Hunting seasons

The church's doors are parsimoniously closed. A light flickers at the end of the street.

The town's asleep.

Old Gavin sighs, because the night makes him feel isolated in a way the day doesn't. Instead of being left out (which he literally is, if you think about), he feels like is the rest of humas who have disappeared. He knows the darkness will die as the light did, but it doesn't seem so.

It's familiar, though.

He's been out here long enough, ever since his grand-kids started being scared of him during his crisis. His daughter tried to take him to a good place, where he would be taken care for. They couldn't cure him, but they could at least treat him... as long as the money kept coming.

And it was a lot of money. Gavin didn't want to be that kind of burden, and he didn't want strangers telling him when to sleep and what to eat, so he left. Every so often, his daughter would show up, begging him to go back home or to the clinic. She would let him money or food, and those nasty medicines.

He didn't want any of that, it made him feel like a failure. But he didn't want to worry her a little bit more than needed, so he took whatever she give him, he even took the meds in case she came back to check. He had even go back to the clinic once, but hadn't been able to stay.

He missed them all so much. He missed the person he used to be for them, before.

Before has been so good. And now was so sad, and hard and... scary.

The school boys would throw things at him, the rich grown ups would threat him to beat him if he didn't get out of their sight and other lost people would rob him so they could keep paying the bills so they wouldn't be homeless like him. Sometimes, even the cops would scare him, blaming him for things he didn't know had happened.

And there was the stalker too.

it has been lurking around for a while now. At first he had thought it was just another homeless person who coincidentally picked the same areas to sleep. But he started spotting him among the crowds during the day. Not stealing or working or begging for money, just standing, looking towards Gavin.

Each day he seemed to be a little closer, and last night it has slept at the other side of the street, right in front of Gavin.

He hasn't seen him today, but now that people had gone home, he knew he wouldn't take long.

A person walked next to him, probably the old lady who cleaned the church, and Gavin said "Good night" almost by reflex, looking around.

His eyes meet a great darkness where it should have been the face of the person. The man who had been following him. The thing that was stalking him.

He scream and ran blindly. 

Behind, the faceless thing hugged the other shadows, and something about them dissappeared, making the night feel less dangerous somehow.

It would come back, once in a while when things were going worse, but Gavin never knew what it wanted from him.

Sounds like a cleanser.
It's weird that it was out there, but I guess that's not completely impossible, and it has all the characteristics. First, a familiar yet uninteresting appearance to the eye of those they follow, creating the right amount of "don't know don't care" in people that would otherwise be spooked by the idea of being followed. The subtle approaching of a predator. The lack of real distinctive traits like a consistent height, a voice, fingers... and specially a face. The scary, yet harmless approach, and how it is summoned by bad circumnstances.
The cleanser feed on the kind of shards that cling on people who doesn't want them. People who is in pain but wants to leave it behind for better or for worse.
That people is way more rare than you would expect. Many of those who complain about the suffering are the ones who try harder to hold the shards of what they have lost, refusing to see any whole things in their life. That kind of people, as well as those who openly keep alive the irrepeatable good memories or the impossible dreams, are never visited by this ghost.
Since most shards come to this world whenever the owner don't want them, cleansers are not interested in going to other worlds, so we don't know if they can. What we do know is that there are exceptions. People haunted by shards or the ghosts they turn into, and being dragged by them despite their best efforts to move on.
And that's what cleansers eat: shards and ghost with the cruelty and the strengh to do such thing.
Why? Because their core is a very powerful shard of some form of carelessness. If a shard like this is exposed to anything that reminds it of its owner, it will try to become a ghost using every other shard around. Whether it works depend on a lot of things, like the amount of shards present and how well they mix.
If the process fails, other ghosts are formed. Which kind, depends on why they didn't become a cleanser. Too few shards usually form a less effective variant of the cleanser, like vultures or even parasites. If shards just don't get along or other cores are formed in the process, you will get one or more ghosts that were always ready to be formed, just waiting for an emotion to awake the shards.