There's a boy at the Home who's been there so long, most of the staff don't remember his name.
He lives in the attic, in a pitch black room with no windows and a door that's locked from the inside, because his shadow eats people. It ate his mother. It ate his father. It ate two of the old staff members when he first moved in, though they came back in time for dinner no worse for the trouble. Nothing can really hurt a staff member of the Home.
Back when it started, when neighborhood cats would disappear and he'd find patches of blood on his clothes, he used to think that light would stop it. That if he was in a room full of light, he'd be able to control it. That was wrong. Light only made his shadow stand out more, made it look darker where it cast. Light made his shadow stronger. The only way to make it weak and lost was to hide in the dark, so he did.
Nobody knows how he eats. Even the staff aren't entirely sure.
One time, on a dare, Jayda went up to the attic, up to the boy's locked room, and slipped a note beneath the door. It said, "Hi. I'm Jayda. Sometimes I make monsters. What's your name?"
She waited ten minutes before another paper slid out. What had gone in a crisp sheet of printer paper had been returned yellowed with age and mangled, as though it had been ten years instead of minutes. There were strange splotches on the paper that she only later realized were tear stains. On it, written in red ink and a painful looking scrawl were the words,
"Please go away."
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