Ellis Kelly
Ellis Kelly was born to Shea Kelly, a real estate agent, and Devin Kelly, a small town doctor. As a child, Ellis had always been curious. He was always searching for something. Sometimes it was a storybook monster, sometimes it was buried treasure. Whatever he was looking for, Ellis was always enthusiastic about his adventures. Often young Ellis could be found spending time in a small patch of forest near his home. It's there that he develops an interest in fire. After stealing a lighter from his father, he quickly becomes enthralled with setting very small fires. Eventually this interest fades and Ellis begins to focus his attention on friends. A chatty child, Ellis had no problems keeping his peers' interest with stories of monsters and hidden places. This eventually leads to Ellis developing a small circle of friends, who he would stay close with until the end of his middle school career. Ellis's parents maintained a distant relationship with each other until their divorce shortly before Ellis started high school.Despite suspecting the divorce, Ellis is still impacted. He begins spending more time away from home. Eventually his interest in fire rekindles and he once again begins to set small fires in the woods near his home. Unlike his younger self, Ellis doesn't grow out of this stage and as he progresses through high school he only becomes more distant from his family. Whenever he does make it home, he begins to notice his father spending more and more time in the family's basement. After trying to investigate, he is quickly shooed away and told to stay out of the basement. This leads to an argument and Ellis leaves once again. This time, instead of going to the forest, he grabs a few supplies from the family garage and makes his way to an abandoned building, one that he had been eyeing for quite some time. Devin returns to the basement where he continues his study of black magic.It's here that things start to go wrong.His plan was to set the place on fire and then to escape somewhere to watch the blaze. Unfortunately, Ellis had never done this before. Hell, he barely had experience with anything larger than a brush fire. After deciding to start the fire in the basement, Ellis begins to make his quick escape up the stairs and into the main room. He doesn't count on his foot going straight through a stair, and catching his leg, but of course...that's exactly what happens and Ellis is stuck as the building fills with smoke. After many failed attempts at escaping he eventually succumbs to smoke inhalation and dies, alone.It doesn't take long for the fire department to show up and extinguish what was left of the fire. Hours later, Devin gets a phone call and is given the news that his son is dead. Distraught that their last conversation had been a fight, Devin asks to see Ellis's remains. After answering a few questions about what he'd like to do with his son's body, a plan begins to form in his head. The secret in the basement could finally come in handy. But he needed to prepare first. Devin spends the next few days balancing speaking with the local coroner and preparing for the ritual the best he can. When the day comes, he heads to the crematorium with tired eyes.After some tears and sad wording upon his arrival, Devin is quickly led downstairs to the morgue to finally view his son's body. He nearly begs the mortician and his assistant for some time alone before Ellis's body is loaded into the wooden casket. The worker agrees but alerts him that his assistant will need to stay nearby. Devin spends ten or so minuets doing his best to convincingly sob over his sons slightly charred body. As soon as he thinks it's been long enough, he calls over the mortician's assistant and pulls something from his pocket.He asks a question and just as the assistant leans over Ellis's body, Devin steps behind him and wraps the wire he'd pulled from his pocket around the assistant's neck. He pulls, and pulls, and pulls until he can wrap another arm around the assistant's body. There's a bit of a struggle but eventually the assistant stops struggling in his arms and falls limp. Devin doesn't take more then a few seconds to catch his breath before he pulls Ellis's stiff body into his arms and onto the ground. He drags him out the back door of the morgue and into the van he'd parked there beforehand.By the time he makes it into the drivers side seat Devin can practically taste his anxiety.
After nearly speeding the whole way he eventually arrives at his destination. A cabin settled a few miles into the woods. Devin begins the process of dragging Ellis's body through the dirt and into the cabin.He preforms the ritual, chanting promises and pleading to some sort of ancient god. This goes on for an hour or so before Devin finally stops and retires to a couch near the back of the cabin. All he had to do was wait.As the evening rolls in, the sound of breaking dishes and snarling wakes Devin. Upon his investigation he finds Ellis crouching in the cabin's kitchen like a trapped animal. He scurries to the corner as soon as he notices Devin and all Devin can do is beam. He'd actually done it. There's not much time to celebrate before Ellis begins to stride towards him, clawed hands grabbing and reaching for any part of the human they could reach.After a bit of struggle, Devin manages to convince Ellis to tell him what he wants. It's flesh. Dead flesh. Ellis is so insistent that Devin doesn't even give a second thought to saying no.
So starts their own ritual. Things stay like this for a few weeks. Ellis begins to learn with Devin's help, and as long as Devin provided Ellis with dead animals, he stayed civil. Of course he was nothing like the son he knew. Devin spent the first two weeks just teaching Ellis how to speak. But he saw this as a positive. A clean slate.Around the month mark of their new time together, animal flesh began to no longer satisfy Ellis. Devin of course refuses, stating that he'd done enough to break the law. This leads to a fight and after a long struggle Ellis ends up bashing Devin's head in with his fists and the help of a lamp. Devin bleeds out as Ellis watches and waits. Sniffing at Devin's dying form until he smelled dead enough. Then he tore in.The next morning comes, then the next, and then the next. With every approaching sunrise Ellis feels himself grow more hungry. Eventually the aching in his belly drives him from the cabin and into the woods. He remains there for a few weeks until the occasional dead deer starts to become unsatisfying and he begins to crave rotting human flesh once more. It's then that he decides to move his hunt into the nearest town he can reach.