The Start
I’ve been able to see spirits all my life. When I was younger I always assumed everyone else could see them too but anytime I would point them out everyone would say there’s nothing there. By age four I learned to keep it all to myself, I was the only one who could see them. As I got older I began to realize there was different types of ghost.
First you’ve got the Drifters, completely harmless spirits. They move slowly or just stand in one spot for a long time just staring. Their usually lost souls who don’t really know what to do, they eventually cross over but it just takes them awhile. Their everywhere but their more heavily populated at hospitals or graveyards, you know places where there’s death. I’ve talked to a lot of them but it’s difficult because their vocabulary is so limited, it’s basically like talking to a zombie.
Then there’s the Scarers, they're your typical pissed off ghost that are hell bent on frightening others to get their revenge. These spirits are usually caused by people who have been murdered or killed in an unjust way and can’t move on until they feel like they’ve finally gotten justice. But some of them aren’t lucky and after years and years of nothing but rage they begin to turn into Lechers.
Lechers were human at some point but have lost their sanity and turn into this beast that I can best describe as an unnaturally tall person who’s always hunched over and has its arms hanging at its side. Oh also it has no facial features only a smile that has way too many teeth. This creature feeds off the misery of others, it likes to torment and play with its food until finally the person kills themselves.
Then finally there’s Beggars, they were never human to begin with. They like causing chaos and watching people suffer. They all look different because they change their form to fit their victims but their usually the persons worst nightmare. Their goal is to bring out the insanity that people bury deep down. The bigger the Beggar the more insane their victim will be. Beggars target families, so any story you’ve heard about a husband shooting his family while they sleep or a mother poisoning her family’s dinner. It’s the doing of a Beggar.
The first time I ever encountered a Beggar was when I was nine years old. I was in town with my parents and we we’re on our way to diner at a local restaurant. On the way there my parents ran into some friends of theirs and they began to chat. I tuned out after the first five minutes, I wasn’t really interested in grown up talk. I looked around to see some Drifters slowly making their way down the sidewalk or just standing in the street. Some of them passed us and I gave them a small smile and they returned it with a nod.
It's then when I heard it, the muffled sound of weeping. I looked towards the source of the sound to see someone crouched down, their head was in their hands and they were crying heavily. My parents being deep in their conversation didn't notice as I silently slipped away from them and headed towards the individual that was located just a few yards away.
As I neared I noticed it was woman and her clothes were tattered and very dirty. It was a spirit but not one I had ever seen before, as far as I was aware Scares never cried and neither did Drifters. I tapped her shoulder.
"Are you okay?"
Do you ever get that feeling when you know you shouldn't have done something, like it's some sort of fear that you messed up even though nothing has happened yet. That's what I felt after those words left my mouth, the women went completely still.
She stopped crying and was just rigid. Then very slowly she picked her head up from her hands and turned her head to look at me. I saw her piercing blue eye first that was bloodshot but then as she turned more I didn't see her second eye. Because it wasn't there, nothing was. Half of her face was gone, it looked like it had been bludgeoned in its bloody and completely unrecognizable state. And if that wasn't horrifying enough I finally notice that her body hadn't turned at all, her head was completely turned around to face me.
But then her body did turn and she crouched down on all fours. Her spine was at an unnatural angle, it was wrong. At this point I started to slowly back away both because I was completely mortified but also because she looked like she was going to charge at me. And she did. She moved unnaturally fast and before I knew it I was sprawled out on the ground and she was on top of me. A big smile formed on her face, well as much as one could with only half their face. Her teeth were decaying and she smelled the way that rotting meat did. Bending down she put her mouth very close to my ear and I shut my eyes tight. It started to whisper in this terrible voice that sounded like too many voices talking at once.
“We can see you too Ellie.”
It knew my name. Suddenly there was a blaring sound and a scream. My eyes snapped open to see the woman was gone. I began to sit up when suddenly hands grabbed me and pulled me up. With the fear of the encounter still current I was scared that it was the women and I began to kick and scream, trying with all my might to get away from her.
“Hey, hey! Ellie calm down!” It was my father.
I stopped and took in my surroundings. My father was holding me an arm’s length away from himself and he looked shaken up. My mother was next to him and she was practically crying and their friends were wide eyed. I turned to my left to see a truck had stopped in the middle of the road and the driver was out of his vehicle apologizing again and again.
“What the hell Ellie, why would you do that!” My father said as he shook me and I looked at him completely confused.
“Wh…what?”
“Honey why would you lay in the road, you could have died!” Now my mother was crying. Then it became clear. When that wom- thing jumped on me it must have pushed me into the road. The blaring noise must have been the trucks horn. My father put me down and headed over to the driver and my mom pulled me into a crushing hug. They sorted everything out and I apologized to my parents telling them I must have tripped when I was crossing the street.
After that I started to notice Beggars more and more. Unlike Lechers that followed their host around, the Beggars attached themselves to their victims. I saw them on people’s backs and at first I didn’t know what they did but when I’d see the newspaper with a header saying Single Mother Dismembers Her Infant Twins, I finally understood because I saw that mother a few weeks earlier feeding her 10 month olds ice cream with a giant Beggar on her back.
I never really got a close up encounter with those things again until I was 15 and that’s where our story really begins.
