Tuesday, November 1st, 2016

Sid’s POV

For little over a week, all I was capable of, was lay in bed or on the couch. I was feeling better, but still felt exhausted physically.

But ever since Raphael and Michael decided to intervein and help protecting me, I haven’t had a nightmare, I haven’t experienced any fear, anger, or feelings of hatred towards anyone or anything.

Annika is able to touch me, to be with me without feeling a barrier, so it’s evidently sure their protection is helping to keep the entity locked away – for now.

Dad hasn’t been home since last Friday, as he – along with Mr. Bray, went to meet up with other Angels, to discuss the situation and find a solution.

I’m just wondering why me being possessed got Wiccans, Angels and even two Archangels to step into action, while they haven’t intervened with the events in the past, for nearly 400 years.

And now that Annika, Davy, Cory and I have this much more information, we started exploring the history, using those search terms to find more information.

Angels and Archangels as a search term, along with Baywick, Baywick’s forest or Baywick Woods, doesn’t give us any results – which we kind of expected.

Wiccans and Baywick gave us tons of results to read.

Most articles are about Wiccans and their rituals in the woods, claiming they’ve been there for years and years in a row, arriving – coincidentally – exactly 13 years after Baywick’s death, halfway during the first cases of missing persons. We’ve collected evidence – me from the couch and the rest in the library – to prove that the firs cycle too place in 1650, 13 years after Baywick’s death.

Six hunters died in the woods in 1950, and all were found by others. They were murdered, stabbed to death and left to die on the banks of the lake.

That lead us to research the lake some more, finding out that locals used to call it ‘The Blood Lake’, since lots of blood was shed in the lake.

It leads me to believe that my dream, about wading through the black slurry that I thought was water, was the lake, and the children I saw, must have all been victims.

I already figured so, but now I’m certain I was right.

It’s an image I can’t get out of my mind; the bloody hands of children groping me, blaming me for their death.

Angie’s words, and her beautiful and innocent face draining from it’s colour while blood kept seeping from the wounds in her stomach.

I feel guilty, yet I know it wasn’t my fault at all. I’ve only been alive during one cycle.

But somehow, I feel like I’m more important in all of this then I originally thought, or then anyone let’s me out to believe.

I already know Cory and I are linked to previous cases, but that means our families are too.

I’m not the only relative of Hannah Hayes, who I found out to be a distant family member. Her great grandmother was my great grandmothers sister.

It does not explain what Cory and I have to do with this, while none of my sisters have anything to do with it.

It’s frustrating to not know all secrets behind all events that happened and are still happening.

And I still lack most energy to fuzz over it too much. I sleep half the day, and with that, I mean during day, while I sleep at night too.

But today, since mom ran to the supermarket to get some groceries, I decided on leaving the house for the first time since I came home from hospital.

I grabbed my schoolbag, and don’t get me wrong because I’m not excited about going to school. But I can’t show up in school without school supply and sit down in class because I miss hanging out with my friends.

Even if it’s during class.

Today is the best day of the week, since I have two hours in arts class, two hours in P.E. and an hour of history.

The latter has never been my favourite class, but it became significantly more important now that we’re going over the history of Miller Town, and the papers that we were supposed to hand in seemed to be only the start. We have to do a project on the history of one of the more important parts of Miller Town. Cory, Davy and Annika are in a group – leaving a spot for me – and picked the old Mill, and it’s start back in 1631.

I leave a note behind to inform mom I’m in school and not to worry. I tell her I will call if something is wrong, and I’ll visit Mrs. Brand to inform her of my presence, so she can keep a closer eye on me.

And then I leave, missing Math, right in time for Arts class if I hurry a bit.

* * * * *

As soon as I enter school, I come in contact with students. At first, nobody really notices me, but soon, whispers start, and people notice me simply because they’re being nudged by their friends, shamelessly pointing in my direction, probably spreading rumours about what happened to me.

It’s another disadvantage of staying home for so long; people had time to come up with their own stories about what happened.

Most popular story is truth, sadly; I was in the woods yet again. The part that is furthest away from the truth in that story is that they claim I was attacked by wolves, just like the one who supposedly hunted Cory down.

Now I know how he felt, and it feels shitty.

I ignore them with the best of my abilities, shortly stopping by Mrs. Brand, who’s behind her desk, waiting for the next class to sit down.

“Mr. Hayes!” She frowns, looking me up and down. “How are you feeling? You’re back in school?” She sends me a knowing look, since they agreed on keeping me home for at least another week.

“I was getting restless… and getting really behind on my schoolwork.”

She rolls her eyes, knowing I couldn’t care less about school. “I’m keeping an eye on you, young man.”

“I know, that’s why I dropped by to tell you I’m here.”

She seems taken aback by the fact I was wise enough to inform her, but smiles after a short silence. “Good, go to your class and let me know if anything is wrong.”

“Will do, Mrs. Brand.” I nod courtly, and leave to hurry towards Arts class. Most students in my class are already seated, and Cory and Davy are bend over a paper, but not looking towards it. They’re whispering about something, and then I stop dead in my tracks, as I notice the familiar face of the girl I started to miss hanging out with; Angie.

I stare at her with wide eyes, and for a while, she’s dreamingly staring into depths, but then her eyes focus, and they find me. She stares confused before she ducks down to alarm Cory and Davy, who both look at her at first, but then turn to look at me.

“Sid!?” Davy hurries towards me, pulling me inside the classroom. “What are you doing here?”

“I… I was bored…” I stare at Angie and slowly, Cory and Davy both look at her too, before looking back at me.

“Hi… Sid?” Angie insecurely asks, waving a hand while seemingly lost at how to react. “You… see me?”

“Hi Angie…” I mutter, staring down because I don’t want to alarm other that I’m talking to an invisible person.

Apparently, I wasn’t careful enough before, and my parents overheard me talking to her on several occasions.

“You see her again?”

“Yeah… I didn’t know I would…” I sit down in between Cory and Davy, while Angie floats around in front of us. “Where’s Annika and Amara?”

“They’re helping Mrs. Fletcher to get some supplies.”

“Oh, right…”

“Why are you here, Sid? You needed to keep calm…”

“I get to see Ang again,” I deadpan, annoyed because they’re acting like I’m going to break down any second now. “It was my search to begin with, and it’s most of all mybattle. It’s inside me. I should at least get to decide what to do with my time while I’m still alive and not… completely possessed.”

“Right,” Cory agrees with a nod and a small smile. “Good to see you again.”

“Good to see you too.” I smile at him gratefully for not bitching about my presence.

Since Amara is seated at our group of tables, we can’t acknowledge Angie’s presence during class, and I can’t inform Annika about this development either.

But it does cheer me up to have Angie back in my life, and to find out we didn’t lose our connection for good. We just had a barrier that prevented us from communicating.

At least I have another thing that will warn me that the seal is starting to break again; Angie disappearing.

Annika jumped me happily as soon as she found me in the class, and Mrs. Fletcher greeted me with a wide smile, telling me to just help my friends during this project and let her know if something was wrong.

I think the entire school knows I haven’t fully recovered yet. It’s just a hand full of people that know I’m not going to recover any time soon, or maybe not at all.

But for today, I want to pretend to be okay.

As if there isn’t a malicious entity feeding off of my energy, trying to break out of me to harm innocent kids to revenge a death that happened 400 years ago.

* * * * *

We’re practising flying rings during P.E. and while I want to participate, it took a lot of effort and discussion with Coach Berners to let me.

I told him I was fine, had enough of a break, and how flying rings wouldn’t cause too much trouble, as long as I didn’t have to run laps.

And how I promised I would stop as soon as I got tried.

I just didn’t tell him I feel physically tired all the time, while mentally I could run a marathon.

He eventually told me to get dressed and join, probably mostly because I wouldn’t take no for an answer and was delaying class while everybody was waiting.

And now I’m waving back and forth, trying not to give into my tired arms, that seem to drain from it’s energy fairly quickly.

I am supposed to turn upside down right now, but instead of doing so, I slide my feet over the floor in a backwards motion, to slow myself down enough to not plunge down from that high up. I try slowing down more in my forward movement, but as I do so, a painful thud in my chest causes me to let go of the rings a bit too early, sending myself flying forwards.

I drop myself on the mat, curling up as another painful jolt is coming from my chest, temporarily knocking me out of breath.

“Sid!” Edward is the first to reach me, kneeling down beside me, Davy and Coach Berners following suit.

How is it possible that this is happening? Am I not supposed to be under the protection of two freaking Archangels?

Isn’t that supposed to be enough to keep the entity to stay silent? If Archangels protecting me isn’t enough, then what will be?

“That’s it, you’re going home.” Coach Berners tells me firmly.

“Or hospital?” Joey, a classmate suggests from close by.

“I’m… fine…” I mutter. “Just a stab… bad condition…”

“No, you’re going home. I’m calling your parents.”

“Whatever.” I roll over to my back as soon as the pain reduced and I’m able to breath again, staring up in agony.

It’s the pity in Davy’s and Edward’s eyes that I hate most. And while Edward hasn’t got a single clue what is going on right now, Davy knows it is a bad sign that the pain won’t stay away.

But all in all, I do manage to stay true to myself for almost a month already, which is something.

“Let’s get you to the locker room, while I call your parents,” coach Berners offers me a hand to pull me up, but I ignore him and get up myself, sending him an annoyed look.

“I’m not a freaking baby, okay? I decide whether or not I’m going, and I’m not going.” I feel annoyed, mostly because mom has been calling me none-stop, texting me to come home and take more rest. And I’m fed up with always being surrounded by people who are keeping an eye on me, while I wouldn’t mind being alone for once.

This whole thing is starting to anger me, and I wish people who know what is going on, would start realising these might be my last days on earth.

I do not want to spend them locked inside a house because something might happen any day.

It’s going to happen eventually and staying at home isn’t going to prevent it from happening.

More so, this is my body, and my life. And for once I want to be at school while I always rather stayed home, and now I’m not allowed?

What kind of logic is that?

I eventually barge out of the gym, fed up with everything and everyone.

And thank god, for once, nobody decides to follow me.

For the next hour or so, I hide away in the library at school, wanting to find more information about exorcisms, and how often they go wrong.

I want to know more about Michael and Raphael, and what their powers supposedly are, and how Archangels and Angels are different from each other. I want to know what it might mean to me that I’m half an Angel and how this might affect the developments while being possessed.

I search for information about the people who died under weird circumstances right after a cycle ended, and shortly before lunch, I find what I was looking for;

They all got ill, and had respiratory arrests just like me, shortly before a kid went missing. I already know those kids are the ones that had been born on the day that the last kid of a previous cycle went missing.

But now I know, those people all got ill, got better, and disappeared about a month after the kid went missing. They’re off grit for about a month or two, and all resurfaced shortly before the rest of the cycle took place.

They all die three weeks after the sixth kid was taken; the exact amount of days it took for the people to kill Baywick after the sixth supposed hunting accident.

This isn’t a coincidence. I’m looking at the names and information of people that had been previous ‘carriers’ as the wiccans and Angels like to call the possessed people. These are the people who killed six innocent kids each, all before they died themselves.

I’m going to be the next on the list, if I don’t find a way to get this entity out of me.

And for starters, I need to find out what exactly happened to the hunters who did die in the woods.

Which is going to be one hell of a job, since reports of the accidents are old, incomplete and very vague.

One thing I do find, is the locations the accidents happened, because they held memorials for several years in a row, to honour those who died during the accidents, in the same spot they were found.

I need to request Angie to take me to those spots in my dreams, ifand only if Angie is still capable of controlling my dreams.

“I still think I am.” Angie sounds… scared, showing up beside me.

Since I’m surrounded by people, I know I can’t talk back, so I decide on writing down my responses.

Can you take me to these spots?

“I’m not sure what good that would do…” She seems hesitant and… unwilling to do so.

I need to go there, and you need to help me.

“I’m really busy with guiding Davy, Annika and Cory through the woods…”

Don’t you want me to figure out what happened?

Angie bites her lip, still keeping a bit of distance between us, nervously waving back and forth. “Davy is helping me… you don’t have to… I mean…”

You mean you don’t want to help me anymore.

“I can sense it, and it scares me.” Angie admits with a soft whisper. “It killed me, you know?” She takes in a deep breath, staring towards the computer again. “But… there’s one thing I need you to search for.”

I’m not going to take any requests coming from you, if you’re not willing to help me.

“It will help you, Sid… because I think it’s what explains why it’s so much more powerful inside you then it ever was before.”

What is it?

“Baywick’s lost daughter.”

Baywick had a lost daughter?

“There were rumours about it. I’m not sure if it’s true though. But there are documentations that he had a second daughter. Edward came across it, but since I can’t communicate with him outside his dreams, he dismissed it as unimportant. I told Davy about it but they’re really busy trying to find a solution to your… problem.”

So, Baywick had another daughter? At least, there’s a possibility and rumours about it? I stare at Angie for a while, contemplating on demanding her to do something in return, but then again, if this might help figure out why I’m this much more affected, then I should do some research on the topic, right?

And, so, I google for any information about a possible second daughter of Baywick.