All her life, Raea Halstine had been very interested in learning about mythology, creatures in the shadows, and the like, of course, that made her an outcast. No one wants to hang out with the weird girl who is obsessed with that kind of thing. When she wasn't doing her school work, she was doing research, trying to learn all that she could about those types of things. Even in her own home, she felt as though she was not quite a part of the family with how they treated her. It wasn't like she wasn't aware of how people felt about her of course, or like she couldn't hear them whispering behind her back, or when she thought she wasn't listening. Hell, she could even remember when she was younger before she had grown from interested to outright obsessed with the paranormal.

She had woken up late in the night to go use the bathroom. She couldn't have been more than 10 years old, and she heard her mom speaking about her. To get to the bathroom in her house she had to walk past her younger brother's bedroom, and past her parent's bedroom to the end of the hallway. "She just isn't normal. There is something off about that girl." She heard her mother say in a hushed whisper to her father, that their door was slightly cracked, as it always was. Her younger brother was around 3, and their mother liked to keep it cracked so that she could hear if Liam was stirring in the middle of the night. He had always been their favorite. "She isn't that bad." Her father responded, she could hear him taking off his boots, having probably just gotten home from work. He had always worked late and would get home at odd times of the night, sometimes long after she had been put to sleep, but because he was always working, he hadn't spent much time with her to see just what her mother was talking about. She heard an exasperated, almost defeated sigh come out of her mother's mouth before she began speaking. "Her teacher called me again today, to tell me that she was asking about those... weird things again. When she was smaller she didn't ask about it so much, I don't know where I went wrong with that girl." Raea didn't even need to look into the room to know that her mother was waving her hand around the air as if she were trying to swat away a fly while she was talking about it. Her mother had always been dismissive, even angry at times when it came to her talking about that kind of thing, but it was the only thing her mind was interested in.

This continued until her death, or as it should be put her "death." She had learned to hide her interest from the greater world, she had even gotten a boyfriend, whose name was Justin. Her parents thought she was finally on the right track, and that she was finally normal. She would excel in her school work, and then she would either go home and put on a fake smile, and force herself to talk about anything other than myths, legends, and the creatures that would go bump in the night with her mom. Her brother didn't talk to her much, the age gap between them just made it so hard for them to interact regarding anything. Her dad was still never home, always working late, it was the only way that they were bringing in money, as her mother couldn't work. Everything was good for a year, her grades, Justin, and she even made a friend who seemed just as interested in the unknown as she was, her name was Kira Winters.

This, of course, caused a spiral that she would never be able to come back from. She stopped spending as much time with her family again, and that included Justin. She would have sleepovers with her friend most nights out of the week, and they would spend hours looking up the myths, on the nights after they had taken a small break from spending time together, they would talk late into the night about all of the things that they had looked up while they were apart. It enraged Justin, and one night he invited her over to spend time together. She... almost didn't want to accept the invitation because she had already had plans with Kira, but when she had texted Kira to ask what she thought, Kira told her to go spend time with Justin, that it would give her time to look up more information about the current 'myth' that she had been extremely interested in, and that they would talk tomorrow. Tomorrow, well, that shouldn't have come for Raea.

When she got over to Justin's house, he was nice for a moment. Her mom had stopped caring when she came and went because she had fallen right back into her old habit, and it meant that on a school night if Raea didn't come home, no one noticed. She had planned on spending the night over with her boyfriend since Justin's parents didn't care if he had someone stay the night, even a girl. Especially a girl. They were the type of parents who were more than happy that their son was having sex, they were the type of parents who used the "boys will be boys" motto a little bit too much. She was greeted at the door by his mom, who seemed to be grinning ear to ear at Raea. Justin's mom had always loved Raea, ever since the moment that he had first brought her home. She remembered that night too. "Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god!" Mrs. Moore practically screeched at the top of her lungs as she jumped out of her chair at the dinner table. "Our little Justin has finally brought home a girl!" Raea never believed that she was the first girl that Justin brought home, based on how he was, but maybe it was the first girl that his mom knew about. She couldn't help but notice that Justin's father rolled his eyes at the over-excited nature of his wife, it seemed to Raea that Mrs. Moore was like this a lot of the time, and it was a thorn in Mr. Moore's side.

Raea followed Justin up to his room, noticing that Mrs. Moore and Mr. Moore were surprisingly absent. They usually didn't go out too much, Mr. Moore being a retired veteran, and Mrs. Moore being a homemaker, had enough money that they could afford to both stay home and essentially dote on their only son. The last thing she remembered from that night was her and Justin getting into a major fight, mostly about the fact that she was weird again, that she hadn't been spending as much time with him as she once was, and that she had been spending too much time with Kira in his opinion. Everything went dark after that, what was supposed to be a nice night, turned into something dark.