Horror High 2

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Imprint Page

The Rollcall

The Lesson

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Unlucky Chapter 13

About the Author

Acknowledgements

A Sneak Preview of 'Horror High And The 101 Damnations'

‘I'm warning you, all of you! This absenteeism will cease or I promise you a slow, ugly death by dot-to-dot disembowelment, followed by some really serious consequences.'

The Rollcall Master was addressing the back wall where the dried, curled-up scalps of a dozen former pupils were nailed randomly like a collection of used Odor-Eaters, but the class knew he was
watching them through evil eyes in the back of his head.

Mr Grimsweather was fully cranked in his rant at the class, snarling in top gear, virtually sweating blood. ‘Dire consequences! Hell to pay! I'll go straight to the School Execution Committee; see if I won't. Absentees from rollcall better have an exceedingly good excuse or it's the long drop for them – double death, slow and hideous, then fast and horrible. Am I making myself crystal clear?'

The class sat statue still, completely silent. The dusty human skeleton hanging lifeless on the wall next to the classroom door looked ready to nod its scaly skull in solemn assent. Since its skull had a metre-long sharpened steel spike hammered right through one ear and out the other, it'd be a pretty cool trick if it could pull it off.

‘I'm making myself crystal clear, right?' persisted Grimsweather. ‘Right. Now, one final time – Jason-Jock Werewolf, are you here?'

There was a long, long pause before Geoff Dandyline opened his mouth. He just couldn't help himself.

Grimsweather instantly shot him a malevolent glare. ‘Yes, Dandyline?'

‘Nothing, sir.'

‘You opened your mouth to say something fabulously stupid, Dandyline. What were you going to say?'

Dandyline adamantly shook his head, self-consciously rubbing his latest shocking fatal neck wound. ‘Nothing, sir. Honest, sir. Just drying my teeth, sir.'

‘And?' said Grimsweather.

‘And now they're dry, sir – very nice. Only, I was wondering, like, since you mentioned exceedingly good excuses, I was wondering, like, well, what's an exceedingly good excuse exactly? Sir.'

‘Why, Dandyline?' snapped Grimsweather. ‘Have you got one for that brainless head of yours?'

‘Oh no, sir. I mean yes, sir. I mean …'

‘No, Dandyline, I'm mean – mean as marmoset measles, especially when you
get me started, so don't. An exceedingly good excuse for being absent might be a funeral, a reincarnation or a dead-raising. I'd accept coma, car wreck, exorcism, bomb blast, gas explosion, multiple homicide and nasty-painful-death-at-the-hands-of-a-mean-evil-deadly-serious-how's-your-father?-my-dad's-great-I-will-KILL-YOU-serial killer. And maybe flu, if you've got a doctor's certificate. Nothing else. Why do you ask, Dandyline?'

Dandyline shifted in his seat and crossed his legs and dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands and concentrated and really tried, but just couldn't quite prevent his trademark dumb grin straddling his face like a ferret riding a bush buffalo. His buckteeth danced out of his mouth like a conga line of chalky skeletons.

‘Well, Dandyline?' pressed Grimsweather.

‘Quite well, thank you, sir,' replied Dandyline brightly. ‘Apart from this neck wound which is kinda itchy and festy, but thanks for asking, sir.'

‘I wasn't asking, curse you! Last chance, Dandyline. Where is Jason-Jock Werewolf and why are you grinning?'

‘I'm not grinning, sir,' Dandyline shrugged, grinning. Then he grinned again, only more inanely than usual. ‘I'm just wondering if cricket practice is an exceedingly good excuse, sir?'

‘Cricket practice? Cricket practice …' Grimsweather repeated the word as though tasting it on the tip of his decrepit, black tongue. ‘Cricket practice. Hmm … yes, I think I'd accept that one. Why, Dandyline?'

‘Because Jason-Jock is practising with the Werewolves XI team for the Interghouls Cricket Cup, sir. They've never won it, sir, they're desperate, practising twenty-seven hours a day, nine days a week. And while we're on the subject of sport, sir, I'll be absent tomorrow practising head bowling. Sir.'

‘Head bowling? What the devil is head bowling?'

‘It's tenpin bowling using one's own head, sir.' Dandyline gaped so enthusiastically his
horse-teeth fanned out like a bunch of freshly peeled bananas. ‘I'm in the regional finals.'

‘What sort of excuse is that?' Grimsweather snorted. ‘What sort of sport is that? Head bowling! Do you take me for a complete fool, Dandyline?'

‘A complete fool, sir? No, sir – sort of half-finished.'

‘Guillotine, Dandyline. Lunchtime. You know the place.'

‘No, sir! Please, sir! Each chop shaves a slice off my neck and I'm too young to shave, sir. Please, sir, my neck's out of slices, I've no neck left – I look like a bullfrog, sir.'

Grimsweather nearly smiled, for the first time ever. ‘You should be grateful, Dandyline – that's a vast improvement.'

The trouble started (as it often does in low-carb, fossil-fuelled stories like this) with a bug-house bet between inebriated school principals, a skeleton crushed into powder and blended into some tripped-out hippy health shake (and understandably irate about it), and a naive, adolescent werewolf who believed the solutions to his insurmountable personal problems lay in a book.

Solutions in a book? Bah. No wonder the dude had problems …

Anyway, the trouble really started when Jason-Jock Werewolf took stinky advice from a brain-dead, head case bystander, listened to it and then actually acted on it. The advice was offered by one of those cheapo, project-kit Frankensteins you see loitering around public places trying to look like someone who has a clue, and JJ was fooled. Should've changed his name to Jason-Jock Jackass.

Listen. Don't ever take advice. Wrong-headed people the world over will try to give you guidance when things get ropey, pretending they've been in that exact situation, navigated their way safely through it and learnt grand and prudent lessons, but their advice is always dangerously defective.

Unless the words of wisdom have come from some officially registered and internationally recognised source of deep wisdom – such as myself – ignore them. That's my advice.

For example, Jason-Jock Werewolf was
misguidedly advised that the key to overcoming his many nefarious problems, dilemmas and general weirdnesses was to get actively involved in a team sport, such as cricket.

Yet the insurmountable problems haunting Jason-Jock only intensified as the red six-stitcher cricket ball now whizzed past his bat and crashed through his stumps.

‘Howzat?!'

JJ groaned as he gazed back at the stumps. They had been in a pleasing and precisely upright arrangement – three stumps supporting two bails, all tickety-boo and how-do-you-do – just seconds ago. Now they'd spun out all over the place like a madman's chopsticks, middle stump flat on its back, bails a metre away in the dirt.

‘You're out,' shouted the coach. ‘Again. For a duck … again. Quack, quack, quack. Back to the pavilion – next batsman.'

Jason-Jock shook his head in deep despair. So far today he'd been out nine
times for a total score of zero, nine ducks in a row, enough to open a duck farm and sell the eggs for a living. He was the team captain and its best batsman, so you can imagine what the worst ones scored – do the maths, it'll hurt your brain.

The other young werewolves crouching in cricket whites on the pavilion benches bowed their heads, muttering darkly while picking at stray fleas. They were doomed and they knew it. And not just doomed as a cricket team either – their future at Horror High was over. They were going to be expelled unless, unless …

Unless they pulled off the impossible.

Anybody who knows werewolves will tell you they can be extremely capable creatures when they put their minds to it. They have the heightened senses of a dog, the supernatural abilities of a ghoul, and the never-say-die spirit of a human who thinks there's nothing peculiar in shedding a quarter kilo of hair on your lounge every time they come to your house to watch the greyhound races on TV.

All of which means they can pull out some pretty gnarly and difficult stuff when pressed. The ‘unlikely' they could do easily, being werewolves, and the ‘doubtful' was pretty much a walk in the park without a leash. The ‘improbable' was imminently achievable, and even incompetent werewolves could pull off ‘no-chance' type gigs standing on their hairy heads.

But the ‘impossible'? As the term ‘impossible' suggests, that was impossible, even for someone as cool and righteous as myself, which these werewolves definitely weren't.

And what Principal Skullwater demanded – winning the Interghouls Cricket Cup – was fully and totally and thoroughly impossible. Yet if they didn't pull it off the werewolves were out of Horror High.

Expelled. Evicted. Banished. Exorcised. Forever …