I grew up in a small village, a simple farming community consisting of two tribes living in harmony, with any conflict being settled by our Shaman, a wise and old man who knew the mysterious ways of the Spirits.
Ever since I was young, I could see shadowy figures from the corners of my eyes. I can’t tell you when it started, as it seems to have been for as long as I can remember.
However, I can tell you that when I was eight – maybe nine – years old, I started to notice that the few friends I had didn’t seem to ever look at these shadows, and neither did my parents.
That is when I decided to tell my parents what I saw, but they thought I was making things up. My mistake was then elaborating, trying to make them understand exactly what it was I saw.
I saw shadowy figures, most looking very humanoid, especially what I called the “Fresh Ones”, solid and deep dark shadows that were hard to miss, standing out with a definite human shape.
Others were more vague, gray, or faded, and were less easy to recognise compared to the fresh ones. They still looked fairly humanoid although fuzzy around the edges, and in my mind I had dubbed them the “Old Ones”.
These two shadowy versions never bothered me too much, they seemed to just wander about, or sometimes just hang around in one spot, doing absolutely nothing.
The reason I decided to tell my parents was the third kind of shadow.
These I had named the “Grotesque”, and I had only seen one of its kind, and only since that specific morning.
It was significantly larger than any other shadows I had seen, at least three to four times bigger and towering over all of the buildings in our little village. Worst of all, it only seemed vaguely humanoid, even though it was much more distinctive than the fresh ones.
The Grotesque also moved around a lot, almost like it was searching for something.
Every time I saw it, something felt horribly wrong, making the hairs stand up in the back of my neck.
My parents didn’t quite get what I was talking about, but they told me they would take care of it. Satisfied that they would do something, although completely clueless as to what, I went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up with five people standing around my bed.My parents, the Shaman, and two of his disciples.
It turns out that after I had gone to bed, my parents went to visit the Shaman, and roughly told him what I had told them.
The Shaman then decided that I was obviously possessed by a dark entity, and that I needed to be exorcised.
The next three days and nights were the most horrible ones in my life.
My parents said goodbye to me and left my bedroom, as the Shaman and his disciples tied me to the bed.
The disciples started chanting the same monotonous chorus over and over again, until it resonated inside of my skull, supposedly to numb the entity inside me.
At the same time, the Shaman hit the bare soles of my feet, sometimes with a whip, sometimes with a wooden cane, supposedly to scare the entity out of me.
I was raised by loving parents, who taught me important things in life like promising to never lie, always valuing and appreciating hard work, and to be kind whenever you were able to.
That was – quite probably – why I let this happen for so long, genuinely thinking they were trying to help me, that there was something wrong with me.
After three days and nights of endless chanting and what could only be described as continuous torture, I finally broke my promise to my parents, and I lied.
I said, while crying hot tears as my lower legs felt like I had been standing in a fire, that I felt better, that I had felt some entity leave me, and that I could see no more shadows.
The Shaman, who had always thought very highly of himself, was convinced. Of course this exorcism worked, he had performed it himself!
As his disciples untied me, the Shaman proudly ushered my parents into my bedroom, all the while boasting on how other Shamans surely weren’t powerful enough to exorcise such a strong entity.
My parents believed him, paid him a sum of money, and promised to spread word of his glorious achievement.
Then, after the Shaman and his disciples had left, they beat me, further destroying any shred of trust I had left.
They told me I had humiliated them by being weak and getting possessed, on how I brought shame to them in the eyes of the tribe, and how getting the Shaman to help them had cost them so much.
How I would be useless in the fields until my feet had healed, and how it was my fault for being so pathetic that I couldn’t resist the entity.
Then they walked out, letting me know that if I wanted food or drink, it was on me to get it. They had to tend the fields, and had already spent way too much time and money on me.
I watched them go, and all I could do was weep, as I had never felt this alone and in this much pain.
The shadows however, were still there. The Old Ones and the Fresh Ones. Nothing had changed, at least not with them.
It took me the better part of seven weeks before I could walk properly again without the aid of walking sticks, and to this day my feet still feel wrong, broken.
I went back to working in the fields, keeping my head down, trying not to look at any of the shadows or even at my parents, as they frightened me more at this point than the shadows did.
A few weeks later, whilst working the fields again alongside my parents, I felt what could only be described as an ominous sensation, almost like a dark presence.
Not long after that, I heard a voice call out.
The Shaman had shown up, to come check if I hadn’t been repossessed.
As he spoke to my parents, I kept my head down, focussing on my work. This man had beaten me raw for three days, and did not deserve a single moment of my time.
My parents however, saw it differently. The Shaman had saved their only son from being taken by a dark entity, and they demanded I at least look him in the eyes and thank him for what he had done.
Obliging their demand, not wanting to give them any reason to beat me again, I looked up.
And I grew cold as ice, my heart skipping a few beats out of terror.
Hovering just over the Shaman, was the Grotesque.
It was that presence I had felt earlier, and now it was almost overwhelming me. The Grotesque was radiating vile and intense hatred, seemingly aimed at the Shaman.
I fell down on my hands and knees, barely able to catch my breath, certain this would be my end. That the Shaman knew I could still see the shadows, and that he would torture me to death.
Luckily, the Shaman was either distracted by something, or thought my falling prone was a sign of silent gratitude, and he walked off with my parents.
That’s when I knew I had to get out of there, to leave my village behind.
I worked hard in the fields, and started helping others out in the few bits of free time I had, doing all I could to earn a bit of coin, hiding it from my parents.
The Shaman never checked up on me again, much to my relief, as he was far too busy telling greatly exaggerated tales about my so-called exorcism, spreading his fame throughout other villages, furthermore inflating his ego.
Not long after he started doing that, people from other villages occasionally began coming by, asking me questions about my experience and how lucky I should be for having such a great Shaman watching out for our village.
These new people also brought with them more shadows, all of them Fresh Ones, and it started to worry me.
I had to get out of here, before another Grotesque was brought over, and possibly focussed its attention on me.
So I left.
I gathered the few handfuls of coins I had managed to salvage, took my blanket, filled a bag with hard breads, cured sausages and some fruit, grabbed two waterskins, and I fled in the middle of the night.
No note left for my parents, no message, I just knew that I had to go right then and there.
For many days I wandered, heading west to where I thought a big town was.
By the time most of my food was gone, I finally stumbled upon a small village. Not the big town I was hoping for, but as I was running low on food, anything would do at this point.
I walked around the town, looking around for the shadows, and was relieved to see that most of them were Old Ones, and only a handful of Fresh Ones.
People started to wonder why a young child was strolling through their village all by itself, so I had no choice but to lie again, and spun a sad tale about how my parents sent me away to look for work, as the crops they grew no longer were sufficient to feed all of us.
A kind matronly lady, Brega, took pity on me, as I reminded her of her nephew, and offered me a place to stay in turn for some work.
Her oldest son, Toni, was in charge of the local blacksmith, and took me in as an apprentice.
A few years passed, and I finally felt safe. There were no Grotesques, they had no Shaman, and I spent my time learning the Crafts of the Forge.
It all seemed idyllic.
Then one day, by the time I was about sixteen, a Grotesque showed up, appearing over the roofs of some buildings in the distance.
It wandered around the village, seemingly looking for something or someone, and it filled me with dread – just like the other one had done back home.
Nobody paid it any attention, just like all those years ago, and I was standing at the forge of the smithy, frozen, mentally planning on how I could gather my belongings as fast as possible and get out of here.
Until I heard the screaming.
Someone else was seeing the Grotesque? Finally, I wasn’t the only one!
I dropped what I was doing, earning me an earful of curses from Toni, and I ran towards the screaming, still holding my hammer.
After a brief search, I found the source of the screaming, which by now had turned into loud sobbing, at the outskirts of town. A young boy was standing before the body of a man, dressed in fancy and expensive-looking clothing.
The Grotesque seemed to be pacing around the area near the corpse, circling around it and scouting for something.
As it seemed to ignore me for the moment, I grabbed the young man and ushered him away from the horrible sight.
By now, others had followed the sound of the scream, and much to my relief one of those people was Brega.
She took one glance at the scene, and took the befuddled young boy away.
I was later told that the corpse had been a merchant from a nearby village, who was to meet a trader just outside of town to purchase some exotic goods. Sadly, some bandits had gotten to the man first, and brutally murdered him while they robbed him.
The boy had been an apprentice to the merchant, but he had stepped away to nervously relieve himself in the bushes a little bit away. When he heard commotion, he hurried back to his master, and stumbled upon the scene.
For days, I saw the Grotesque wander around, seemingly looking for something, while I took great care to never be in its path.
Five days after it had appeared, the Grotesque froze. It stopped looking around frantically, turning slowly on the spot, and crept out of our town.
No longer hesitant, but with an apparent direction, towards a goal only it knew, slowly but steadily making its way.
I immediately went to Toni and Brega, to tell them that it was time for me to go, to bring my earnings back to my parents, and I thanked them with all my heart, promising them I’ll return one day to repay their kindness.
We said a tearful goodbye, and I left, carrying whatever I had earned or made in the time I was there, along with again a bag full of food.
Bought, this time, not stolen, and for some reason, this tasted better.
I followed the Grotesque, making sure to keep a certain distance between it and me, determined to find out what this thing was and what it was doing.
Luckily for me, it moved at a slow pace, and even though it took me several days to follow the Grotesque to its destination, I managed to keep up by sleeping a few hours, then running to catch up.
By the third day, the Grotesque approached a small clearing, filled with a smokey campfire and some ragged-looking tents.
There were some men there, who fit the description of the bandits that had attacked the merchant earlier.
It was one of those men that the Grotesque appeared to be interested in, hovering over him, completely unnoticed by all but me.
The Grotesque then started to radiate vile and intensive hatred, aimed at the man he was hovering over.
The same sickening feeling that I had felt coming from the Grotesque hovering over the Shaman.
That’s when I made the connection.
The bandit was the one who had murdered the merchant, and the Grotesque was whatever got created the moment the merchant died violently.
And now it had found its killer, and latched on.