Page 45 of Lake Hollow Curses

Looking down the shoreline at the area of the last drownings, I decide to invite her for a nighttime swim. “Don’t tell anyone. No one.” She was dumb enough to listen.

I pulled her down using the necklace that time, then took it with me. It was harder without the meds to cause severe pain and respiratory distress with sensations of asphyxiation, panic, and terror.

The fourth time, with Jeremy, that wasn’t a plan, but he found the meds I’d buried in Lakeside Park. His dog dug it up. When I saw the lockbox in his work locker at the Funpark, he caught me taking it.

“Charlie?” He shut the locker room door. “Were you stealing that? Wait… wait.” His wheels slowly turn thinking about where the box had been buried. He’s already accused me of trying to knock him into the bumper boat pond.

He never noticed I’d managed to get one of the vials into my pocket before he caught me. On his evening swim, I stabbed him with the meds, jumping from underneath the old bridge behind him. It happened too fast for him to react.

The fifth time, with Susanna she had the necklace. Just like Tera she was bugging Cal.

“What are you doing here?” She’d been told Cal would meet her at Lakeside Park that night. It was over fast. The only issue was someone spotted the boat that night. But either the detectives discounted it, or they could not confirm it.

Either way, it was over. All she had to do was leave Cal alone, but she didn’t. It was her own fault.

Sara was the sixth. At first, I hadn’t meant to, but then face to face in the dark it came to me. Wilder and his visions wouldn’t be a problem for me anymore if she died after their argument.

“Oh great, just what I needed. What are you doing here?” I’d seen the nitwit from the telescope at the Funpark. I slipped away down the shore to where she was stomping her way to the bridge. To walk back home.

I started to respond but decided to attack her before I second guessed myself. She would’ve screamed otherwise. I choked her with the ugly necklace. I knew which dock had no lights that would illuminate it. Carried her to the end of the dock. Dumping her, she came up gasping. I held her under. ‘Remember that you are water. Cry. Cleanse. Flow. Let Go.’

She never should’ve associated with Wilder. Doing so made it impossible to save her.

Then there was our sweet Katie.

The last thing I wanted was to take her away from the world, but she couldn’t be reasoned with.

“Charlie, I have to tell mom and dad. Just tell them it was an accident. You-you didn’t mean to hurt her. Right? You didn’t mean it.”

I shake my head at her. Not in response to her question, but over her betrayal. I’m her big brother, she looks up to me, loves me.

I had the meds back from Jeremy’s locker. After giving her a lethal dose of the potassium chloride, she went more quickly. No struggle in the water necessary.

That one messed with me. I’d contemplated letting Mitchell go, but he still believes in me.

His call about Carlotta Marlow talking to him about the investigation she was doing on her own into the drownings, it was clear what needed to happen. It was high time to call her out over the affair she was having with my father, the baby that was never Daniel’s but my dad’s.

Did they think I never heard the closed-door arguments? The loon pin found of Carlotta’s in my parent’s bed, the notes between them locked in the drawer at the bottom of her dresser? The way the strain made mom sick… vomitting until she needed to get shots of potassium chloride?

Carlotta Marlow deserved her end, that fall should’ve killed her. Instead, she held on uselessly for weeks, making Mitchell suffer. I was ready to be done with them both by the time she passed. I was worried for him.

Oh, Katie. Your loss made me never want to send anyone into a watery grave again.

Until Remi.

Chapter Thirty-one

Remington James

“Ch-Charlie?” He’s silent standing next to me looking out over the water. He’s not acting right. His whole demeanor is cold and off. In my heart, I’m still hoping I’m wrong. That all the arrows pointing towards him were a mistake. But even as he takes my hand to hold, I sense how fucked I am.

“It never had to be this way,” he says tenderly. Like the Charlie I thought he was, but the words are damning.

I tremble as tears start to pour out of my eyes. He tightens his grip slightly on my hand. He looks at me thoughtfully, wiping away the tears on my cheeks. “You could’ve let it drop. But you even managed to find the WPL logbook.” He shakes his head grimacing. “You had so many opportunities to leave it all alone.”

The twisted thing is, he told me about the drownings. He pulled me into this to begin with. I was in trouble the minute Imet him. “I don’t understand. Why? Why, Charlie?” My voice is pleading, choked with tears.

I try to pull away, but his firm grip on my hand doesn’t loosen. He wraps his other hand around my waist. I’m a fighter. Everyone says that, but I am. A scrapper that managed to fend for myself in rough neighborhoods without a parent around most of the time. I’ve kneed a junkie that tried to rob me, I’ve run from a group of older boys that were giving me the creeps, and I shot a flare gun at a scary guy that followed me home one night. But in the face of a man I’ve fallen in love with, I can’t scream for help, I can’t kick and fight. I’m dissolving in tears.

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