Page 47 of Lake Hollow Curses

Instead, I followed his lead in blaming Wilder. I shit talked him by his side.

Sara, if you can hear me now, I’m to blame that Charlie ever knew you. I’m part of the reason you’re gone.

This is going to destroy me.

Remi, with her hands on my cheeks, looks me in the face. “This isn’t your fault. It’s no one’s fault but his. Do you hear me?” She may never understand…

All of the deceptions wash over me.

…friends I let go over Charlie’s say so.

…the appropriation of my ideas.

…lies upon lies.

…the cunning way he put suspicion on me.

…all the lives he ended. How many did he kill?

“Honey, I’m with Wilder on this. He needs to feel tortured. Oh, my fucking God.”

Standing at the side of Lake Hollow, in wet clothing, clinging to Remi… I promise, all his victims… both dead and alive, to help the detectives uncover it all.

“I don’t want this to be real. How is this real, Cal.” She shivers next to me, her pupils blown.

Wilder rests his hand on her shoulder. “We stopped him. It’s over.”

Or it’s now just all beginning as we learn the fucking truth.

Chapter Thirty-three

Wilder Lee

Burned in my psyche are the images from my last episode, along with seeing the struggle in the lake as I ran from my dropped bike. The horror of seeing the vision brought to reality. Again.

Gibson should’ve drowned. But I could never hold another person under the water robbing them of air, stealing life from them.

It turns out I was never the psycho he tried to tell everyone I was. I was just the threat to him being found out. My visions marked me as a liability.

The motherfucking bastard didn’t understand that the visions were never straightforward. It didn’t work that way.

He couldn’t believe me when I said it, because a liar believes everyone else tells lies.

Remington James. She shakes even with our arms wrapped around her, huddling together in disbelief. The sound aroundus is nothing more than white noise. She looks at me with her watery blue eyes. “You never trusted him.”

No. I couldn’t let go of all the times in the past where pieces of his vile personality peeked through. The bullying, the lies, the manipulation. I was never convinced a person could change or grow enough to not have been those things anymore. They just get better at hiding it.

Kissing the reddened mark from the thick braided chain of the necklace Charlie had pulled her under with, I’m dumbfounded it found its way out of the lake again. An icy fear prickles down my neck.

It was at the hands of Charlie that people died, but he didn’t get the necklace off the bottom of the lake… he didn’t manufacture the bad energy in Remi’s cabin…

Questions I refuse to ask out loud, to ponder with anyone, start to surface in my mind.

What turns someone into a killer? Two energies exist in the cabin the James’ have rented… Katie and Daniel? How much did Daniel’s legacy influence Charlie?

It doesn’t matter in the least… he’s responsible.

As people leave us, we all sit on the couch in my cabin. Droolius is asleep on Remi’s feet. We are all emotionally spent to the degree we’ve all grown quiet, leaning on each other. Remi is curled up in Cal’s lap, her head against his chest, Grady is laying back against me, my arms around him.

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