Brace yourself a (Seriously) very long story is coming (But really just read it I promise it's worth it well for me at least):
Elia - Part 1
May 12, 2017
by Shawnti Therrien
from creepypasta.com
One breath and then another. He could feel his heart slow within his chest, just the way it always did when that feeling drew closer. Soon that voice would enter his mind, the one that he knew haunted more than only him. All he had to do was lay there and soon, that voice would ask him if he was ready to die. This time, he hadn’t the strength to say anything more than yes.
* * *
“God what a mess…” His voice trailed off as he took a step back. He hadn’t even entered the house yet. All he could see was the blood across the window, produced undoubtedly from some horror that lay upon the interior of the room. He had been woken from a sound dreamless, blessedly dreamless, sleep and now blinked his eyes to be sure that this wasn’t a nightmare of his own fabrication.
“Sir? Sir, we have started to get pictures and the ambulance is on the way.”
“Ambulance? I thought you said that there was no one left alive.” A strong furrow creased a brow that had already been on its way to a scowl.
“We were wrong. There is a child.”
* * *
“Elia, Elia come away from the window, baby. Come finish your lunch and we’ll go to the park after. You have to eat if you want to grow big and strong.”
“But I don’t want to grow up big… then it will hurt right?” He looked up at her and his big blue eyes momentarily illuminated from within. His face was so serious that she paused and was mute, trapped in his gaze.
Elia was her treasure. She couldn’t imagine a world without him, even as she knew that someday she would not be able to guide his steps as he passed through the vale. Elia was fae touched, and though he was simply a child to her, as a young wolf, he represented a legacy that many had thought dead and lost. He was most certainly lost but because of that, it meant that the name she had chosen as his birth name, Elia Darkstar, was more correct than she could have ever known. All that she could do was try to protect him from the world so that he would remain innocent. Many Darkstar wolves were lost to the fae realm, unable to bridge the gap between the humanity that had entered their hearts and the fae blood that coursed through their veins. They would go insane or simply wither away as their minds became attached to a place somewhere through the vale but their bodies remained. She did not want those sad fates to be what waited for her sweet boy; the only thing that remained of her mate. She had to close her eyes to him before she could speak. She knew that he would never tell her everything that he knew, but Elia had already seen so many things that a child should never have to face and remained so free and pure. How could she ever apologize to him.
“Then just strong. How does that sound since big is another evil. How did you get to be so clever?” She allowed a smile to touch her lips even though she felt somber.
“I don’t know?” He said in a sing-songy voice before he smiled a giant grin and skipped toward her across the room, finally feeling more the age he looked. He pounced on her on the way past squeezing her in a big hug before seating himself at the table and grabbing the other half of his sandwich. “Could we go to the woods instead?”
“But I thought you wanted to play with the other kids that you met…”
“Mmm…” the little noise had cut her off and she turned to see that Elia’s hair had slipped over one eye and he’d frozen, staring off into space. “The woods feel more like home to me. I can hear them.”
“Elia!” It was too soon. She knew he shouldn’t be hearing them yet. He was so young.
He blinked up at her, seemingly startled by his own name. His hair still fell about his face concealingly and a gentle furrow marked his brow before his features relaxed. He cocked his head to the side as though he were trying to listen to a faint noise before he drew a breath to speak.
“You don’t need to worry. I already know the path. It’s not like you fear. They will protect me and I will be your Elia, even when I have walked in the other place and called my guardian. I know his voice. I just need to learn his name.”
“Elia…”
“So what’s for dessert. I’ve finished my sandwich.” Once more he smiled like the little boy he was. She could see his eyes sparkle, despite that his hair was in his face, even before he pushed it back only enough for her to see both of them again.
Elia was not uncommon for what he was. He had a slim slight frame that still held the androgyny of youth. Compared to a human he was markedly pale with soft freckles across the bridge of a nose that was almost too small for his face and definitely too small compared to his eyes. His hair was to his waist or just slightly past with a few areas that were shorter and framed his face in soft darkness. His smile came easily, unless he was lost, and he was spending more and more time lost, which frightened his mother to tears, no matter how he tried to reassure her. His clothes, the ones that he picked for himself at least, were all in soft colors like the many layers of color one might find in a field or soft earth. He didn’t like to go to the playground, especially not lately. Everyone there thought he was a girl. Even the other kids were beyond correcting, and though he acted as though it really didn’t matter, some part of him still stung. He sighed. Elia knew why his mom was worried and why she wanted to go to the park… she had seen how lost he was at home within four walls. What if it was worse? What if his soul was called away? Elia had never thought that might happen. He didn’t know what had happened to other wolves that had been like him. He didn’t know his father. He didn’t know any of them at all, only her. Perhaps that was partly to blame for his fearlessness, but what would the other wolves do with a fully functional Darkstar? They certainly wouldn’t embrace him as part of the pack. They would look upon him with pity and fear. In europe there might be others, but she couldn’t risk the hunters. Even here, there was a chance that the hunters could find them. It was slim, but between the potential reaction of the other wolves and the danger that could, even now, be just outside their door, Sabyn needed to keep her little boy safe.
“Mom?”
She hadn’t realized that she had stopped moving until he had called to her. Perhaps going out would be a good distraction. She was becoming a little bit more lost too. She sighed heavily as she reached for his dish.
“Go get your shoes on. We’ll walk today.”
“OK.” He skipped off in the direction of his room.
* * *
“Sir. The coroner is here.”
He took a heavy breath through the handkerchief he clasped to his face. His stomach had always been too weak for this job but he was far too good at it to walk away. He was the lead detective on this case, though he was surprised that no one else had wanted it. Perhaps it was the hour. This one, especially now, would require extra care. One of the medics bumped past him. How was this child even still alive? When he first saw the small form laid flat upon the floor he hadn’t thought that it was a real person. Great blue eyes stared at the ceiling above them, unblinking. Skin that was far too pale to be healthy was spattered in blood and gore. Dark hair spread out in a limp halo around the lifeless form. He had asked if there was any chance that she would be alright. He was sure it had been a rape case. He was sure this child must be broken, but the man who turned to him with tears in his eyes shook his head and immediately he had thought the worst. The child was beyond hope. The words that left the man’s lips were not what the detective was expecting: that this was not a little girl, but a boy. Someone had mutilated this beautiful little boy. His voice had fallen to a harsh whisper when he told them to cover him up and that was what had forced him to take out his handkerchief. Who would do that to a child? What kind of monster would do that?
Now he turned away from those unblinking eyes. He had been told that the boy would live. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy or weep. What would become of a child that had been mutilated like that? There wasn’t even anyone to question. There wasn’t anyone who would answer for the crimes against the small form that lay rigidly on the hard floor. He was a nameless child, lost and broken, cast aside, or perhaps he had been sought after because of some base desire in one of those who lay with him in the room. One of those was missing half of her face, presumably from being shot by a rifle that lay across the room, while the other was so mutilated it was barely recognizable as having been human.
The more he had looked about the scene the more confused he became. There were paw prints, so many paw prints in blood smeared across the floor, the walls, the windows, any surface that paws could reach, and two sets. One of them was sizable, a big dog like a german shepherd or a malamute, perhaps a wolf if it was wild, while the other set was only around the boy’s body, smaller and softer, as though it had been a lighter, smaller animal that had made them, even though the paw print was nearly identical to the larger ones. There was too much blood in this small room, too much to have come from only the two corpses and the boy who lay upon the floor. What had happened here?
* * *
He made sure he was out of his mother’s sight before he sat down in the grass and closed his eyes. The sun felt good. He was well enough away from the other kids to not be bothered unless they went to some trouble. There were too many people here. He was listening anyway. He wanted to hear them. Their voices were soothing and quieted his mind. They were a comfort. He could barely hear their whispers from the treeline just before he was unceremoniously hit with something, hard. He blinked and turned in the direction he thought it must have come from to find a stocky ruddy cheeked child sneering back at him.
“Throw it back, freak.”
Elia sighed heavily and looked to where the ball had rolled, just beyond him. This is what constituted for playing with his friends, fetching a ball and throwing it back like a good little dog. He didn’t want to do this today. He wanted to sit in the grass and be left alone. He wanted to walk through the woods. He wanted to listen to all the whispered voices of the trees until they gave way to the voices of those who lay beyond them, until the whispers became one singular male voice that he recognized and found to be of greater comfort than even his mother’s arms. His body went through the motions as his expression went blank. He grabbed the ball and gently tossed it back to the boy who waited with a look of disapproval.
“Heh, not a bad toss for a girl.” The boy threw it back and was surprised when Elia caught it easily. “Come on, let’s play.”
He wandered after, knowing that this would end badly. It always did. Whether it was because he was better than the others his age or that they discovered he was not the girl they thought he was, it always ended up going wrong. He didn’t understand why there always seemed to be different kids and none of them remembered. It would be easier if they just left him alone.
* * *
The lights passed overhead in a dull rhythm just slightly off from the music that played in the car. He would have nightmares. He knew that by the time this was all sorted out he would spend months trying to banish the image of that boy from his mind. Even now those eyes haunted him. He knew that child was in the ambulance before him, safely buckled into place on a stretcher. As if he would try to move. He was catatonic and even now there was no certainty he would ever come back from whatever abyss he had mentally plummeted over. The space around him had been taped, catalogued, and collected. It wasn’t easy. He was going to have to pour over pictures of that horror if he had any hope of muddling through. What if the child never recovered? He had so many questions. What had those great blue eyes seen? Would he even remember? What was mercy in a case like this?
* * *
Elia gingerly held his face as he walked away. He wanted to go to the woods. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He pulled his hand away to reveal blood as he slunk in low beneath one of the steel plated platforms and took a heavy breath. He had been good. He had played along. Why did it always end this way? Why couldn’t he just go to where the pack was? Surely they would be more kind. His nose ached. They had pushed him down and pulled his hair before slamming his face into the ground hard enough to make his eyes water. Was it because he was faster than they were? Was it because he could throw a little further? Why couldn’t he go to a place where he would be accepted for what he was? Why was the first response always to cause harm when they did not understand why he was different?
He just had to stay out of sight long enough to heal. He could already feel his nose mending. The blood had stopped. He would only be dirty. So long as he didn’t look like he had been bleeding. He wiped his hands on the bark chips and sniffed. He could say that he fell. How could she not see that he was only clumsy when he was at the playground with the kids that she wished were his friends? He curled up in a little ball and closed his eyes. He wished that the voices would come. He wished he could be out in the sun instead of hiding beneath the steel structure of the playscape, hoping not to be found. He wished he could change into his wolfen form and run away but he was too young. He was too young to hear the voices but he did anyway. Both were wrong. Both were bad. Elia whimpered in the darkness. Why was he bad even when he tried so hard to be good?
* * *
He should not be standing in this room. He should be at the station. He should be getting to the bottom of this but he couldn’t seem to abandon the form before him, who lay nearly lifeless, in the hospital bed.
“What happened to you? I wish you could tell me…”
There was no response from the one in the bed. He was so small, so fragile. His eyes had been closed, some merciful nurse had seen to that, but it didn’t matter. The man who stood in the room thinking that he should leave remembered how they looked when they were open. No one had reported a missing child. It had been two days since those eyes had been closed and he had been settled into the hospital bed but no one had been missing him. The woman hadn’t had any identification on her. The information that they had found had linked her to the name of a child who had died at birth, long ago. Soon the tests would return which would prove that the detective’s worst fears were confirmed. What if that woman had been this boy’s mother? Was there really no one who could say this child’s name and call his soul home to the frail body that barely had enough substance to rumple the sheets? The detective sighed heavily as he smoothed his hand through hair that was a little bit greasy from lack of a shower. He should go home and take one of those or eat, maybe sleep if he could.
How was he going to be able to look into those big blue eyes and say that he had found a way to offer justice for what had been done. Even when the body healed, would this one’s mind ever be able to understand that he had tried, that he wanted to give closure so that this boy could smile. He almost looked peaceful, almost. If he had been older, the soft furrow of distress that marked his brow would have seemed more commonplace, but in someone so young, it made the child before him feel even more tragic. What had he been like before? Would he ever be that boy again?
