It was early in the morning, it was wet and raining and school had only started less than two hours ago, however, instead of being in class studying Eli Ward, a fourteen-year-old boy was instead getting his ass kicked by a group of bullies at least a head taller than him in the boy's bathroom, with the sound of thunder drawing attention away from the carnage.

*whack*

*Bam*

*Bang*

Those were the sounds of multiple legs and fists drilling into Eli’s body, nothing was safe his legs, arms, chest, even his face, they aimed indiscriminately and the only reason his privates were spared was because he cupped them with his hands in order to protect them.

Eli however, instead of fighting back just lied there on the ground knowing he wasn’t a match for them and couldn’t run away fast enough so he just waited, hoping that they were almost done so he could get off of the wet and dirty bathroom floor as soon as possible.

He wasn’t sure of the exact reason as to why they attacked him since they just randomly started to attack him one day indiscriminately without having even met him before hand, but if he were to guess why, it was probably because of its influence.

Eli then looked up past his attackers and saw a man behind them staring at him. Well, it wasn’t really a man though, while it had the shape and figure of a man it wasn’t human at all having Grey skin that was slowly starting to peel off and an injured right eye with an extra one growing from its right cheek.

Stolen novel; please report.

It continued to stare with a somewhat blank face only occasionally twitching uncontrollably but as they continued to beat Eli he could feel its aura grow knowing that if this continued something bad would happen.

Eli then focused really hard and held his breath, feeling a large surge of power enter his body, he then quickly placed one of his hands onto the floor causing a strange energy to fill the room, causing the ghost to frown and walk away through the bathroom wall.

This was a technique Eli only resorted to when it got too bad for him and had no other options. The reason for why he didn’t use it right away however was because it made him feel incredibly sick and tired and he’d rather take a quick beating than use it. But today was a rare occurrence where he had no choice.

The bullies then started to slow down and eventually stopped and soon after one of them spoke up.

“Looks like we got a little too excited this time, let’s bounce” he said to his friends before walking away.

He then looked over towards Eli one more time before speaking again “tell anyone about this and we’ll do worse next time, consider tomorrow a free pass since we overdid it a little” he said before exiting the boy's toilets.

“Haaa, Shit” Eli sighed and mumbled as he turned over onto his back in pain looking up at the ceiling, waiting for his stomach to calm down.

Ever since that ghost thing showed up almost a year ago he’s constantly had it rough with it manipulating people to hurt and pick on him for some unknown reason, though Eli guessed that it had something to do with his powers.

Eli didn’t know much about his abilities and at first, he didn’t even know he had them since he lived in the same area most of his life and the first time he ever even saw a ghost was when he was ten years old and even then it wasn’t much of a problem since none of the ones he saw targeted him like this one did.

He didn’t know what it was planning, only that it had it out for him and that it could manipulate people that were already close to breaking, suppressing their filters and common sense and turning them into monsters.

Eli didn’t really care however only seeing this as an unfortunate part of his life and as long as he could repel it he didn’t mind taking a bit of a beating plus he’s gotten really good at avoiding them altogether only running into them about once a week due to them being a grade above him.

Eli then got up slowly, grunting in pain as he did so. He then decided to go home early for the day and started to limp out of the bathroom looking back to where his tormenter was standing minutes prior once more before leaving.