock ledge, Josiah couldn’t imagine. No pillow for his head, even, and still he’d managed to sleep past sunset. When he opened his eyes, the treetops above him were a rustling mess of shadows, and when he sat up with a grunt, the pool of water far below was no longer visible. Full night.

Two of the beers remained warm and unopened at his side. The gulf gurgled down below, and he got to his feet stiffly, thinking about the dream and unsettled by it. Wasn’t often that Josiah dreamed when he slept, and he couldn’t recall ever having the same dream twice, or even a variation of it.

But this one had returned, this dream of the man aboard the train. Strange.

He’d ordinarily hike back the way he’d come, but he had no flashlight and it was a difficult trek in the darkness even if you knew where you were going. Too many roots to stumble over and holes to turn an ankle in. Taking the road would be longer but easier.

He left the ledge and climbed to the top of the ridge and found the trail that led to the gravel drive the state had put in. From there he came out to the county road as a dog barked in the distance and the moon and stars glittered and lit the pavement with a faint white glow. To the right he could see the white sides of Wesley Chapel gleaming against the dark, and a few pale orbs surrounding it, the stone fronts of the monuments in the old cemetery also catching the moonlight. He turned left, toward home.

Not a single car passed. He hiked south, open fields on each side of him for a spell, then into the woods of Toliver Hollow, and there the road curved away and he walked east for a time before leaving it for another road and moving south once more. A half mile farther and he left the paved road for a gravel one. Almost home. He’d taken no more than twenty steps on the gravel when he pulled up short and stared.

The moon was three-quarters full and bright in the periods between clouds, and it was glittering off something just down the road from Josiah’s house.

A windshield.

A car.

Parked on the Amish farm property. Last time Josiah had checked, his Amish neighbors didn’t have cars.

He hesitated for a moment and then left the road and went into the weeds as he continued on. As he got closer, he could tell it was a van. Funny place to leave a car, and funnier still was that it was parked in one of the few locations where Josiah’s home showed in the gaps between the trees. He could see the outline of his house from here. The Amish barns were visible, but not their home. Just Josiah’s.

Someone had run out of gas or had engine trouble, no doubt, pushed the thing off the road and left it till daylight. Nothing to trouble his mind over; Josiah couldn’t give a shit whose car it was. Had nothing to do with him.

That was his thought for another fifty paces, until he saw the glow.

A brief square of blue light inside the rear of the van was visible for about five seconds and then extinguished. A cell phone. Someone was inside that van. In the back.

He felt something dark spread through him then, a feeling he knew well, his temper lifting its head on one of those occasions when it would not be denied, when fists would surely be swung and blood drawn.

Somebody was watching his house.

There was nothing else to see from there. Nothing but fields and trees and Josiah Bradford’s own home.

A memory hit him then, a flash of something seen but ignored—the blue minivan that had been pulled off the road near Edgar’s house when the man from Chicago and the black kid left. Josiah had driven right past it, had seen that it was parked off the shoulder and in the grass. Just like this one was now.

Son of a bitch was following him.

This would not be tolerated.

He dropped the beer cans he’d been carrying into the grass, then slipped down off the road and into the weed-covered ditch and picked his way along in a crouch. The van was parked facing the cattle gate, both sides exposed to the road, but its occupant was in the rear, and odds were he was watching the house and not the road.

It took him a long time to work his way down until he was directly across from the van. Twice the blue light appeared and disappeared, and he decided that whoever was inside was checking the time. Impatient, wondering