Page 2 of Somber Prince

“Is she still talking about the black smoke?” Dad asked quietly.

I strained my hearing to listen to their conversation, but Mom had no chance to reply.

An ear-splitting scream tore through the house.

Mom’s face went as pale as the wall behind her.

“Ciana…”

Dad tossed his briefcase aside and sprinted for the basement door. I ran after him.

Ciana’s terrified screams rushed from the basement when Dad threw the door open. She screamed like she was being murdered, and I hoped Dylan hadn’t sneaked into our house somehow. Because then, my parents would surely kill him right there in our basement.

Dad ran down the stairs, skipping a few at a time.

Over his shoulder, I saw the closed door to the guest bedroom. Black tendrils curled from under it.

Black smoke.

It was so thick, it looked like ink spreading through water. Then it suddenly constricted again, as if pulled back into the room.

“Ciana!” Dad yelled on his way to the door.

Her screams stopped abruptly, as if cut off mid-breath.

Dad slammed against the door, shoulder first, knocking the door off its hinges. Splinters flew all over the place.

“Ciana?”

I skidded to a stop in the doorway.

Her bed was unmade and empty. As my dad frantically searched the small room for my cousin, I watched the black licks of dense-like-ink smoke being sucked into the walls by some silent, invisible power.

Then, they were gone.

And so was my cousin.

* * *

Now.

“Hey, keep it down!” Melanie, my older sister, stomped down the stairs into the basement.

I sat on the couch with Elaine who was staying overnight. We were watching a movie.

“What do you mean?” I squinted at Melanie. “The sound is barely on.”

Melanie jerked her head impatiently, flicking back her shoulder-length hair, blonde like mine.

“Well, Dad wants to go to bed. He needs his teeth brushed and stuff.” She gave me a pointed look.

It’d been years since Mom passed from the same disease that had taken her older sister, the type of cancer that killed women fast and young. A decade older than my mom, Dad had always said he’d go first, but fate had ruled otherwise. He’d never recovered from her untimely loss, and with age, his mental health had deteriorated to the point that he couldn’t stay in the house on his own anymore.

Melanie took a week off work to “help” look after Dad. That didn’t mean she actually did anything to help. I’d been Dad’s one and only caregiver ever since he took a turn for the worse last year.

It made sense. Melanie had a growing career in finance. I had odd dance gigs here and there, still working on getting a contract with a production company. Between the two of us, I’d seemed to be a more logical choice to put my dreams on hold and move back home to take care of Dad.

“I’ll do it.” I got up from the couch.

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