Hi, I’m Leon Barrett and I’m a regular school kid, or I was. Now I’m just your regular kid with superpowers. If you’re reading this, that means that you like books about kids with superpowers, so enjoy.
CHAPTER 1
OH MATHS TEACHERS!
It’s a beautiful day to go to the beach or go for a bike ride, or it would be, but I live in a boarding school, the Storm King school to be specific. So, all I can do is lie down on my bunk and play monopoly with my dorm mate. I do really wish that I could spend more time with my mum, alas I can’t. I get kicked out of schools all the time, but my mum still somehow remains faithful and says that I can do anything if I try. Me and my friend Link are playing monopoly on my bottom bunk. I am getting absolutely thrashed by Link but it’s fun, after all it’s the only thing we could really do in our free time. We start talking about our last maths lesson; it was very weird. Mid-year the teacher just changed to an old woman named Mrs Tlesor and no one seemed to notice apart from me and Link, “She was so sketchy, and she looked at me like she’s going to murder me in my sleep.”
“Yeah, when I looked at her the first time she came into class, she looked at me like I was some sort of parasite and probably tagged me as her most hated student of the year” said Link.
“She gave me detention for the whole week, I bet she’s going to make me mark all of the assignments from all of her classes, or make me clean up the classroom every day after the lesson” I replied to him.
“Yeah, she looks like just the kind of person that would make you do something like that.”
“Honestly I’d rather pick up junk outside on a day like this than sit is her class for hours and rewrite textbooks.”
Oh and of course I didn’t realize how wrong I was about that. As always, I so underestimated the potential evilness of my teacher. In previous years of bad teachers, they were only regular harmless Karen teachers. This year I was going to have problems, BIG problems.
The next day me and Link woke up in the middle of the night to a strange noise in the. I looked out the window and saw something I will never be able to unsee in my life. I saw three strange humanoid figures with glowing eyes standing at the edge of the woods, as if waiting for something. I called up Link and we both stood paralysed at the window. Then to our surprise and horror, we saw a figure emerge from the teacher’s dorms wing and out there striding towards the creatures was our maths teacher. Link let out a whimper of fear. “It’s her, Mrs Tlesor!” he said, “either we are having a group hallucination or she’s not at all human.”
Links voice was shaking, he was hyperventilating and I don’t think I was doing any better. As we watched, our maths teacher morphed into the same kind of humanoid monster. The monsters all had eyes that glowed in the moon light like a cat’s, they had ghastly brick brown leathery skin and were bald with their heads like a shrivelled walnut. Their arms where long and their fingers… Oh, I didn’t want these fingers anywhere near my face. Their hands where the size of small plates but their fingers where over two feet long and were tipped with claws sharper than should have been necessary to gut anyone in their way. When she neared the other three creatures she stopped and began telling them something. Link tore his gaze off our demonic teacher looked at me and whispered; “What’s she talking to them about?”
“I don’t know but definitely not something good” I said. My voice cracked half way through the sentence, my heart thumping rapidly against my chest as if trying to tear itself free.
“Link, is the door locked?”
“Yes but I don’t think it will stop those things if they wanted to break in”
My mind was racing, I thought about the creatures. Why would things like that go to a regular New York boarding school? Then it struck me; all those looks Mrs Tlesor seemed to shoot only at me and Link like she wanted to kill us, she seemed fine with everyone else. No, I couldn’t think that, I must be hallucinating, even if my eyes weren’t fooling me why would someone, even a monster want to kill me? Finally, I tore my gaze from the creatures, I looked at Link and asked him to pinch me.
“Owwch!” it hurt alright. This was real, I looked back at the group of creatures and I nearly died from fear: the monster that was Mrs Tlesor made a half turn and looked at our window.
“Link duck!” I whispered
I slightly peaked out and whimpered, monster Tlesor was pointing at our window and the other creatures looked at it as well. She opened her fanged mouth and said something, my senses were working overtime and I managed to lip read: “SMELL THEM OUT, KILL THEM!”
CHAPTER 2
VENTS ARE…. USEFULL
Sure enough the creatures started walking towards the dorm wing, slowly like they had all the time in the world. “Link did you see that?”
“Y-yeeah” now he too was whimpering.
“Link, she said for them to smell us out and…” my voice suddenly failed me. Then I finally managed: “Smell us out and… KILL”.
“Leon, if you’re right what are we going to do?”
“First of all, we need to move, Link get your bag” I said, I snatched my own bag and stuffed it with all of my belongings. There wasn’t much, without my school gear it could easily fit in a backpack. I looked at Link, he was ready. The creatures where now just outside the dorm wing door, struggling to open it with Mrs Tlesor’s keys because of their long claws. I knew that they won’t struggle for too long, they already had the key in the lock. Just as me and Link started down the third floor hallway, we heard a distant screech of the rusty door, they were here.
“Link where can we hide?” I asked.
“I don’t know if it will work but there’s a broken vent cover down on second floor.”
“Okay, lets go then.”
“Leon, they are probably marching up to second floor right now” Link looked at me in despair.
“Well, what other options do we have Link? Lets take the second stair case when we hear them coming up the main stairs.”
We arrived at the foot of the stairs, I glanced back and whispered: “Not yet.” Finally, I heard a creak of the main stairs and said: “now slowly lets go down.” As we crept down, I heard shuffling at our dorm door, I locked it to slow them down. I heard violent sniffing and a raspy voice: “I sssmell them, I ssmell theyy arre closse!”
As we emerged from the staircase Link whispered: “there it is, how are we going to climb up there?” I glanced up, and yes Link was right, the vent entrance was above a square of construction tape, the only problem; it was two and a half meters above the construction tape.
“I have an idea” Link said.
He joined his hands making a step, “Come on Leon, get up.” Without wasting time, I stepped up reached for the vent, grabbed the edge and pulled myself up. Hastily, I positioned myself in a position so I won’t fall and reached my hand out to Link. Our hands connected, I started pulling and nearly dropped my friend when I heard a wail of rage run through the corridor. “Hurry up Leon, they’re coming!” I finally hauled him up to the vent entrance. After what seemed like hours though was probably only thirty seconds, we were now both crouching inside a dark vent. It smelled like dust and electronics. I thought I caught the smell of fish or frog, or some other amphibian. Wait, frogs? I stopped in my tracks, right underneath the segment of vent we were in I could hear the all too familiar raspy breath. A hissing voice said “I sswear I can ssmell them here!”
“Nonssenssse” said a second voice “Animmma Messsorem, yourr nossse is clogged from that room!”
The strange part was that I had understood what he said, despite never learning a word of Latin in my life, I understood. He called the other creature ‘Anima Messorem’: reaper of souls. That was really not someone I wanted to meet face to face, I’d prefer my soul intact! I was scared to half death, but just as my heart was about to go for another leap of faith out of my throat Anima Messorem let out a grunt of annoyance and to my disbelief I heard footsteps walking down the corridor.
“Leon, what the hell?” Links voice was shaking; “did he just say soul reaper?”
“Yeah I understood it too, lets talk about it later, right now we need to go.”
CHAPTER 3
DARK FOREST WITH A DARK SECRET
Finally, after what seemed like all night we were out of the vents and sprinting towards the forest. By the way, did I mention the forest? It was a ominous dark mass hanging over the school court yard. The forest spanned all the way back to the edge of New York. At this time it was completely dark; not even the moon light could get through the mass of foliage. Nevertheless, no darkness could have scared us any more than we already were. We didn’t even slow our pace as we ran through the forest. We ran until we couldn’t take it any longer. I dropped exhausted onto the soft grass, Link strolled over and crashed beside me. After a long time of staring into the branches above us, the total reasonable question came to me: “Link-!”
“Yeah?”
“WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED?!”
The next morning, we woke up in the same forest, it didn’t get much lighter in the forest, but it was light enough to see where we were going. I quickly woke Link up and told him we had to get going if we wanted to get home to New York. For multiple days we trekked the forest, until after nearly a week of tiredly walking and searching the never-ending sea of trees for a sign of civilization we finally found a clearing. Me and Link cautiously approached the only light spot we have seen in days. After so long walking in the darkness of the forest our eyes took a moment to adjust to the sight that they saw, though the moment I made out the image in front of me it took all my will power not to scream,
I turned to where Link was standing but he wasn’t there. In the place where he had stood was just an empty patch of grass.
