Dreamwalkers: The Restless Spirits

Prologue: Shadows

Under a dark moonless sky devoid of speckled stars, a small group hurried through a labyrinth of dimly lit city streets. The cold, hollow air rang with echoes of bangs from uprooted trash bins and undulating of chain-link fences joined by a chorus of whispers. A street gang filed from a narrow, trash-ridden alleyway into a large concrete crevice enclosed by tall apartment buildings.

This half-block sized sanctuary of concrete had once been a neatly and carefully tended courtyard green grasses, and painted benches. Since then, it had been uprooted and covered in slabs of concrete and steel until it became a skate park. However, the enclosure which the outer buildings provided invoked a sense of fortification and secrecy, which inevitably made this place a lucrative gang hideout. By now, the concrete had begun to chip and crumble, and the rails warped and sagged. The entire park had, over time and ownership, accumulated a colorful collection of graffiti as numerous and varied as the trees and flowers that had once dwelled here.

The leader of the gang, who had most recently claimed this park, had ducked though the cut chain-link and then stopped.

This was a man who clearly had never taken life seriously. The fact that he had never worked an honest day's living was written all over his face – literally, in the form of vulgar words and images tattooed all over one side of his face. This had cemented this man's poor life choices in such a way that he could never be taken in to become an accepted and productive member of society even if he had obtained some radical change in perspective. This was unfortunate, because a radical change in perspective was now standing before him on the other side of the park.

The tattooed man flung his arm out to command his minions to stay back. The others swarmed around him, but did not cross. They too had seen what alerted the tattooed man, and they began to whisper quietly among themselves about the shadow standing before them. It appeared as the silhouette of a young man with long, unnaturally spiky hair. But they could make out no other detail in the darkness.

"Yo! This is our turf!" The tattooed man shouted with an angry sneer and deep commanding voice, "Beat it!"

The park echoed horribly as sound bounced between the flat facades of the surrounding buildings. The man's voice and intent was not missed, despite the distance between him and the shadow.

The shadow slowly raised its head, the subtle movement almost lost in the surrounding darkness. However, the opening of his eyes was not at all subtle. The eyes were unnatural, shimmered in the darkness like those of a wild animal struck with a sudden light which reflected a golden glare that cut down into their terrified souls. Many of the gang members stepped back and gasped with horror.

"But... I want to play..." responded a soft youthful voice.

The tattooed man whipped out a pistol, and his fellow gang members armed themselves with guns, knives, and generally any weapon to their personal liking. This encouraged many of them, but among others, whispers crept out between them of the ghost before them.

The tattooed man had never dealt with a ghost before, and indeed, never believed in them. But he did believe in intimidation, and that acting tough was enough to scare off anything he had ever encountered before. This shadow before them, be it a man or a ghost would make no difference to him.

"This ain' a play park... beat it!" The tattooed man mocked with aggression and a cocked stare.

His voice shot though the park and out into the city like a cannon ball fired from the barrel of buildings surrounding them. The man had never found a better location to make his voice sound any more monstrously formidable. This place completed him in this way, and this is why he fought so hard to keep it.

The shadow's eyes visibly narrowed. The shadow could have left; it could have given up and allowed these selfish and ungrateful children to resume control of this private sanctuary. No one would have gotten hurt, and the gang would simply have laughed and beamed at the shadow's cowardice and their victory.

But that is not what happened. Instead, the tattooed man pulled back the hammer on his pistol and began to count down. Something shifted in the darkness, and a gun fired from behind the tattooed man out of reflex from one of his less courageous followers.

The tattooed man did not let his eyes wander from the shadow despite the shot. There was a flash of sparks as the bullet hit something metal within the shadow. The shot rang and reverberated off of the buildings around them, followed by the clang of metal, and then a scream as the ricocheted bullet sunk itself into the flesh of one of the gang members. The tattooed man's eyes left the shadow only long enough to see which of his men took the bullet, and returned to find the shadow gone.

The shadow ripped the gun from the tattooed man's hands, which whirled and smashed against a brick wall. Before the man even registered his gun had left him, he felt the blow of metal stamped against his face with mechanical force. His jaw and face bones splintered with the impact, and his feet left the ground. He fell into his followers, who had either braced themselves or caught him, while still wielding their own weapons and carelessly damaging him and themselves further.

Other shots fired, but they hit either nothing or their peers as the shadow swept across the crowd. Knives flashed the air, gun barrel flares struck the darkness, and fists lunged at nothing. One by one with an air of precision and methodology, each of the panicked gang members were disarmed by the shadow and tossed into one of various heaps that began to form around the group.

The shadow was everywhere, and nowhere. The remaining crowd quickly thinned as they turned and ran, abandoning their weapons and comrades who lay broken, bruised, and swelling on the cement.

An eerie warm breeze swept through the park, felt only on the backs of the few who fled. They glanced behind to find the shadow had gone, but they would not turn back. Indeed, they would never return. The encounter was forever embedded in the memories of every one of them. This shadow was a darkness which no weapon could touch and which could seemingly without form throw humans around like mere dolls – it could not have been anything but a ghost, or a demon.

Author's Note:

Edit 5/28/2018 - Removed the unpolished first scene depicting Raptor. I decided to tell that story in another way.

Who or what is the mysterious Skate Park Ghost? Antagonist or Protagonist? 

Leave your hypothesis in the comments, and see if you're right when the mystery unravels in future chapters!