Pouring Shadows (Chapter 9)

If it hadn’t been for the loud bangs, Iris might have never woken up from the best sleep she had ever had in ages. She rubbed her eyes and lifted her head a little to see what was going on. Her head felt heavier than usual. She was still in the black car it seemed, and it was pitch black outside. Another bang was heard over the rumble of the car engine. Iris clapped her hands on her ears. Her hands felt wobbly. The source of the sound was so close to her.

She sat up slowly, careful not to make any sound that would reveal her presence. She was getting a very strong sense of the shard. The vibes seemed to get stronger and stronger as the seconds passed. Iris watched the driver from behind his seat. He wore a black suit, black pants and very dark shades that seemed more like goggles from the front. There was this red dot of light blinking at one side and Iris knew they weren’t ordinary shades.

What she didn’t understand was why the man had a gun in his hand and was constantly firing, through his window, into the dark in front of him. Her head throbbed every time he fired a bullet. Then for the first time, Iris looked straight in front at the car ahead that shone dimly under the headlights of the car she was currently in. She could make out two people in the back trying to duck in fear of the bullets. Their back window was completely shattered and there was a hint of golden light for a split second.

Just as Iris realized the location of her last shard, a strong force tightened itself inside her stomach. Then it knocked her back down. Her head hit the carpeted floor of the car with a thud. She curled into a ball. It was happening. She knew what was happening and yet she trembled in fear of it.

‘I thought I just heard… What the–’ The driver looked back at the little girl lying on the floor under the backseats.

Iris was gasping hard. She was losing her vision. She knew that pretty soon everything would turn black. That was a requirement for the third eye.

Only when you lose sight of things, do you clearly see the unseen.

She was afraid, almost to the point of struggling to focus her eyes again. She struggled to see properly. However, every time she blinked, everything would get more blurred.

‘What’s a kid doing in my car?’ The man was shouting furiously.

Iris could hear him exhale in frustration. She could feel his angry vibes… she could feel his mind. She was still alive and breathing, when everything in front of her turned completely black. She knew her eyes were open and she was blinking but no matter how hard she blinked, all she saw was blackness.

Then she felt it; the force, recoiling inside her stomach, sending strong vibes throughout her body to make her shiver and gasp.

‘Hey, kid! Are you sick or… where did you come from? Who’re your parents?’ The man asked while holding up his gun to shoot at the car ahead some more.

Just as he stretched his hand out through the window, a powerful force knocked the gun out of his hands. Iris heard him curse under his breath and fiddle into his pockets for another gun.

‘You ca–’ she tried to speak but was cut off by the sudden stab of immense pain in her forehead.

She gripped her hair with all her might, feeling the dirt filled nails cut into her palms. She gritted her teeth, swallowed back the scream that was stuck in her throat and turned to one side, coiling into a ball. She held her head with her eyes shut tightly. Iris could hear the man shooting once again and the loud bangs from the bullets were only making it worse for her.

She tried to picture the second gun twisting out of the man’s hand. The image flashed in her mind, followed by another bang that tore through the image. Her mind felt distorted and heavy. Her breath came in quick gasps as she started to tremble once again. It felt like something was being ripped open inside her brain, too much pressure to think straight.

She unleashed it without thinking.

There was a loud crack followed by two seconds of silence as the horror slowly unfolded itself. The man dropped his weapon and screamed out in agony. Iris’s mind was too foggy to understand why the guy was making so much noise. She covered her ears tightly.

‘My hand! D-Damn it! What the hell…’ The words escaped his mouth as the car spun around unexpectedly, tires screeching out.

‘Too much noise, too much noise…’ Iris kept muttering with her hands still clapped onto her ears.

The car did a full 360 degree turn before falling into a ditch at the side of the road. The bushes tore out of their roots as the car moved past them and ran straight into a tree. The final smash might have damaged the car badly from the front.

Silence followed. Iris could hear the drumming of her heart in her ears. Her lips quivered slightly as she tried to steady her breathing. Nobody moved or said a word for a while. She lay there calming herself and slowly opening her eyes to focus. It was still dark but not completely black. Her vision was back and the pain was fading away quickly. Whatever happened in the past few seconds made them the most difficult few seconds of her life. She had never had to go through such flesh-shredding pain in her life.

The question remained, why did the pain occur when the third eye was trying to open? Another question invaded her thoughts as she slowly pulled herself into a sitting position.

‘Where am I?’ she finally spoke.

She didn’t remember how long it had been since she’d last spoken a word. Her past experiences had forced her to become completely mute, although an almost death experience was something that pulled her out of it. She tried standing up and bent forward to inspect the unconscious man in the driver’s seat. In the orange light of the car, Iris’s gaze lingered down to his hand that had held the gun before. The minute she saw it, her hand went up to cover her mouth to stop herself from throwing up.

The hand was badly twisted in an abnormal position with his finger bones sticking out of the flesh and blood was still dripping from it non-stop. Iris looked away. She hadn’t seen anything more gruesome than that in her eleven years of life. What was worse was that she was an accidental cause of that. The good news was that she finally found the shard and it was in the car that was being under attack.

She might have already been pumped up about going after it if it wasn’t for the strange vibe. Someone in that car was part of the organization that was after her powers. The same people her parents had turned her to and who’d kept her in that prison cell for years. She’d sensed this person’s vibes a couple of times in the organization before but never seen him or her. She knew she’d die if the shard was not in her hands once again but that one person was what frightened her more.

The vibes she’d felt were too strong, too strong that they might have been the reason her third eye was unable to open. Those vibes had been interfering with her senses, distracting her from the shard, which was why she kept losing focus from it. Now it all made sense.

‘Ugh…’ The man groaned.

Iris had almost forgotten about him. She slowly reached for his shoulder and laid a tender hand on it. He was coming around finally as he turned his head to look back at her.

‘It’s you again. The one who was sick. How’re you feeling now?’

Iris couldn’t help but feel the calm vibes of this person. They were nothing like the ones she’d felt earlier. It was like these were his true vibes and the ones she felt before did not belong with him, like he’d been under a trance of some kind. She smiled and then looked at the hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ she finally spoke.

She had never thought a day would come when she would be talking to someone once again, and telling them about her powers. Yes, that was what she was going to do because the man’s confused face asked for an explanation.

‘What happened to your hand was… it was my fault. I-I couldn’t control it, I was aiming at your gun but there was too much noise and–’

The man’s frown slowly disappeared and he smiled slightly. Iris knew that was his best effort to stay calm despite the excruciating pain he was experiencing.

‘So that was you, eh. I knew it didn’t just slip from my hands. Something had knocked it away.’

‘I can fix your hand, I mean, your bones so that they heal properly… um… you’re free to yell at me for this mistake but you don’t seem angry.’ Iris’s words were barely above a whisper. Her large blue eyes searched the man’s brown ones worriedly. He still didn’t seem to get mad.

‘I’m not mad…’ he said, as if telling himself, ‘I don’t know but for some reason, I just feel great, like my mind has finally cleared and I can see and believe the truth once more. Dixon had been telling the truth all along.’

Iris just stared, not sure of what he was talking about. Her eyes flickered to the injured hand once again, the power surged through her. There was a sudden crack as the bones shifted and clicked back into their original positions. The man slightly jumped in his seat, it happened too fast for him to cry out in pain.

‘Wow, you really should’ve warned me…’ he trailed off, flipping his hand over with a surprised look on his face. Then he turned to Iris, ‘It doesn’t hurt though, not as much as before. I should thank you.’

Iris stared at the person’s forehead. She could feel the happy vibes, no longer filled with anger and distortion, which reminded her.

‘Were you in a trance before… or was something different about you when you were driving earlier?’ the question just made its way out of her mouth. She felt like she should know what was wrong. Just clear instincts perhaps but she never asked questions that felt unrelated to her problems.

The man looked at her with what seemed like gleaming eyes. ‘I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m Edward. It’s nice to meet someone with such abilities. I know a place where you would be warmly welcomed if it’s ok with your parents, because that place consists of people like you and me–’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’ Iris cut him off. She knew where this was going and she had been in a place with people like her. Edward couldn’t fool her into thinking the place was any good. They treated her like a lab rat. He studied her face for a few seconds before answering.

‘I guess you could call it a trance. Something’s not right. I don’t know if it was my bones cracking like that which brought me back to my senses or something else but… I was trying to kill someone I had always respected and looked up to. That person probably doesn’t know this but people actually looked up to him so much. I don’t know how we started to doubt him all of a sudden.’

‘If he was that precious to you, why did you try to hurt him then?’

‘I don’t know what came over me, or any of us. I wasn’t able to think clearly at that time. What Dixon had done was save a person’s life but that person misunderstood. He didn’t see the attacker and thought Dixon was the one who’d attacked him. It was crazy how people started doubting Dixon all of a sudden and buying the person’s story so easily without any real proof.’

‘Did you just say doubt?’

The word clung to her mind. Her instincts told her she knew the answer, although she couldn’t really come up with one at that moment.

‘Yes, it’s crazy I know and I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. You’re what… twelve?’

‘It’s because I asked you to, and I’m eleven.’

‘You’re one smart kid, you know. What I need to know is how you ended up in my car? And where are your parents? I can call someone to drop you where you live.’

‘No, I don’t need anyone knowing about me,’ Iris pressed. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’

‘Alright, alright, it’s okay.’ Edward held up his hands, ‘But you’re going to have to stay some place. I can’t just leave you here in the middle of nowhere.’

Iris looked down. She couldn’t believe she was about to do this but there was no other choice. This person was not going to let her go where she wanted unless she lied to him.

‘Alright. I’ll tell you where I live. If I fix your car then will you drop me back to my house without telling anyone?’

Edward’s brows went up and his face was replaced with delight and excitement.

‘You can do that? If you can then sure, I’ll drop you off. It’s no problem at all!’

Iris nodded.