THIS WAS TERROR, as true and as deep as he’d ever felt it.
He dropped to his knees, driven not by physical pain but by anguish.
“You bitches,” he said, speaking to the long-departed cleaning team that had removed the water. “Do you know what you did? Do you know?”
He knew. The withdrawal was going to return now in full glory, and this time there was nothing he could do to stop it, nothing he could take.
Call Kellen. Make him bring it back.
Yes, Kellen. That was the best chance he had. He got the phone out of his pocket, still on the floor, and dialed the number, held his breath while it rang.
And rang. And rang.
Then voice mail, and for several seconds he couldn’t even think of words to say, too awash in the sick sense of defeat. Eventually he mumbled out his name and asked for a call back. He had no way of knowing where Kellen was, though, or if he even still had the bottle. He could have passed it off to someone by now.
All he needed was a sip, damn it. Just a few swallows, enough to hold the monster at bay, but there was nowhere to find even that much because he’d given up both the Bradford bottle and Anne McKinney’s…
Anne McKinney. She was right up the road, with bottles and bottles of the water-old, unopened bottles.
All he had to do was make it there.
He stood again, shaky, dropping a palm to the bed to hold himself upright. He got in a few breaths, squinting against the pain and the nausea, and then went to the door and opened it and went out into the hall. He was alone in the elevator again, and that was good, because this time, holding the wall wasn’t enough-he had to kneel, one knee on the floor of the elevator, his shoulder and the side of his head leaned against the wall. It was a glass elevator, open on the back, looking down at the hotel atrium below, and he saw a young girl with braids spot him and tug her father’s sleeve and point. Then he was on the ground floor and the doors were open. He shoved upward, got out, and turned the corner and broke into a wavering jog. Speed was going to be key now. He could feel that.
He’d parked the Acura in the lower lot, closest to the hotel, and he ran for it now through the rain, which was coming down in gusting torrents, no trace of the sun remaining in the sky. Behind the hotel the trees shook and trembled.
He had his keys out by the time he got to the car, opened the door, and fell into the seat. The warmth inside the car made the nausea worse, so he put down the windows and let the rain pour in and soak the leather upholstery. He drove in a fog of pain, didn’t even realize the windshield wipers were off until he was out of the parking lot. He flicked them on then, but the slapping motion made him dizzy and clouded his vision even worse than the rain itself, so he turned them back off and drove with his right hand only, leaning out the window and squinting into the rain.
As he looped through the casino lots and into French Lick, each passing car seemed to have three windshields and six headlights. At some point he must have edged across the center line, because he heard a horn and jerked the wheel to the right and hit the curb, felt the front right tire pop up onto it and then drop back to the road with a jarring bang. The thunder was on top of the town now, harsh crackles of it, and occasionally lightning flashed in front of him, leaving behind a fleeting white film over his eyes.
The tires spun as he turned onto the uphill road that led to Anne McKinney’s house, but then the car corrected and he was almost there. A moment later he could see lights on in the windows, and out in the yard the windmills spun in silver flashes.
He missed the drive when he pulled in, felt the tires churn through wet soil instead, slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a stop and then threw it into park and popped the door open with the engine still running. He ran through the rain to the front door, and when he got to the steps, his shoe caught and he tripped and fell to his hands and knees on the porch. Then the door opened and Anne McKinney looked out at him, her face knit with fear, and said, “What’s wrong?”
“I need some water,” he said. “I need some of your water, fast.”
“Pluto Water?” she said, and she pushed the door back until it was open only a few inches, allowing her to peer out, as if she were afraid of him.
“Please. I’m sorry, but I need it. I’m getting sick. I’m getting very sick.”
She hesitated only a moment, then swung the door open, blinking against the rain that blew in her face, and said, “Get in here, then.”
Most days she’d have been down at the hotel at this time, but it was a Sunday, and on Sunday afternoons she stayed home. The rain that blew in made her glad of that, because it came down in gales, and she was no longer fond of driving in foul weather.
She’d been studying the skies when he arrived. What thunder there was had some courage to it, and the lightning flashes were brilliant, but beyond the quantity of rain it seemed a very ordinary storm, which both surprised and on some level disappointed her. The weather radio-or weather box, as her husband had always called it, a small brown cube that broadcast only the National Weather Service updates-crackled with the usual warnings, but there was no mention of tornadoes or even severe storms or supercells, no spotter activation. She kept watch on the clouds all the same-she never had required spotter activation, thank you-and didn’t see anything of note.
She’d been expecting more, and probably that was why the crashing arrival of Eric Shaw on her porch didn’t surprise her as much as it should have.
She left him on the floor and went to the stairs, and when she took the first step, pain flared in her back and her hip. Then she looked back at Eric Shaw and saw the anguish in his eyes, blended pain and terror, and she bit down against her own aches and got moving up the steps, going just as fast as she could.
The box with the water bottles was still out in the middle of the floor because she wasn’t strong enough to replace it, and now she was grateful for that. It took but a few seconds to grab a full bottle and remove the wrappings and start back down the stairs, clutching the rail with her free hand and taking careful steps, getting her foot down firm and flat each time. Eric had crawled back to the door, was sitting with his back against it and his head in his hands.
“Here you go,” she said, and she was almost scared to hand him the bottle, scared to touch him. Whatever was going on in his body and mind wasn’t right. Wasn’t natural.
He took the bottle from her and opened his eyes to thin slits, just enough to let him see the top. He was mumbling something, but she couldn’t make it out.
“What’s that?”
“Lights,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Turn them off, please.”
She leaned over him and hit the wall switch and plunged the room into darkness. That seemed to give him some relief as he drank from the bottle. Years she’d saved those bottles, unopened, some of the only original Pluto Water in the valley, and now he’d gone through two in two days. Oh, well, wasn’t Christian to worry about a thing like that, sort of condition he was in.
There was still a light on in the kitchen, so she walked over and turned it off, too, and now the whole house was dark. She came back into the living room and stood with her hand on the back of a chair and watched him as the rain hammered the windows and another bolt of lightning lit the room briefly. He was sitting with his knees pulled up and his head down, and after a moment’s pause he drank again, just a few swallows.
I should call a doctor, she thought. He’s sick with something fierce, and the last thing that’s going to cure it is Pluto Water. I’ve got to call him a doctor.
But he was coming back. It was astonishing, really, the speed of it. He was recovering while she watched, his breathing easing back to normal patterns and color returning to his face and the tremors ceasing in his hands and legs. Across the room the grandfather clock Harold had made back in ’fifty-nine began to chime, and Eric Shaw lifted his head and looked at the source of the sound, and then he turned and looked at her. Smiled. Weak, but it was a smile.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re feeling better,” she said. “That fast.”
He nodded.
“I mean to tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “Shape you were in… I was standing here thinking I’d have to call for the ambulance, and then I took but a blink and you looked better.”
“It works quick when I get it.”
“And when you don’t?”
He closed his eyes again. “Gets pretty bad.”
“I could see that. Go on and finish it.”
“Don’t need to,” he said. “Doesn’t take much.”
He put the top back on the bottle, which was now about two-thirds full, and added, “I’m sorry. First of all to come crashing in your house in the rain like this; second for ruining more of your water.”
“Don’t you worry about that.” She went over to the hall closet and got a couple kitchen towels out, brought them over and handed them to him. “Go on and dry off.”
He dried his face, neck, and arms and then used the towels to mop up some of the water from the floor. While he was doing that, she noticed that his car was still running out in the yard, lights on and driver’s door open. She went outside and down the steps into the wet yard. The storm was dying down now, but the thunder still had a menacing crackle to it, like a dog snarling and snapping its jaws as it retreats. Thing about a dog like that-it always comes back.
When she got to the car, she leaned in and turned it off and took the keys in her hand. The interior was soaked, water pooled on the leather seat. She closed the door and then went back into the house and handed him the keys. When he finally stood, his legs looked steady. Anne told him to take the wooden rocker and she sat on the sofa.
“I’ve come across plenty of stories about that water,” she said, “but I never did hear of anyone needing it like you did. It’s almost like you’re addicted to it.”
“A lot like that.”
“Well, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know what would be in it that would-”
She stopped talking when she saw his eyes. They had shifted suddenly, warped into something flat and unfocused.
She said, “Mr. Shaw? Eric?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t seem to have heard her, even, was staring at the old grandfather clock, but she wasn’t certain he was seeing that.
“You all right?” she asked, her voice a whisper now. He was in some sort of trance. Could be a seizure, could be something for that ambulance she’d considered a few minutes ago, but for some reason she didn’t think it was, didn’t think she ought to go for the phone.
Give him a minute, she thought.
And so, as the thunder continued to roll, softer now, pushing east, and a light, fading rain pattered off the porch and the windows, she sat there in the dark living room and watched him slip off into a place where she could not follow.