In a sleepy neighborhood on the western bank of the Mississippi river lived a small family with a big reputation. The Beckers were quite well known locally - the kind of notoriety that is the nightmare of any school-age youngster looking to make his or her mark in the world. They were unusual. Strange. Funny in the head, some would say. Mrs. Becker was a sitting-room psychic - a fancy way of saying stay at home mom, as far as her husband was concerned - and held weekly seances at various locations around town with her exclusive club for the occult. Mr. Becker, some said, dabbled in the stuff himself. Pure rubbish, he would retort, but he kept black chickens. Everyone knew what that meant.
Their first child arrived on a nondescript day in October. They named him Washington Henry Becker, after his grandfather and father, and couldn't be prouder. As with most children, he was kept out of the 'family business' - he had toys, a swing set that was only second hand. To the dismay of the neighbors, he was everything a normal boy should be - rambunctious and full of trouble. If he had a few odd habits, neither of his parents seemed to notice. After all, boys will be boys. So maybe he blocked his closet off with a chair before bed every night. Once or twice he dug out his daddy's toolset and nailed the sock drawer shut, until they finally got him a brand new dresser. Wash had said the old one talked to him at night, said horrible things. His father told him next time to put a sock in it.
Then, at the tender age of five, something terrible happened. His mother had twins. They didn't have time for his shenanigans anymore, with the new babies- they hardly noticed when he duct-taped all the cabinets in his room and started keeping his clothes neat and tidy on a chair in the corner. Or when he sawed the legs off his bed so that things couldn't hide under it. His dad WAS a bit upset when he took a spare bag of cement out of the garage and tried to seal his closet, but chalked it up to him vying for attention, and promptly signed him up for kindergarten. Thus began the rest of Wash's life.
School was rough, at first, as his parent's reputation had him answering for more than a few things that he didn't do. However, he soon learned the ropes. He hunkered down and acted normal. He didn't draw attention to himself, and the novelty soon wore off- especially after his younger brother and sister got enrolled. At first, he felt a kind of kinship with them- for it became obvious rather quickly that they too Saw Things. It was much easier to stare into the beady eyes of shadows lurking in the corners of the predawn chicken yard when you had two someones holding your hand.
The glamor quickly wore off. Soon they were just siblings - little better than tiny gremlins that broke his toys and stole away his parents. Worse still, they indulged the monsters. It in fact turned out to be what a young Wash considered the only positive thing about them - titles of freak or taunts about his mother being some kind of voodoo queen were quickly redirected to the pair who swore they saw ghosts lurking in the classroom. Problem was, Wash saw them too.
But Wash was normal. He ignored the cold sweats, the feelings of something other biding it's time just beneath the surface of reality. High school went by in a daze. He got a part time job on the weekends, while the twins went to their grandmother's or to occult society meetings. His sister Deborah had a knack for Tarot reading, whilst Daniel began recording EVPs and investigating paranormal phenomena on the net. The neighbors were finally satisfied - HERE were the weirdos that made them feel good about the labelling and the namecalling.
And then it was over. Wash graduated well enough to earn a scholarship to Xavier University, his father's alma mater, and left home. He would miss his father - all those rumors about the chickens were just so much hogwash - but his mother and the others... Well. Relieved was probably the best word for it. Despite his excitement on the potential separation he quickly found city life to be incredibly daunting. No one seemed to care about his small town reputation, but then, no one seemed to care about him at all.
And he was still Other. He wasn't a New Orleanian, and he didn't really understand what that meant. But that was okay. It was nice to be tossed aside in the scurf of the metropolis. It was a kind of exile that he soon overcame, and he enjoyed the ebb and flow so much that after completeing an associate's degree he started interning to become a home inspector. If he seemed uncomfortable in attics, or particularly old homes (of which there were dozens) no one questioned him. He could only secretly count his lucky stars the city didn't have basements.
He met Denise when he was getting his license renewed at the tender age of 20. She was the front desk clerk, and while it wasn't love at first sight, something passed between him and she slipped him her number on a bit of tape over his new ID card. She was pretty, a bit creole, but a lot of just... Denise. In a year he would ask her to marry him. He found he could ignore the voodoo dolls and the gris gris and the strange supersitions - it was just another side of life here, really. After a small ceremony they settled down on the western banks, removed from the hustle and bustle, in a neighborhood not unlike the one he grew up in.
He kept in touch with his family. It was mostly via his father- semi annual conversations about Daniel's new Paranormal club or Debroah's latest dire predilections in her readings. They were there for him, as best they could - his father gave him their savings as they struggled with finding a home, a car and then-
A baby. Daniel Henry Becker was born at a healthy 8 pounds, 11 ounces. His grandparents, aunt and uncle were in attendance. Wash found his place in the world, after so much time spent just trying to get by. Wash was a father. Coworkers noticed the spring in his step, the razzle in his dazzle. Something about the usually monotonously monotone man had changed. The sleepless nights, the emegency doctor visits - none of it seemed to get him down. For a time, he stopped seeing Them. Shadows held nothing but an absence of light. Utter exhaustion and burning happiness proved an antidote for his lifelong struggle.
But nothing gold can stay. One evening, he was inspecting a home in uptown when something... stirred. Ripples through reality, as if something lurked under the surface. At the corner of his eye, or in the darkening shadows, there was suddenly an eerie awareness. It had been so long, it was as if Wash had forgotten how to block it out. The entity, or whatever it was, fed off his panic. He tried to continue as normal - physically the house checked out fine. He put the toughest hurdle for last. It was his final appointment, so it was nearing dusk as he rounded the corner to face the attic.
The stairs were already slid down, the trap door eerily cavernous - deep grooves in the floorboards suggested frequent use. The elderly couple who owned the building said their grandson stayed up there. As if the thought summoned him, a small boy raced past him and clambered up the steps into - Silence. The shadows were boiling now. He could feel their eyes on him wherever he turned. With nowhere left to go but up, he catiously followed.
Empty. Save the boy's bed and belongings, there was nothing up there. Had he imagined it all? Unnerved, he rushed home, forgetting to check in with the owners- he would call them later, perhaps the next morning. Yes. He kissed his wife, tucked his boy into bed and was off to troubled dreams.
A police car waited for him outside the next morning. There was a boy gone missing on the property he'd been scheduled to inspect, and he'd not made any contact with the owners after his hasty departure. Before he knew it, he was riding with the officer to answer a few questions at the station. He wasn't under arrest- yet - but he doubted that legal forces would take kindly on a dark skinned man suspected of kidnapping a happy child of Eurpoean heritage. That wasn't his biggest problem though, and it wasn't what had kept him tossing and turning that night.
The monsters were real. The cops let him go after grilling him for a few hours- but he was too dazed to care. Weeks went by. The boy never turned up. They started asking him questions that he couldn't answer- what did he see? The boy's shoes had been found at the foot of the stairs. He'd been there. Wash had been there. It was simple math. Even Denise was becoming increasingly troubled and suspicious, and left with Daniel to stay with her parents. That was only a fraction of the much larger issue Wash faced. As the boy haunted his dreams, his facade slowly became the trusting gaze of his son. He had to protect him. From what, he didn't know. It didn't matter. No amount of gris gris could stop this from happening.
It didn't take long for him to be issued a court date. It didn't take the city police long to figure out his family couldn't afford bail. Orange had never really been Wash's color. As he awaited his trial, troubled with both his own safety and that of his family, he was visited by a stranger. A stranger that promised him the power to fight back. To save himself. To protect his son.
It even came with a uniform, quite a bit smarter looking than his usual get up. But that bit didn't interest him. Nothing gold can stay.
tl;dr
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