The Dead Crime (Draft)

Chapter#13

"Oh my, what happened to her?" The nurse asked rushing towards them as Ethan came inside and rested Camille on the bed.
"She looks badly injured, did she have a fight."

"I'm not sure, she was like this since she came in the morning." He said panting.

"We'll have to take her to a hospital, she's having difficulty breathing, I suspect a fractured rib."

"What..." Ethan looked at the nurse worried, wanting her to do something quick.
                            
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His heart sank and his eyes became teary while he looked at her weak body laying on the hospital bed, breathing from an oxygen mask and covered in bandages and tubes around her. He wondered what could have caused her to be like this which made him regret not being able to find her in the forest the previous day when he had suddenly lost her among the pine trees and had been looking all around for her when the other girls ran outside the forest screaming. 'what exactly had happened.'

He started to recall his memory of yesterday when he was exploring the quite forest as it turned dark. When he thought it was time he should head home and not roam around there he had seen smoke arise from afar. He ran towards it to see a small cabin on fire. First he had felt curious about how it caught fire, 'could it be someone put fire on purpose?' he had thought slowly approaching towards it when he had heard a light voice of a figure trying crawl out of the cabin. Ethan ran towards it and pulled her out of the cabin towards the road on the side.

"Are you alright?" He had asked trying to calm her down. It was Emily. She was trapped inside the cabin and someone had tied her arms and legs with a rope but she had managed to loosen the rope around her arms and crawl till the door of the cabin. The rope wasn't really tied too tightly, as if someone with no experience had tied her. After he was done untying her legs he was reminded of Camille, 'could it be...she's in there too!' he moved his gaze towards the cabin and muttered,

"Camille....no." he had ran towards the cabin again and tried to go inside by covering his mouth with his arms but the fire had gone wild. And he was desperate.

"There's no one else in there." Emily spoke. She could hardly stand by herself with her legs shaking.
Ethan had looked at her,
"Are you sure there's no one else?"

Emily nodded.

"I'll take you to a hospital. Let's go."

"No I'm fine. I just want to go home." She spoke, her voice trembling.

"What fine? You don't look fine at all."
He looked at her sprained ankle and said,
"Your ankle looks bad. Put some ice on it once you get home. I'll take you."
He let her put her arm around his shoulder and walked home with him.
It had suddenly started to rain heavily on her way home and they put got drenched in rain.

"Thank you....for saving me." She said once they had reached home.

Ethan also had headed home after that and passed out on his bed due to extreme exhaustion. He didn't even have strength to wonder why she was trapped inside and who had done it.
But now standing beside Camille he started wondering everything. 'could it be she got beaten like this yesterday but had managed to escape?' or it wasn't anything related to the fire in the cabin or the forest at all?
He felt the urge to solve this mystery and punish the person who had done this to her.
"It's unfair. How can someone beat her up this bad? This is so inhumane."

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Emily didn't go to school because she was still in huge shock. She had been laying with her mother hugging her tightly. Her warmth calmed her down and she had fallen in deep sleep after a long time of restlessness. Her friends who had ran away after hearing a lady's scream from deep inside the forest leaving her behind felt worried because she was absent from school.
"What if the monster has eaten her?"

"No way, monsters aren't even real."

"Oh my god, we shouldn't have gone there. What do we do now? Should we report her missing?"

Diana was reading a magazine while patting Emily with her soft hands with which she had beaten Camille yesterday. She always saw Camille as a danger, as a burden to herself and Emily. Though she had suspected her when Emily didn't came home for a long time but even then she had been too much shocked to know it was her who had harmed her daughter.

Emily opened her eyes after a good sleep, the sun had already set and Diana was still laying with Emily.

"Don't you have work to do? I'm fine so you can do your work now." She told her mom.

"No sweetie, it's ok. I'll tell Kevin that we'll eat out and as for other work,it's no problem I'll do that tomorrow."
Emily sat straight, her eyes telling that she was feeling sorry,

"You're not going to send Camille out of the house right?"
Diana sat up with her and said,
"Are you still worried about her even after what she did to you? She almost murdered you."
Emily stayed quite. The silence seemed to be saying that she was hiding something, something she hadn't told her mom yet. Something she was scared to say.

"Still you shouldn't have beaten her like that. I wasn't even hurt and you hit her so bad." She said, "I felt disappointed."

It hurt to hear that from her daughter's mouth. She felt guilty of abusing Camille in front of her. 'I shouldn't have done that in front of her at least. Still she deserved to be beaten.'

"I'm sorry dear. What should I do to make it up to you?"

"Just...don't forbid her from eating and don't abuse her again."

"Alright dear, I won't do that." She sighed patting her cheeks.

EPILOGUE:
(The day when Camille was following Emily and her friends.)
On every start of an alley, Camille slowed down and Ethan who was following behind would think that it was where she'd turn to and then transform into her real appearance in the dark but Camille just kept walking straight onto the street. Her eyes were fixed like glue on her little sister goofing around with her friends until she saw another familiar face on the other side of the street going in the same direction. It was her father, Kevin. But that wasn't what caught her attention, it was the elegant looking lady by his side. They both were walking with their arms linked into each other's, laughing and talking as they advanced forward on the street.
Camille was only shocked to see that, she moved her eyes towards Emily who was in front of her and stared at her to figure out if she had noticed that. But she was too busy with her friends. Camille didn't know if she felt relieved about it or tensed about it because Kevin was her biological father and she was the only person in her family who knew the truth about him. She could hear their voices from afar,

"But didn't you get married to Lina? You both used to love each other back then."

"I'm not sure...did I?" Kevin smiled at her.

"Though where are we going?" She asked curiously changing the topic.

"Somewhere you're going to love."

There was sweet evil mix in his smile that looked heartwarming but his eyes showed a   devilish stare like an animal thirsty for blood. Camille wondered what that look was and felt the need to follow them but she still kept her feet moving in the direction of her sister. After covering a few miles, even her eyes swayed away from the couple and she only focused on following her sister.