Chapter 2 — The Man Without a Spirit
614 Words
She should have walked away.
That would have been the smart thing. Turn around. Blend back into the crowd. Let the rain wash the moment away like it never happened.
But curiosity is a dangerous thing when you’ve spent your whole life surrounded by monsters no one else can see.
Her feet moved before her mind could stop them.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Cars rolled past, spraying thin sheets of water across the street. The smell of wet asphalt hung in the air. People brushed past her shoulders, laughing, arguing, living their normal lives.
And the spirits moved with them.
A thin one crawled along a couple walking ahead of her, its spine bent like a broken ladder. It pressed its mouth close to the girl’s ear, drinking in the soft way she leaned against the boy beside her.
Another spirit dragged itself across a shop window, leaving a faint smear of darkness that no one else noticed.
Same as always.
Except for him.
He hadn’t moved.
Still standing under the flickering streetlamp like the night had built itself around him.
The closer she got, the stranger it felt.
Normally the spirits reacted when she approached someone they were feeding on. They hissed. Pulled tighter around their hosts. Sometimes they even turned their hollow faces toward her like animals guarding a meal.
But near this man…
There was nothing.
The air around him felt wrong. Empty in a way that made her skin crawl.
She stopped a few steps away.
Up close he looked ordinary enough. Dark coat. Rain clinging to his hair. Eyes that held the kind of tired you only see in people who’ve been alive too long.
But there was something else in those eyes too.
Recognition.
Like he had already been aware of her before she walked over.
“You’ve been staring,” he said.
His voice was low. Calm. No surprise in it.
She crossed her arms, trying to hide the unease climbing up her spine.
“Most people have something following them,” she said.
He tilted his head slightly.
“Something?”
“You know,” she muttered. “Shadows.”
The word hung between them.
For a moment he just watched her. Studied her face like he was digging for something buried under the surface.
Then he asked quietly,
“You can see them.”
Not a question.
A statement.
Her stomach tightened.
Nobody ever said that so easily.
Most people laughed when she tried explaining. Called her crazy. Imaginative. Sick.
But this man didn’t laugh.
He didn’t look surprised either.
“How do you know about them?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he glanced behind her.
At the couple passing by.
The thin spirit clinging to the boy’s back lifted its head slowly. Its mouth twisted into something like a snarl.
The creature saw him.
And it recoiled.
Not a slow retreat.
A violent one.
It ripped its claws free from the boy’s shoulders and scrambled backwards across the pavement like a spider escaping fire.
The couple kept walking.
They didn’t notice the thing abandoning them.
But she did.
Her breath caught.
Spirits didn’t run.
Not from humans.
Never.
She turned back to the man.
“What are you?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer right away.
His gaze drifted upward, toward the dark stretch of sky above the city.
For a moment his expression looked… tired.
Like someone remembering a mistake too old to fix.
Finally he spoke.
“Someone they remember.”
A cold wind slid through the street.
And somewhere far above the rooftops, something large shifted in the darkness.
Watching.
Waiting.
And slowly, one by one…
The spirits began to gather.
- Writer
