Not him.
Someone else, who wasn’t alone. A man was there with another. A woman. She kept telling him no, saying she couldn’t be with him anymore, and he didn’t like that.
“We have a life together, Julia. We have a family.”
“Will you listen? I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
“Is this about that guy from work?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Don’t start this again. This is what I’m talking about. You have all these anger issues. I can’t keep our son around that. We can’t keep doing this.”
He raked his hands through his hair. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you? You’re fucking the guy from work.” Before she could respond, he grew more and more upset, his chest puffing in and out.
The man was someone who made my breaths harder to swallow, and my fear more fearful. I had been less afraid when I’d stood alone by the wrong twisty trees. I should’ve stayed by the wrong trees.
He screamed at her, his voice cracking. “You fucking whore!” he shouted, slapping her hard across the face. She stumbled backward and whimpered, her hand flying to her cheek. “I gave you everything. We had a life together. I just took over the business. We were getting on our feet. What about our son? What about our family?” He slapped her again and again. “We had a life!” He shoved her to the ground and his eyes popped out of his head, as if he was crazy—disturbed.
My throat tightened as my eyes stared across the way, where the man who reminded me of the dark sky wrapped his hands around the woman’s neck. “You can’t leave me,” he said, almost begging her as he choked and shook her. She screamed, clawing at his hands. He shook her. She screamed, trying to gasp for air. He shook her. She screamed, and I felt his hands.
It felt as if his hands were around me. Choking me. Shaking me. Dragging me.
My fingers wrapped around my neck and I begged for air, knowing that if I felt like I couldn’t breathe, the woman was hurting even more.
Then the evil man started dragging her body toward the water.
In that moment I knew who he was.
The devil.
The devil pulled the woman’s body toward the water and shoved her head beneath its waves.
And I stopped breathing.
He drowned her.
He drowned her.
The devil drowned a woman on the bank of Harper Creek.
I knew she was dead. She fought back as the devil kept holding her head beneath the water. The devil held her at the edge of the lake and kept shoving her head under the water.
The woman fought at first, clawing her fingers at him, trying her best to attack the devil. The woman’s body pushed against his, but each time the devil brought the woman’s head back from under the lake, her mouth inhaled and exhaled, choking on water, struggling to breathe. The devil pulled her deeper into the waters, splashing loudly. The water was up to the devil’s neck, and I couldn’t even see the woman anymore.
“Don’t leave me,” he begged her, pleaded. “Don’t leave me, Julia.”
I should’ve stopped looking.
I couldn’t stop looking.
She was fully submerged, and all I saw was the devil’s darkness.
He pulled the limp woman from the water, back to the shore, and he wouldn’t stop talking to her. “How could you? How could you do this to us?” He reached for the woman’s left hand and removed the wedding band from her finger. He slid it onto his own finger.
He killed the woman.
He killed her.
I saw it, too—the realization of his actions, him realizing what he had done. He started to shake the woman, her body limp. “Julia,” he whimpered. “Julia, wake up.” He fell to the ground beside her and shook her, trying to bring her back, but he couldn’t. He sobbed over her body. “Please, come back.”