Strange Beginnings// j.p.

prologue

     I always knew I was special, different from other kids. My parents always used to tell me I was. And I know what you're thinking: Every parent says that to their kid, because every parent wants their child to believe that it's true. But for me, I really am special, I really am different. It all began the night my parents were brutally murdered. I was seven, and they had been killed by a pack of wild dogs, according to the police. But I knew the truth. A monster killed my parents, a monster only I could see. I was placed in the care of Abraham Portman as my parents requested in their will, and for the first time since the night I watched them get ripped apart, there was someone who believed me when I said a monster had done it. Abe could see the same monsters, and he began to teach me how to fight them. He taught me how to control the powers I was once so afraid of, taught me unarmed combat, as well as how to fire a gun, and he found me a special tutor, someone like me who could teach me how to harness the abilities I had kept locked inside for so long. I quickly became best friends with Jacob, Abe's grandson. Abe used to tell Jake stories about peculiars, which is what I am, but Jacob had begun to outgrow them, saying they were fairytales and refusing to believe them, no matter how much I insisted they were true. Eventually, Abe told me to stop trying, and out of respect for the old man, I did. But then, when Jacob and I were 15, something terrible happened to us, and it became time for me to convince Jacob of just how true Abe's stories were. And of what role we'd have to play in the new stories unfolding.