So Cold the River(91)
“Son,” she said, “I was having your sort of week, I’d be saying a lot worse.”
“You saved me today,” he said.
“Held it off. You ain’t saved yet.”
That was true enough. He thanked her again and went to the car, felt the water soak instantly into his jeans when he sat. The seat and dashboard were drenched, but his cell phone, dropped onto the passenger seat and forgotten, was dry. He picked it up and saw nine missed calls, ignored them all, and called Alyssa Bradford. Got no answer. Hung up and dialed again, and then a third time, and this time she picked up on the first ring.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was hushed, and he was so surprised that she’d actually answered that for a moment he said nothing.
“Sorry,” he got out at last. “You’re sorry. Do you understand that I’ve spent my day with police because a man is dead?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, and now it was clear that she was whispering intentionally. Someone was probably in the room with her or nearby, and she didn’t want this conversation to be overheard. “Listen, I can’t talk to you. But I’m sorry, and I don’t know what to say except that you should leave that place—”
“Why did you hire me?”
“What?”
“You didn’t send me down here to make a happy little memory film, damn it. The bottle was part of it, but I want to know what you really were hoping to find out.”
“I was tired of the secrets.” She hissed it.
“What does that mean? What secrets?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Not to you. Just—”
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter to me! I’m the one down here dealing with murders, not to mention the effects of that fucking water! Someone from your family knows the truth, and you need to find it out. I don’t care if you have to go into that hospital and electroshock your father-in-law back into coherence, I want to know—”
“My father-in-law is dead.”
He stopped. Said, “What?”
“This morning, Eric. About four hours ago. He’s dead, and I need to be with my family. I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m sorry about everything, but let it go. Leave that place and get rid of that bottle and good luck.”
She disconnected, and he was sitting with a dead phone at his ear and Anne McKinney watching him from the door. He lowered the phone and started the car and gave her a wave, tried to put some cheer into it.
The old man was dead. Not that it mattered—he’d been as good as dead anyhow, but, still…
He thought of Anne’s words about the supernatural being just like the weather, ebbing and flowing, fronts colliding, one side winning at least a temporary victory. When that old man in the hospital died, the one who’d been keeper of the bizarre damn bottle for so many years, what did it mean? Would it have any significance? Did it matter?
Stop thinking like that, Eric thought. Stop buying into the idea that whatever is happening down here is real. You’re seeing visions, but the people in them can’t affect this world. They just can’t do it.
“They can’t.” He said it aloud this time, hoping the sound of his voice would add strength of conviction in his mind. It did not.
39
THE MAN IN THE bowler hat disappeared in a blink. Just that fast. He was in the passenger seat at Josiah’s side, real as the truck beneath him, and then he was a memory. A memory that had every muscle in Josiah’s back tight as winch cables.
He actually put his hand out and waved it around the cab. Caught nothing but air. Then he puffed out a deep breath and waited to see if it would fog again. It did not.
The man in the hat, that’s how Josiah still thought of him. But this time he’d identified himself. Had called himself Campbell, had told Josiah that he was all that remained of the family blood.
Didn’t have to be you that I selected…. Nothing requires it…. All you got to do is listen, Josiah. All you got to do is listen to me.
It had been another dream, that was all. Just yesterday Josiah had wondered if the man in the dream could be Campbell, and his heat-addled brain had grabbed on to that and worked it into this latest dream. Odd thing was that all his life Josiah had been a man of deep, dreamless sleep. What had changed?
Hadn’t been a thing strange going on until the men from Chicago had shown up in town. The first of the strange moments had been the dream he’d had yesterday morning after the fight the night before…
No, it hadn’t been then. The first strange thing had been what happened when he went to wash Eric Shaw’s blood off his hand. The way the water had gone from hot to ice cold when it touched the blood. He’d never felt anything like that before. The house was still on a well, had an electric pump bringing in water from the same ground that produced the springs and the Lost River and the Wesley Chapel Gulf, and Josiah had always liked it that way. Didn’t need any treated city water.