Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

“Look in my purse,” the woman on the floor said in a ragged voice. “If you’re going to kill me, you ought to at least know who I am.”

For a long moment Anne didn’t hear a sound, and she was fleetingly afraid that he’d made a silent slice with the knife, leaving the poor woman bleeding her life out on Anne’s living room floor. Then she heard the boards creak as he rose and opened her eyes to see him crossing the floor to where a leather purse lay on its side, a lipstick and cell phone dumped out of it already. Josiah grabbed it and turned it upside down and a cloud of papers, coins, and cosmetics fluttered out and clattered onto the floor. In the center, landing with a dull, heavy thump, was a wallet. Josiah flung the purse at the wall and scooped the wallet up, tore the clasp open and flicked through it. For a long time, he stood staring in silence. Then he snapped the wallet shut and stared at the woman in the overturned chair.

“Claire Shaw,” he said.

“I told you.”

He seemed almost calm as he gazed at her, but somehow Anne was more afraid now than ever.

“You’re his wife,” he said. “Eric Shaw’s wife.”

“Yes. And we don’t know Lucas Bradford. We have nothing to do with the Bradfords. If you want money, I can get you money, but you have to believe that we have nothing to do with the Bradfords!”

“I can get you money,” she said again. “My family… my father… I can get…”

Her voice trailed off as he walked back to her. He still had the knife in his hand but now he knelt and picked up the roll of duct tape, pulled out a short strip and cut it free with the knife. She was trying to say more when he bent at the waist and smashed the tape roughly over her mouth, running his fist over it to make sure it was secure.

“Don’t hurt her,” Anne said softly. “Josiah, please, there’s no cause to hurt anybody. You heard what she said, they have no idea-”

“What?” he said. “What did you just say?”

It took her a second to realize he was upset about the use of his name. He actually wanted to be referred to as Campbell. He was standing there in front of the bloody drawing he’d left on her window, asking to be identified as a dead man. She’d never heard of anything so mad.

“Don’t hurt her,” she said in a whisper. “Campbell? Please don’t hurt her.”

He grinned. Showed his teeth in a wide smile, as if the use of Campbell’s name was something delicious to him, and Anne felt a bead of chilled sweat glide down her spine.

He turned from her, still smiling, to stare out the window. A moment later Anne realized he wasn’t staring out of it but at it, at the blood silhouette he’d drawn there that had now gone dry on the glass.

“Well,” he said, “what now? You told me to listen. I’ve tried. And this bitch isn’t worth a thing to me. Not a thing. I’m standing here holding a handful of nothing, same as I always was. But I’m ready to listen. I’m trying to listen.”

The wind rattled the glass against the old wood frame as he stood there and stared at it, stared as if there were something in it that could offer help. Down on the floor, Claire Shaw was silent, watching in obvious astonishment and horror.

“You’re right,” Josiah told the window. “You’re right. ’Course she’s not worth anything to me-none of them ever was. That isn’t what it’s about. I don’t need the dollars. I need the blood.”

Anne’s mouth had gone chalky and her heart was fluttering again.

“I’ll deal with them first,” Josiah said, voice softer now, thoughtful, musing. “Finish what needs to be finished, and then I’ll come back to that hotel. They’ll remember me when it’s done, won’t they? They’ll remember us when it’s done.”

He swiveled his head back and locked his gaze on Anne.

“Get up.”

“What? I don’t-”

“Get up and go down into the basement. Now.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Anne said. “Don’t you hurt that woman in my home.”

Josiah dropped the knife to the floor, stepped over it, and collected his shotgun. Lifted that and swung the barrel to face Anne.

“Go down into the damn basement. I ain’t got time to waste tying your wrinkled old ass up.”

It was only then, the second time that he said it, that she realized exactly what was being offered-the shortwave, the dear old R. L. Drake. A lifeline.

She stood up, legs unsteady after sitting for so long, and, with one hand braced on the wall, went to the basement door and opened it and started down the steps. There was a light switch mounted just beside the door but she didn’t reach for it, preferring to walk down into the dark rather than chance his seeing the old desk with the radio.

He didn’t even wait till she’d reached the bottom of the steps before slamming the door shut. That plunged her into real darkness, and she stopped and gripped the railing. She heard some banging around and then something smashed into the door and the knob rattled. He was blocking the door, locking her in.

She slid her hand along the railing and took a careful step down into the blackness, then another. A splinter bit into her palm and she gasped and stopped. Upstairs Josiah was saying something she couldn’t understand, and then she heard footsteps, too many to be just him. The front door opened and then banged shut. She stood still and listened and when she heard the motor of his truck start, she thought, Oh, no.

They were on the move. He was leaving, and he was taking that woman with him.

Anne had to hurry now.

She took another step, down into the dark.

KELLEN AND ERIC WERE still standing in the same spot in the woods when they saw the cloud. The rain was coming down in furious gales and the wind was howling now, sounded like something alive, like something wounded and angry, and it was Kellen who pointed up at a bank of purple clouds that seemed to be separating and joining and separating again, partners in some strange turbulent dance.

“I don’t like that,” he said. “We got to get out of here, man.”

“I need to find that spring,” Eric said, feeling numb as he watched the clouds. “I’m going to need that water, Kellen. It might be the only thing that will work.”

“Then we’re going to have to come back for it,” Kellen said. “We’ve got to leave now.”

Eric stared at the clouds but didn’t move or speak.

“Come on,” Kellen said, and when he pulled Eric away by the arm, it was with the ease of a grown man moving a child. Only when he realized Eric was finally cooperating and running alongside him did he loosen his grip.

“Gonna be slick!” he shouted in Eric’s ear. “Watch your ass. We run fast enough, we’ll be back at the car in a few minutes.”

They ran down the hill and found the dry channel and splashed through it. It was a dry channel no longer-the slab they had used to cross was a foot underwater now. The Lost River filling it from beneath even as the rain attempted to do the same from above.

Eric’s legs didn’t feel steady, seemed to be operating more out of momentum than muscle control, but he kept up with Kellen as best he could and kept moving. Finally the edge of the tree line was in sight, and from there it was maybe a half mile through a field of short scrub pine to get back to the car.

They broke out of the trees into a roar of wind and ran right up to the barbed-wire fence. Eric was ducking to his hands and knees again, thinking, the hell with looking graceful, he just wanted to be on the other side, when Kellen reached down and grabbed the back of his shirt and spoke in a hiss of awe.

“Look at that. Look at it.”

Eric straightened and followed his stare and felt his own breath catch.