The urge to run and get inside somewhere safely away from the fog is strong, but that would defeat the purpose of being here. You have to watch to see how this happened.
"Thomas Reid, if you don't get away from my house and my family this second—" the woman's father begins to say.
"I suppose you think I'm not good enough for her. Is that it?" Thomas asks. He takes a step back and yells up at the second floor. "Charlotte! None of it's true, Charlotte! I love you, and you love me, I know it!"
Charlotte's father knocks Thomas over the head with the butt of his rifle, sending the young man to the ground. He then points the gun at him.
"Leave."
You watch as Thomas slowly picks himself back up. Charlotte has gone from the window. He walks back out to the road then keeps going, the rifle still trained on him.
You follow him down the road. He walks slow, like he's already a corpse with limbs too stiff to move right.
Again, something moves in the trees. Your instinct is to go closer to the man for safety in numbers, except he's not really there, or maybe you're not really there, and either way, he seems to be a murderer. You're close to the other house now. It's possible you could hide in there, if you could get inside.
Suddenly, he stops walking.
"I suppose you've come to watch me die," he says with his back still to you. There's no one else here though, so he must be addressing you. "I have an offer to make. Your memories. You must have happy ones. I don't remember ever being happy, though I must have been at times. Tell you what. I'm good at making people feel safe. Good at putting them at ease, good at making them trust me through words and action. Charlotte did love me, before she knew what I'd done, and I made her love me by earning her trust. This whole town trusted me once. I can teach you, if you let me see your memories. Feel them inside me as if they were my own."
Still, he does not turn to face you.
"Or maybe you're just like the rest of them," he says angrily. "Maybe you just came here to take things away from me."