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.”
He got unsteadily to his feet and slipped into the robe. The pockets banged off his hips, weighed down by the two plastic water bottles he’d filled.
“Just another vision,” he said to himself. “Harmless as the others. You’ll get used to them.”
He turned to lift the plug from the tub and froze with his arm extended.
There, on the surface, floated a cloud of brown liquid. Tobacco juice.
He stared at it for a long time. Closed his eyes and reopened them and it was still there. Straightened and stood above the tub and studied it from an angle, then turned in a full circle, making sure the rest of the room was as it had been when he entered, before looking at the tobacco juice again. Still there. Disintegrating in the water now, thinning and separating, but still there.
How?
It had come from Campbell’s mouth, and Campbell had been a vision, was gone completely now, just as had happened with all the previous visions. Never before had a trace lingered, never before had the visions left any mark on reality.
“Mr. Shaw?”
“Coming out!” he shouted, and then he opened the drain and let the tub of mineral water begin to empty. He stood there until the tobacco juice found the drain, and when it did a shiver rode high on his spine.
For a moment, just as it swirled out of sight, it had looked exactly like blood.
Part Four.COLD BLACK CLOUD
43
IT TOOK DANNY ABOUT forty minutes to return with the cell phones. At first Josiah waited on the floor of the barn near the open door. As time passed, though, he found himself outside in the rain, leaning up against the barn wall, the weathered boards rough on his back. There was a tree that hung over the barn at this edge and kept the rain from falling on him. It was a light rain now, a gentle touch on his flesh, so he moved away from the tree and found a spot where he could sit against the barn wall and let the rain come down unobstructed. He was there when he saw the headlights of an approaching car, and though he knew he should move into the woods until confirming it was Danny, he did not. For some reason, he wasn’t all that concerned about who it was.
The car was the Oldsmobile, though, and Danny pulled it up close to the barn and pushed his door open while the engine was still running.
“What are you doing sitting in the rain?”
“Passing time,” Josiah said, rankled by both the question and Danny’s expression, the way he was staring at Josiah like he was crazy. “You get the phones?”
“I did.”
“Well, bring them here. And shut the damn headlights off.”
They went back into the barn and Danny set up one of those battery lanterns, filled the room with a white light.
“Figured you could use this,” he said. He also had a few bottles of water and a bag of beef jerky, and all Josiah did was grunt a thank-you, but he didn’t like the lantern. He’d grown used to dark-almost to the point of fondness, really.