Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

They passed cattle farms and a group of Amish men working beside a barn. The countryside here was rolling as if tossed by an unseen ocean, no flat fields as there were in Illinois and the northern half of Indiana. The terrain here was closer to what you’d find on the south side of the Ohio River, where Kentucky’s rolling bluegrass fields edged into foothills and then became mountains.

Kellen was doing about seventy down the county road, and he jerked his head to the left and said, “That’s where your buddy was killed.”

“This road?”

“Next one down, I think. That’s where his van was set on fire. I drove past it yesterday on my way back into town. I was… curious.”

Something about this knowledge made Eric uncomfortable. Not just considering the man’s death, but that it had occurred so close to where they were headed now. They were driving past low-lying fields and scattered homes and trailers, but in the distance the hills rose blanketed with centuries-old forests. They came into view of an old white church with a graveyard beside it, and Kellen hit the brakes hard. The Porsche skidded on the barely wet surface and they slid past the turn, so Kellen had to throw it in reverse.

“You always drive like this, then it’s a good thing your girlfriend is going to be a doctor,” Eric said. “You’re going to need one.”

Kellen smiled, backing up to the church and then making a left turn. They’d gone just far enough for him to build up his speed again when a sign and a gravel drive appeared to their left and he had to hammer the brakes again. This time he made the turn on one try, bounced them along the gravel until it ended in a circular turnaround.

“Now we got to walk.”

“Where in the hell are we?”

“Orangeville. Population around eleven, but double that if you count the cows. This spot is Wesley Chapel Gulf. We have to hike to get to it.”

They got out of the car and stepped into the brush. There was a trail of sorts leading away from the gravel drive, and they followed that. Fields showed on the high side to their left, and on the low side to the right, the woods were dense and pieces of limestone jutted out of the earth. It was evident that the slope fell off abruptly just past the tree line, but through all the green thickets Eric couldn’t see what lay beyond. He was trying to fit the place in with what he’d seen in his visions but so far could not.

They walked for about five minutes before the trail forked and Kellen, after a moment’s hesitation, went to the right, where the trail seemed to wind downward. They left the ridge and walked down into a sunken valley that was filled with waist-high grasses and reeds.

“Looks like this floods sometimes,” Eric said.

“When the gulf gets high enough.”

They followed the trail as it wrapped through the bottoms. Down here between the heavily wooded ridges any sun would have been screened, and on a morning like this there was a shadow-shrouded dark that felt almost like twilight, the day coming to a close instead of a start. At length the trail opened out of the weeds and thickets and they were standing at the top of a sandy, tree-lined slope facing a pool of water that was bordered on the far edge by a jagged stone cliff rising a good eighty or ninety feet above the water. The pool was of a shade Eric had never seen before-a bizarre aquamarine blend of deep green with streaks of blue, water that seemed to belong in a jungle river somewhere. There was a roiling spot in the far corner where water met rock, and out beyond that the pool seemed to swirl. All around them the sound of rushing water could be heard, but nothing flowed from the pool.

“Damn,” Eric said. “This place is crazy.”

“Yeah,” Kellen said. He’d come to a stop and was staring down at the water, entranced. “Water must be rising. It starts to swirl like that if it’s rising after a strong rain. Way it came down yesterday was enough, I guess.”

Long white limbs of fallen trees slid in and out of the water in places, and on the low ends of the surrounding slope other trees lay on their sides, uprooted but snagged before they’d tumbled all the way into the pool.

“They have some sort of windstorm go through here?” Eric said.

Kellen shook his head. “That’s from the water. It rises high enough to reach the trees, and then when it gets to swirling the force is strong enough to bring them down.”

Some of the downed trees were a good twenty feet above the current waterline.

“See that ridge?” Kellen said, pointing at the woods to the west of them. “That’s where they found Shadrach’s body.”

They’d begun walking again, circling toward the opposite end of the pool, where the best access seemed to be, and Eric pointed at his feet.

“It’s been up here before. That’s sand that got pushed up.”

He was right. The soil here was soft silt, clearly carried high above the waterline during some flood or another. They walked through it and then began to work their way down, using trees for handholds and turning their feet sideways to avoid slipping. As they got closer to the bottom, Eric looked up at the cliffs and saw the root systems of the trees dangling off the stone face like Spanish moss. The wind scattered leaves that fell around them in a whispering rush.

“If there isn’t a ghost down here,” Kellen said, “there should be.”

He laughed, but Eric was thinking that he was right. There was something strange about this place that went beyond the visual, an eerie vibe that seemed to rise from the water and meet the wind. That charge Kellen’s great-grandfather and Anne McKinney had agreed about.

“You can hear the water moving underground,” Eric said. “It’s flowing right under us.”

There was a steep, muddy slope between them and the water and no good way to get down to it. Beyond, the cliffs rose with jagged pieces of stone scattered in loose piles and dark crevasses looming, testaments to the cave that had collapsed here. Some of its passages clearly lived on.

Kellen came to a stop about ten feet above the waterline, but Eric kept going, attempting a careful climb that turned into a barely controlled slide, his shoes plowing through thick, slippery mud that coated the hill above the water. In the far corner the pool bubbled and churned.

“Is that a spring?” Eric called over his shoulder.

“I believe so. But it’s a well-known spring. My guess is the one we’re looking for is not, right?”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Eric said, but he picked his way over the slippery stones and down to the spring. Just as he neared it, some water shot forward, splattering off the rock and soaking his pants. He knelt and extended a hand and took a palmful of water and lifted it to his lips. Cool and muddy and with a whisper of sulfur. On the top of the ridge-which suddenly seemed a long way up-the wind gusted and sent a shower of leaves into a gentle downward spiral, scattering across the surface of the slowly spinning pool.

“So, uh, what am I supposed to do?” Kellen said. He was still standing on the hill above Eric. “You need me to leave, or say some sort of ghost chant, or…”

“No,” Eric said, his voice barely loud enough to carry. “You don’t need to do anything. This isn’t the right spring.”

“You know that?” Kellen said.

No, he didn’t. He assumed the water in the right spring would taste the way the Bradford bottle had, though, with that faint trace of honey. And Kellen was right-Granger’s spring wouldn’t have been well known. Still, there was something about this place that had power. As if they had the wrong spring, but not the wrong spot.

This is where Shadrach died. You’re close.

“So we keep looking?” Kellen said.