Chapter 0

I have always been able to see them. From a young age they haunted my dreams and the shadows of my bedroom, always staring at me with indescribable eyes. I use to see them creep around the kitchen while my foster mom cooked for my brother and me; they would knock down pans and cause all kinds of mischief, often times I would get scolded for causing trouble.

Trouble.

That was practically my middle name for much of my childhood. I would bounce from foster home to foster home, never staying in one for longer than a few months before I was moved again. Troubled child, I would hear them say when they thought I had fallen asleep or when the social workers thought I was somewhere else. I use to imagine my file have a big, red stamp that declared me troubled and unfit to stay in one place longer than a few months.

I once tried to explain to the family that was housing me about the little beings I could see. I described, in as much detail a seven year old could manage, my best friends who crawled around their house. I explained that it wasn't me who was knocking things down and leaving all the lights on, but the transparent shadows that once pushed their son down the stairs. I had watched as their faces twisted in horror with each detail I gave them, I watched as they seemed to scoot away from me, I watched as they retreated into their bedroom, bringing their son with them and locking to doors. By the next week I was out of the house and on my way to a new one. This time I would be seeing a shrink.

I hated Dr. Nemuing. She was a bigot who thought herself better than the kids she treated, always looking down her sharp nose with piercing hazel eyes that judged me. I hated the sound of her nails drumming along her note pad, dundundun dun dun, it was worse than the clocks ticking. I hated the blue leather chair that seemed to want to make me slide off, and fall below her. The biggest reason I hated her was her insistence that my shadow friends (as I deemed them) were not real. Every time I mentioned them she would get this look in her eyes, like I had slapped her child (I don't think she had children and if she did I feel sorry for them) and quickly demand that I hold out my hands. I would receive two sharp slap with her ruler on each hand; I was seven years old and I thought that the behavior was normal.

I only stopped going to her because I was moved again, this time to a remote village up in the mountains. This was the point that my life really changed, it was the point I found my family. Before I had always been fostered by more elderly people, those in their 40s to 60s, but when I arrived at the small village I was adopted into a large family that are the village chiefs and leaders. Most of them were young, at least on the exterior. The most shocking part, to my then eight year old self, was the fact that my new family could see my friends. They saw the little shadows that hung next to me all the time, the ones that flew over others, the ones that protected me during my nightmares. They embraced my differences and smiled whenever I invited a new friend over.

I was content there for eight and a half years before a snake crept into our garden and started a chain of actions that I regret and embrace.