So Cold the River

Eric tried to pick his way through the barbed wire, promptly got snagged and tore his shirt, then felt an idiot’s flush of shame when he turned and watched Kellen step easily off the top of a stump and over the fence. Oh, well, he probably would’ve just jumped over it if the stump hadn’t been there. Guy that size wasn’t going under it.

On the other side of the fence the old track became even more overgrown, harder to follow, and it climbed gently but steadily. One of those hills that didn’t feel like so much until you were a ways up it and began to feel a tight burning in your calves. After about ten minutes the slope fell off abruptly and they went downhill for a bit and then came to a rounded ditch packed with old leaves, slabs of limestone protruding here and there. Water flowed through it, no more than a foot deep but moving swiftly.

“One of the dry channels?” Eric said.

“I’d say so.”

They slid down into the ditch and used one of the limestone pieces to cross the water, then got back to climbing. It was about five minutes before the ground flattened out and it was clear they’d reached the top. By now Eric was breathing hard—Kellen didn’t seem to be breathing at all—and if not for the sudden absence of slope, it wouldn’t have felt like much of an arrival. Everything up here looked pretty much the same as the hill had—thick with trees, tangled with brush and weeds, dark with shadows. Insects buzzed around them, and a pair of crows shrieked in discontent. The humidity seemed twice as high as when they’d started, and Eric lifted his shirt and used it to dry sweat from his face. When he lowered the shirt, he felt an odd tingle, like a ping of static electricity. The crows shrieked again and he winced at the sound.

“I feel like we’re just wandering now,” Kellen said. “We’ve got no idea where we should be looking.”

“I know it,” Eric said. A gust of wind blew up, and a thin branch from one of the young trees whipped into his face. When he lifted his arm to ward it off, his hand passed through a spider web, which stuck to him with wispy, sticky threads. He swore and wiped his hand off on his jeans and continued on as Kellen fell in behind him. They’d gone no more than twenty feet before Kellen’s phone began to ring. Eric didn’t turn at first, but when Kellen began to speak, his voice was low and serious in a way that brought Eric to a stop. When he looked back, he saw Kellen’s face knotted in an expression of disbelief.

“You’re sure?” he was saying, voice hushed. He was turned sideways, as if trying to retreat from Eric, attain privacy. “Thanks. Yeah, I know. Crazy. All right, baby. I’ll talk to you…. Look, yeah, I got to go. I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you. Okay? Thank you.”

He disconnected and slid the phone into his pocket, a thoughtful look on his face.

“Your girlfriend?” Eric said.

“Yeah.” He was looking at Eric with a frown of scrutiny.

“Why are you looking at me like I’m a test subject?”

“Danielle just got results on your water.”

“Really.” Eric’s eyelid twitched and fluttered again. “Were we right? Is there something in it besides the mineral water?”

Kellen nodded.

“Alcohol?” Eric asked. “Some sort of whiskey?”

Now Kellen shook his head. “Not even a trace of alcohol. It was, according to Danielle, a mixture of mineral water and blood.”

“Blood.”

“Yeah.”

“Just… blood. She has no idea where it might—?”

“Human blood,” Kellen said. “Type A human blood.”

Eric thought of the bottle, and his senses seemed to slam him right back into contact with it—he had a flash of the cold touch in his palm, the honey-tinged odor, the sickening-sweet taste…

“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?”