Down By The River

7

𝔸𝕟 𝕆𝕝𝕕 𝕋𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕀𝕗 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕤𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕣𝕠𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕤𝕡𝕠𝕚𝕝 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕠𝕟

Lottie knew that she was dead the minute she stepped inside the door. On the way back she had been worrying that her parents might have noticed she was missing or that they might have woken up. It had happened before at times and the consequences of her sneaking out had never been good. She hoped that she wouldn't get caught, of course, but she could never be 100% sure. And she was terrified of her father finding that she snuck out while a presumed murderer was on the loose.

Speaking of... Lottie wasn't quite sure how to feel about Zach. She had been there talking to him, all while she could feel the adrenaline rushing through her veins. She was both terrified by him and fascinated by him. And the more they had been talking, the calmer she got. She was wondering whether he maybe never did anything at all... or whether he was just very good at making people feel safe and secure around him. Was that why Grace had trusted him so much, before she got murdered? Was this all some sort of strategy, some tactic?

Lottie had to admit that she liked the attention he was giving her. And he was incredibly handsome. The danger of him being an outlaw just added to the attraction that Lottie felt to him. If he was to ask her to sneak out again and meet him in the middle of the night, she wasn't sure whether she'd be able to do the smart thing and stay at home. It was exciting to be so close to someone so dangerous.

And the thing was... he didn't even seem dangerous at all. He seemed like the nicest person that Lottie could imagine. If that man was a murderer... she just couldn't believe it. She was starting to doubt that Zach Wright had ever done anything wrong. That man she had met by the river tonight wasn't a killer. Or so she thought. She just couldn't convince herself that this man was evil. She couldn't bring herself to believe it.

And the thing was... Lottie had never heard of any evidence that he had killed Grace. She had only ever heard the stories about it from her family and from the neighbours. Zach Wright was something of an urban legend around these parts. Some kind of boogeyman to scare young girls not to sneak out at night, not that it had ever worked for her. But all of that was just hear-say. The story was a little different every time it was told. And there were a lot of gruesome details that were added to make it scarier. Lottie thought about what exactly she knew about the murder.

She soon realised that she didn't know a lot for sure. All that happened and that she knew for sure was that Zach and Grace had been seen out on a walk in the evening and the next morning, Grace's family had raised the alarm that she hadn't come home. Everyone started looking for her all over until they stumbled upon Zach down by the river. He was holding her corpse in his arms and was pale and cold and shivering. He barely even said a word. Everyone just assumed that he had done it...

And to his detriment he didn't deny it at first. He didn't say anything at all about what happened, so everyone had to fill in the gaps and the explanation that everyone came up with was fairly easy, so no one really thought that anything else might have happened. But Charlotte knew that technically... technically he wasn't proven guilty. But it wasn't like that mattered to people living in a town as small as this. Everyone just believed what they wanted to believe and a young, jealous lover that lost his temper was just so much easier to believe than anything else.

But Charlotte had started wondering now and the thought that Zach was maybe completely innocent as he insisted later on wouldn't leave the back of her mind, no matter how hard she tried. Maybe that led to her not being cautious enough. Maybe that was why she didn't climb back in through her window and instead just walked in through the front door. She had no idea why she didn't even wait to listen whether anyone was awake in the house. Charlotte wasn't thinking of much at all. Not much except for Zach. Either way, it didn't matter. What happened next would have happened anyway. There was no way to avoid it, none that Charlotte could think of.