Zachery
Legacy Name: Zachery

Zachery trudged in the damp grass, newspaper tucked under his arm, his shoes coated with a thick layer of mud as he made his way up a the hill towards the mansion. He hesitated to look at the ominous mansion that loomed in front of him. Made completely out of black sandstone and glass windows that were now covered in dust and grime with no shortage decaying creepers spreading their long, thin finger-like branches along the moss adorned walls, trying to pry through every nook and corner. The mansion reminded him of an abandoned fortress, left to crumble away, brittle with detritus. It was certainly not the most welcoming home. He knew that what it held inside was a whole lot darker than its external appearance. It had the aura of something vile and corrupt.When he reached the front door, he stood quietly in front of the chipped wood, staring dismally at the brass knockers. One, two, three.

The door rattled violently, then slowly swung open. Being accustomed to this, the boy walked into the mansion, slipped off his shoes and settled down in the parlour.He opened up the newspaper, reached for the porcelain teacup from the table beside him and took a sip of the Darjeeling that had long gone cold. He placed the cup back on the saucer and looked down at the headlines. "Woman murdered in her sleep". He frowned, reaching for the teacup once again and brought it to his lips. It was empty.Some of them were mischievous.

A loud noise from the first floor, followed by scurrying sounds coming from the top of the stairs. Zachery clicked his tongue impatiently and made his way up the staircase, purposefully making loud thuds with each step as if announcing his arrival.

He entered one of the bedrooms. It belonged to his parents when they were alive. He had left it untouched, the pastel pink walls with their peeling wallpaper, the four-poster bed with the ivory silk bedspread, the dressing table with the clawed legs, that he had always disliked, still intact with his mother's trinket boxes. He walked to the dressing table and picked up a gold chain. He looked up at the mirror and found a pale, skinny boy with slim shoulders and a narrow waist staring back at him with rich, deep blue eyes and dark, unruly hair.

His reflection moved. It beckoned to him, its mouth twisted in a wicked grin. It moved its fingers towards one of its eyes. Before it could go any further, Zachery looked away and walked out of the room.He was used to such things happening in and around the mansion. It was infested with paranormal entities. Sometimes, he saw them, sometimes they left signs. They had defiled the home he once played in blissfully and had taken over his life entirely. However, they never harmed him because they needed him.

Due to the fact that he was constantly surrounded by death and grief, Zachery had a cold outlook on life. During his time, his only activity was to channel the spirits onto their right paths, once their last deed was finished. Most of these situations required him to gamble his life, as he summoned the spirits, not knowing full well about their capability to overpower him.

The spirits were seldom fed on the other side, leaving them eternally famished. They were always eager to meet the loved ones they had left behind, or to take revenge in cold blood. Zachery tried to stay away from these types of spirits. The vengeful ones.

Most of the macabre cases in his town ended with some dead body floating in the river that ran behind the mansion's stables or left to hang from one of the trees in the woods that surrounded the mansion. So, there was no shortage of deceased people who tried to communicate with Zachery. The least favourable part of this whole situation was that the dead returned in the form they were last seen in. He was unperturbed by anything he came across simply because he had seen it all.

A headless man with most of his organs harvested for money, leaving his stomach and chest cavity rotting and wide open, a bride in white, stained by the blood that her heart pumped out when it was stabbed by her scorned lover, a child mercilessly killed by her father by shooting her in the head, causing it to split open. Disease-stricken deaths, accidents and murders left spirits confused, frustrated and lost. All these spirits appeared in front of Zachery, waiting to be channeled, trying to find peace. They knew that he could see them, so they appeared everywhere he went.

Zachery kept reminding himself it was not his duty to help them move on but they constantly reminded him of their presence, when he was awake, and in his dreams. They spoke to him through the walls, sometimes in whispers, sometimes in wails. They showed him visions of how they had died or lived; their memories. Sometimes, the visions came on so strong, giving him severe headaches and turning his eyes white, following which he would find himself on the ground, crouching, sweating and panting, fists closed tight, eyes burning as they returned to normalcy. The spirits let themselves into his home, lingering perpetually as constant nuisances until Zachery helped them.

Sometimes, he brought their relatives to his house to pass messages. He did this with Ouija boards. Most of the spirits wanted to convey their feelings to their loved ones and then they were ready to move on. Of course, nobody could see the spirits like he could, they only saw the planchette move on the board as the spirit communicated.

He was resentful about the fact that he could not contact his own parents. He knew they could see him but he could not communicate no matter how hard he tried. Even though he faced risks constantly trying not to let any spirit take over his body, it happened sometimes, and it would always be the fight of his life to fully regain himself. His life was a living nightmare, one that he did not try to inch away from because he was convinced that it was his fault that his parents had died.
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