Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

It was the outline of a man. The head and shoulders of a man, at least, etched in blood over her window. The man was wearing a hat, and Josiah Bradford appeared to have spent most of his time on the hat-and the eyes. The outline of the face and shoulders looked like a child’s scribbling, but the hat and eyes were clear. He’d drawn a nice, smooth almond shape for the eyes and now, as she watched, he took his finger off the glass and stood there squeezing it to raise more blood. He was patient, waiting for a full, thick bead of it. When he was satisfied, he reached out with infinite care and touched his fingertip to the center of the eye, filled it in with blood.

He repeated the act for the second eye. Anne could hardly draw a breath, watching him.

When he had the second eye filled in with blood, he stepped back like a painter studying his canvas, cocked his head, and looked judiciously at the window.

“You see him now?” he said.

Anne didn’t speak, keeping that vow of silence she’d made for her own safety. He turned on her then, though, looked right at her with a hard stare and said, “Do you see him now?” and she knew that she had to answer.

“Yes,” she said. “I can see him.”

He nodded, pleased, and then turned back to the window, sidestepping so that he was out of the way of the blood drawing. Anne sat trembling on the couch and stared at the liquid crimson eyes and, beyond them, the storm.

They found what appeared to be an old road about a half mile from the gulf, overgrown with weeds but absent of trees, maybe eight feet across. In the distance, off to the east and west, farm buildings were visible, but then the old track curved away from the fields and roped back into the trees. There was an old barbed-wire fence lining the edge of the field, and from that point they could see for miles in three directions. Every direction except the one they were facing, southeast, into the trees.

Eric tried to pick his way through the barbed wire, promptly got snagged and tore his shirt, then felt an idiot’s flush of shame when he turned and watched Kellen step easily off the top of a stump and over the fence. Oh, well, he probably would’ve just jumped over it if the stump hadn’t been there. Guy that size wasn’t going under it.

On the other side of the fence the old track became even more overgrown, harder to follow, and it climbed gently but steadily. One of those hills that didn’t feel like so much until you were a ways up it and began to feel a tight burning in your calves. After about ten minutes the slope fell off abruptly and they went downhill for a bit and then came to a rounded ditch packed with old leaves, slabs of limestone protruding here and there. Water flowed through it, no more than a foot deep but moving swiftly.

“One of the dry channels?” Eric said.

“I’d say so.”

They slid down into the ditch and used one of the limestone pieces to cross the water, then got back to climbing. It was about five minutes before the ground flattened out and it was clear they’d reached the top. By now Eric was breathing hard-Kellen didn’t seem to be breathing at all-and if not for the sudden absence of slope, it wouldn’t have felt like much of an arrival. Everything up here looked pretty much the same as the hill had-thick with trees, tangled with brush and weeds, dark with shadows. Insects buzzed around them, and a pair of crows shrieked in discontent. The humidity seemed twice as high as when they’d started, and Eric lifted his shirt and used it to dry sweat from his face. When he lowered the shirt, he felt an odd tingle, like a ping of static electricity. The crows shrieked again and he winced at the sound.

“I feel like we’re just wandering now,” Kellen said. “We’ve got no idea where we should be looking.”

“I know it,” Eric said. A gust of wind blew up, and a thin branch from one of the young trees whipped into his face. When he lifted his arm to ward it off, his hand passed through a spider web, which stuck to him with wispy, sticky threads. He swore and wiped his hand off on his jeans and continued on as Kellen fell in behind him. They’d gone no more than twenty feet before Kellen’s phone began to ring. Eric didn’t turn at first, but when Kellen began to speak, his voice was low and serious in a way that brought Eric to a stop. When he looked back, he saw Kellen’s face knotted in an expression of disbelief.

“You’re sure?” he was saying, voice hushed. He was turned sideways, as if trying to retreat from Eric, attain privacy. “Thanks. Yeah, I know. Crazy. All right, baby. I’ll talk to you… Look, yeah, I got to go. I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you. Okay? Thank you.”

He disconnected and slid the phone into his pocket, a thoughtful look on his face.

“Your girlfriend?” Eric said.

“Yeah.” He was looking at Eric with a frown of scrutiny.

“Why are you looking at me like I’m a test subject?”

“Danielle just got results on your water.”

“Really.” Eric’s eyelid twitched and fluttered again. “Were we right? Is there something in it besides the mineral water?”

Kellen nodded.

“Alcohol?” Eric asked. “Some sort of whiskey?”

Now Kellen shook his head. “Not even a trace of alcohol. It was, according to Danielle, a mixture of mineral water and blood.”

“Blood.”

“Yeah.”

“Just… blood. She has no idea where it might-?”

“Human blood,” Kellen said. “Type A human blood.”

Eric thought of the bottle, and his senses seemed to slam him right back into contact with it-he had a flash of the cold touch in his palm, the honey-tinged odor, the sickening-sweet taste…

“I feel like I should get sick,” he said.

“Brother,” Kellen said, “you already are. And there isn’t a doctor alive that’s going to know how to treat it, either.”

“What about the other bottle? Anne’s bottle.”

“Typical mineral content. Nothing special at all.”

“Not that shows up in a lab test, at least,” Eric said.

A few drops of rain fell around them as they stood and looked at each other.

“Wonder whose blood it was,” Eric said.

“Yeah,” Kellen said. “I’m a bit curious about that myself.”

JOSIAH WAS STANDING WITH his nose almost to the glass, staring out at the storm like a child. When he stepped back and looked at it from the right angle he could still see Campbell sitting there watching him, his face perfectly aligned with the silhouette Josiah had drawn in his blood. Campbell hadn’t spoken in some time, but Josiah hoped he’d been pleased by the gesture, the only thing Josiah had been able to think of that would show his loyalty, show that he would indeed listen, would indeed do the necessary work. He’d brought Campbell into this world, at least to the point that the old woman could see him, and he’d done it with his own blood. Surely Campbell saw that as indicative of respect. Of loyalty.

Now he couldn’t see Campbell, though, because he’d stepped too close to the glass. Couldn’t help himself-the storm was doing something strange. There was a massive cloud taking shape ahead of them now, shaped almost exactly like an anvil. It advanced slowly but steadily and seemed to carry both threat and calm at the same time. Like you could flip a coin and if it came up heads, the cloud would pass on by, or maybe offer a gentle shower. Came up tails, though, and God help you. God help you.

“You see the bubble?”

He twisted and stared back at the old woman, baffled both that she’d spoken at all and by what she’d said.

“Top of that big cloud,” she said, nodding, “the one you’re looking at that’s shaped like an anvil? It’s all flat across the top except for one part. You see it there? Looks like a little bubble up on top?”