Campbell was gone. The second tub was gone, and the bleeding man.
Eric sat there on the floor in a puddle of water and gasped for breath, and then the door banged again. He tried to jump to his feet but slid in the water, his heels going out from under him and dropping him back against the edge of the tub with a painful impact as a female voice floated in from the other side of the door.
“Mr. Shaw? Are you—”
“I’m fine!” he yelled. “I’m fine.”
“I thought I heard you shout,” she said.
He reached for the robe and dragged it down to cover himself.
“No, no. I’m done, though. I’m going to be coming out.”
He got unsteadily to his feet and slipped into the robe. The pockets banged off his hips, weighed down by the two plastic water bottles he’d filled.
“Just another vision,” he said to himself. “Harmless as the others. You’ll get used to them.”
He turned to lift the plug from the tub and froze with his arm extended.
There, on the surface, floated a cloud of brown liquid. Tobacco juice.
He stared at it for a long time. Closed his eyes and reopened them and it was still there. Straightened and stood above the tub and studied it from an angle, then turned in a full circle, making sure the rest of the room was as it had been when he entered, before looking at the tobacco juice again. Still there. Disintegrating in the water now, thinning and separating, but still there.
How?
It had come from Campbell’s mouth, and Campbell had been a vision, was gone completely now, just as had happened with all the previous visions. Never before had a trace lingered, never before had the visions left any mark on reality.
“Mr. Shaw?”
“Coming out!” he shouted, and then he opened the drain and let the tub of mineral water begin to empty. He stood there until the tobacco juice found the drain, and when it did a shiver rode high on his spine.
For a moment, just as it swirled out of sight, it had looked exactly like blood.
Part Four
COLD BLACK CLOUD
43
IT TOOK DANNY ABOUT forty minutes to return with the cell phones. At first Josiah waited on the floor of the barn near the open door. As time passed, though, he found himself outside in the rain, leaning up against the barn wall, the weathered boards rough on his back. There was a tree that hung over the barn at this edge and kept the rain from falling on him. It was a light rain now, a gentle touch on his flesh, so he moved away from the tree and found a spot where he could sit against the barn wall and let the rain come down unobstructed. He was there when he saw the headlights of an approaching car, and though he knew he should move into the woods until confirming it was Danny, he did not. For some reason, he wasn’t all that concerned about who it was.
The car was the Oldsmobile, though, and Danny pulled it up close to the barn and pushed his door open while the engine was still running.
“What are you doing sitting in the rain?”
“Passing time,” Josiah said, rankled by both the question and Danny’s expression, the way he was staring at Josiah like he was crazy. “You get the phones?”
“I did.”
“Well, bring them here. And shut the damn headlights off.”
They went back into the barn and Danny set up one of those battery lanterns, filled the room with a white light.
“Figured you could use this,” he said. He also had a few bottles of water and a bag of beef jerky, and all Josiah did was grunt a thank-you, but he didn’t like the lantern. He’d grown used to dark—almost to the point of fondness, really.
Danny had purchased, as instructed, two prepaid cell phones and a battery charger that Josiah could plug into the truck’s cigarette lighter. He got the first phone out of the package now and started charging it.
“I don’t understand why you needed two of them.”
“If I’m going to be calling these people in Chicago, you think it’d be a real good idea to call you from the same number?”
“Oh,” Danny said. “That’s good thinking. This guy you’re going to call, his number was in the briefcase you stole?”
“Yes.”
“I still don’t understand how you’re going to get any money out of him.”
“Fact is,” Josiah said, “a man can get awful lost in details if he dwells too much on them. I don’t intend to have such a hindrance. The man paid someone thousands of dollars to drive down here and sit outside my home, Danny. Paid another man to come down and talk to Edgar. Hell, might have been paying that one that told me he was a student. But the paperwork I got suggests something about me was worth a dime or two to this old boy. If it was worth something last night, it still will be tonight.”