So Cold the River

getting a little… edgy.”

Kellen took a few steps farther down the hill, frowning. “Maybe we shouldn’t have you out in the woods right now. Anything happens—you have another one of those seizures or something—it’ll be a bad place for it.”

“I’m fine. Let’s find this thing before the storm hits.”

Back up the hill and away from the cliff, back in the direction from which they’d come. Just before they entered the trees again, Eric took one long look back at the gulf, blinked hard, and stared. He could’ve sworn the water was higher already.

51

TIME AND PLACE PLAYED tricks on Josiah’s mind, as they had a few times up at the timber camp. He’d been staring out at the incoming storm clouds for a long time before the light changed enough that he caught a glimpse of his own shadow in the window and saw that there was a figure behind him. He whirled and found himself facing old Anne McKinney. Of course that’s who it was. But for a moment there, he’d lost any memory of where he was or who he was with. For a moment there, he could’ve sworn he heard music, some sort of old-time strings number. He’d been sitting at a bar with a whiskey glass in his hand, laughing with some fat son of a bitch in a tuxedo, explaining that the economic shifts weren’t going to bring a thing to this country that couldn’t be solved with a bit of ambition…

A dream. But he’d been on his feet. He’d fallen asleep on his damn feet? What in the hell was going on? He was here to wait for Eric Shaw. Shaw would be coming for the water eventually, and when he did, Josiah would have him, and then the woman, and then he’d have answers. That’s what he needed to focus on. He was here to get answers. Why was that so hard to remember?

He shook his head, blinked, then mustered a glare and held it on Anne McKinney for a few seconds, enough to show her that he was still in control. It wouldn’t do to let his mind drift like that again, not with so many decisions to be made.

He turned back from Anne, thinking he’d steal another glance at that crazy damn cloud, but this time when he looked at the window, what he saw froze him.

Campbell was sitting where Anne McKinney had just been. He was staring dead on into the window, his face reflected clear as a bell, his dark eyes shimmering like the rain that splattered the glass.

You was told to listen, Josiah, he said. Said you wanted to go home and take what was yours, and when a ride was offered in exchange for a piece of work, you agreed to it. But you failed to listen, boy. Needs to be a day of reckoning come upon this valley. It was mine once, should’ve been yours, and they took it from us. Took it from me, took it from you. You going to let that stand, boy? Are you going to let that stand?

Josiah didn’t answer. He just stared into the glass, into Campbell’s reflected eyes.

I could’ve chose anyone for this task, Campbell said. Could’ve chose Eric Shaw, or his black friend, or Danny Hastings. You question my strength, boy, question the power of my influence? That’s foolish. It didn’t have to be you. But you were here, my own blood, and that meant something to me. Doesn’t mean a damn thing to you, though.

“It does,” Josiah said. “It does.”

Then listen, damn it. Do what needs to be done.

Josiah turned to him then, anxious to say that he was more than willing to do what needed to be done, that he was just having some trouble understanding what in the hell it was exactly. When he turned, though, Campbell was gone, the old woman there in his place, looking at Josiah with fearful eyes.

He looked back at the window. Campbell was there again, but he was silent.

“I’ll do your work,” Josiah said. “I’ll do it. Just show me what needs done.”

Anne’s fear had grown as the morning went on and Josiah Bradford’s ravings turned stronger and stranger. Those muttered conversations had become something else, and now she could tell that Josiah was no longer imagining an exchange with someone, he was seeing someone, speaking directly to him as if he were in the room with him. Wasn’t a soul in sight but Anne, and he sure wasn’t talking to her.

When he got to the last bit and said I’ll do your work in a voice that seemed untethered to his person, she squeezed her hands tightly together and looked away from him. He’d whirled on her once and she’d been afraid he might do something, but then he’d just turned back to the window and carried on with his conversation.

She wouldn’t watch him anymore. Better to pretend she wasn’t seeing or hearing any of this, better to pretend she wasn’t even in the room.

He took to pacing again, in and out of the room, and each time he came back, he’d look from her to the window, do it suspiciously, as if trying to catch her at something he thought he saw her doing in the reflection. Then he went all the way into the kitchen and began to rattle around, and when he stepped back into the living room, she stole a glance and felt her heart seize.

There was a knife in his hand now. One of her kitchen knives, with a five-inch blade, plenty sharp. She pulled back, fearing harm, but he just carried on past her like she wasn’t there and returned to the window.

Don’t look at him, she thought, don’t make eye contact. He’s as close to a rabid dog as anything now, and worst thing you can do with a dog like that is make eye contact.

So she kept her head turned and tried not to make a sound that would attract his attention, tried not to so much as breathe too loud.

She didn’t look at him again until she heard the squeaking noise. Even then she hesitated, but it kept up, sounding like he was polishing something with a damp cloth, and finally she turned to see what it was.

He was drawing on the window with his own blood.

The knife was on the end table beside him, and she could see that he’d cut his right index finger to draw blood and had then begun to smear it around the glass. His face was screwed into an intense frown, not from pain but from concentration, and he was moving his finger carefully, tilting his head from side to side occasionally to change the angle. It looked as if he was tracing something. Once he looked over his shoulder and then swore at himself and paused for a long time before beginning again, as if he’d ruined his image. She couldn’t see what he was drawing at first, but then he stepped to the side and leaned over and she got a glimpse.

It was the outline of a man. The head and shoulders of a man, at least, etched in blood over her window. The man was wearing a hat, and Josiah Bradford appeared to have spent most of his time on the hat—and the eyes. The outline of the face and shoulders looked like a child’s scribbling, but the hat and eyes were clear. He’d drawn a nice, smooth almond shape for the eyes and now, as she watched, he took his finger off the glass and stood there squeezing it to raise more blood. He was patient, waiting for a full, thick bead of it. When he was satisfied, he reached out with infinite care and touched his fingertip to the center of the eye, filled it in with blood.

He repeated the act for the second eye. Anne could hardly draw a breath, watching him.

When he had the second eye filled in with blood, he stepped back like a painter studying his canvas, cocked his head, and looked judiciously at the window.

“You see him now?” he said.

Anne didn’t speak, keeping that vow of silence she’d made for her own safety. He turned on her then, though, looked right at her with a hard stare and said, “Do you see him now?” and she knew that she had to answer.

“Yes,” she said. “I can see him.”

He nodded, pleased, and then turned back to the window, sidestepping so that he was out of the way of the blood drawing. Anne sat trembling on the couch and stared at the liquid crimson eyes and, beyond them, the storm.

They found what appeared to be an old road about a half mile from the gulf, overgrown with weeds but absent of trees, maybe eight feet across. In the distance, off to the east and west, farm buildings were visible, but then the old track curved away from the fields and roped back into the trees. There was an old barbed-wire fence lining the edge of the field, and from that point they could see for miles in three directions. Every direction except the one they were facing, southeast, into the trees.