Secrets In The Shadows

Chapter 4: Blowing Off Smoke

I walk as fast as I can away from RSA but I don't go home. Not yet. Instead I go to Tuley Park, the summer camp close to my house. It takes me two buses to get there.

Once I arrive, I go under two trees and sit on the concrete near them. I extend my left arm and open my hand. Moving it up and down, I move my fingers like I'm playing a piano. I watch as the shadows on the concrete start to rise up from the concrete  in waves. The tingling in my head subsides as it always does.

The name for my...ability... is called Shadow Manipulation. Basically its where I have the ability to merge with, control, and draw power from the darkness. Meaning that I can hide in and travel through shadows. 

But that's not all I can do.

I can still remember the day I discovered I had this kind of ability. I was eight years old and me and my twin brother Hunter were playing  on our block. We were pretending that we were raised by monkeys because we had just seen Tarzan for the first time.

We were running up and down the block making monkey sounds until we came to a particular tree in front of one our neighbors lawns. It was one of those trees that usually had a tree house built in it but this one didn't.

Hunter had suggested that we climb up to the top of tree so we could be just like Tarzan. I was afraid of heights and it was January so the ground was still slippery and the tree still had snow covering it so I said no but Hunter climbed it anyway. As I watched him grasp each branch and climb higher, I felt a tingle in the back of head.

He got higher and higher. With barely any leaves covering the tree it was easy to track his movements from branch to branch. As he got higher and higher, my tingling got more persistent.

At one point, Hunter reached for a branch. I expected it to go like this: he would grab the branch, put his foot on it, pull himself up and move onto the next one.

That's what I expected to happen.

That's what I thought would happen.

But it didn't happen. Here's what did happen though: As he grasped the branch in one hand, his feet started to slowly slide off the other branch because of the ice coating it. He panicked and grabbed the other branch with both hands, his legs dangling in the air.

I remember we were both screaming. I was screaming his name, telling him to hold on, to not let go. Our screaming was so loud that it brought the lady whose front yard we were on outside her house. She saw what was happening, and screamed at Hunter to hold on as she ran down the block to our house to get our parents.

Hunter was crying, panicking. I could see his fingers starting to slip. The tingling soon became a hammer banging on the edge of my skull like it was a nail. It was so painful that i screamed out, scaring Hunter. Causing him to lose his hold on the branch.

Causing him to fall.

I can still remember what I felt. The sheer fear for him. The panic that he would fall and die and i would be an only child. I was screaming No! in my head. I wanted him to be safe. I wanted to save him.

All I wanted was to save him.

I flung my hands out towards him. As if i could do something. Tears were blurring my vision but i still saw what happened. I saw the shadows that  were formed at the edge of the tree lift up from the ground. Saw them twist and turn like snakes until they wrapped around my brother's ankles and wrist and slowly tugged him down, setting him softly on the grass on his back. I heard my mom call my and Hunter's name.