Title: The Reluctant Recruit
The bell's shrill scream was the only thing that felt normal. It cut through the chatter of the hallway, a signal for the herd to move. Leo shoved his history textbook into his backpack, the frayed strap digging into his shoulder as he joined the river of students flowing toward the exits. Freedom was six minutes away, and he was counting every second.
"Hey. Leo. Wait up."
The voice was like a splash of cold water. Anya stood leaning against the lockers, her arms crossed. She wasn't smiling. Her dark eyes, always seeming to see a few inches beneath the surface of things, pinned him in place. Behind her, Kareem loomed, a silent mountain of a boy whose perpetual scowl was more effective than any hall monitor.
Leo's stomach tightened. "I've got a shift," he lied, hefting his backpack.
"This'll only take a minute," Anya said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She jerked her head toward the side corridor that led to the old gym—a part of the school that smelled of dust and forgotten ambitions. Reluctantly, Leo followed.
They slipped into the gym's storage room, a cavernous space cluttered with broken bleacher seats and deflated basketballs. The air was thick and still. Kareem closed the door, the click of the latch sounding unnaturally loud in the silence.
"We have a problem," Anya began, getting straight to the point. "And we need your help."
"My help?" Leo let out a short, nervous laugh. "Why? You two seem to have the whole… ghostbuster thing under control."
"It's not a ghost," Kareem rumbled, his voice low. "It's something else."
Leo's bravado faltered. The memory of the last month was a raw, open wound. The thing in the auditorium that had worn Sarah Milligan's face, the whispering shadows that only he, for some godforsaken reason, could see clearly. Anya and Kareem had been there too, fighting it with a desperate, practiced energy that terrified him almost as much as the entity itself. He'd helped, in a frantic, fumbling way, and he'd spent every day since trying to forget it.
"Look," Leo said, his voice dropping. "What happened with Sarah… that was a one-time thing. I got lucky. I don't know what you think I can do."
Anya stepped closer. "You see them, Leo. Really see them. Not just the vague cold spots or the feeling of being watched that most people get. You see the details, the forms. You saw the stitches on Sarah's mouth before we even knew what we were dealing with."
"So I have a overactive imagination. It's a curse, not a gift."
"It's a tool," she countered, her gaze intense. "My grandmother's stories, the protections… they're a guide. Kareem's strength is a shield. But you… you're our eyes. We're fighting blind without you."
Leo shook his head, backing toward a stack of wrestling mats. "No. You don't get it. I don't want to see them. I want to go to class, go to work, and get through senior year without being eaten by some… some jumbie." He spat the word his grandmother had used, the old Caribbean term that felt both silly and deadly serious.
Kareem's expression softened almost imperceptibly. "It doesn't care what you want."
"What is 'it'?" Leo asked, a knot of dread forming in his chest.
Anya sighed, running a hand through her braids. "His name was Alex Cruz. A sophomore. He died last week."
The name rang a faint, tragic bell. A car accident out on the old county road. A one-car wreck, they'd said. A tragedy.
"The accident," Leo said.
"It wasn't an accident," Kareem stated flatly. "The cops found his car wrapped around a tree, but there were no skid marks. He didn't try to stop. They said he fell asleep at the wheel."
Anya picked up the thread, her voice barely a whisper. "But his friends said he'd been different the last few days. Exhausted. Pale. He kept complaining about the tapping. A constant, soft tapping on his bedroom window at night. He said it sounded like fingernails."
Leo felt a chill that had nothing to do with the dusty room. He remembered his own grandmother, years ago, warning him about a spirit that mimicked sounds to lure the weary. A Bolom. A thing that craved the warmth of the living.
"A Bolom?" he whispered, the word feeling foreign and dangerous on his tongue.
Anya nodded, a flicker of respect in her eyes. "You know the stories. It imitates a crying baby or a lost pet to get you to open your door, your window. It drains your energy, your will, until you're just an empty shell. It makes you… suggestible. Compliant."
"It made Alex Cruz drive his car into a tree," Leo finished, the horror of it settling deep in his bones.
"It's not finished," Kareem said. "It's found a new target."
He didn't need to say it. Leo could see it in their grim faces. The reason they'd come to him. "Who?"
"Chloe Miller," Anya said. "She sits next to you in chem. Her brother was friends with Alex. She posted on her social this morning about how she hasn't slept in two days because of some 'stupid bird' that keeps tapping on her window."
The world seemed to tilt. Chloe. The girl with the laugh that sounded like wind chimes, who always borrowed a pencil and never gave it back. A real, living person, not just a name in a story.
"We have to stop it tonight," Anya said. "Before it finishes its work. Before it makes her do something… final."
"So stop it," Leo said, his voice cracking. "You have the salt, the iron, the… the words. Do what you did before."
"It's different this time," Anya explained, a hint of frustration creeping into her voice. "A Bolom is a fetcher. It's not anchored to a place like the thing in the auditorium was. It's attached to a person. We can't just banish it from the school. We have to go to its source, to where it's latched onto Chloe. We have to see it to fight it properly. I can only sense its presence. Kieran can only feel its malice. You… you can show us where to aim."
The weight of their expectation was a physical pressure. He saw the desperate hope in Anya's eyes, the grim acceptance in Kareem's. They were a team, a unit, and they were asking him to complete them. The thought made him feel sick. He wasn't a hero.