Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

“Look,” Campbell said.

This time he turned his face down, stared right at the corpse. There was blood in the grass on both sides of it now, and the muscles of the dead man’s face looked stricken and taut.

“What you see there,” Campbell said, “is a man who had no appreciation for strength. For power. A man who could not take heed of ambition. What you have to decide now is, are you such a man?”

Lucas looked up. The wind was blowing hard and steady, bending the treetops and whipping his hair back from his forehead. He did not meet Campbell’s eyes, but he shook his head. He shook it slowly but emphatically.

“I thought not,” Campbell said. “You been up here for a good while. You’ve seen him at work. Do you know how to make that moonshine?”

Lucas nodded, but it was hesitant.

“Whatever you’ve forgotten about it,” Campbell said, “you’d be advised to start remembering.”

He put the gun away and then dropped his hands into his pockets, hunching against the wind.

“Time for you to find a shovel, boy. I’d hurry, too. Feels like rain.”

Eric’s hearing returned before his sight. He was dimly aware of the chiming grandfather clock before the room appeared around him, vaporous at first and then hard edged, and he found himself looking into Anne McKinney’s fascinated and fearful eyes.

“You see me again,” she said. It was not a question.

“Yeah.” His voice was a croak. She went into the kitchen and poured him a glass of iced tea and brought it back and watched silently as he drank the whole thing down.

“You had me a little nervous,” she said.

He choked out a laugh. “Sorry about that.”

“It was plain to see you’d gone somewhere else,” she said, and then, leaning forward, added, “Tell me-what were you seeing?”

“The past,” he said.

“The past?”

He nodded. “That’s the best I can describe it. I’m seeing things from another time… They’re from this place, and they are not from this time.”

“This place,” she said. “You mean my home?”

There was something so excited in her voice, so hopeful, that he was taken aback.

“No. I mean the town. The area, I guess. But not your house.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointment clear. “Is it scary, what you’re seeing?”

“Sometimes. Other times… just like watching a movie.”

“You always have the visions when you drink the water?”

“I seem to,” he said. “They’re different when I have your water. Then I’m nothing but a spectator. When I drank from the other bottle… then it was more like seeing a ghost right here with me. I wasn’t seeing the past, I was seeing something out of it that had joined the present.”

She was quiet, considering what he’d said.

“Do you know the name Campbell Bradford?” he asked.

She rocked back. “That’s not who you’re seeing?”

He nodded.

“Oh, my. Yes, I know the name. Haven’t heard it in years, but he was the talk of the town when I was a girl. There’s plenty of folks who thought he was evil, you know. Or became evil, that’s the way I remember my daddy telling it. He said Campbell was just another mean man at first, but then something dark took hold of him and pushed him beyond mean. Pushed him until he wasn’t even himself anymore.”

“Something dark?”

“You know, a spirit. A lot of folks believed that sort of thing in those days.”

“You remember Kellen, the guy I brought over?” Eric said, and she nodded. “Well, his grandfather worked down here in the twenties and had some idea that the area was… not necessarily haunted, but-”

“Charged.” The word left their mouths simultaneously, and Eric pulled his head back and stared at her.

“He talked to you about this?”

“No,” she said softly, “it’s just the right word.”

“So you believe there are ghosts here?”

She frowned and looked at the window. “I’ve always connected it more to the weather myself. That’s what I study, you know. And there’s something different in this valley… You can feel it in the wind now and again, and on the edge of a summer storm, or maybe just before ice comes down in the wintertime. There’s something different. And charge is the best word for it. There’s a charge, all right.”

“Does that mean you believe there are ghosts here or not?”

“There’s something in this area that’s close to magic,” she said. “You call it supernatural if you want; I’ve always called it magic. But there’s something in the place itself-in the earth, in the water, in the wind-that has power. You know, with weather there are cold fronts and warm fronts, and when they collide, something special is going to happen. I think there’s something about Springs Valley that’s similar. It feels the same way to me as the air does right before those fronts collide. That probably doesn’t make sense to you but it’s the only way I know to explain it. A special kind of energy in the air, maybe energy beyond the natural. Could there be ghosts here? Certainly. Not everyone sees them, though. That much I’m sure of. But those who do, well, I imagine it has a mighty powerful influence.”

Eric was staring at her, silent.

“Thing you need to remember?” she said. “You can’t be sure what hides behind the wind.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

She smiled. “You’re too worried about figuring out what you can believe about all of this, and then figuring out how to control it. That’s how most people approach their lives. Way I feel, though, after a lot of years of living? Not much of what matters in the world is under your control. You don’t dictate, you adapt. That’s all. So stop trying to control this, and start trying to listen to what it’s telling you.”

His reaction made her frown and tilt her head. “What?”

“If there’s a single point to these visions,” he said slowly, “I haven’t been able to understand it yet. Except the first one, with the train, when he tipped his hat at me. I understood that. Campbell was thanking me.”

“Thanking you? For what?”

“For bringing him home.”

ONCE DANNY LEFT AND it was just Josiah up at the old timber camp, time slowed to a lame man’s crawl, the heat baking him as he sat outside the old barn and swatted at mosquitoes that approached with a mind for feasting.

He wished he’d thought to ask Danny to bring him some food and water, but he hadn’t, and now his tongue was thick from thirst and his belly knotted with hunger. Eventually the heat and mosquitoes conspired to send him into the barn.

It was a dusty wreck of a place, lined with discarded equipment and broken crates and pallets, two chipmunks coming and going through a torn board near the floor. It should have been dark, but the light bled in from a thousand cracks and holes and gaps and formed crisscrossing beams through the shimmering dust in the air that reminded him of the laser security systems you saw in heist movies.

He wandered, shoving pallets and barrels around, searching the place because it offered a distraction to ease the painful passage of time. There was a chain saw in one corner, but it was rusted and worthless. Beside it was a long metal box, padlocked shut. That struck his curiosity-anything in a lockbox might have value. He gave the lock a tug but it held. The hasp around it was rusted, though, and the metal looked thin.

There was a crowbar in the bed of the truck, and he went for it now and returned to the box and gave it a gentle tap near the hasp. The sound of metal on metal banged loudly in the barn, and the box held. It was damn foolish to be hammering away up here, risking attention, but he was curious, so he gave it another whack, harder this time. Then a third, and a fourth, and on the fifth, the edge of the crowbar bit through the metal above the hasp. Success in sight now, he swung it in again, punching a hole in the box, and then levered the crowbar up and down, working it like a water pump handle, until the hasp had split from the box and the lock was now meaningless. He dropped the crowbar onto the dusty floor and lifted the lid.