During the memorial service for my missing uncle, my son suddenly trembled when he saw his parents’ wedding photo. He pointed to the empty space behind his mother and said those words. Nobody saw anything. When the original photo was enlarged, the police discovered…
The November fog in Maine was as thick as a soaking wet woolen blanket, enveloping our seaside cabin. Today marks five years since Arthur—my twin brother—disappeared without a trace.
The police concluded it was a drowning accident. They said Arthur, after drinking too much at Sarah and my wedding, slipped and fell into the sea from a cliff. His body was never found. The notoriously merciless North Atlantic current rarely returns what it has swallowed.
I, Daniel, sat in the living room, staring at my glass of whiskey. Sarah was busy in the kitchen preparing snacks for a few close friends attending a small memorial service. She was the perfect wife: beautiful, resourceful, and always my emotional support for the past five years. Without Sarah, I probably would have gone mad from grief.
“Dad.”
Leo’s soft call, my six-year-old son, pulled me out of my thoughts. He was standing in front of the fireplace, where a large wedding photo of my wife and I hung. It was the most beautiful picture, taken right on our family’s old wooden pier, with the glorious sunset over Frenchman Bay in the background.
“What’s wrong, son?” I set my glass of wine down.
Leo didn’t turn. He just stood there, shivering. His tiny hands clutched the hem of his pajamas.
“Are you cold?” I stepped closer.
“No,” Leo whispered, his voice faltering, sounding like the wind whistling through a crack in the door. “Dad, why is Uncle Arthur there?”
I froze. “Uncle Arthur isn’t there, Leo. That’s your parents’ wedding photo. Uncle Arthur… is gone.”
“No,” Leo shook his head vigorously. He slowly raised his index finger, pointing to a spot in the photo.
It wasn’t pointing at me, nor at Sarah.
It was pointing at the dark space behind Sarah, right at the edge of the pier, where the old wooden planks met the black water.
“He’s there,” Leo said, then turned to me, his eyes wide with horror and tears. “He’s clinging to Mom’s leg. He’s in so much pain, Dad.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. “What did you say?”
“Mom’s stepping on his hand,” Leo sobbed. “She’s making him bleed. Look, Dad! He’s begging you to save him!”
Leo’s cries shattered the silence. Sarah ran out of the kitchen, still holding the toast knife.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her face filled with worry.
I looked at Sarah. Her gentle beauty suddenly seemed alien in the dim yellow light. I looked back at the photograph. From this distance, I could only see Sarah’s pristine white wedding dress billowing on the wooden floor, and her sparkling high heels. There was nothing behind her. Just the shadows of the gaps between the wooden planks.
“Leo’s talking nonsense,” I said, trying to stay calm, but my heart was pounding. “Take the child upstairs to the bedroom. He’s tired.”
Sarah picked Leo up, the boy still looking back at the photo, his eyes filled with haunting longing.
When their footsteps faded behind the stairs, I couldn’t suppress the overwhelming curiosity that was rising within me. I took the photo down. I needed to look more closely.
But this canvas print wasn’t sharp enough.
I ran into my office, turned on my computer. I’m an architect; I have stored all the original high-quality (RAW) image files from the photographer. I found the “Wedding – 2018” folder.
I opened the original image file. 50MB of storage. Ultra-high resolution.
My hands trembled as I moved the mouse. I zoomed in on Sarah’s feet.
The 27-inch screen clearly displayed every grain of wood on the pier.
I zoomed in on the expensive Jimmy Choo high heels Sarah had worn that day. The sharp heels dug into the wooden floor.
I zoomed in further into the gap between two floorboards, just behind Sarah’s left heel. It was a gap about 5cm wide, usually obscured by the shadows of her wedding dress.
I increased the brightness (Exposure) and contrast of that dark area.
My breath caught. I nearly fell back in my chair.
From the pitch-black darkness of the pier gap, something emerged.
Not moss. Not rotten wood.
They were fingers.
Three fingers of a man’s hand clung tightly to the edge of the wooden plank, desperately trying not to fall into the sea. On his ring finger was the gold Signet ring engraved with our family crest – the ring Arthur always wore.
But the most horrifying thing wasn’t the hand itself.
The most horrifying thing was Sarah’s sharp heel.
That metal heel wasn’t resting on the wood.
It was digging deep into the back of Arthur’s hand.
Blood. Even with the artistic color correction, when zoomed in, I could clearly see the dark liquid seeping from the wound, soaking into the wood.
Arthur hadn’t fallen.
Arthur had grabbed onto the pier. He had tried to climb.
And Sarah – his wife, smiling brightly at the camera, holding a bouquet of white roses – had used her heel to crush his hand, pushing him back into the sea.
She knew he was there.
She was killing him in our most sacred moment.
I vomited.
The secret was revealed on the spot. The veil of five years’ secrecy was torn apart by an accidental photograph.
Arthur wasn’t drunk. He’d been murdered. And the killer had been sleeping in the same bed as me for half a decade.
“Honey?”
Sarah’s voice rang out from the doorway of my office.
I jumped, hastily turning off my computer screen. But it was too late. My reflexes betrayed me.
Sarah stood leaning against the door frame, still holding the bread knife. She no longer looked worried. Her face was icy cold, her beautiful eyes now empty like the night sea.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” Sarah asked softly.
I stood up, backing away from my desk. “Why? Sarah, why?”
Sarah entered the room, closing the door behind her. The sound of the latch clicking dryly echoed.
“Arthur didn’t accept me,” Sarah said, her voice even, like she was telling a fairy tale. “That night, right before the ceremony, he caught me on the phone. He found out I wasn’t the daughter of a wealthy New York family as I’d claimed. He knew I’d changed my name, knew about my past, my time in prison for fraud.”
She moved closer, the knife glinting in the screen’s light.
“Arthur threatened to tell you right at the wedding. He said he’d kick me out of this house. I couldn’t let that happen, Daniel. I love you. I love this life.”
“So you pushed him into the sea?” I yelled.
“He fell,” Sarah shrugged. “We struggled on the pier and he slipped. But… he grabbed on. He’s very strong. He was about to climb back up.”
She looked down at her feet, her eyes gleaming with cruelty.
“Just then the photographer called out, ‘Bride and groom, look here!’ I had to smile. I had to act. But Arthur was down there, he grabbed the hem of my dress. So I did what I had to do. I stomped on his hand. I stomped really hard. Until he let go. Until there was a splash.”
“You’re a devil…” I whispered, fumbling for the phone on the table to call 911.
“Don’t try, Daniel,” Sarah shook her head. “I’ve cut the landline and Wi-Fi. Leo is fast asleep thanks to the hot milk I made.”
She lunged at me.
I grabbed the desk lamp and threw it at her. Sarah dodged, the knife grazing my arm. Blood spurted out.
I lunged at her, and we both fell to the floor. Sarah was much stronger than her slender appearance suggested. She pinned me down, holding the knife to my neck.
“I’m sorry, Daniel. I really want us to be happy forever. But you’re just like Arthur. You know too much.”
The icy blade touched my neck. I closed my eyes, thinking of Leo.
BANG!
A deafening gunshot echoed through the narrow room.
Sarah’s weight suddenly felt heavy. The knife fell from her hand. She collapsed onto my chest, her eyes wide with surprise, a tiny bullet hole in her forehead.
I pushed her body away, gasping for breath as I looked toward the door.
The door had been flung open.
Standing there was Sergeant Miller – a close family police friend, the one who had handled Arthur’s case five years ago. In his hand was a smoking pistol.
“Miller?” I stammered. “How… how did you know?”
Miller lowered his gun, his face pale. He pointed to the cell phone lying on the floor, its screen still lit.
That was my phone. I hadn’t had time to call 911.
But I had accidentally pressed the Livestream button on Facebook when I fumbled with it earlier.
“You’re live streaming, Daniel,” Miller said, his voice trembling. “The whole town of Bar Harbor just watched your wife’s confession. I was on patrol nearby when I got the notification from headquarters.”
I looked at the phone screen. Thousands of comments were scrolling by. The whole world had seen the true face of the seemingly perfect wife.
The police sealed off the scene. Sarah’s body was taken away.
I sat in the ambulance, my arm bandaged. Leo was awake, sitting silently in my lap. He didn’t ask about his mother. Perhaps, with some childlike intuition, he knew his mother was “the bad guy” from the moment he saw the photo.
The technician handed me a printout from the station’s printer. It was an enlarged version of the wedding photo I had edited.
“You were right, Daniel,” the police officer said. “We’ll send divers down to the base of the pier tomorrow morning. With this precise location, Arthur’s remains might be trapped in a crevice beneath the rocks.”
I looked at the photo one last time.
Sarah’s face in the photo was beaming with a radiant, blissful smile. But beneath that smile lay the heel of death.
And in the darkness of the crevice, I noticed a detail I had overlooked earlier in my panic.
Arthur wasn’t just clinging to the pier.
His index finger, though crushed, was still reaching out, pointing in one direction.
He was pointing at Sarah’s stomach.
At their wedding, Sarah said she was two months pregnant. It was Leo.
But Arthur… was Arthur trying to say something in his final moments?
I recalled Sarah’s confession: “Arthur knew I’d changed my name, knew about my fraudulent past…”
I looked down at Leo. He had golden blonde hair and blue eyes… exactly like Arthur.
Arthur and I are twins, our genes are 99% the same.
A terrifying thought struck me.
Could Arthur have discovered something beyond Sarah’s true identity? That night, their argument wasn’t just about her past, but about… the baby?
Leo looked up at me, his deep blue eyes reflecting the police car’s headlights.
“Daddy,” he whispered. “Is Uncle Arthur still hurting?”
I hugged him tightly, tears streaming down my face.
“He’s gone, son. He’s home.”
Arthur had used his death to protect the truth, but it took five years and the innocent eyes of a child for him to be exonerated. That beautiful wedding photo would now forever be evidence of a crime, a reminder that sometimes, the devil doesn’t hide in the shadows.
The devil in a wedding dress, standing right beside you in the sunlight.
