The Shadows

One

I never found the dead frightening.

It's not like the movies, they don't realise I can see them and hassle me, they don't try to scare me; mostly I receive friendly smiles and waves or I'm just ignored entirely. Even by the time I was old enough to realise some of the people I was seeing weren't alive I couldn't bring myself to be frightened, I'd been seeing them my whole life. It was too normal for me, I did know straight away that this was a secret to keep.

What did frighten me, however, were the shadows.

I slowly sat up from my lounging position and placed my book down of the grass beside me, I peered across the park to the pond frequented by ducks. The sight of them scurrying away had dragged my attention away from my fictional world and into the real one where I watched the creature -the ones I had no so creatively named the shadows- stroll to the edge of the water and snatch one of the slowest ducks up, swallowing it whole.

The creature was straight out of a nightmare and every time I saw one a light feeling of nausea would sweep over me; it walked on all four of its elongated limbs though it appeared to have feet on the back legs and hands on the front limbs, its neck seemed the regular length of a humans but if you watched it for long enough you'd usually catch it stretching longer as it explored an area; its head was just like a person except it had no face, save for when it had opened it mouth to reveal sharp white teeth as it gobbled up the duck. The entire creature was such a dark black that the shape of the creature nearly just looked like a voided space. While the sun was looking to start setting I was still shocked, I don't see the shadows often to begin with but I'd never seen one during the day and I had previously just assumed that they couldn't be in sunlight, it's overwhelming blackness didn't waver in the light.

A lady with a beagle stepped onto the grass near me and was heading towards the water, the creature's head snapped in the direction of the dog and it appeared to crouch, ready to pounce. The duck must have been only the entrée.

I glanced to my side where a rock half the size of my palm lay in the grass, I grabbed it and weighed up whether tossing it at the creature would distract it enough to leave the dog alone -but if I did it would know I could see it, would it come after me then? I took a deep breath to prepare myself.

"Oh, my god!" I shouted, standing up quickly, "I'm so sorry but can I say hello to your dog?"
My gushing startled the older lady, but once she registered my words she stopped walking and gave me a soft smile, "Of course, dear, his name is Buster."

I walked over, glancing quickly at the creature who had relaxed his posture but still appeared to be looking in the direction of the dog and his owner.

Crouching down I pet the dog who leant right into my hand, I chuckled softly and began asking the lady questions about Buster I didn't really care about like his age or his favourite food. Thankfully the lady didn't seem to mind because I was desperately trying to think of any excuse for her to not keep walking the way she was going.

"You know it's really sad," I told her after what felt like fifty questions, "the way people litter everywhere. I usually like to read by the water but I couldn't today, there's a tonne of broken glass down by the edge."

"Oh," her brow creased and she looked down at Buster, "I guess we won't do down there today then, don't want it to end the day with a trip to the vet if he cuts his foot open. It's starting to get dark anyway, we should probably head home."

I nodded, giving Buster a final rub on the head and standing up, "Probably a safe idea."

The lady thanked me for my warnings and headed back the way she had come, I looked over at the creature who seemed to stare at me with a cocked head, as if asking why I disturbed his dinner. I stared back at it, acutely aware that I wasn't very well hiding the fact I could see it, eventually it did what I could only describe as a shrugging motion with its shoulders and walked away. All I could do was hope that it had given up entirely on the idea of dinner.

Eight o'clock the next morning I was parking myself at a seat in the back of a lecture hall with a large coffee steaming in my hands. I booted my laptop up and got ready to take notes, just as the lecturer began speaking a last minute person slipped through the door and slid into the seat next to me.

"I'm sorry," he said to me, his voice was laced in the faintest of an accent I couldn't detect at the low volume of his words, "Is this Abnormal Psychology?"

I turned to him to confirm but when I looked over at him I froze. He was cute, very cute. Light blonde hair hung limply around his head and looked like he may have cut it himself at home but he managed to pull it off, deep emerald eyes stared back at me, he lips twitched into a half grin, "You alright there?"

No. I wasn't, and it wasn't his good looks that had thrown me off. Instead it was the older man the colour the ocean turns in a storm, a greyish blue tinge set deep in his skin and dark, dark bags hung under his eyes. I didn't miss the red rope burn that ringed around his neck. The man hung closely behind the green-eyed boy and watched him sadly not taking noticing me staring at him.

I shook myself back in motion when I realised I had been staring for too long, "Um, yeah, you're in the right place." I turned away from him to my laptop but I couldn't concentrate as an overwhelming feeling of sadness took over me, ghosts rarely showed the signs of cause of death, it only happened very early after the fact and by the way the man was fixated on the boy next to me I'd bet that the two had some kind of close connection.
Once the hour was over I scrambled to grab my things but my neighbour caught me before I could make my exit.

"Hey, I'm Alex by the way." Italian I realised, that was his faint accent it was, I looked up and realised that he had a fair amount of height on me-not that I should be surprised as I was shorter than most.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Rory. Are you new here?"

"Yep, just moved down here from Sydney, so not too far."

"What sparked the move?" There was something about him that made me comfortable and I asked without thinking, instantly regretting it as Alex's silent companion looked up to glare at me, 'clearly me, dumbass,' his eyes seemed to say.

"Changes in living arrangements," he answered, almost but not quite quick enough to cover his hesitation and I could have sworn I saw his ghost friend almost crack a smile at his wording. I felt bad for asking and searched for a change in subject, I glanced at my watch and realised the time.

"A few friends of mine who have time to kill are having a football game in about ten minutes, if you're free you could tag along?" I didn't know if I actually liked Alex yet or whether I just felt bad for the new guy who'd probably had a rough few months.

"You play football?" His surprise was clear as he surveyed my small size.

"Professionally actually," I responded, his green eyes seemed to double in size and I grinned up at him, "I'm kidding, you'd be surprised by the muscle packed under this jumper," his disbelief was still clear, "Come on or we'll miss the game."

We walked across the campus to a field where a few of my friends were scattered around. Emily and Justin sat to the side chatting quietly while my housemate Nick and his best friend Ryan threw a football between them a few metres away.

"I brought someone to even out the teams," I called out as we stepped on the field joining Emily and Justin on the ground, the other two jogged over.

We made introductions and as the Michael started designating teams I glanced across to the other end of the field where there was a parking lot. I squinted trying to focus on what I couldn't have been seeing—but there it was. A shadow creature was stalking its way through the parking lot. The ghost by Alex's shoulder caught my line of sight and flinched as he saw the creature, he glanced back at me the fear unmistakable in his eyes before he disappeared entirely. After seeing two shadow creatures in two days after only seeing three in my whole life before this I couldn't help but feel that something was very wrong.

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A/N   

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