The Hidden Spirit

Prologue

My life was okay before I died, my younger brother was such a little angel and we got along quite well despite me not knowing my father and our step father being quite cruel and harsh to both of us. It was winter, our favorite time of the year though also it broke my heart to think of what happened one year during the winter that killed my only friend. Jackson Overland. He died by saving his sister and when it happened his sister came and told me.

From then on I was closed off to everyone else, my anger able to come out in just the smallest little things though I protected my brother from everything my step father did to us. At one point I fought back angrily, tired of his beatings for no reason and harsh words. He was shocked when that happened, and seemed quite frightened by something that had been behind me but when I looked around all there was was my shadow.

From then on our step father stopped beating us and yelling, which was a relief to me and my brother though it took us another year before we started acting nice and actually friendly around him.

I shook my head slightly, realizing I had stopped painting I continued on my art picture for the Overland family. It was a picture of Jack since this was the sixth year of him being dead in the frozen pond. I finally finished up the picture and left it to dry, snuggling into my thin jacket though it did nothing to block the cold air that always seemed to follow me wherever I went. Jack died when I was six, he had been 18 when he died and it had been ten years. I was sixteen now, my mother and step father were already trying to find me a suitable groom for when I turn 18 and may leave their care.

I hadn't been too happy when I started hearing about the talk of me being married, especially to someone I would only know for two years before I would marry them. My mother knew my step father for almost 3 years before she married him and had Christopher, my little brother. He's 13 now and will turn 14 as I will turn 17 a day after him in October. I always asked about my father, but my mother would barely give me any information, only that he was polite to her and later she learned he just....disappeared.

Unfortunately I took on my mother's looks rather my dad's, though it would've guessed scaring people would've been something of his personality since my mother was very against it.

"Cre!" I heard my brother yell, he sounded worried.

I raised down towards the pond I always dreaded going near. It was the one Jack died in saving his sister, and now my brother was stuck on it. I stopped right at the edge, my brother was standing in the middle his arms out towards his sides as he looked at the ice frightened. I looked around and grabbed my sharpened stick I used for drawing things in the ground, slowly I headed out on the ice towards Christopher.

"Hey, remember how I made that game whoever lost had to jump in the pond during the summer?" I said, trying to distract him.

"This isn't a game Cre," Christopher said worriedly.

"I know, but whoever loses this game still has to swim right? So whoever falls in....loses!" I said, flipping my stick around to the other end so a small hook at the end hooked his ankle and sent him elsewhere as the crack spread.

I stood straight, a blank expression on my face as a tear fell down it.

"And you're the new winner Christopher," I whispered almost, then the ice split and I fell in.

You know that feeling when you're asleep and you feel like you're falling? That's how it felt in cold water, though you're numb rather than feeling the blankets under you when you wake up in fright thinking it was real. It was the same, but I knew I wasn't going to wake up as the moon shone through where I had fallen through. The moon? It was daytime when I fell through, yet I survived long enough to night and see the moon.....