The River's Edge

Chapter 3- A Grim Reunion

Chapter three

Being in a room with no windows that she could see through, walls a dull gray, made Karen Serventell nervous. What could they be discussing through that mirrored glass? She was innocent. Why would she kill a child when she had one to look after herself? Why could they have possibly arrested her?

A man then came through a side door painted the same color as the walls. He had a stern face with no trace of intending on being nice. He walked to the table and sat in a chair. Karen was handcuffed to the table.

"I'm going to be asking you a few questions, and you need to answer honestly. Lying to the police is a serious offense." he reminded her sternly.

She nodded.

"So, tell me. Why did you murder Amanda Woodburn?" he said, getting closer and narrowing his eyes.

Karen shook her head. "I did not kill her."

He sighed. "It was your fingerprints that were on the knife. And you are also the only one with motives to kill her. Maybe you're right. Maybe you didn't kill her. But it is evident that you could have given the murderer the weapon and hired them to kill her, is it not?" he inquired menacingly.

She now nodded. "It is possible, but simply not true. I have my own daughter to care for, and I would never put her care and safety in danger. I have already lost one daughter, and I know what that's like, so why would I put people through the same suffering and kill an innocent child?"

"Ah, but that is precisely why you would kill her. She was much like your daughter, Olivia. Perhaps you wanted to have her parents suffer the same pain."

The interrogator was beginning to think that he was right with all of the silence. The woman's short dark red hair covered half of her face, her head turned away. Her blue eyes were looking sad, guilty to the man. But the rest of her looked completely innocent.

***

Brielle creeped out of her room from crying and went to her mother's. She sat down on her bed and looked at an old newspaper sitting on the pillow. She read the circled article. It was about her sister's burial. She read about how the town had donated money to make the small grave for her sister, and they all attended her empty casquette funeral. They had never found Olivia's body. The police searched for a week, but found nothing. This made her mad. Why hadn't they searched longer? She got up and left her mother's room.

Brielle stormed out of the house after an hour or so after her mother had been taken. She walked down the street, furious. Her emotions blinded her, leaving her eyes useless. She stomped into downtown and past busy stores, the wind whipping at her face. People were shouting and laughing around her, but she did not notice. Brielle walked all the way to the opposite end of town before her legs hurt, and she noticed a man following her trail. She ran now, afraid. She ran past the town's limits and into the dark woods. She kept on running, her feet a blur. She looked behind her and saw the man running too. He had joined up with a friend, both of them looking haggard but muscular. There was no way at all that she was going to make it. She kept on running forward, the trees a blur around her. She looked back one more time over her shoulder to see them closer...splash!

She fell right into the deep river.

Water rushed around her face, and ice cold stabbed at her. She hit a big rock and her knee sliced open. She kicked and flailed but it was useless. She was running out of air fast. She made one last push to the surface. She managed to bob her head above the surface briefly to spew water from her lungs and gasp some air, glimpsing the men, smiling in the distance. Then the riptide dragged her under again. She kicked and tried to grab something. The water compressed her lungs, and left her chest burning from lack of oxygen. She bonked her forhead on something sharp. And she felt the skin rip open. Before she could cry out, she felt something brush past her arm, and she grabbed it. She pulled herself up closer to the base of the root she was holding onto, to the open air. She coughed and spit water from her lungs and mouth. She was heaving now, her lungs hurting. She felt her hands slipping, and she couldn't help it. The wood was worn and sliding from under her grasp. Then her hands let go, and she tried with one last attempt to grab it, jerking her arm and practically ripping it from it's socket. She cried out with pain, and then she was under water again. She didn't try to struggle. She let the current pull her swiftly downstream. It was only when she felt the current getting stranger did she begin to panic again. She reached out but she was too late. The current was too strong. She saw a shadow overhead and assumed that was the small wooden bridge. She kept on going, faster and faster. She began to feel faint when the water disappeared from underneath her. She was falling.

This was much worse.

She couldn't scream because of the water in her lungs, so instead she reached her arms and legs out, and her arm caught a jutted rock. She held on for as long as she could, but she could only use one arm, because her shoulder was dislocated. When her fingers let her drop, it was short. If she had not caught that rock, she would not be alive. She splashed in the water and made her way to shore, coughing and sputtering. She collapsed, her forehead, knee, and shoulder all aching. She turned her blurry vision to beside her, where someone lay. She looked at the person, vision still unclear, and placed a hand on their shoulder, desperate to get the help of another. She blinked her teary eyes, and when her vision started to clear, a horror awaited her, floating face up in the water. When her eyes focused fully, she recognized the cold corpse of her sister. Her bloated, waterlogged body was very still, and her skin was icey to the touch. Her eyes were partly open and staring blankly to the sky, slightly rolled into the back of her head. Beyond all that, the worst part was the smell. Brielle couldn't stand the stench of rotting flesh, mold, and spoiled milk, her little sister's body possibly writhing with maggots by now. Brielle quickly retracted her hand, scrambled up, and screamed. She wanted to run but her legs wouldn't work. She noticed a pool of blood on the shore, with a trail leading into a thick part of the woods. She did not want to follow it. She ran like she had never run before. She ran up the hill, and alongside the edge of the river until her legs burned, but even then, she did not stop. Her whole body cried out to stop, but she needed to tell the police. The adrenaline fueled her tired muscles all the way to the police station.

***

Within the next few days, an article of the full understanding of the murder of Amanda. It had taken them so long to find the killer, simply because the fingerprints had melted away, along with the weapon: A sharp icicle, the weapon that left no trace.

The police released Brielle's mom early due to the new evidence she had found, which were the cause of the breakthrough for Amanda and Olivia's cases to be confirmed as solved. For the next three days they found the full extent of the truth. DNA of the blood near the waterfall was discovered to belong to Casper Serventell, Brielle's father. He was also another who had fingerprints on the knife. The interrogation went fairly well. They got him to confess within eight hours.

"Why did you do it?" the officer asked with impatience.

Casper sighed, knowing there was no escape. "I did not kill my daughter on purpose. She was with my other daughter, Olive, when I took her aside. I wanted her to live with me, but she said no, so I pushed her. I didn't mean for her to fall in. I dived after her, but when she fell over, she was only a child, too delicate for that kind of fall. I walked away, and made a plan. If I didn't get to have a perfect, happy, child, no one should. So I blamed her death on Olive and threatened to report her if she didn't take the life of Amanda Woodburn. She was a happy child. Too perfect. I told Olive to kill her with an icicle, that way it would melt and leave no trace of fingerprints. Of course she was so sad and feeling guilty about the task and the death of her twin, she didn't notice when she dropped the pocket knife I gave her that belonged to her mother. She was to kill her sister, Brielle next, and then her mother. Although I couldn't do it myself, because we were still married, merely separated.This was my genius plan, to make life more fair. No one should be perfectly happy. Sadness is a part of life." he said.

After his confession, life went on pretty smoothly for the little town. The bodies were buried, and the families were sad, but everything felt well and safe now that Casper Serventell was in jail. The Woodburns slowly healed as they had another baby boy, Charlie. As for Brielle and her mother, Olive was now living with them as one happy family. The only bad thing was the news became boring again. Life went on, and even though it was sometimes strange for Brielle and her mother to look at Olive, who was so much like Olivia her twin, it sealed a gaping wound that had been there without them knowing it.

Life seemed to continue on as normal, and with old age came faded memory. Some things never change, though. The rivers edge would forever be stained red, and that fact would never be forgotten by the little town and the families that suffered within it.

(I hope you guys enjoyed!! I wrote this in 2018 or beginning of 2019 so it's pretty old, and I'm probably going to make more stories. This was my first one so I'm not sure show good it is and tbh I've probably gotten worse, I haven't written anything in a while. Lmk any advice or how you liked it in the comments)