been dead for fifteen hours before this was revealed.
The letter made no mention of an odd green glass bottle, or of the reason the old man had for taking Campbell’s name as his own.
Eric lets everyone wonder about this. He does not tell them about Campbell’s final threat, that anyone who did not share his blood and his name would feel his wrath.
Claire urges him to tell the doctors about his addiction to the mineral water and the ravaging effects it may have on his body. He tells her this is unnecessary. It is done, he says. It is over.
She asks how he can know this, and it is difficult to answer.
Just trust me, he says. I’m sure.
And he is. Because the water gave him back. His heart had stopped, his breathing had stopped. Those things began anew. He began anew. The old plagues will not return for him.
He returns to Chicago for two weeks before he can convince Claire to go back to the valley with him. He has a purpose there, he explains, and for the first time he understands it. There’s a story that needs to be told—so many stories, really—and he can be a part of that. A documentary, though, a historical portrait of this place in a different time. It will not be the sort of thing that makes it to the theaters, but it is an important story, and he believes the film can be successful in a modest way.
She asks him if he will write the script, and he says he will not. That isn’t his role. He’s an image guy, he explains, he can see things that need to be included in the story but he cannot tell its whole. He wonders if her father would be interested in writing it. His name could help secure some interest. She suspects that he would.
Kellen meets them in the hotel, his foot encased in an Aircast, crutches by his side. He says he has a green glass bottle to return to Eric but left it in Bloomington. He didn’t think it should be brought back to this place. Eric agrees.
They eat a celebratory dinner in the ornate dining room of the beautiful old hotel, and Eric explains the documentary and asks Kellen if he would consider being part of it. Kellen is enthusiastic, but it’s obvious something else is on his mind. He doesn’t address it until Claire has gone to the restroom and left the two of them alone. Then he mentions the spring, the one from the visions, and asks Eric if he believes it is really out there.
Yes, Eric tells him. I know that it is.
Kellen asks if he will search for it.
He will not.
Do you think Campbell is gone? Kellen asks.
Eric thinks for a moment and then offers a quote from Anne McKinney—
Claire and Eric stay the night, make love in the same room, and then she sleeps and he lies awake and stares into the dark and waits for voices. There are none. Beneath him, the hotel is peaceful. Outside, a gentle wind begins to blow.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The idea for this story came wholly from the place itself. The towns of French Lick and West Baden are very real, as is the astounding West Baden Springs Hotel, as is the even more astounding Lost River. I grew up not far north of these places and saw the West Baden hotel when I was a child and it was little more than a ruin. It was a moment and a memory that lingered, and over the years, I continued to learn about the place and its remarkable history. In 2007, when I saw the restoration of the West Baden Springs Hotel near completion, I felt the storyteller’s compulsion revving to a high pitch. This book is the result, and because the places and the history are important to me, I’ve tried to present them accurately whenever possible. Still, this is a work of fiction, and I’ve taken some liberties—and no doubt made some mistakes.
Two dear friends helped with my research and encouraged the undertaking—Laura Lane and Bob Hammel— and a few people I’ve never met also deserve credit. Chris Bundy has chronicled the history of the area better than anyone, and his books were wonderful resources. Bob Armstrong, the late Dee Slater, and the members of the Lost River Conservation Association have been dedicated protectors and proponents of an underappreciated natural wonder for many years, and they piqued my interest in the river several years ago while I was working as a newspaper reporter. And to Bill and Gayle Cook, who brought the hotels back from near extinction, I’d like to say a most heartfelt thanks on behalf of the people of Indiana.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is such a tremendous pleasure to work with the people at Little, Brown. My deepest thanks to Michael Pietsch, editor and publisher without peer, for his efforts and above all else his faith. Thanks also to David Young, Geoff Shandler, Tracy Williams, Nancy Weise, Heather Rizzo, Heather Fain, Vanessa Kehren, Eve Rabinovits, Sabrina Callahan, Pamela Marshall, and the many other key players on the Hachette team.
My agent and friend, David Hale Smith, patiently listened to my wild explanation of an idea for a novella about haunted mineral water and then, with an astounding level of calm, watched it turn into a five-hundred-page manuscript. What can I say, DHS? Oops. An important note of gratitude is due the extraordinary violinist Joshua Bell. This fellow Bloomington native’s violin work on the haunting song “Short Trip Home” (written, I must add, by another Indiana University product, renowned bassist and composer Edgar Meyer) pushed me toward an unexpected but rewarding place. It was a melody that needed a story, I thought, and from that grew a large portion of this book.
I fear that I tend to lean too heavily for input and advice on the writers I’ve long admired, and without fail they somehow tolerate it. It’s great to be in a business where amazing work comes from amazing people, and there are none finer than Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, and George Pelecanos. Thanks to you all, for so many things.
Please turn the page for a preview of
Michael Koryta’s
,
available in hardcover in January 2011.
1
THEY’D BEEN ON THE TRAIN for five hours before Arlen Wagner saw the first of the dead men.
To that point it had been a hell of a nice ride. Hot, sure, and progressively more humid as they passed out of Alabama and through southern Georgia and into Florida, but nice enough all the same. There were thirty-four onboard the train who were bound for the camps in the Keys, all of them veterans with the exception of the nineteen-year-old who rode at Arlen’s side, a boy from Jersey by name of Paul Brickhill.
They’d all made a bit of conversation at the outset, exchanges of names and casual barbs and jabs thrown around in that way men had when they were getting used to one another, all of them figuring they’d be together for several months to come, and then things quieted down. Some men had slept, a few had started card games, others just sat and watched the countryside roll by, fields going misty with the twilight of a late-summer night and then shapeless and dark as the moon rose like a watchful specter. Arlen, though, Arlen just listened. Wasn’t anything else to do, because Paul Brickhill had an outboard motor where his mouth belonged.
As the miles and minutes passed, Brickhill alternated between explaining things to Arlen and asking him questions. Nine times out of ten, he answered his own questions before Arlen could so much as part his lips with a response. Brickhill had been a quiet kid when the two of them first met in Alabama, and back then Arlen took him for shy. What he hadn’t counted on was the way the boy took to talk once he felt comfortable with someone.
