And below that, written larger and underlined:
The most important tool for observing thunderstorms is the trained eye of the storm spotter.
This claim made in an era of Doppler radars and high-tech satellites. They were the experts, too. So if they said it, she figured it was true. Besides, that statement was the sort of thing that had always made sense to her. It gave science its due while warning that humans hadn’t yet developed a science that could understand, encompass, or predict all the tricks of this wild world. Nor, she knew, would they ever.
She turned the television on and saw they still had a thunderstorm warning active for Orange County. Well, they could pull that down. The storm was gone now and wouldn’t be back for a bit. They might want to keep the flash flood warnings handy, though, because if this rain fell all night, the creeks would be high come tomorrow, when the thunderstorms returned.
There was nothing on TV worth watching. A basketball game, but while she’d been raised on basketball, she didn’t care for the pro game. Still followed the Hoosiers, of course, and went to the high school sectional, but that had never been the same since they broke the legendary tournament into classes. Thank heaven Harold had been gone before that happened.
The phone rang just as she was making dinner, startled her, and she went to it, wondering if it was Eric Shaw, fearful he was having trouble again. Instead it was Molly Thurman, a young woman—well, forty—from church who was calling to tell Anne she’d been right about the weather again. Anne had guaranteed a storm after the service this morning, and it was nice to see somebody had remembered and thought to call. Molly had two boys, five and seven, and it wasn’t but a minute after she called that she had to hang up to tend to some crisis with them.
The phone was silent then, as was the house around it, just the hissing of the gas flame on the stove and the dripping of water down the gutters and off the porch roof to keep her company. She was glad the phone call hadn’t been Eric Shaw, having another spell, but she also would have been interested to know what was happening with him. If he were to be believed, things would remain normal for a few hours, at least. Then the pain would come back, and then he’d need some more of her water, and then he’d take to seeing things… seeing the past.
That’s what he’d said this afternoon, at least. What were you seeing? she had asked, and he’d said, The past. Moments from the valley’s history. And people from it. He’d seen the hotel in its glory, and then some old whiskey still up in the hills, seen it just as vividly as if it were real, seen the people as if they were in the room with him.
She thought on that while she ate her dinner and cleaned up, and when she was done, she went to the stairs again, sighed, and took the railing and started up.
When she got up to the empty bedroom, she unwrapped another bottle—her supply was dwindling fast this weekend—and held it in her hand. She hadn’t tasted the stuff in years. Decades. Surely nothing would happen, though. Whatever Eric Shaw was experiencing had to be unique, or unrelated to the water at all.
But she’d seen him react to it. She’d sat there in the living room and watched his eyes leave this world and find another, and in that world was this town in a way she ached to see it, with people she missed, people she loved.
He’d told her it appeared to be sometime in the twenties in the visions. Her mother and father would have been young people then. Her grandmother would have been alive. Now, that would be something to see again.
There was no telling the water would land her in the same place as him, either. It could take her fifty years back instead, to a time of Harold and her children…
“Why not, Annie,” she said. No one had referred to her by that name since she was a child, but sometimes she said it aloud to herself. Now she unfastened the wires and lifted the stopper from the bottle, smelling the sulfur immediately. What she’d told Eric Shaw on his first visit was true enough—this water was probably dangerous. But then, he didn’t seem to drink much of it. Just a taste. And that taste took him back.
She tried a nip. Horrible stuff, made her head pound and her stomach churn, but she got it down. One thing she’d never lacked was willpower. She took a minute to settle herself and then tried another swallow, smaller this time, and then she replaced the stopper and wrapped the bottle again and put it away.
Now she would wait. Wait and, hopefully, see.
41
TIME SLID AWAY FROM Josiah while he was out in the wet woods. He’d walked all the way to the far end of the ridge and then down the slope, moving aimlessly but enjoying the feel of the water running over his skin and saturating his clothes, savoring the way he sometimes had to blink it out of his eyes just to see. The lightning stopped and the thunder softened and then faded away, and it surprised him when he realized that the western sky was no longer dark from storm clouds but from sunset.
He started back up the ridge then, mud and wet leaves stuck to his boots, everything smelling of damp wood. He caught himself spitting often, which was odd as it wasn’t a habit he’d practiced before. Stranger still was the mild taste of chewing tobacco in his mouth.
The long stretch of summer twilight that should have guided him back wasn’t present beneath tonight’s overcast sky. He came back to the timber camp in almost total darkness and didn’t make out the shape of the car until he was almost upon it. He gave a start at first and shrank back into the woods but then recognized it as Danny’s Oldsmobile. When he came up behind it, the driver’s door swung open and Danny stepped out with a face twisted with consternation.
“Where in the hell you been? I swear, Josiah, I was ten minutes from leaving.”
“My truck was in the barn.”
“I seen it, else I would’ve been gone an hour ago.” He frowned. “You been walking around in the rain?”
“I have.” Josiah leaned past him, looked into the car. “That a pizza?”
“Figured you’d need some grub. Cold by now, of course.”
“Hell if I care.”
They pushed the barn door open a few feet and sat just inside while Josiah ate some pizza and drank a bottle of water. It took the edge off the powerful thirst that had built in him, but neither food nor water removed that faint taste of tobacco.
While he ate, Danny gave him the update from town. Talk of the murder was common, but credible theories were not.
“You find out if the one who called himself Shaw is still in town?” Josiah said.
“He is. I had a hell of a time finding him, but then I got lucky.”
“Yeah?”
“I called both hotels and asked for him. French Lick said he wasn’t registered, but West Baden put me through to a room. I hung up soon as it rang.”
“That’s a hell of a hard time?”
“No. But just because he had a room doesn’t mean he was still in it, and besides, you told me to follow him. But I don’t know what kind of car he has. Car they were in yesterday was the black guy’s.”
“Right.” Josiah caught Danny frowning at him. “What are you staring at?”
“Why do you keep spitting?” Danny said. Josiah was surprised; he hadn’t even realized he was doing it again.
“No reason,” he said. “Get back to the story.”
“Well, I went through the parking lot, looking for Illinois plates, but there was quite a few of them, so I didn’t know what to wait on. It started to rain then and I decided I’d drive back up here and ask what you thought. I was halfway through town when I seen him walking down the sidewalk.”
“You did.”
“Uh-huh. Wouldn’t have even noticed him but he was all bent over like he was about to be sick. He walked all the way back up to the hotel, stumbling like a drunk. Wasn’t but five minutes later he came out and got in a car. Acura SUV. Then he drove to Anne McKinney’s house.”