“Well, I want more of it. And I want it fast, hear?”

“Thing is”-the old man shifted again, moving away from Campbell-“I’m not going to be able to help you much longer.”

“What?”

“I’m fixin’ to move. The boy needs to be somewhere else. I got a sister-not his mother, but another one-who got married and moved out east. Pennsylvania. Wrote and said he should be somewhere he could get music schooling. I don’t know about that, but this place… this place ain’t fit for raising a child. I ain’t fit.”

Campbell didn’t speak. Night was coming on quickly, shadows lengthening, and the wind howled around the home and the shed that housed the whiskey still.

“This valley’s drying up,” the old man said. “I’ve heard the talk, everybody losing their savings, banks closing. Won’t be anybody down here spending money on gambling and liquor anymore, Campbell. You ought to think about getting out yourself.”

“I ought to think about getting out,” Campbell echoed, his voice a thousand-pound whisper.

“Well, I don’t know what your plans are, but I’m going to try to get the boy east. Get him to somebody will see to him in the right way. Figure I’ll probably come back, this is the only home I know. But-”

“This is my valley,” Campbell said. “You understand that, you old shit-heel? I don’t give the first damn about what’s happening to banks and stocks, and I don’t give the first damn about what’s happening with your bastard nephew and your whore sister. This here is mine, and if I tell you to keep on making liquor, you damn well better take heed.”

The old man kept shuffling backward, but he lifted his head and dared to meet Campbell’s eye.

“That ain’t how it works,” he said. “You ain’t my master, Campbell. Run people all over here like you was, but the truth is, you’re just another greed-soaked son of a bitch. I’ve made money selling liquor to you, but you’ve made it back tenfold at least, so don’t tell me that I owe you a damn thing.”

“That’s how you see it?” Campbell said.

“That’s how it is.”

Campbell reached into his jacket, pulled out a revolver, cocked it, and shot the old man in the chest.

The gun was small but the sound large, and the old man’s eyes widened and his hands went to his stomach even though the bullet had entered high on his chest. His tattered hat fell from his head and landed in the grass a half second before he did. Blood ran thick and dark from the wound and coated the backs of his hands.

Campbell switched the gun to his left hand and walked over to him. His stride was brisk. He looked down at the body and spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the wound. The old man gurgled and stared.

“This world breaks many a man,” Campbell said. “I’m not one of them, old-timer. It’s a matter of the strength of your will. You ain’t never seen any strong as mine.”

The door to the shack banged open and the boy stood there, hands at his side, hair tousled. Campbell gazed at him without reaction. The boy looked at the body, and then at the gun in Campbell’s hand, and he did not move.

“Get down here,” Campbell called.

The boy made no response.

“Son,” Campbell said, “you best think about your future right now. You best think fast and hard. Ain’t going to be but this one chance to make the decision.”

The boy, Lucas, came slowly down the steps. He walked across the grass toward his uncle’s body. There was no motion from it now, no trace of breath. When he reached the body, he looked up at Campbell. He said not a word.

“You are facing,” Campbell said, “a key moment in your life, boy. Seminal is the word. Now look down at your uncle.”

Lucas gave the body a flick of the eyes. His knees were shaking and he’d squeezed his fingernails into his palms.

“Look,” Campbell said.

This time he turned his face down, stared right at the corpse. There was blood in the grass on both sides of it now, and the muscles of the dead man’s face looked stricken and taut.

“What you see there,” Campbell said, “is a man who had no appreciation for strength. For power. A man who could not take heed of ambition. What you have to decide now is, are you such a man?”

Lucas looked up. The wind was blowing hard and steady, bending the treetops and whipping his hair back from his forehead. He did not meet Campbell’s eyes, but he shook his head. He shook it slowly but emphatically.

“I thought not,” Campbell said. “You been up here for a good while. You’ve seen him at work. Do you know how to make that moonshine?”

Lucas nodded, but it was hesitant.

“Whatever you’ve forgotten about it,” Campbell said, “you’d be advised to start remembering.”

He put the gun away and then dropped his hands into his pockets, hunching against the wind.

“Time for you to find a shovel, boy. I’d hurry, too. Feels like rain.”

Eric’s hearing returned before his sight. He was dimly aware of the chiming grandfather clock before the room appeared around him, vaporous at first and then hard edged, and he found himself looking into Anne McKinney’s fascinated and fearful eyes.

“You see me again,” she said. It was not a question.

“Yeah.” His voice was a croak. She went into the kitchen and poured him a glass of iced tea and brought it back and watched silently as he drank the whole thing down.

“You had me a little nervous,” she said.

He choked out a laugh. “Sorry about that.”

“It was plain to see you’d gone somewhere else,” she said, and then, leaning forward, added, “Tell me-what were you seeing?”

“The past,” he said.

“The past?”

He nodded. “That’s the best I can describe it. I’m seeing things from another time… They’re from this place, and they are not from this time.”

“This place,” she said. “You mean my home?”

There was something so excited in her voice, so hopeful, that he was taken aback.

“No. I mean the town. The area, I guess. But not your house.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointment clear. “Is it scary, what you’re seeing?”

“Sometimes. Other times… just like watching a movie.”

“You always have the visions when you drink the water?”

“I seem to,” he said. “They’re different when I have your water. Then I’m nothing but a spectator. When I drank from the other bottle… then it was more like seeing a ghost right here with me. I wasn’t seeing the past, I was seeing something out of it that had joined the present.”

She was quiet, considering what he’d said.

“Do you know the name Campbell Bradford?” he asked.

She rocked back. “That’s not who you’re seeing?”

He nodded.

“Oh, my. Yes, I know the name. Haven’t heard it in years, but he was the talk of the town when I was a girl. There’s plenty of folks who thought he was evil, you know. Or became evil, that’s the way I remember my daddy telling it. He said Campbell was just another mean man at first, but then something dark took hold of him and pushed him beyond mean. Pushed him until he wasn’t even himself anymore.”

“Something dark?”

“You know, a spirit. A lot of folks believed that sort of thing in those days.”

“You remember Kellen, the guy I brought over?” Eric said, and she nodded. “Well, his grandfather worked down here in the twenties and had some idea that the area was… not necessarily haunted, but-”

“Charged.” The word left their mouths simultaneously, and Eric pulled his head back and stared at her.

“He talked to you about this?”

“No,” she said softly, “it’s just the right word.”

“So you believe there are ghosts here?”

She frowned and looked at the window. “I’ve always connected it more to the weather myself. That’s what I study, you know. And there’s something different in this valley… You can feel it in the wind now and again, and on the edge of a summer storm, or maybe just before ice comes down in the wintertime. There’s something different. And charge is the best word for it. There’s a charge, all right.”