Horror High 1

by Paul Stafford

  Cordelia Househaunter cursed Geoff Dandyline with another ten years of …

  Ah, sod it. That’s nowhere near a hundred but I assume you can’t count past six and don’t give a hoot anyway. Tick off whichever excuse you want. Don’t like it? You know which overflowing toilet to lodge your complaint in and who to call for help when you fall in headfirst – not me.

  Anyway, there’s only one curse we’re interested in right now, because it was to really effect the whole outcome of that fated Fool’s Day – Mick Living-Dead’s curse.

  What was it about Mick Living-Dead? Was he born backwards? Was there something in the water he drank as a child? Or is there some other logical explanation why the boy did the things he did?

  I grew up in a bad neighbourhood and that’s always been my excuse, but what about young Living-Dead? He lived in one of the better suburbs in Horror, attended the finest zombie preschool money could buy and had loving parents who bent over backwards – not easy for zombies – to provide a stable and supportive home environment.

  And how does Mick repay them? By buying a curse page off Nathan and setting off a clone bomb in the school toilets. Rascal. He later claimed he’d planned to trap Mrs Goatbeard in there, to clone her into ten cranky old vice-principals as a revenge against her husband, Mick’s much despised football coach.

  But the plan backfired. Gary Hooper had already cursed Mrs Goatbeard, turning her into her namesake, a bearded goat. Funny, nobody – not even fellow teachers – actually noticed the difference, though she spent both recess and lunch in the staffroom. But she couldn’t open the staff toilet door with her cloven hoofs and as a result had to relieve herself out on the front lawn. Consequently, she wasn’t first into the staff toilets as usual.

  First in, for the first time ever, was Principal Skullwater. Mick Living-Dead had taken his curse page and carefully smeared it all around the toilet seat as he’d recited the cloning curse. He’d done a good job of it – there was no shifting it. So when Skullwater came out of the bog, having shifted whatever he was in there to shift, he came out in multiple copies.

  The nature of the curse meant that ten seconds elapsed before each subsequent clone popped off, so the original Skullwater had no notion of what had happened. He stood washing his hands at the sink, straightening his tie in the mirror, checking for nose hair and thinking he wasn’t a bad looking bloke for 2305 years old. Then, seconds after he left, another came, then another, and another – ten principals in total, enough for any school, no matter how rowdy.

  Parked outside the school was a black sedan with heavily tinted windows, a skull logo on the car door and the number plates KILL-U. Seated inside was Avril Fule, excellently evil e-assassin.

  He examined himself in the rear vision mirror, straightening his tie, checking for nose hairs and thinking he wasn’t a bad looking bloke for a cold-blooded killer. Maybe he’d meet a nice lady teacher at work today, he thought, as he checked his briefcase.

  Therein lay the evil tools of his trade. An M16, a Glock 9mm, a TEC-9, an Uzi semi-automatic, an Ingram M-11, a stun grenade, a hand grenade, a smoke grenade, a confetti grenade (for children’s parties), a grenade launcher (so his arm didn’t get sore tossing such a wide variety of grenades) and an axe (for chopping firewood for the weekend barbeque).

  He double-checked everything, made sure the axe was loaded and the guns were razor sharp, ticked off on spare ammunition clips and snapped the briefcase shut.

  Time to go to work.

  There’s simple and there’s simple, but was there ever a simpler job than this? Avril Fule took three steps through the front gate of Horror High and there was Principal Skullwater tying his shoelace. Fule checked and double-checked, comparing the target with the mugshot photograph, stood behind Skullwater, put the Glock to the back of his head and fired.

  We’ve all seen schlock horror films so I don’t need to go into graphic details about blood spatter, brain scatter and the attendant gore fest from the point-blank head shot. In a school with over thirty student vampires, a bit of blood here or there wasn’t even noteworthy, so Avril Fule was able to pack his hand gun, brush a speck of Skullwater off his shoe and abscond. It was a job well-done – the easiest twelve bucks he’d ever made – but as Fule was stepping out past the gate, he glanced sideways across the quadrangle.

  Who should he see but Skullwater, scolding a student for being out of uniform.

  Fule did a quick double take, shook his head in disbelief and unpacked his hunting rifle. A quick look through the rifle’s telescopic sights confirmed his suspicions – Skullwater alive and unharmed – but a quick shot from the rifle and the principal lay spread-eagled on the pavement, half his head missing. The tardily dressed student shrugged, stepped over the prone body of the ex-principal and ran off to get in the reserves line for handball.

  Fule shrugged, wrote the first murder off to mistaken identity and was walking out the gate again when Skullwater walked in, nodding and smiling a friendly ‘good morning’ at the heinous hit man. It was like giving him the forked fingers and Fule responded with lightning rapidity, dropping a hand grenade down the principal’s pants.

  Boom.

  Again Fule went to leave, when an announcement blared over the loudspeaker: ‘Good morning, students. This is Principal Skullwater reminding you of the special April Fool’s Day assembly this morning. And I’m warning you, there’d better not be any Fool’s Day pranks involving me.’

  Now Fule was starting to think he’d lost it. Was somebody playing an April Fool’s joke on him? They’d better not be – he’d killed people for less, a lot less. He decided to track down the student who’d hired him – some idiot named Nathan Grim-Reaper – and pop a cap in him just for good luck.

  Teach these kids to fool around with a serious man.

  But first he had to do the job he’d been paid for, the job he’d guaranteed. He was starting to take this personally. Was he losing his touch? Washed up? Was it finally time for retirement? And what sort of life expectancy could he anticipate in a retirement home full of ex-assassins, all arguing over who should have the remote control?

  Two more Skullwaters crossed his path while these thoughts were charting their troubled way across the hired killer’s higher consciousness. He dispatched one principal with his axe and garrotted the other with his trick tie. But by now the assassin was deeply worried.

  Worried? His stomach ulcer was growing a stomach ulcer. See, life as an ex-assassin is no bed of roses and you’re only as good as your last job. It’s not like teachers or world presidents who get all sorts of lurks and rewards for their retirement years, like unlimited free money and canteen food and stuff.

  No. Even though assassins have to apply through the same government department as teachers and world presidents, and even though they all have exactly the same qualifications, hit men got righteously shafted in their twilight years.

  Retired assassins got diddly except stabbed in the back, shot through the heart, strangled, poisoned or boiled in oil, and some even went out painfully.

  Avril Fule knew this better than anyone. His father had been an assassin, as had his father’s father. Fact is, his father’s father assassinated his father before he assassinated him, and then Fule Junior topped the old boy for good measure.

  Family do’s can get very complicated sometimes.

  So Avril Fule was not in a screaming hurry to retire, a fact I’m sure you’ve now become thoroughly cognisant of. (The publisher insisted I check – thinks you’re idiots.)

  If this Horror High job was as big a fiasco as it was shaping up to be, Fule was looking at forced retirement up on Boot Hill. Three more Skullwaters had now been through his hands, one literally, as he wrung the neck of the ancient principal like a wiry chicken.

  The next one he dispatched with a medieval samurai sword so razor sharp he over-swung and removed not only Skullwater’s head, but also the head of some cretinous geek standing nearby, name of Geoff Dandyline.

  He’d h
ave to remember to send a sympathy card to the family.

  The third principal was knocked down with a stun gun, popped in a sack with a taipan and left at the mercy of the world’s deadliest snake poison.

  Another Skullwater, another miserable death, run over repeatedly with the school’s ride-on lawnmower. Bits of the aged principal helicoptered out, spraying gore over nearby eyewitnesses and sending a wrinkled hand Frisbee-ing over to the handball court, where it neatly deflected a late cut shot and stymied a certain victory for the dude in king square. This player, who was challenging the dude in ace square, called ‘Interference’ and it was granted – a civilised and honourable outcome.

  There are some things more sacred than a dead principal and handball is one of them.

  Actually handball’s just the top of a long list of things more sacred than a dead principal. I don’t have time to recount it here, but you can order a copy of the list from P.O. Box 12, Horror Post Office. Enclose a $20 note or cheque made out to me, and I’ll be sure he gets it.

  More Skullwaters came tripping across the school oval, picking on kids for minor offences and setting defaulters onto scab duty, collecting litter.

  Avril Fule was bricking it now. It was a nightmare worse than Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. He kept taking them out, but they kept coming back in. He killed Skullwaters with a gas gun, a dart gun, a shotgun, a spear gun, a nail gun and a glue gun (wherein he glued Skullwater’s goolies to a school bench and drove a steamroller over him).

  How many Skullwaters is that dead now? Twelve? Fifteen? Two dozen? I’ve lost count. And there were only ten clones in the first place you say? And I actually look like someone who cares?

  Fule cared – he was cared to death. The joke ended here and it was time to kill the joker – the one who was to blame for putting the contract out and calling the hit in. He started stopping students and asking who Nathan Grim-Reaper was and where he could be found – and they told him.

  Nice one, guys.

  With friends like those, who needs enemas?

  Meanwhile, the only thing keeping Nathan one step ahead of an angry and professionally humiliated Avril Fule was that the boy was tracking down curse victims, giving them a 1/100th piece of the last page from The 101 Damnations.

  It wasn’t easy and some of the victims had assumed some pretty strange forms, but by far the most difficult was Thomas Thicher. Yes, remember him? He’d completely disappeared. When Nathan questioned the kid who’d cursed the bully last, it turned out Big Tom’s remains were residing up the wrong end of a stinky old donkey living at a retired donkeys’ farm on the edge of town.

  We’re not going to go into the surgical particulars of how Nathan retrieved Thomas’s remains – this is not that sort of story, thankfully – but if there was one happy ending in this otherwise sorry saga, it’s that Tom was actually grateful for being rescued from that dark, unhappy place, and didn’t bully Nathan anymore.

  Isn’t that sweet?

  Not so sweet was the fact that by this stage Fule was seeking Nathan full-time. He’d shot, bombed, gassed, axed, electrocuted and guillotined every Principal Skullwater he’d come across, but they just kept popping up.

  It was diabolical, but even Diablo denied any involvement in what was happening here.

  By the time Fule had whacked the last of the sultana-wrinkly principals, it was his last. He was exhausted, shattered, defeated. Finally, overcome with emotion, he collapsed sobbing in the quadrangle, another broken man, another April Fool’s Day victim.

  For shame.

  A teacher came over to comfort him, asked who his mother was and if she’d be home from work yet, and rang her. Fule’s mother picked him up from school, lent him a hanky to blow his nose and carted him off to the assassins’ retirement home. It was much nicer than he’d expected – the others didn’t try to kill him and the food was nowhere near as bad as he’d been led to believe.

  Avril Fule had whacked every Skullwater clone, stopping just short of killing the genuine, authentic, indisputable, original-edition Principal Skullwater. It was that close.

  I find that sort of coincidence deeply suspicious myself. I pointed it out to the publisher, who told me to pull my head in, mind my business, just write it as it happened and stick to the facts.

  What does it matter? I figure this story is so terminally unhinged it wouldn’t matter now if Shrek or Catwoman or even Michael Jackson bounced in to write the last pages.

  It sure couldn’t do any harm …

  Actually, the above chapter heading proved to be totally misleading, like everything else about this book. It all turned out fine and tickety-boo.

  Nathan wasn’t murdered by Avril Fule, Mrs Grim-Reaper, Principal Skullwater, Thomas Thicher, me, the Devious Radio Crew, or any of the hundred ugly, dissatisfied students who’d been duped into buying curse pages that were subsequently invalidated.

  The 101 Damnations book was fully restored thanks to Nathan’s sound research and hard work, and dutifully returned to the family vault, where I’m reliably informed it’ll remain until the sun burns out.

  Thomas Thicher stopped bullying Nathan and became his best mate (which means now I’ll be giving both of them my lunch money).

  And – best of all – Nathan still had the Platinum KR scythe to look forward to. It arrived that afternoon, special delivery, at Horror High. Nathan was called out of class to come down to the front office and sign for it.

  When Nathan got there a spotty delivery guy wearing a Death’s Door cap and jacket had him sign a receipt book, then handed him a package the size of a deck of cards.

  Nathan laughed. He wasn’t falling for that one. No way was he going to be tricked by such an obvious and predictable April Fool’s joke – he wasn’t that wet. Where was the real scythe?

  But the spotty delivery dude wasn’t laughing. He shrugged, dropped the package in Nathan’s hand, sloped out to his van and drove off whistling some unidentifiable tune.

  Nathan stood perplexed, staring at the package, then unwrapped it, obviously. Inside the wrapping was a small plastic box which he cracked open. Inside that lay a bed of foam, and on it a shiny platinum scythe, perfectly crafted, the only problem being that it was just seven centimetres long, with a chain attached to a ring.

  The Platinum KR.

  The KR stood for key ring.

  Paul Stafford is a literary consultant working in schools across Australia, and the author of nine books of teenage fiction. He grew up in Kurrajong Heights and now lives outside Bathurst, NSW. He studied print journalism at Mitchell CAE, graduating in 1989, but renounced the make-believe world of journalism for the hard and gritty reality of teenage fiction. Although a career in writing has meant abandoning his childhood dreams of wealth and respectability, he now gets to sleep late, dress scruffy and gnaw on the skulls of his enemies. It’s a trade-off he’s learnt to live with.

  This book is dedicated to my darling wife Catarina. Without her nothing matters.

  I’d like to acknowledge the fantastic support of my parents and family, Suzanne Bennett of the State Library of NSW, and Catherine McLelland of Lateral Learning.

  These stories were really written to irritate my nephews and niece – Paddy Rutherford, Sam & Annika Clayton, and Kieran Stodart. As rotten kids go, they’re not too bad, even if they smell that way.

  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 ar
ound 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 …