Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

He is another vision, Eric thought, not moving at all, afraid a single ripple in the water would cause the man to raise his head. It’s just like the others.

It wasn’t like the others, though. Not like watching a movie, everything distant. This time, it was here with him. As it had been with Campbell in the train car.

He heard a click then, and the door pushed open, nothing but blackness on the other side, and Campbell Bradford stepped into the room.

His eyes were straight ahead, on Eric. Maybe it was going to be like the one in the train car, when Campbell had spoken directly to him, when he’d had to run for the door because Campbell was on his feet and walking toward him…

Campbell turned away, though. He flicked his eyes away from Eric and to the sleeping man in the other tub, and then he walked toward him. He moved quietly, his shoes sliding over the tile floor, his suit barely rustling. When he reached the man in the tub, he stood over him silently, looking down. Then he slid his suit coat off his shoulders and laid it over the back of a chair. Once the jacket was off, Campbell unfastened his cuff links and set them on top of the coat. Then he rolled both sleeves up past the elbows. Still the man in the tub didn’t move, lost to sleep.

Warn him, Eric thought. Say something.

But of course he couldn’t. He wasn’t part of this scene, he just felt like he was. Campbell couldn’t see him; Campbell was not real. Eric hadn’t taken any of the Bradford water, none of that dangerous stuff that brought Campbell out of the past and into the present. All he had to do was watch and wait for it to go away. It would end in time. He knew that it would end in time.

For a long moment, Campbell stood above the man in the tub and watched him, almost serenely. When he finally moved, it was with sudden and violent speed. He lunged out and dropped the palm of one hand on top of the man’s head and put the other on his chest, near the collarbone, and then slammed his weight behind them and drove the man into the water.

The tub exploded into a frenzy of water and both of the man’s feet appeared in the air, flailing. His hands clenched first on the edges of the tub and then grappled backward at his antagonist. Campbell appeared not to notice.

He held him down for a long time, and then straightened and hauled back. His right fist was wrapped in the man’s hair now. Once he cleared the water, gurgling and gasping, Campbell slammed him down again. This time he held him even longer. Held him until the frantic motions slowed and almost ceased. When the man’s hands had lost their grip on Campbell’s jacket and drifted back toward the water, he let him up again.

They do not see you. Cannot see you. It was a frantic mantra, the desperate reassurance of someone in a plane hurtling toward the earth-the pilot will fix this.

Campbell had released the man in the tub and stepped aside and was only a few feet from Eric now. The man hung on to the side of the tub, gasping and choking, water streaming from his hair to the tile floor.

“There are debts to be paid,” Campbell said. His voice was eerily calm. “I’ve established this with you in the past. Yet they remain unpaid.”

The man looked at him with disbelieving eyes, chest heaving. His face was wet with water and tears, and there was a smear of blood-tinged mucus beneath his nose.

“I don’t have any money!” he gasped, pulling back to the edge of the tub, dragging his knees up as if to protect himself. “Who does right now, Campbell? I lost my savings. You see how empty this hotel is? That’s because nobody has any money!”

“You seem to think that your circumstances affect your debt,” Campbell said. “That is not an idea which I share.”

“You’re crazy, trying to collect now. Not just from me-from anybody. There’s no money left in this valley. The whole thing’s going to disappear in a blink. Don’t you read the papers? Listen to the radio? This country is going to hell, man.”

“I’m not concerned with this country,” Campbell said. “I’m concerned with what’s owed me.”

“They’re not even going to be able to keep this hotel open, I can promise you that.” The man was babbling now, his voice nearly hysterical. “Ballard might try to force it along, but it’ll close and they’ll be broke, too. Everyone will be. Everyone in this whole country will be broke soon, you wait and see. It’ll come for us all.”

Campbell used his index finger to push his hat up on his head, and then he reached into his pocket and came out with a chaw of tobacco, worked it in behind his lower lip. The man in the tub watched warily, but Campbell’s silence and cool demeanor seemed to have soothed his panic. When the man spoke again, his voice was steadier.

“Hand me that robe, will you? You could’ve killed me earlier. All to try and get money that I don’t have. Now what would the point of that have been?”

“The point?” Campbell said. “I don’t understand your confusion. There’s nothing difficult to this situation. The world breaks some men. Others, it uses for the breaking.”

He tilted his head and smiled. “Which one do you figure I am?”

The man in the tub didn’t answer. When Campbell walked toward him, he did not speak or cry out in alarm. Instead he watched, silent, until he saw Campbell’s hand dip into his pocket and come out with a knife. Words left his mouth then, left in a harsh whisper of terror, just two of them: “Campbell, no-”

Campbell’s hands flashed. One caught the man’s sopping wet hair and jerked backward, exposing the throat; the other dropped the blade and cut a ribbon through it. Blood poured into the water.

Eric’s body seized at the sight. He couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t do anything except watch the blood drip into the tub, the sound like a water glass being refilled from a pitcher. They can’t see me, he thought. Had to remember that. Had to remember…

Campbell turned and looked at him. Those watery brown eyes found his, and when they did, the wild thoughts died in Eric’s brain and even the sound of the blood seemed to disappear.

“You wanted me to show you,” Campbell said. “Now you’ve been shown. There’s plenty more on the way for you, too. I’m getting stronger, and you can’t stop it. All the water in the world ain’t going to hold me back now.”

Then he pulled his lips back, the gesture a cross between a smile and the warning of a dog showing his fangs, and spit through his teeth. A stream of tobacco juice landed in the mineral bath, splattering Eric’s stomach and chest with brown drops.

Eric shouted, the moment having just cost him any slight faith that what was happening in this room was not real. He scrambled to get out of the tub, moving to the far end, away from Campbell, and as he turned his head, Campbell laughed, a low whispering snicker of delight. Eric’s knee caught the faucet and his shin smacked off the ceramic edge of the tub and then he was over the side and on the tile floor, naked and dripping and helpless as Campbell advanced. Eric twisted to face him, thinking he’d do what little he could to defend himself.

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.”