Tedan Galloway ...

The first thing that came back to him was his name, floating up from the darkness of his mind that matched the darkness in this non-place. It gave him an anchor, something to hold onto ... a kind of line to bring the rest of it back. The name was like a tiny light somewhere in the darkness ahead of him and without really thinking about it, he moved slowly toward that light ... the little circle of radiance getting brighter and brighter until it eclipsed all of his sight.

And slowly, he started to remember ...

He'd been born into a fairly typical middle class family, in a suburb near Memphis, Tennessee. He had an older brother and both of his parents were still together, even with the divorce rate of the current times. His parents had tried their best to raise him as a normal healthy child. But from the start, there had been ... problems. He couldn't remember the first "incident" himself but his parents had told him about it when he was older. He'd been lying in his crib one night when quite suddenly he started screaming - apparently for no reason. By the time his mother reached his room, the tiny Tedan had pressed himself back against the far side of the crib, refusing to look at the patch of shadow that was his closet, covering his face and sobbing in terror. And that was only the first of many. As he grew older, he could articulate his fears ... fairly typical and childish things. There was a monster in his closet. The shadows were going to eat him. The thing under the bed would grab his feet, so he couldn't get onto the bed to go to sleep. It was scary outside because there were things hiding in the pools of shadow between the streetlights.

But the problem was, he didn't "grow out of it" like most children. Instead, his descriptions only grew more and more detailed, and the fears less typical. Any type of shadow could house a demon, or allow a monster to step into his room. He insisted upon having several lights on all the time, even when he was sleeping. The attic was the purview of a huge spider with a human face. Zombies and skeletons walked in the graveyard down the street, climbing up out of their resting places at night to roam the streets. The crows that cawed with harsh voices in the trees outside grew huge by the light of the moon and the caws became a strange, hoarse speech that spoke of things he didn't want to think about. Tedan was never able to say for sure that he saw these things, or heard them with any clarity. But he felt them there ... and he knew that they were probably a lot worse than what he could imagine and articulate.

His parents had tried to talk to him about it, convince him of the absurdity of these ridiculous notions when held up against reality. They knew their son was intelligent, surely he could understand. But he was also stubborn, and Tedan knew what he saw lurking in the darkness. Then came the therapy, when he was about to enter middle school. He'd always known that he was different, but it wasn't until those sessions that he realized just how much his ability to see those dark things scared other people. His parents, the therapist ... who tried to hide the fear, but he could see it ... his classmates, teachers. Everyone. He wasn't "normal" and they were afraid of him. They would never believe him.

So he started pretending. He told the therapist that he was "better", that he understood those things weren't real. He was just "making it up so that he could get attention". Tedan was quite smart. It didn't take him long to learn the correct phrases, to be able to articulate the lies that everyone around him wanted to hear. Within a year he was declared to be "rehabilitated" and the sessions stopped. He finished middle school, went on to high school, then college ... pretending all the while. He glanced away from the dark corners, tied his closet doors closed at night with a bit of rope, turned his lights off as long as his parents were paying attention then dashed over to turn them all on again later. He tried his best to never be outside after dark, certainly a model son when it came to curfews. Whenever he was out at night, he always had a flashlight (or several) with him, claiming to anyone who asked that his eyesight was bad in the dark. It was hard ... to be normal, hard to pretend, to do all of the things that normal high school boys did. To date, to go to scary movies, to stay up late and sample forbidden alcohol that someone's older sibling had bought for their little group of friends. Hard ... but he did it, because he didn't want to be different. He wanted this life, though a part of him knew that it could never truly be his. Because though he had constructed a careful façade to show to the world, he never lied to himself. He knew there were things out there, waiting for him, watching him. And they were hungry for ... something.

College seemed like it would be a haven for him. He could get away from Memphis, his family, everything and everyone he'd grown up around ... start over fresh. The first year went well. He tried out for the football team and made it, picked fairly easy classes to take, and just ... coasted. Tedan was intelligent enough to know that he needed to keep his grades up to hang onto the scholarships that had gotten him here in the first place. He had yet to pick a major or anything like that, just ... enjoying this new life of his. He still saw things now and again, but usually at a distance, fairly easy to ignore. This place was much calmer, on the spooky spectrum, than Memphis had been, apparently.

His life was more or less normal by that point. He got handed some a*****e of a partner for a history project, did decently on the football team, had some fun teasing the shy mousy sort that was usually on duty in the library ... generally had a good time of things. Until one of the fraternities on campus approached him. At first, Tedan thought it would be great. Being part of a fraternity was an awesome status symbol and all that. And hey, he'd get to move into the frat house, have all the girls and alcohol he wanted ... parties every night ... it would be the good life. Until he found out that the "initiation" for the the damn thing involved wandering around in a local graveyard that was rumored to be haunted. In the middle of the night.

And though nothing really untoward had happened for almost a year, Tedan had a bad feeling about this. He did NOT want to go into that graveyard. It was stereotypical and stupid, and he knew intellectually that probably all that would happen was that other members of the fraternity would be lurking behind gravestones to jump out and scare him and the other initiates. But ... still. Now, every weird thing he'd ever seen in the darkness rose up out of the depths of his mind - reminding him that there really were things out there.

That's when he showed up, just two weeks before the graveyard initiation. A man in a dark cloak, lurking in the campus coffeeshop where someone with such a foreboding figure had no right to be. But no one seemed to even notice him except for Tedan. The man told him what he already knew, over steaming hot cups of mocha lattes. That the things in the dark were real, that he wasn't crazy. But ... then he told him more. He told Tedan how those things were using humans for food, fattening them up for the slaughter, harvesting their fear. That, Tedan was a little bit skeptical of ... and the man just nodded, and went away - saying he would come back when the young man had had some time to think about it.

And then came the lovely little graveyard trip. It didn't really take long for Tedan to spot the members of the fraternity that were hiding around the place ... and he made sure to pass a couple of them, jumping and making startled sounds when they ran out at him wearing masks and the like. But that wasn't really what scared him about this place. They were only human. Moving along toward the center of the graveyard, he spotted an old dead tree that had once watched over this place. There was no one else around the thing, perhaps subconsciously they sensed what Tedan could feel there ... a dark malevolence, a presence in the night. "I know you're there..." he called, slowly walking toward the thing. "C'mon ... I'm right here. COME ON." He knew that this was stupid ... but he had to know if the man was right. If these things did want to feed on him....

It came for him when he was within about five feet of the three, a rushing, roaring sort of shadowy thing, washing over and around him. The feel of this one was worse than anything he'd encountered before, huge and strong and hungry. And Tedan couldn't help it, he screamed, falling to his knees and covering his head with his arms. He'd never tried something like this before, confronting one of them directly. He had always shone the flashlight about, turned on the lights, looked away, pretended they weren't real after the therapy. This ... had been a horrible idea, he was realizing now. Even as the thing surged over him, he could feel himself weakening, the terror draining out of him until he was just .... numb, kneeling there on the grass. He didn't know how long it was until he was able to stumble up to his feet and out of the graveyard. Then of course, the other guys made fun of him for screaming like a girl, being afraid of the dark and so on. But Tedan couldn't bring himself to return their jabs, just ... exhausted and almost sick by this point.

It was true. It was all true... humans ... were nothing but food for these things. Cattle to be raised and fattened for the kill. Except that they didn't even have to kill them. Just scare them half to death, suck up the fear, and wait for a while to do the same thing again. Were their entire lives just to be FOOD for these things? Tedan had never really believed in higher powers or God or anything but ... these things were real. He'd always sensed them, seen them ... ******** the man showed up again a few days later to tell him more ... Tedan didn't hesitate when he heard that some people could fight back. That HE could fight back. "I'll go with you," he said instantly, nodding rather decisively. If he couldn't be normal, maybe he could at least protect the rest of the human race. Hell, maybe that was what he was supposed to do with his life. "I don't care what I have to do ... just tell me."

And so, he woke up in a strange classroom wearing a gasmask and armor, and became ... Alpha Five.