Specters

My oldest memory is not a pleasant one.

Of course, there’s the fuzzy remains of birthdays, the echoes of shared laughs; but I will never be able to forget the day all of that was ruined.

The day one of those monsters took her from me..

The air was thick with anticipation. A gleam in my sister’s excited eyes as she tugged at the hem of my shirt, our pupils fixed on the fence that separated our yard from the neighbor’s. We were from a family of ghost hunters, my sister and I, and on that fateful day, we were on a mission to catch little spirits, as we often did for fun. But as we glanced over at our neighbor, Mrs. Thompson, her eyes wide with horror, we knew something was different.

Curiosity got the better of us, and we approached cautiously, our gazes shifting between Mrs. Thompson and the object of her terror. There, lying near the fence, was a lifeless body, bathed in an eerie, ominous energy that sent shivers down my spine. It was a specter, as our magic confirmed, but this one seemed far more malevolent than any we had encountered before.

She and I exchanged a quick glance, knowing what we had to do. In our world, feeding a specter a small piece of a soul was supposed to keep them quiet, harmless even. And so, without a moment’s hesitation, we offered it a fragment of our mother’s soul, hoping it would pacify the vengeful spirit lurking before us. Hers was the strongest of all of ours.

We were young. Stupid.

But as Mrs. Thompson lifted her camera, ready to capture the scene forever, a sudden realization washed over us. Something was terribly wrong. The specter, far from being silenced, seemed to grow stronger, and its dark essence twisted and writhed in the air. Fear gripped my heart, my sister tugging at my arm, urging me to show the photograph to our mother. She was making dinner in the kitchen, always a few steps away from our ghostly adventures.

“We have to show Mom!” She pleaded, her voice trembling with a mix of anxiety and innocent urgency.

I nodded, my expression mirroring my concern. “She’ll know what to do. We can’t let this... thing... roam free.”

As we burst into the kitchen, panting and clutching the photograph, our mother turned to us with a gentle smile, a knife in her hand as she prepared the evening meal. “What’s all the commotion, my darlings?”

I held up the photograph, my voice trembling. “Look, Mom! The specter, it’s not... it’s not what we thought. Something’s wrong.”

Her eyes darted from the photograph to our anxious faces. “I’m sure its alright. I’ll look into it later, my sweethearts,” she said soothingly, her attention returning to the stove. “But for now, let me finish preparing dinner.”

But it was too late.

The creak of the front door interrupted our conversation. Doing the only thing I could, I sprang into action, rushing to close it, but an unseen force overpowered me, throwing me back with a violent thrust. The rest was kind of fuzzy. I remember my sister being tossed into the wall next to me, as our dad fled. Damn our coward of a father. I couldn’t help as I cursed him for running in that moment.

That face...I’d never forget that face though. Nor what came next.

Our neighbor’s son, Jonah, appeared in the doorway, wearing an unsettling, off look on his face. There was no remnants of the boy I used to play with during the long summers.

Peacefully, he reached out for me, his voice dripping with an eerie charm. “Oh, my, you’re just so delightful. So....delicious. I only came to finish hers...but I can’t resist. The fire in you burns so brightly.”

Terror clutched at my heart as his- No, that thing wasn’t even close to human. As its fingers grazed my cheek, and I recoiled instinctively. I stumbled backward, finding myself in a silent standoff with the creature that had taken hold of Jonah’s body.

Suddenly, our father burst into the room, his expression filled with a mixture of fear and determination. He brandished a mystical artifact, a relic passed down through generations of our family, and invoked its power to imprison the demon within Jonah. But deep down, we all knew it wouldn’t hold for long.

Right before our eyes, the demon’s malevolence consumed our father’s gaze, and in a horrifying twist of fate, he yanked our mother backward, his blade slicing across her throat. Blood gushed forth, staining the room, as an offering to the demon, which, content with its macabre feast, finally released us from its clutches. She was who it came for, therefore with her, it left.

The blood....

Oh, gods. All I could see was red.