Outcast

On the outskirts of the village lived a skinny young man called "The Outcast", so they called him because no one dared to go near him. He was not evil, but he was different. He lived alone in a mud house with corroded walls, smelling of mould and dampness. His mother had died years ago, and his father disappeared one night without a trace. No one has ever visited his house, except for the wind that howls around the shattered windows as if it is screaming with him. By day he works in the fields in silence, and at night he sits in front of a small oil lamp and stares at nothing, trapped by the echo of his loneliness.

One evening, as the rain poured down and lightning split the sky like a fiery tongue, he heard a faint whisper coming from the old abandoned well behind his house. The voice echoed like a mysterious call, slight, but clear, as if it was addressing him personally. He stepped out despite the cold, shadows skipping across the muddy road, until he stood at the edge of the well. Its deep echo swallowed the sounds of the wind. This time he heard the whisper clearly: "At last you have come." He took a step back, but curiosity got the better of him. "Who's there?" He asked, and a soft voice, as if spoken by the wind, came to him: "A friend."

Since that night, the young man was no longer alone. The voice appeared to him every evening, talking to him, comforting him, asking him about his sorrows. He could see nothing of the voice, but he felt it as if the presence was filling the house. It spoke to him from the shadows, from between the slivers of light refracted on the walls. As the days passed, the voice began to materialise more and more, in the form of a light mist that coloured the moon and then rippled until it became the faint shape of a man. The young man was not frightened, but felt strangely comfortable. This entity sometimes laughed, and got angry when it saw him depressed. He no longer felt alone. The genie, as he later identified himself, told him that he had spent centuries under this earth, locked away from the eyes of the world, looking for a companion to hear him.

The genie began to help him with his daily chores, cultivating the land and carrying water from afar, so much so that his neighbours began to whisper: How could the land of the outcast suddenly blossom? How could a strange light shine from his hut every night? He didn't care about people, he had found someone to fill the emptiness of his soul. The elf liked to talk about old times, about spirits that inhabited places no one dared to mention, about tales of people who had failed him long ago. After a while, the genie would go away for days and then come back. When he came back, his face would be paler and his eyes would be sunken, as if he was carrying an unbearable weight.

One night, the young man returned home and found the genie sitting by the lamp, his features rigid and expressionless. He told him in a tired voice: "Someone is trying to summon me again, but I don't want to leave." The young man sat in front of him, feeling an anxiety he had never known before, and asked him: "Who?" The genie did not answer him, but approached him and stared at his face for so long that he felt a strange heat coursing through his body as if he were on fire. "See?" The genie said, "Our souls are intertwined, and no one can separate us anymore." The young man felt afraid for the first time. He tried to get up, but his legs trembled. He screamed: "What have you done to me?" The entity smiled faintly and said in a voice that sounded like a whimper: "I saved you from your loneliness... but the price was greater than you think."

In the following days, people began to notice that the outcast had changed. He didn't go out as much. His voice is hoarse and his gaze is tense. At night, they would hear moans and strange noises from his house that sounded like whispering and laughter at the same time. Children no longer pass by the place. Once a woman saw him from afar talking to the void, then suddenly laughing, then falling silent and collapsing as if he had lost his mind. A man tried to investigate but didn't dare to approach, as his door was said to open on its own after midnight.

On that fateful night, the villagers heard a loud cry that broke the silence. They rushed towards the outcast's house, but when they arrived they found only the door open, the lamp extinguished, and the smoke seeping through the cracks like the smell of burnt flesh. They did not find the young man's body, nor any trace of a person there. On the floor they found only an old book, wet with water, with strange symbols written on its pages that no one could understand. Some elders said it was a book of necromancy, but no one knows how he got it. From that night on, the house remained deserted. Even the wind seemed to avoid it. However, from time to time, some people say they see a faint light shining from within and a quiet voice saying: "At last you have come...".

Years passed, and the village itself changed. The elders died, the children grew older, and the newer generations forgot the story of the outcast. But the old well remained as silent as ever, and no one dared to go near it. Some shepherds say that when they pass by it, they feel something looking at them from the depths, something breathing slowly. One night, a young boy was sitting on its edge, playing with a stone and throwing it into it, when he heard a faint voice coming from the darkness: "Friend...". 

The strange part of the story is that the boy returned to his village a few days later and became mysteriously different. He would disappear for hours in the fields, talking to himself as if he was consoling an invisible spirit. When he was once asked what he was doing, he said with a faint smile that resembled the smile of the young outcast before his disappearance: "I'm not alone anymore." 

Since then, no one has dared to say a word about the outcast or the genie who was his friend. With every rain that fell on the village, the whispers would return, echoing from the walls of the houses like an undying memory, whispers that said: Maybe it wasn't the evil genie that was the issue, but the loneliness that awakened him from his long slumber. 

To this day, no one knows if the castaway really disappeared, or if he became part of the shadows that inhabit the well. 

Everyone who approaches the place hears the same voice gently calling to him: "Come closer... you won't be alone anymore." 

Then it is never seen again.