33. Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-three
Wilder Lee
B urned in my psyche are the images from my last episode, along with seeing the struggle in the lake as I ran from my dropped bike. The horror of seeing the vision brought to reality. Again.
Gibson should’ve drowned. But I could never hold another person under the water robbing them of air, stealing life from them.
It turns out I was never the psycho he tried to tell everyone I was. I was just the threat to him being found out. My visions marked me as a liability.
The motherfucking bastard didn’t understand that the visions were never straightforward. It didn’t work that way.
He couldn’t believe me when I said it, because a liar believes everyone else tells lies.
Remington James. She shakes even with our arms wrapped around her, huddling together in disbelief. The sound around us is nothing more than white noise. She looks at me with her watery blue eyes. “You never trusted him.”
No. I couldn’t let go of all the times in the past where pieces of his vile personality peeked through. The bullying, the lies, the manipulation. I was never convinced a person could change or grow enough to not have been those things anymore. They just get better at hiding it.
Kissing the reddened mark from the thick braided chain of the necklace Charlie had pulled her under with, I’m dumbfounded it found its way out of the lake again. An icy fear prickles down my neck.
It was at the hands of Charlie that people died, but he didn’t get the necklace off the bottom of the lake… he didn’t manufacture the bad energy in Remi’s cabin…
Questions I refuse to ask out loud, to ponder with anyone, start to surface in my mind.
What turns someone into a killer? Two energies exist in the cabin the James’ have rented… Katie and Daniel? How much did Daniel’s legacy influence Charlie?
It doesn’t matter in the least… he’s responsible.
As people leave us, we all sit on the couch in my cabin. Droolius is asleep on Remi’s feet. We are all emotionally spent to the degree we’ve all grown quiet, leaning on each other. Remi is curled up in Cal’s lap, her head against his chest, Grady is laying back against me, my arms around him.
We don’t move. We don’t get up to drink or eat. We drift off at times to sleep restlessly. I’m worried about the dark days ahead. The return to life, not normal life… nothing can be ‘normal’ again, the moments when we’re by ourselves and some memory strikes a blow. The truth laid bare isn’t healing. It’s going to hurt while we process it all.
I can see in Cal’s eyes the deep pain of life altering betrayal. The kind only a trusted and loved friend can deliver.
Carlotta Marlow tried to find the person responsible. She spent the last couple years of her life poking at the past. She was so close to learning what Charlie had done. Until he stopped her. We should’ve taken her warning more seriously, but who can accept they’ve grown up with someone capable of cold-blooded murder?
We kept telling ourselves, if there is someone responsible, they would’ve been caught. Never believing they’d cover their tracks so well, convince everyone in their life so effectively of their harmlessness…
Charlie Gibson played us all. Lake Hollow didn’t see the monster in one of their own.
The cabin descends into darkness, but we don’t move to turn lights on, only shifting now and then. The hurt whispers of disbelief among us, as we hold onto each other tight. When the screen door is knocked on, and Ceily bustles her way in with bags of food, I finally unfold myself from the couch. “You shouldn’t have,” I say to her quietly. No, she really shouldn’t have, but it’s sweet of her to bother.
Keenan comes in behind her, flipping a light in the kitchen on. “This is from Pops… all of it.” In other words, highly edible. Remi lets out a brief cry of relief seeing her friends. She gives Keenan a bear hug, saying, “I can’t believe it, I just… Keke, I can’t…”
No one has an appetite for food that is stowed away in the fridge. Ceily prays over us, telling us that Father Chris is on the way. For once, I won’t fight his council. I need something… something to tell me we’ll survive this. That the pain won’t eat us alive. “In the Lord’s name we pray.”