halfintheshadow

[halfintheshadow]

It wasn't exactly easy for her to do her job in a lowkey matter. It wasn't like she could easily secretly say 'hey have you noticed any ghosts?' It wasn't something that rolled off the tongue and it was something that was easy to disguise. And most people didn't react well when she spilled the truth. But at least she could try to get some honest answers before she dropped the ghost bomb. People were either overly receptive or showed her the door the minute she dropped the bomb. She was trying to read the room, figure out what all these spirits were doing here. "Sorry," she said as he spoke, turning her attention to him. She offered a small smile. "I'm just trying to see if I can hear the problem. A lot of people reported noises," again, it wasn't a lie. It was just the truth. Not all of it.

She knew time was ticking before he figured it out. If she didn't get some solid leads as to why the ghosts were gathering around him and this apartment she would be at a loss for a new lead. His comments about the wifi spots had her chuckling a little. "I've always found that a booster solves that problem," she remarked rather lightly. Ella took once more glance around and figured she was just about out in the fact she wasn't the basic maintenance worker. "Well, the landlord called me in to have a look at complaints from other tenants. I'm not the common worker really. I'm what they call a medium," she didn't use the word she learned as the proper term. Most times people didn't recognize those. "And I noticed there's a lot here. And they're all centered here, in this apartment."

Blake x Ella - Starter

@iamblakelove​

Most people hated their jobs. She knew that. She’d seen everyone from those working at desk jobs to those working in the center of the action, up all night. But she /hated/ her job. Using her gift was something she despised with every bit of her being. Not only did it put her on the slow descent into insanity as it drove all necromancers, but she was often plagued by the ghosts as soon as they realized what she was. She rarely ever slept, between the nightmares and the ghosts whispering in her ear all hours of the night. She supposed it wasn’t all bad, sometimes she got some good ghosts. In the morning though, she begrudged leaving her bed every time. Yes, she definitely hated work. 

Ella had been called by a man who owned a set of condos. They were a newer development from what she understood, which was unusual for hauntings. She asked the usual questions. How old was the building? Any deaths on sight? Background checks on the tenants. All the usual things. When she hadn’t gathered anything besides a couple of elderly people passing away, she decided the best she could do was look around the apartment. Most times it was nothing, she expected that much at this point. The landlord had given her the master key and had offered her full clearance. She supposed that came with such high reviews. 

The brunette decided to head in as the evening was setting in, roaming the hallways. No ghosts thus far. It wasn’t until she got to the staircase that she started seeing spirits. They definitely didn’t fit the usual bill. They noticed her quickly, but she tried to ignore most of them. She realized that the hotspot of it all was the third floor. There were an unbelievable amount of spirits, and most centered around room 312. So she knocked on the door. She might have a key, but she was still trying to be polite.

[halfintheshadow]

She was maintenance, in a way. Only she was being paid to clean up a ghost problem as opposed to fixing pipes or doing general janitorial services. She suspected she was getting paid a lot more money than most janitors and plumbers did. Not that she’d ever been the type to brag about her finances. Instead she preferred to keep it quiet, especially since the way she got her money was nothing to be proud of. Sometimes, she genuinely helped, but most of the time she told people what they wanted to hear. There wasn’t a lot of money in the truth. 

“Thanks,” she smiled a little, more than happy he hadn’t been difficult. The building manager had made it seem like there would be a little bit of pushback about her entering the apartment. At first, she wanted to tackle those who’d reported sightings, but she needed to get an idea of where they were coming from more importantly. It was hard to focus on keeping a friendly conversation when she had a million little voices whispering in her ear. 

Ella stepped into the apartment and glanced around. “Don’t worry about cleaning up, I’m not going to tattle to the landlord,” she said with a little chuckle. “Have you noticed anything strange around your apartment?” She decided to start in, pulling out a little notebook. Sometimes she was forgetful, whether that was from former drug addict brain or from how overwhelming ghost experiences could be. “Cold spots, sounds at night that don’t sound like they belong, that kind of thing?” She asked, figuring dipping a toe in the pool and getting some answers would be better than jumping in head first and getting nothing but the usual judgement looks. She was freezing herself with the spirit presence, she could imagine even the civilians were feeling some of that.

Blake x Ella - Starter

@iamblakelove​

Most people hated their jobs. She knew that. She’d seen everyone from those working at desk jobs to those working in the center of the action, up all night. But she /hated/ her job. Using her gift was something she despised with every bit of her being. Not only did it put her on the slow descent into insanity as it drove all necromancers, but she was often plagued by the ghosts as soon as they realized what she was. She rarely ever slept, between the nightmares and the ghosts whispering in her ear all hours of the night. She supposed it wasn’t all bad, sometimes she got some good ghosts. In the morning though, she begrudged leaving her bed every time. Yes, she definitely hated work. 

Ella had been called by a man who owned a set of condos. They were a newer development from what she understood, which was unusual for hauntings. She asked the usual questions. How old was the building? Any deaths on sight? Background checks on the tenants. All the usual things. When she hadn’t gathered anything besides a couple of elderly people passing away, she decided the best she could do was look around the apartment. Most times it was nothing, she expected that much at this point. The landlord had given her the master key and had offered her full clearance. She supposed that came with such high reviews. 

The brunette decided to head in as the evening was setting in, roaming the hallways. No ghosts thus far. It wasn’t until she got to the staircase that she started seeing spirits. They definitely didn’t fit the usual bill. They noticed her quickly, but she tried to ignore most of them. She realized that the hotspot of it all was the third floor. There were an unbelievable amount of spirits, and most centered around room 312. So she knocked on the door. She might have a key, but she was still trying to be polite.

[halfintheshadow]

She could already feel the sheer amount of spirits weighing on her. They all had stories, ones they whispered in her ear. Perhaps one at a time was a manageable number. But the volume of these spirits had reached insanity levels. There was no way a new apartment complex had cultivated so many property deaths in such a short time. It was hard to sort out the difference voices. They all blurred together, becoming a cacophonous harmony that she had to listen into. She could already feel a headache gone. No wonder there’d been complaints by the tenants. She suspected there were so many even the tenants could sense them. 

Not to mention the various strength she could sense in the spirits. She had no doubt they could corporealize or throw things around if they wanted. One thing she noticed was that almost all the spirits were modern. They all seemed to be wearing average clothing and didn’t seem out of place for the time. All ages, old and as young as teenagers. She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of them all, she just knew something strange was happening. 

Room 312, that was the center of it all. She could tell. She tried to resist the urge to wince as she walked to the room. Hopefully she could get to the bottom of this and hopefully find a way to purge the spirits from the room. Chances were she’d probably have to stop to an occult shop. The man who opened the door didn’t seem like someone who’d attract so many spirits, but there was definitely something strange about him, she just couldn’t put her finger on what that might have been. Ella chuckled a little at his words, even if it was hard to find laughter with the headache she had. “That’s not really my style,” she commented. “I’m maintenance I guess you could say,” she held up the master key she’d been given. It was always weird explaining what she did. People either suddenly clung to her, demanding she speak to their loved ones or they laughed in her face.

Blake x Ella - Starter

@iamblakelove​

Most people hated their jobs. She knew that. She’d seen everyone from those working at desk jobs to those working in the center of the action, up all night. But she /hated/ her job. Using her gift was something she despised with every bit of her being. Not only did it put her on the slow descent into insanity as it drove all necromancers, but she was often plagued by the ghosts as soon as they realized what she was. She rarely ever slept, between the nightmares and the ghosts whispering in her ear all hours of the night. She supposed it wasn’t all bad, sometimes she got some good ghosts. In the morning though, she begrudged leaving her bed every time. Yes, she definitely hated work. 

Ella had been called by a man who owned a set of condos. They were a newer development from what she understood, which was unusual for hauntings. She asked the usual questions. How old was the building? Any deaths on sight? Background checks on the tenants. All the usual things. When she hadn’t gathered anything besides a couple of elderly people passing away, she decided the best she could do was look around the apartment. Most times it was nothing, she expected that much at this point. The landlord had given her the master key and had offered her full clearance. She supposed that came with such high reviews. 

The brunette decided to head in as the evening was setting in, roaming the hallways. No ghosts thus far. It wasn’t until she got to the staircase that she started seeing spirits. They definitely didn’t fit the usual bill. They noticed her quickly, but she tried to ignore most of them. She realized that the hotspot of it all was the third floor. There were an unbelievable amount of spirits, and most centered around room 312. So she knocked on the door. She might have a key, but she was still trying to be polite.

[halfintheshadow]

Blake x Ella - Starter

@iamblakelove​

Most people hated their jobs. She knew that. She’d seen everyone from those working at desk jobs to those working in the center of the action, up all night. But she /hated/ her job. Using her gift was something she despised with every bit of her being. Not only did it put her on the slow descent into insanity as it drove all necromancers, but she was often plagued by the ghosts as soon as they realized what she was. She rarely ever slept, between the nightmares and the ghosts whispering in her ear all hours of the night. She supposed it wasn’t all bad, sometimes she got some good ghosts. In the morning though, she begrudged leaving her bed every time. Yes, she definitely hated work. 

Ella had been called by a man who owned a set of condos. They were a newer development from what she understood, which was unusual for hauntings. She asked the usual questions. How old was the building? Any deaths on sight? Background checks on the tenants. All the usual things. When she hadn’t gathered anything besides a couple of elderly people passing away, she decided the best she could do was look around the apartment. Most times it was nothing, she expected that much at this point. The landlord had given her the master key and had offered her full clearance. She supposed that came with such high reviews. 

The brunette decided to head in as the evening was setting in, roaming the hallways. No ghosts thus far. It wasn’t until she got to the staircase that she started seeing spirits. They definitely didn’t fit the usual bill. They noticed her quickly, but she tried to ignore most of them. She realized that the hotspot of it all was the third floor. There were an unbelievable amount of spirits, and most centered around room 312. So she knocked on the door. She might have a key, but she was still trying to be polite.

[halfintheshadow]

Biography

Name: Mirabella Freya Elkins.

Nicknames: Ella.

Biological Age: 24.

Real Age: 24.

Birthday: 12/01/1996.

Star Sign: UTA.

Place of Birth: Freeport, Maine..

Current Town: Falls Church, Virginia.

Sexuality: Heterosexual.

Marital Status: Single.

Species: Necromancer.

Occupation: Medium.

Education: Incompletely High School.

Faceclaim: Victoria Pedretti.

Personality: Mirabella is definitely on the more soft side of personality types. She’s a rather bubbly and gentle soul, despite the past that tends to haunt her. Even with everything that has happened in her life, she’s maintained some forms of her innocence. Ella finds herself trying to enjoy things more fully and find joy in little things in life. She doesn’t like to take things for granted. After seeing all the spirits with last words unspoken and buried regrets she doesn’t wish to be like them, so she tries to live every moment to the fullest. Ella is compassionate and forgiving - almost too forgiving. She has a hard time standing up for herself with both the living and the dead. Most people tend to take advantage of this, including but not exclusive to the spirits she’s plagued by. She’s not the type to turn away someone in need, and can often be manipulated through her kind and open heart. Despite Ella’s softer and more naive nature, she has a hidden talent for deception. In her younger days, where she often abused drugs, she had learned how to manipulate and act a certain way to get what she wants. She still possesses these talents, and if she chooses to utilize them, she can often figure out what a person wants or needs to hear. The only time she uses this for personal gain is when it comes to her line of work, often telling people lies of what the dead have said when she deems the truth too painful. Ella suffers frequently from night terrors, often experiencing moments from the lives of ghosts that haunt her or rather harsh flashbacks from her own life. Sometimes she experiences intense flashbacks or hallucinations during her waking moments. She also is constantly weighed down by guilt and remorse, which often prevents her from making a lot of true friends or connections. Despite her job, Ella hates having to use her gifts and has spent most of her life running from them, both because of what happened to her mother and what people tend to say of what happens to necromancers. Since her mother’s gifts, she’s only actively sought out the use of her gifts as it pertains to her survival. Due to the darkness throughout her life and the darkness that is brought by her gifts, she often falls into states of intense depression. She tends to become dissociative and will lose track of days. In the worse of these states, she finds herself yearning for former bad habits: such as drug use. 

Biography: Mirabella was not the result of some happy, perfect marriage. No, she was the result of an affair. Mirabella’s mother, Daara, had been married when she got pregnant with Mirabella. Daara’s marriage hadn’t exactly been perfect. Sure, there was no active fighting, and she’d ended up getting three beautiful children out of her marriage, children who she loved dearly. But the marriage had fallen flat. There’d never been any true love or spark between Daara and her husband. So when she started work a year after her youngest, for the first time since she’d had her eldest child, she was quickly seduced by a moody and mysterious man who had brushed through her office. He kept to himself, and was rather quiet around the office. One evening she found him crying in his office and she comforted him. The affair started innocently, with a friendship. But it slowly grew into more as she became his one and only confidante about his life. He told her about his mother passing away, and then his sister ending her own life. They ended up sleeping with each other and while Daara felt a great deal of guilt about the whole thing, she couldn’t break it off. So she grew more distant from her husband and closer to this man. Then she found out she was pregnant. She knew the baby wasn’t her husband’s, and she finally realized the gravity of what she’d done. She confessed everything to her husband. He was furious. He didn’t hurt her, but he made it a personal goal to make sure she didn’t get to keep the children, after all she’d spent almost a year completely ignoring them to continue her affair. So, while Daara was pregnant, the custody battle raged on. Eventually the court ruled in favor of her husband and he gained full custody, denying Daara rights to her children. Mirabella was born only a month after the final hearing had wrapped up. By then, she’d broken things off with the man she’d been having an affair with, and he’d disappeared from her life. Despite the heartbreak of losing her children, it taught her a lesson of valuing things she had in the moment. So when Mirabella was born, she vowed she would never neglect her like she had her other children in the last few days. Mirabella and her mother were inseparable. Her early years were filled with love and even if they didn’t always have the most money, they were happy. Mirabella didn’t have everything she wanted but her needs were more than met. Though her mother’s loss of her elder children had resulted in her sheltering Mirabella a great deal. Sure, she got to go to school and see friends, but her mother could be slightly overprotective of her. When Mirabella was eight, she started seeing things. At first it was just bad nightmares. She was seeing things and feeling things she didn’t have a clue about. The first few were just about being sick, only she didn’t ever experience the kind of sickness she was feeling. And then after months of having these vivid dreams, she found herself seeing figures. Mostly when she first woke up, she’d see shadow figures, and sometimes it looked like someone was ducking behind furniture in her room. But she never saw anything when she checked or had her mother check. It grew more intense, and soon the shadows weren’t just shadows. She could see people. Some looked normal, some wore clothes she didn’t recognize, and others were bloodied and beaten up. Her mother didn’t know what to make of the horrific sights her daughter was seeing. At first she thought she was just attention seeking, but as the problems grew worse she thought perhaps her daughter might be showing an early onset mental illness. After some rather violent visions and episodes of extreme fear, Mirabella’s mom brought her to the doctor who had her start seeing a psychologist. It didn’t help. Instead it just made Mirabella withdraw more and think she was actually crazy as people continued to tell her she was ill. She often begged these ghostly images to go away and leave her alone. All she wanted was to be normal. When she was ten, she stopped seeing things. She was just normal again. Her mother wasn’t sure what it was, neither did Mirabella really. But things were calm and quiet finally. Mirabella went on with life as normal, as if nothing had ever been wrong. She put the past in the past and pretended she hadn’t been crippled with fear only a short while ago. The break did not last long. She was just about thirteen when the phantoms came back. One by one, they started pouring into her life again, starting similarly to how they did when she was younger. She hated it. Every moment of it made her feel like she was about to fall into the depths of insanity. At least until one of her little ‘phantoms’ as she called them explained everything. He was only a little older. Fifteen she would have guessed. He told her that he’d met her kind before, and that she was a necromancer. He said most often such gifts ran in families. Ella knew without a doubt her mother didn’t carry such gifts. But it started to make sense. The more research she did, the more it seemed to come together for her. The hallucinations, or what she thought were hallucinations were just ghosts and ghosts showing her their own memories. The nightmares were her consciousness melding with the spirits around her, adapting the moments of their lives into her awareness. She still needed proof though, so she decided to interact with some of these ghosts. The easy ones she got information out of, like names. She found them with some research. It was a huge relief, knowing that she wasn’t crazy. The ghost who had told her about her gifts, Adam stuck around too. He became a friend of sorts, someone to confide in. He told her that she was one of the more powerful ones that he’d met, and said she must have come from a long line of necromancers. Not only did things make sense, but she finally felt like she had a purpose in life. For a year, things went well. Adam kept her company, was always at her side when her mother or friends from school weren’t there. She didn’t even notice times when Adam would behave strangely. She just chalked it up to a ghost issue. He helped her practice her abilities, helped to make her stronger and hone the immense amount of power she had. Honestly, she started to develop feelings for him. It was miserable for her that she had fallen for someone who she could never have. After a year of interactions with Adam, he told her that there was a way they could be together. At first she thought he was simply being silly, but he told her that sometimes, really powerful necromancers could bring people back. She didn’t believe him at first. And even if there were people with those sorts of powers, she didn’t think she was one of them. He kept bringing up the idea though, taunting her with the idea of them being together if she just brought him back. One night she had a truly horrible dream. In the dream she had a brother. In the dream she snuck up on him while he was sleeping and murdered him, beating his head with a rock. When she woke up, she was disoriented, scared. But she knew without a doubt that she saw Adam standing by her door. She quickly closed her eyes and went back to sleep, knowing very well the correlation between ghosts nearby and her dreams. She started to doubt Adam’s intentions far more than before. He continued to push her for this ritual to bring him back and burning with curiosity she agreed, knowing he’d have to tell her who he was to find his grave. Upon searching his name, she found a few newspaper clippings from almost twenty years back. Adam had been one of three children, and after butchering his younger brother at thirteen, he’d been committed to an insane asylum. Two years after his admission he died during electroshock treatment. Instead of gathering the ingredients to revive a spirit, she looked for ones to banish a spirit. Adam caught on though. So he decided there was only one way he’d get what he wanted. So he possessed her. Ella was awake the whole time as he took her body from her house, onto a bus and two towns over to where he was from. He used her body to go to the cemetery and then used her powers for his own selfish desires. He found out she didn’t even need the ritual, she was that strong. In the process of trying to bring himself back - something grueling and exhausting - he was interrupted by Mirabella’s mother. To disarm her, he acted like Mirabella. When she came to hug him, he used his own abilities he’d developed as a malevolent spirit to stop her heart. Ella, still awake inside of her own body and trapped felt every moment of it. It was horrifying. And then he completed raising himself. Only not in the way he thought it would happen. Ella gained control of her body back and ran to her mother, hoping desperately she might be able to help her. She performed CPR, prayed to whatever god that would listen but nothing worked. And then he crawled up from the ground. The body was decayed, pretty much a skeleton for the most part. But she knew it was Adam. He was coming for her. She was terrified more than anything. She was certain her life was ending when she pleaded for him to stop. And to her shock he did. It was then that she realized he had to do what she said. So she told him to leave his body. And so he did. His spirit was detached from his form once more. By this time, Ella was exhausted. Her nose had started bleeding from so much brazen use of power. With her last few moments of awareness before all the power use caught up to her, she banished his spirit. When she woke up, it was two days later in the hospital. The police had a lot of questions about what had happened. She knew better than to tell the truth. So she lied through her teeth. She said she had gotten in a fight with her mother and ran away from home. She told them that she hadn’t been able to find a place to sleep and while wandering around the town she’d come into, she’d found some kids digging up a grave. After confronting them they’d turned on her. Somewhere along the way she said her mother had showed up and scared them off. She told them she passed out and didn’t know what happened to her mother. Eventually, a coroner's report claiming a heart attack came to light. Between that and her story, she managed to get out of trouble. Ella ended up going into the foster system after  that. At first, she tried to maintain her dreamer-esque attitude and childhood innocence. But it just wasn’t easy. She’d lost so much and seen so much. And the darkness growing from her gifts was harder to ignore. By the time she was fifteen, she had turned to the crowd of rough cases in her school. She picked up smoking, and then drinking, and eventually started using drugs when she learned she wasn’t plagued by spirits while she was using. For years, she barely made it by. She used any money she had for drugs. Sometimes she didn’t have anywhere to sleep at night, other nights she crashed on couches. It was rough going for a long time, she was often in and out of community rehab centers and group homes. Most foster homes stopped taking her after she turned sixteen, so her life was one without a proper home for a long time. She was nineteen before the drugs were no longer enough to ward away her gifts. It was what made her quit. Because as soon as it stopped working to stifle her gifts, it only made things far worse when she was out of control. So she checked herself into another community rehab and got clean. It took months of trying, but after a year of being there she finally got herself together and checked out. She was almost like her old self, who she’d been before everything. But she was faced with new challenges. Like difficulties with finding a job and affording life in general. Eventually, she was left with very little in the way of solutions. So she started using her gifts. She’d investigate hauntings or get called to talk to people’s dead relatives. She didn’t mention that most times ghosts don't often hang around unless they have some serious grievances. Most times, she’d tell families what they wanted to hear to bring them peace. Other times she actually helped spirits find peace. It was a toss up, but most of her work ended up being a sham, even if she meant most lies to help people. She became rather successful. She was even stable in terms of money. She swore as soon as she had enough to go back to school she would hang it all up and never deal with the dead again. Her work eventually led her to Falls Church, something that appeared to be a hotspot of sorts for paranormal activity.