Horror High 1 (6 page)

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 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 …