So Cold the River (2010) Read Online Free Page B

of bottles had been
     consumed over the years. Had to be safe. Mineral water didn’t go bad, did it? Then again, wouldn’t
anything
go bad after so long?
    Only one way to find out, but of course he couldn’t do that.
    Why not?
    For one thing, the water could be tainted, could poison his ass, leave him dead on the living room floor from one tiny taste.
    You know that won’t happen. That water is natural, came out of a spring, not a chemistry set.
    But there were other reasons, those of the courteous, professional sort, not to crack into an artifact the old man had for
     some reason left untouched all these years.
    It has a cap. You open it, take a sip, put the damn cap back on. Who’s to know?
    He felt like a young boy standing in front of the liquor cabinet, pondering his first taste of the sauce. Drink some of it
     down, then fill it up with water—maybe apple juice for color—and they’ll never know. What the hell was his problem? It was
     abottle of old mineral water. Why did he want to know what it tasted like? It tasted, no doubt, like shit.
    Scared of it. For some reason, you’re
scared
of it, you pussy.
    It was true, he realized as he stood there staring at the bottle, it was true and it was pathetic, and there was only one
     way to slap that fear down. He forced the old wires up and loosened the stopper. It was a terrible thing to do—he’d probably
     just cut the bottle’s value in half by opening it, and it wasn’t even his bottle—but after the whiskeys and the bad conversation
     with Claire and the realization that for some inexplicable reason he was frightened of this bottle, he no longer cared about
     that. He just wanted a taste.
    There was a sulfuric smell to the water, and he felt mildly repulsed as he lifted the bottle to take a drink. He was almost
     unable to bear the smell of the stuff; how had so many people actually ingested it?
    The bottle hit his lips and tilted and a splash of the contents sloshed over the rim and into his mouth and found his throat.
    And Eric gagged.
    Dropped to his knees and spat the foulness onto the carpet, the taste more corrupt than anything he’d ever experienced, a
     taste of rot, of death.
    He set the bottle on the floor, spat onto the carpet again as he took a shuddering breath through his nose, and then felt
     another gag coming on and knew this time it wasn’t going to be so clean, made it halfway into the bathroom before vomiting
     violently onto the floor. The whiskey scorched through his throat and burned his nostrils and he fought his way to the toilet
     and hung on to the bowl and emptied again, felt his temples throb and saw his vision go cloudy with tears from the force of
     it, the terrible exertion.
    The next bout was worse, an awful wrenching from deep inhis stomach, like somebody twisting a wet towel until the fibers screamed with strain. When he finished, he was facedown on
     the floor, the tile cold on his cheek.
    It was an hour before he left the bathroom. An hour before he felt strong enough to stand. He got out the mop and a bucket
     and some disinfectant spray and went to work. When the bathroom was clean, he returned to the living room, avoiding the clock
     that announced it was four in the morning, long past the hour that decent people had found their beds, and picked up the Pluto
     bottle. The smell rose again, and he clenched his teeth as he fastened the cap, holding his breath until the bottle was in
     his briefcase.
    Curer of ills, indeed.

4
    T HE NEXT DAY HE took some Excedrin and drank about a gallon of iced tea and waited until evening to eat, and that night he did not allow
     himself so much as a beer or a glass of wine.
    There were no other jobs in play, just the Bradford project, so he spent the rest of the week on research and equipment shopping,
     considering spending Alyssa Bradford’s advance check on a new camera. He wanted to upgrade partially for the quality improvement
     and partially to stop using the camera