Hidden Darkness

Chapter 11

             I spent two months looking for any leads for Eric's sister. Her school, where she lived, anything. I found nothing. I just got the same answers every time. "Eric has a sister?" and, "I don't think he has a sister."
I was stuck. I couldn't figure out where to go and what to do. The end of school is creeping up and I'm afraid that I won't be able to find her by summer break. Even so, what will I do when I find her? What's my mission?
To look after his sister? How? I don't even know where she is, how can I do anything? But then Amelia found something and I got Bobby. We were walking from school, not exactly going to our homes but just walking.
"She doesn't go to school." Amelia said while walking to my left and Bobby to my right. "How do you know?" I ask her. "One of my friends drives by Eric's house apparently every morning and every afternoon. She sees him leave a nasty, old, house every time he goes to school. Sometimes on the days he didn't go to school, she would see him playing with a little girl out front in the morning and in the afternoon sometimes."
"Did you get the address?" Bobby asked while walking sideways. "Yeah I did."
"Then that's our next stop." I began to speed up my walk. "What, now? Are you sure?"
"Absolutely." We spend thirty minutes looking for the place and another ten for the building itself. It wasn't hard. The house was ugly. Peeling paint and wood rot as well as tall, uncut grass.
Thankfully it was summer, I couldn't imagine how cold it would be in the winter time in that house. I knock on the door. Almost three minutes later, it opened and a tall, thin man wearing a dirty sweater and jeans answered the door. He looked pretty strong, but he didn't have as much muscle mass as Eric. His hair was short and had a five-o'clock shadow that didn't compliment any of them.
"Umm, are you Eric's dad?"
"Who wants to know?" His voice was nasty and slightly gravelly. "We're, uh, friends of Eric and we would want to know if there is anyway to talk to him."
"You know he's in jail, right?" I noticed a small figure peek around the edge of a doorway from the hall behind Eric's dad. "Yeah, I know. I meant if you could call the prison and see if we could speak with him?"
"No, they won't allow anyone to talk to him after what he did."
"Oh ok. Just wanted to check. I guess we'll just-" He closed the door without letting me finish. "Go," I finish saying. We stepped our way off the porch. "I don't like that guy," Bobby said suddenly. "Why is that?"
"For one, he was rude, and he was eyeing up Amelia."
"Was he?" I say, looking towards Amelia, who looked like she saw a ghost. She just nodded in response and I got a chilling feeling. I started forming a stupid plan. And I sure as hell wasn't gonna tell either one of them.

It's already June. Almost halfway til death row. The other inmates have heard of me and who I am and I became pretty popular. Some being suspiciously more nice to me than others. I never realized why until one night. I sat in my bed wide awake, wondering if I'll get sleep soon when I heard a strange and quick hissing noise.
There was a brief moment of silence until I heard it again, followed by, "Hey, Eric." It was coming from one of the inmates in the cell next to mine. I whisper back, "What?"
"You're super strong and stuff, right?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"We're both in a place where we don't want to be, yeah?"
"Uh, yeah, that's obvious."
"What if I told ya I had a plan on getting out?" I started figuring out where he was going with this. "I would ask what it was." I heard what seemed like bare skin slapping a metal pole and then him say yes in celebration. "Okay, we use your special ability to bust outta here, right? Take out the guards and start running all the way to the next city. Or country. Anywhere."
"Absolutely not."
"Wait, what? But you agreed to it."
"No I asked what the plan was, I didn't agree to anything. I'm not gonna kill anyone who hasn't done wrong. I stopped killing long ago." I didn't hear a response so I laid in my bed and fell asleep. The next day I just spent talking with Trevor and Ren and watching the news. News about Black Widow Crow sprang up apparently. A crowd of people had taken positions in front of the prison, protesting and saying that I shouldn't be jailed, or I have done no wrong, or I was even framed.
The signs said things like, 'Free Chicago's Crow!' and, 'Release the diamond-backed bird!'. I of course made a quizzical look after reading one of them. My symbol was a bird with an hourglass, not a diamond. "Seems you have fans outside the prison, dude," said Ren. "I guess," I said in a not-so confident voice.
"Ain't no guessing about it, Eric my man. Your crime-fighting on the outside has won the hearts of Chicago's people. You're a hero despite your current position," Trevor said. I cracked a smile. "I guess so." The smile faded once I remembered that I was planned for death row. Who could help this city if I'm gone? No one has the same visions and abilities as me.
Then again, it seemed to have been going well before everyone even heard of me. I don't know. Later that night, I was lying on my side, staring at the cement blocks of the walls, when I got what's probably the worst migraine in my life. I yelled from the pain and fell off the bed. Ren was woken up and crouching near my trembling body.
The migraine rocked my head as it felt like there was a black hole and a solar explosion causing extreme havoc inside my mind. Then images flowed through it. An arm, a man, blood, fire, my sister, and then it all stopped. I stared up at Ren's face, his hair shading his face. "Eric, are you alright?" he asked.
The pain soon subsided, but I was driven to do what I had to do. It may speed up my wait for death row, but I have to do it. I launched up and placed my hands on the back wall of the cell and began pushing. "Eric?" I ignored Ren and kept pushing as hard as I could.
"Eric, it's solid cement you can't just-" Ren was then interrupted by the noise of a large crack shooting across the wall from my hands. More cracks started to form the longer I pushed. I received a small headache and revealed my tendrils. The moment the cement busted and started hailing down, my tendrils flew outward and caught each falling rock aside from a few harmless pebbles.
I placed the cement rubble near my bed and formed wings from my tendrils. I turned around to Ren. "Don't use this hole to escape. It will only bring you more trouble. I'm sorry but you have to stay here."
"I wasn't planning on it, dude. Good luck with whatever you have to do." I nodded and launched from the hole, allowing my wings to lift me into the air for a both stressful and relieving moment since I was imprisoned. But I still had to focus because this vision I had had was not a normal vision. It was the first vision of mine that involved murder.

It was an insanely stupid idea. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was up with Eric's dad. I mean, his daughter not going to school could be because they are poor, but I still had that feeling. So, that night, I wore a long sleeve jacket, black gloves, black pants, quiet shoes and a scarf to cover half of my face. Of course, on my way there I had many second thoughts and hesitations, but I knew that this could be the only way to figure out what was going on.
It was probably one in the morning when I got to Eric's house. The moment I stepped onto the porch, it squeaked. I froze half expecting to see an enraged man fly out from the door, but I was glad to be proven wrong. I quickly and quietly reached the door and slowly turned the knob and pushed. The door, surprisingly, didn't make a single squeak.
The air in the house was hotter than outside and I was briefly surprised by this until I saw that the fireplace was lit. The house wasn't small in the slightest, but it sure wasn't in the best condition. I was slightly crouched and slowly made my way to the room Eric's sister was in earlier that day. I made it with only a few small noises from the floorboards, but I was sure I would be fine. I opened the door like I did the front door and slowly stepped in.
It was dark, but the light from the fireplace showed some of it. Little pictures of shapes and squiggles obviously made from the hands of a child hung on the wall. I looked closer at one near me. It was a crudely drawn picture of a girl and a taller boy. Both had red smiles drawn from a crayon.
Written sloppily at the top in blue and red crayon, 'Me and ri-ri'. I smiled under my scarf at the cute name she gave her brother. I turn to the bed and see Eric's sister asleep. I unconsciously became even more silent and slower with my movements, possibly because I did the same if my own sister was asleep some years back so I wouldn't wake her. I crept closer to a small whiteboard and squinted in the dark to read what it said.
Written all over it were a jumble of sentences and spellings both in two separate handwriting, one sloppy and one not as sloppy. On the floor in front of the whiteboard sat messy piles of paper with sloppy hand-writing of the alphabet. Some papers showed a bad design of some of the letters while others were a large improvement. All those times Eric would skip school was to teach his own sister who couldn't go to school. To still give her an education when she couldn't go to school.
If Amelia's friend was right, then he's also been playing with her as much as possible. Most people I know wouldn't even have the time of day to talk to their siblings, let alone spend time with them. Even so, why was he more angry than ever before he was arrested? Out of the corner of my eye I see another crude drawing, but this one was crumpled up. I can just barely make out a nasty face, even for the drawing skills of a child.
I reach for it and freeze in place. There was something different in the room. It felt tense and stressful. like a huge weight was suddenly set on me. Like I was being hunted.
Then I see it. A tall thing shrouded by shadow. A silhouette against the burning fireplace. "You're trespassing," came a deep, powerful voice. I tried to look up and possibly defend myself, but I was busted.
Then I realized I had more problems than trespassing at that moment. When I looked up, right where the eyes should be on the silhouette, were two bright, white dots.