It was one of those days that Aloka stayed up late and had to get up early. She didn’t stay up late out of her own free will, she was taking care of somebody else's mess. Around eleven PM a ghost of a young woman came to her dorm room and pointed towards the city. The ghost didn’t say anything because her throat was slit. That didn’t mean she couldn’t talk but when humans die the ghost still, for some time, feel human and think they are still human, so this woman's ghost thought that she couldn't talk because of her slit throat.

Douglas, the ghost that's been following her for six years now, looked at the ghost of the woman “Ahh... When will they stop pestering you? This is the sixth one this week and it’s only Wednesday.”

Aloka looked at Douglas with a murderous look “When are you going to stop pestering me?” She asked him.

Turning his look away from the ghost and towards Aloka, Douglas saw the look on her face and jumped a step backward.“ You know I’m not pestering you. You know your mother told me to watch over you.”

“Well, you behave more like a pest than like a guardian Douglas. Let's see what she wants from us.” Aloka stood up and walked over to the woman's ghost to see where she was pointing. Aloka followed the direction the ghost's finger was pointing at and saw a park.

“Is it the park?” She asked the ghost and the ghost nodded.

“Douglas, it seems we are going to the park. Get dressed, it’s cold outside.” Aloka said with a sneer. She loved teasing him just because she knew he hated it.

“Hardy, har, har. Good one.” Douglas said with an empty tone and a blank look on his face. He hated when Aloka teased him, but that seemed to be her favorite pastime in the last few months. 

They all left Aloka's dorm room and went towards the park. When they arrived, they saw a woman sitting on a swing, her upper part of the torso bent down and her head pointed towards the ground. The ground beneath her was full of blood. Aloka came closer to the swing, crouched down and looked at the women's face. It was the same face as the ghost of the woman who came to her dorm room, it even had the same wound, her throat was slit. 

She stood up wanting to grab her phone to call the police but the ghost of the woman stood in front of her and pointed at something again. Aloka looked in the direction the ghost was pointing but couldn’t see anything.

“What do you want to show me?” She asked the ghost.

The ghost of the woman started moving in the direction of the fence surrounding the park and Aloka followed. The ghost stopped at one point of the fence and pointed. Aloka took a closer look and saw blood on the fence.

“Is this the blood of the person who killed you?” Aloka asked and the ghost nodded.

Aloka took out her phone and called the police. She reported that she found a dead woman in a park and waited for the police to come. When the police came, she told them that she was walking to her dorm room and saw a woman sitting on a swing in a strange position. When she went to help, she noticed the blood on the fence, saw the blood under the woman and called the police. 

A few days later Aloka was watching the news in her dorm room. The police captured the serial killer who murdered five women by slitting their throats and leaving them in public places. The ghost of the woman she helped, appeared in her dorm room again, thanked her with a smile on her face and disappeared into a bright light.

This was Aloka's life. When she was a child, she saw people that looked different from her or her mother and father. Their skin was gray and they had parts of their bodies missing or mutilated. She wasn't afraid of them they just looked different. She didn’t tell her mother or father that she could see them, she just assumed that all people could see them. When she started school the teacher gave them art assignments to draw different things and Aloka drew what she saw, what she thought others saw and what she thought was normal. Most of her drawings had drawings of the gray people she saw every day, but the drawings of her classmates didn’t. She wondered why her classmates didn’t draw the gray people.

Seeing Aloka's drawings, her teacher started to worry. She knew that children had an overactive imagination, but in Aloka's drawings, the gray people repeated constantly. She feared that this wasn't a child's imagination, that it was something else, so the teacher called Aloka's parents in for a talk. 

Her parents came to school to talk with the teacher. She shared her concerns about Aloka's drawings and the gray people and asked them to talk to her about that because they previously had cases similar to this. One time a boy, in one of her classes, always drew black circles in all his drawings and it turned out that he had a psychological illness. She said that children have an overactive imagination and that this happens from time to time, but that it’s better to see if this is just a case of her imagination or if it’s a sign of some psychological illness. They assured her that they would talk to Aloka about this, took some of Aloka's drawings with them and left the school.

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At home, they sat down with Aloka, showed her the drawings from school and asked her. “Aloka, why do you draw these gray people?” 

Aloka looked at the drawings, she thought that she did something wrong because her classmates didn’t draw them, and said. “I don’t know.”

“There must be a reason. The gray men and women are in almost all of your drawings. Why?” Her mother asked.

Aloka didn’t want to tell her mother that she was drawing them because she could see them. She now started to doubt that others could see them. “I don’t know. I like drawing them. The tings teacher tells us to draw are boring so I draw them because they are not boring.” Aloka lied.

Her parents exchanged a weird look between each other, a look she didn’t understand. “Ok, Aloka. Just don't draw them in school anymore, please. And don’t talk to others about them.” Her mother told her.

“Ok, mom. I won’t.” Aloka said, not understanding why she couldn’t draw the gray people.

When her mother fell ill, things changed. Her mother had cancer that was incurable. The doctors gave told her that she had only a few months left until she died. Aloka was only fourteen when all of that was happening, she saw how hard her father took the news, even though he didn’t show it. Aloka spent a lot of time with her mother during these last few months of her mother's life and noticed that the same gray man was always near her mother wherever she went. She didn’t want to ask her mother about that, she didn’t want to talk about the gray people again.

One day her mother sat down with Aloka in the living room. Her skin looked almost as gray as the gray people’s skin, she looked exhausted but she had a warm smile on her face. Her mother's face suddenly became serious.

“Aloka, do you remember our talk about the gray people when you were young?” Her mother asked.

“Yes, I remember. You told me not to draw them or talk about them.” Aloka said confused that her mother was talking about them now.

“I was just trying to protect you from other people. Other people don’t understand what we see.” Her mother continued. “I want you to meet someone.” She turned around and started waving her hand as if calling someone to come “Douglas, come. Let me introduce you.”

The gray man that Aloka saw following her mother came closer towards them and sat on the couch next to her mother.

“Aloka, this is Douglas. He is an old friend of mine. He helped me understand my power and watched over me for most of my life. Douglas, I know you know Aloka, but I don’t have much time before I leave this life, so I wanted to ask you if you could do for Aloka what you did for me. Would you teach her about her power and watch over her as you did over me?” Her mother said.

“I would be honored.” Douglas said.

“Good. Thank you.” Aloka's mother smiled. “I’ll teach you the first thing my mother taught me. The gray people you have been seeing all your life are ghosts. Even Douglas here is a ghost.” Aloka stared at Douglas who decided to put on a little show and disappear into the couch.

“Douglas stop fooling around, this is serious.” Her mother gave him a disapproving look and then continued. “Most ghosts stay here because they have unfinished business, but there are some that stay here because they are full of hate and don’t want to move on, these kinds of ghosts are evil and stay behind because they want to hurt the living. We can’t help them, it’s impossible, that's why Douglas here protects me. All the ghosts, the benevolent and the evil, look the same to me. They look gray to me. To Douglas they don’t, the evil ghosts to him look black.” Her mother put her arm on Aloka's knee, the look on her face got very serious now.

“If Douglas and you see an evil ghost, run. Don't try to stop it or you’ll just get hurt. Just help the normal gray ghosts that come to you because if you help them finish their business here, they will be able to move on, they will go into the light. Ok?” Her mother asked waiting for Aloka to confirm that she'll stay out of the way of the evil ghosts.

“Ok, mom. But how do ghosts become evil? There has to be a reason.” Aloka asked because if there is a reason, maybe she could stop it from happening.

“Don't get involved with evil ghosts, ever!” Her mother said raising her voice.” They only bring death, misery and suffering into your life. End of discussion!” Her mother stood up slowly and started walking towards her bedroom. “I’m tired. I’ll go and get some rest. Douglas, I’m leaving her in your capable hands.”

Douglas looked at Aloka and saw a worried look on her face. He tried to cheer her up. “You’ll see we’ll be best friends in no time.” Aloka just left the living room and went straight to her bedroom. She couldn't believe her mother had been lying about the gray people to her all her life, leaving her to think she was the only one who could see them. 

At one point Aloka fell into a restless sleep, having one nightmare after another, until she felt someone sitting on the bed beside her. Aloka opened her eyes and turned towards the person sitting on her bed. It was her mother, sitting on the edge of her bed looking at her with a warm smile on her face, but there was something different about her, her skin was gray and Aloka couldn't touch her. 

“No... No! Mom! Don’t leave us! We still need you!” Tears started to run down Aloka's face. Her mother blew a kiss in her direction and said the words I love you but no sound came out of her mouth. Aloka was crying as a bright light enveloped her mother's ghost and as it disappeared.