Cellar Door

5

Nefarious Design

Makenna

The silence is absolute. A constant ringing fills my head. It’s maddening, and suddenly I’m fearful I’ve lost my hearing.

Walled in by concrete, the sounds of the world—even the slightest, most easily ignored noises—are absent. I scrape my hands along the slab to interrupt the stillness, to stop the ringing.

I’m bruised and cold and honestly, I am scared…but I found him.

Him. The man with stone-cold blue eyes.

I close my eyes now, letting the memory resurface.

The sound of rushing water. The smell of the stream. The flash of lightning. The storm is everywhere.

I’m caught in the downpour. Muddy earth slides beneath my shoes. I lose my footing, and the landslide takes me. I wipe at my face and crawl up the rocky embankment, and that’s when I see him. A hulking figure standing over Hudson.

There’s a scream—and I realize it’s coming from me.

He turns his head toward the source. He looks at me. And when lightning webs the sky, lighting up the pitch-black night, the flicker illuminates his eyes. They’re all I can see—that ethereal blue, just like the streak cracking the sky.

His severe gaze holds me hostage. I can’t will my lungs to work. I’m shackled to the edge of the hill by fear, shock. I’m terrified to move…because he’s holding a knife to Hudson’s throat.

I reach for my gun, pull the weapon free and aim it. My finger goes to the trigger.

I have a clear shot. I can take it…

Time lapses. Moments collide and suspend. The sky darkens, blotting Hudson and the man from my view. I harness my weapon. The ache in my calves is fire as I climb the embankment and run. I chase the storm, begging the lightning to flash. I need to see Hudson alive. My breath won’t come. My chest aflame and desperate for air.

When the sky blinks again with the next crack of thunder, I’m kneeling beside Hudson. My hands stained red. I apply pressure to his neck, but I’m trembling with the reality that he’s gone. There’s no pulse pushing back against my palm.

Pain splinters my skull, sharp and acute, before the storm is gone. Hudson is gone. All that remains is the dark.

I shake the memory from my head, making it stop. It’s too suffocating to think about in this place. The air is too cold, too thin. I’m on the brink of hyperventilating.

I claw at the slab, grit and dirt embedding beneath my nails.

Later, I discovered I sustained a blow to my head.

By the time I was revive

d and inside an ambulance, Hudson was missing. They searched the entire ravine and surrounding area. They dredged the stream for two days. They never found his body.

Dirty, suspicious looks trailed me. My report was mocked, and an investigation was opened on me.

Hudson and I were off the clock that night. The location never a part of any formal investigation. So why were we there that night? The truth was too salacious to be logged in my rebuttal report.

Cops work with facts. And the fact was: Hudson was missing. Forensics proved his blood was at the scene. His blood was stained on my clothes. I was the only witness to the account, and it was a deranged account of an ambush and a crazed man with blue eyes and a knife.

The rumors were more believable.

Detective Hudson and his partner were involved. It was a lover’s quarrel gone bad. Of course, there was no proof to that theory, either. But that made it even worse. Evidence could’ve set me free with the truth. Saved my tarnished reputation.

Instead, I suffered a month of ridicule and insults, even threats. My fellow officers targeted me, demanding to know what I did to Hudson. The encounters became hostile. Cop killer was plastered across my car. I was ousted before I ever turned in my badge.

I breathe through the memory of it all. There were times I even questioned myself, wondering if I did snap. If I imagined the whole thing. Hudson and I…we had been having problems, but no. It wasn’t possible—I’m not that person who could do something so abhorrent.