The river moved beneath the ice. I could hear it breathing—slow, heavy, patient. My wife leaned into me on the boat, laughing as we lifted the phone for a Christmas selfie. The lights flickered. The wood scraped.
Then the river chose me.
Cold tore through my body like glass. I remember her scream—my name—before the current dragged me under and carried me somewhere I was never meant to survive.
I woke to fire and pain.
My body felt abandoned and poorly stitched back together. A man sat across from me, feeding sticks into the flames. His clothes were worn thin, his face shaped by weather and something heavier.
“Don’t move,” he said. “You’re not ready.”
His name was Josh.
Later meant nothing here. He lived in a hut deep in the forest, far from roads and voices. I could barely lift my arms. Pain answered every attempt. I was alive—and that relief quickly turned to fear.
“I need to contact my wife,” I whispered one night.
Josh stared into the fire. “No.”
I didn’t ask again.
Time blurred. He fed me, cleaned my wounds, watched me constantly. Even asleep, his presence filled the room, like the forest refusing to look away.
We talked about nothing. About silence. He listened too closely, as if storing pieces of me.
One night, memory surfaced without warning. A television screen. A headline. A missing suspect. A wife found dead at the foot of the stairs.
Josh’s face fit too well.
Panic rose. I wanted to run. But my body was useless, and the forest waited.
At dawn, while he slept, I packed his bag and fled. I had a map, but it meant nothing. I walked all day—no roads, no signs, only trees and cold. By dusk I was lost, torn between freezing alone or returning to a murderer. I screamed into the dark.
Then I heard his voice.
He stood nearby, a gun in his hand. My legs gave out. I closed my eyes.
“Get up,” he said. “We need to go back. Wolves hunt here.”
I followed him. I didn’t sleep that night.
Days later, I asked why he lived there.
“We were going to divorce,” he said, stirring the fire. “We argued. She ran outside.” His voice stayed flat. “She slipped. Hit her head.”
He didn’t look at me. “They said I killed her.”
I searched his face for guilt, for grief. I found nothing. Or too much, sealed away.
The next morning, he packed supplies.
“I’ll take you to town,” he said. “You’ll go home.” A pause. “You won’t tell anyone about me.”
I agreed too quickly.
At the road, he turned back into the forest without looking at me.
I made it home. My wife clung to me, shaking, afraid I might vanish again. I held her and said nothing. No words felt safe.
I never told anyone about the man in the forest.
But at night, when sleep won’t come, the river returns. I hear it moving beneath the ice, just as before it took me. And with it comes a quiet, relentless question, repeating like water against stone:
Was Josh innocent… or not?