He didn’t answer. Kellen said, “Maybe finding that spring isn’t worth anything, is what I’m saying. If there’s nothing about the water itself-”
“There’s something special about the water,” Eric said. “I think it was the balance to his blood. The counter.”
A steady rain was falling now, and he wiped the moisture off his forehead and turned away from Kellen, looked into the windswept trees. His head throbbed and his hands shook. The agony was approaching again, the fruit of poisoned water, of a dead man’s wrath, and he had nothing left to fight it with. The hell of it was that the sorrowful sense of defeat had little to do with fear of what was coming. No, it was the understanding of what would not be coming: a continuation of the story, an eerie insight into that hidden world, and the glory it could have brought him. He could see the foolishness of his idea now. All thoughts of the fame that would surround his strange gifts were bullshit; he’d have been a fifteen-minute tabloid freak show, a washed-up almost-was who drank a bottle of old blood and fancied himself a psychic.
“A counter?” Kellen said.
Eric nodded. “Everything changed with Anne’s water, with the water that didn’t have blood in it. The story it was showing me was a warning.”
“Of what?”
“Of what I did,” Eric said. “I brought him back.”
Campbell Bradford. His spirit, his ghost, his evil-pick your term, Eric Shaw had returned it to the valley, and the water allowed him to see that, caught his body with agonized cravings and forced him to drink more so it could force him to see more. He hadn’t understood in time, though. Somewhere along the line he’d lost all sense of purpose entirely, had begun to fantasize about what the water could do for him, to think of it as a gift instead of what it really was: a warning.
“Now they’ve stopped,” Kellen said. “Right? The visions are done.”
“Yeah. They’ve stopped.” Eric was thinking of the blood in the bottle and the way Campbell Bradford had looked right at him last night and said, I’m getting stronger.
There was a reason the visions had stopped. The past was not where it belonged anymore. The past was here.
Josiah needed that siren to stop. Damn thing was chewing into his brain, disrupting his focus, which needed to be on Danny’s message.
Wesley Chapel Gulf. That’s where Shaw was right now. In the sacred spot of Josiah’s boyhood. It made not a lick of sense but still felt as purely right as anything he’d ever heard. Of course that’s where they’d gone. Of course. There’d been something at work here for a while, something he couldn’t get his head around, and now he understood that it was time to stop trying. Let the chips fall. Stop trying to figure out the house rules-there were none, at least not any he’d ever understand. Wasn’t his place to lay plans now, was his place to listen to those that had been laid for him.
All you got to do is listen…
Yes, that was all. He was told that hours ago and still he’d been fighting it, making his own plans, trusting himself. Just listen, that was all he needed to do. He had a guide now, a hand in the darkness, and he wanted to listen but that frigging siren kept shrieking and screaming…
“Shut up!” he howled, tightening his hand on the gun as if he could put a few shells into the air and silence it all, silence the whole damn world.
“Won’t stop till the cloud passes over,” Anne McKinney said. “There’s rotation in that cloud. Could touch down.”
“A tornado?” he said. “A tornado’s coming here?”
“Won’t be here. Going to be well over our heads if it touches down. But it may hit the towns. It may hit the hotels.”
She said this as if it were the very definition of horror.
Josiah said, “I hope the son of a bitch does. I hope it spins right into the damned dome and leaves nothing but a pile of glass and stone behind.”
The idea thrilled him, drew him to the window. He looked off to the east as if he might actually be able to see the place.
I ought to be the one to take it down, he thought. No damn storm-me.
“You don’t think I could do it, do you?” he said. “Well, I got a truck full of dynamite parked out back would do the job. Bet your ass it’d do the job.”
Anne didn’t answer, and he blinked and shook his head and tried to get his mind back to the task before him. He had to force his mind back to that fact time and time again, like a man trying to cross the deck of a ship that was forever tilting him in one direction and then another. Never mind this pissing contest with some old bitch, he had to get moving. That required a decision on what to do with her, though. He stared at her and pondered as the window glass rattled in its frame beside him. Best tie her up. Problem with that was she was in front of the big window, visible to anyone who stopped by. There was a basement in the house. With no phone to use, she could holler her lungs out down there and never be heard. Tie her up and stick her ass down there.
He crossed the living room and pulled open one door, found it went to a bathroom, then tried a second and saw the steep wooden steps leading down into the dark, smelled the moisture. Yes, that would do fine. He’d get her to walk down there before he bound her, make things easier to handle.
He was just about to tell her to stand up when he heard a car door slam.
He crossed to the window fast, stared out into the rain, and saw the car that had pulled in. Not police, but a Toyota sedan, unfamiliar to him. The driver’s door opened and a tall, dark-haired woman stepped out, holding her arms up to shield herself from the rain. She ran out of sight, headed for the porch. For the front door.
“Who’s here?” Anne McKinney said.
“Not a word, bitch,” Josiah said. “Not a word. You speak, our visitor gets shot. It’ll be your choice.” Then he lifted the shotgun and walked out of the living room and down to the front door. He hadn’t even made it there before the doorbell rang. He pulled the door open, keeping the gun in his left hand and using the door to screen it from sight.
The woman didn’t give any real start or indication that she was expecting someone other than Josiah. She just said, “I hope I have the right address. I’m looking for Anne McKinney?”
She was even better-looking up close, the sort of woman Josiah wouldn’t be able to hit on until he was at least ten beers into the night because the odds were so great she’d shoot him down, and Josiah didn’t take rejection well. Raven-colored hair with some shine to it, damn near flawless face, body that would catch plenty of looks despite being a little on the skinny side. While Josiah studied her, she turned and looked over her shoulder at the howling storm and said, “Is that a tornado siren?”
“Yes,” Josiah said. “And you best come inside quick.”
“You don’t think I can make it back to the hotel if I hurry? I just stopped by to pick up a few bottles of water from Anne.”
A few bottles of water. He hadn’t been certain of her relevance until now, but this brought a smile to his face that was no longer forced, as authentic and genuine a grin as he’d had in some time, and he said, “Oh, you’re picking them up for Mr. Shaw?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll get them for you, but come inside and visit with Mrs. McKinney until the siren stops. It’s the only safe thing to do. I insist.”
She took one last, hesitant look back at her car, and right then a good-size branch pulled down from one of the trees in the yard and broke into pieces on the ground. She turned away, said, “I guess I’d better,” and then stepped inside.
He had the door closed before she noticed the gun.
54
ANNE COULDN’T SEE THE front door from where she sat, and the wind and siren kept her from making out the words, but the sound of the unknown woman’s voice, gentle and kind, put a sickness through her so powerful she moved her hands to her stomach. It was a feeling she’d had only a time or two in her life, the last coming when they swung the ambulance doors shut with Harold inside and assured her that it wasn’t over yet, even though everybody knew that it was.