Forever Changed (5 page)

the
window. I giggled and kept walking. I wonder if that is what my father meant, when he said everyone must fear me.

After that
, I sort of let my mind clear. I just wanted to walk and escape from everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours.

An hour later, I ended up two miles away from my home. I had stopped to take pictures of everything, bugs eating a spider, flowers, a funny looking rock, and birds.

I was enjoying my alone time, that I had not realized that I was at the bottom of the waterfall. I could feel the cool mist as the water hit the rocks on the bottom. I walked over to one patch of sun that had escaped among the trees, and stepped into it.

I sat down on a huge rock and started taking pictures of the falls and the rainbows that came off of the falling water. I put my camera down and looked up. It
must be a 300 foot waterfall. I started wondering to myself why I always come to the falls when I clear my mind.

I slowly got up and started walking the steep hill
up to the top of the falls. I had been up there a few times, but never had my camera with me. I figured I would take pictures now, from the top.

About ten minutes later
, I was standing on the edge of a rock, right next to the flowing water. The sun here was shining brightly without the trees blocking its way. Wow, it was really high and gorgeous up here. The sound of the rushing water filled my ears, so that I could not hear anything else.

I took my camera from around my
neck and laid down on the big rock. The rock was so warm. I was lying flat on my stomach, so that I was looking over the edge of the waterfall. I started taking pictures; I felt like this place was calling my name and had no idea why.

All of a sudden, as I was takin
g pictures, the skies darkened.

“
Oh great, another storm,” I grumbled to myself while raising the camera to my eye. I continued to take pictures.

I gasped, nearly dropping
my camera over the edge of the falls. I looked down at the falls and saw nothing, but while I was looking through the lens of my camera, I could swear I did see something. I slowly lifted the camera to my eye and looked through again. I had to make sure that I was not seeing things.

I gasped again
, as I seen a boy falling into the water below!

Chapter 9

              I snapped a quick picture. I jumped up so quickly, that I nearly fell over the edge of the falls myself. I started running at full force back to my house.

I was trying to get to my dark room a
s fast as possible, so that I could develop the film! I had to see if my eyes were lying to me. The skies had cleared up and no longer did they look like a storm was coming.

I felt a stitch in my side, I could hear my pulse in my ears, but I didn’t stop running.

              I was not paying attention to where I was going and tripped over a root of a huge oak tree that was sticking up from the ground.

I landed hard on a rock
, with a sharp edge. I felt the stab of pain, as I struck the rock. I sat up, since I had landed on my knees then stomach and looked at the damage done.

My black slacks had been ripped and
a piece of the rock had broken off into my knee. It was sticking in my knee, as if a thorn from a beautiful red rose was stuck in your finger. I gently touched the broken part of the rock and winced from the pain. It was wedged in there pretty good and hurt tremendously. Now what was I going to do.

             
“Where is my camera,” I gasped, in fear that it got broken or scratched in the fall. I looked behind me and seen it laying a little to the right of where I fell. I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands, looking for any sign that it may have caused harm to the film inside. I sighed with relief; my camera was unscathed in the fall.

Now, I had to figure out how to get home with my knee in the shape it wa
s. After thinking for a little bit, I decided that the rock had to come out, if I wanted to make it home. So, with a lot of mind over matter, I grabbed the end of the rock firmly and quickly pulled. I screamed out in pain, as the two inch rock slid out. I automatically clasped a hand over the wound and the other over my mouth.

I sat there rocking back a
nd forth crying from the numbing pain in my knee.  I slowly gained control over myself, ripped a strip off the bottom of my shirt, wrapped and tied it around my knee, so that the bleeding would stop. I will inspect and take care of it better when I get home.

I got up and limp
ed my way toward my house. I had run a pretty good distance before I fell. I was only fifty yards away from the back door. I should have been more careful, but I really needed to check this film, so it was my own stupidity for not paying attention.

Every time I lifted my foot to take a step
, searing pain would shoot through my knee. I looked down and the blood had leaked through my makeshift bandage. I guess fixing this knee will have to come before developing my film. I growled in anger and aggravation.

I continued on to the house and let myself in through the back door
. There was no way I was walking all the way around the front that is a long walk.

I stopped at the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water.
After closing the door to the refrigerator, I walked through the huge kitchen to the dining room table. I pulled a chair out and sat down. The bleeding from the wound was so bad that my black slacks were soaked and my socks and Nikes were covered in my own blood. I had even had bloody shoe prints all over the kitchen floor.

I needed to get to my bathroom upstairs, I have everything I need
ed to clean and sew this wound up, in the closet.  I didn’t think I could make it up the stairs to my room. I was dreading it.

Why the hell did I have to fall for? If I wouldn’t have fallen, then I wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and I would
not be in such a predicament now. I was becoming angry and my blood pressure started rising. I heard a clap of thunder, but ignored it, overcome with anger. I wanted to develop my film and now I was in a major situation.

I stomped the floor with my foot and the pain in my knee was horrific. I screamed out over the clap of thunder and clamped my
hand on my knee. I was so mad my face was blood red and the thunder sounded like it was getting closer. It sounded as if it was in the dining room with me.

I felt a hot pain in my knee, bu
t started kicking the wall. I was throwing a two year old tantrum. I picked up the chair and slung it to the other side of the dining room. I have only been this angry once and that was when I slammed through the door of the closet, I was hiding in the night my father died. Then I realized that my anger was not going to do anything and I needed to think rationally.

I caught my breath and tried relaxing. Breathing in and breathing out. It was working
, my blood pressure was going down, and for some reason the thunder was losing the intense rhythm that it had displayed before. I walked over picked the chair up, that I had slung through the dining room. I placed it back where it belonged. I was fixing to sit back down when I noticed something. I stopped with my butt about an inch from the seat. How can that be?

I looked down; the bleeding from my knee had stopped. I sat
the rest of the way down, to have a closer look. I gritted my teeth while pulling back the rip in the black slacks, expecting to feel the pain that never came. There was no blood and no proof that I even had a wound at all, except for the blood down my leg, on my slacks, and on my shoes.

Chapter 10

             
What in the world? I thought to myself. How is this possible? Hell, the real question is, how did this happen? My knee was completely healed. What is going on? I really wished my father would have gone into detail of what ‘our kind’ was and who I was. This is so aggravating. I need to get this film developed and then go to my father’s study soon. I need answers.

With a knee that seemed to heal all on
it’s on, I headed upstairs to my studio. I had to get to the dark room. The boy looked familiar, the one who I seen falling through the lens of my camera. He looked like a boy I go to school with. Lucas Sheath is his name; he always has girls hanging all over him. I found this repulsive. Why would a bunch of girls want to hang on him all day? I knew why of course Lucas Sheath is gorgeous!

His hair is blond with a hint of brown that is cute, like a little boys cut with just a little sticking up at the top. He has a baby face even though he is seventeen. He has gorgeous crystal blue eyes that you can see your reflection in and a body, damn a body! He is tall with broad shoulders and a six pack to prove to everyone he does work out on a daily basis. He is the captain of our football team and he has a dark tan all year long.

He is a model type boy and rumor had it around school that he had a contract with a modeling agency. I had fantasized once about being one of those girls always hanging on him, but there is just something about him that makes me think of a deer’s eyes caught in headlights. He just gives me a bad feeling and I have not yet figured out why. Something draws me to him though and has for a while. I am not a hundred percent sure if the boy I saw in my camera was real, but I was definitely going to find out!

Once I reached my bedroom,
I walked over to the side of my bed and pressed the button to enter my studio, from there I half walk, half ran to the back room to the door leading into my black room. I walked in and flipped the switch that casts a red light, so that regular light does not ruin my film. I hear the familiar sound of the soft humming from the vent fan that automatically comes on when I turn on the light.

I set up my three trays next to the sink on the long counter. I grabbed the developer and the fixer off the shelf under the table. The developer is what develops my pictures on the paper and the fixer is what stops the developer from, well, developing. I poured some of the developer in the first tray and the second tray I poured some fixer. The last tray I turned to the sink and put some water in it, so that when my pictures are done being processed, all the chemicals can be washed off of it. 

After I got the trays set up I walked over to the enlarger and placed some special paper on it. I removed my camera from around my neck and
I fumbled around with my camera trying to open it. Even though there is a red light on in the dark room, that does not mean that you can see that well. So opening my camera was a pain. I couldn’t turn on the regular light because I had my paper already in the enlarger and if it came on it would turn my paper black when I put it in the developer.

I finally opened the camera and reach
ed into the chamber to remove the film. The chamber was empty.

Chapter 11

I couldn’t believe it. I was dumbfounded! When I had ran to grab my camera earlier
, before going on a walk, the one I had used to take pictures of my father’s murder scene, well I had removed the film and placed it in the safe. When I was taking pictures I had forgotten to replace the film.

N
ow I was frustrated and would never find out the truth if the boy was real or not. I laid my camera down and walked out of my dark room and into my bedroom, and then I headed straight for my bathroom.

             
I wanted to try and relax; the last couple of days had been horrible so I needed it so I would take a bath. I had grabbed my robe on my way to the bathroom and laid it beside my tub. I slowly lit all of the black candles that surrounded my tub, turning on the faucet, filling the tub with hot water.