Down By The River

Prologue

𝔽𝕠𝕣 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕝𝕕𝕣𝕖𝕟 𝕝𝕖𝕗𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕡𝕣𝕠𝕞𝕚𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕;𝕀𝕟 𝕤𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕔𝕙 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕚𝕣 𝕠𝕨𝕟 𝕨𝕒𝕪

He looked down onto the town from where he was standing. It hadn't changed much ever since he had left. The thought of it still being the same old town brought a smile to his face, even though it was a bitter smile. He was glad to be back after all those years, but he'd never quite be able to forget what this town had done to him. He wasn't sure whether they had already forgotten him or not, but he didn't care. Some of the older ones surely remembered him.

He wasn't coming back to stay - all he came for was revenge. Not revenge for himself, but revenge for Grace. Poor little Grace Fletcher. Everyone thought it was his fault she drowned down by the river. Maybe it was his fault. He wasn't here to debate that. He had lived with the guilt for years and years now, it wasn't going to change what he was going to do. He didn't even care if he got away with it or not. It made no difference to him anymore after being out on the road for so long.

13 years. For 13 years he had been roaming the country, trying to find a way to make his peace with what had happened. Trying to survive, barely getting by. He had to resort to crime at times to make ends meet. But it was all so he would make it towards his goal, his revenge.

And here he was, looking over the sleepy town that he used to live in once. It seemed so small and insignificant now. He was looking forward to setting foot into the pub there again, to see his old friends again, to see what happened to everyone. No matter how much he had always despised this town, he had missed all those people that he had grown up with. But he had to leave 13 years ago, when everything happened. Maybe the townsfolk were going to shoot him on sight if they remembered him. He looked quite different now - his hair was longer and he had grown a beard and he had gotten much older, but there was a chance a lot of them would remember Zachariah Wright.

He wasn't even sure whether that was him anymore or not. He had changed the last few years, but he had never lost sight of his goal of eventually returning to this town and making sure that at least some form of justice was served. And then maybe he could die in peace. Or maybe he'd go to hell. Either was fine for him at this stage, as long as he could stop his restless life.

As he made his way down the hill and towards the town he got a feeling that things weren't going to go according to plan whatsoever. But when did anything ever go according to plan? For Zachariah, plans had never worked out. So he wasn't even going to bother with making them.

He pulled his long coat a little closer around himself as a cold gust of wind blew in his face. The days were getting shorter this time of the year and that meant that the nights were getting colder. Sleeping outside had been trying lately and Zachariah had been avoiding it as much as he could, but sometimes there had been no way around it. But not long now and he'd have a proper bed to sleep in.

His friends owned an inn in the town, if he could believe what they had told him in their letters, so he would be able to stay with them. He wasn't sure whether it was going to be a wise decision - they might get in trouble because of him - but they had assured him it would be fine. They said they were prepared to deal with any trouble that might come their way and Zachariah really wanted to believe them, but in his heart he knew better. The townsfolk were nosy and they were unforgiving. If they could punish anyone for stepping out of line, they would do it.

But it wasn't his decision anymore. He needed a place to stay and Abigail and Joel had been insistent. Any other place probably wasn't going to let him stay. He was an outsider ever since he left town. He had been a bit of an outsider before that, but he was still part of the little community there. After he left and with the circumstances under which he left... he was sure he wouldn't be very welcome here anymore.

Zachariah was hoping to be done within a few weeks of coming back. He didn't think the people in the town were going to tolerate him much longer than that. He knew he'd be able to see the priest in their little church. Father Lawrence had always liked him and he was the only one who had believed him back in the day. But there was no point. There was nothing he could have done to help him. Not unless he would have wanted the townspeople to run him out of town.

Zachariah wondered if he ever felt guilty - maybe when he was hearing confessions, when he was preparing mass, when he was alone at night in the draughty church, when he was praying in the darkness and his breath turned to mist. Father Lawrence always seemed to be afraid of something, no matter who he was speaking to. Zachariah was almost certain that he felt guilty for not doing more.

But what else could he have done? He believed him - or at least he had said so - and everything else would have cost him more than was reasonable to expect. Zachariah had no ill will towards Father Lawrence, but he still hoped that he sometimes felt guilty when he thought of him. He hoped everyone would feel guilty thinking of him, but he knew that they didn't.

He heard that they tried not to speak of him in general. And if they did they'd curse him over and over. Zachariah looked up, wondering whether this was really worth it. Whether he should really go and get his revenge. He wasn't sure how he would feel about seeing the river again - the river where Grace drowned. He wasn't sure whether he could stand seeing all these places again that he had so many memories of - not all of them fond memories. He was starting to feel a little scared.

But he had to keep going. He had promised Grace he would avenge her. He had visited her grave as often as he could during the last few years, which wasn't very often because he had been told never to set foot again in this town. And for years he had believed that he should stay away, but this was over. He wasn't going to stay away any longer. He was going to make sure everyone got what was coming to them.

It was almost dark when Zachariah had reached the edge of the town. He stopped in his tracks to look at his surroundings. The road had been paved with cobblestones since he had left. There was only the one main road that led through the town, every other smaller road was not paved. The houses looked older and more damp, since he left. The town seemed tired, grey... but maybe that was just the lighting at dusk that made this town look so hopeless.

Some of the leaves on the trees were already turning yellow, orange and red, but most of them still looked green. Now that it was getting colder there was a fine mist covering the ground and it would have been hard to see anything if it hadn't been for the lanterns that were hanging outside most of the houses. Zachariah took a deep breath and continued on his way through the town. He was looking down, trying not to show his face, should anyone be outside still.

Most people were in their houses and didn't have much of a reason to come back outside, however. It had been like that 13 years ago already - the town was dead after a certain time and there was almost no one on the streets. It seemed a little like a ghost town and Zachariah shivered when he thought about it. There was an eerie atmosphere about the town he grew up in - as if it had been rotting at the core for a long time already and was just continuing to rot over years and years until it was finally starting to show in the collapsing houses, the empty streets and the mould that was flourishing on every shed and every wall in sight.

Zachariah turned around the corner and made his way up a small road towards a big house that was lit by many lanterns. This was one of the two inns in the town - one was part of the pub in town and then there was this place. His friends lived there and they owned the place. It belonged to Abigail's family. Abigail had married Joel shortly after her father died and her mother had become ill and only a year after they got married, her mother died, meaning that it now belonged to Joel through the marriage.

Zachariah wondered what they looked like these days. He remembered them when they had just started their courtship, when they all were only 18. When Grace was still alive. When everything was still normal and he didn't have to live the life of an outlaw. But there was no point dwelling on it and complaining. What happened had happened. He was going to set things right.