Horror High 1 (2 page)

The trouble started (as it often does in dozy, ozone-depleting stories like this) with a cheapo mail-order catalogue, an April Fool's Day prank gone wrong, and an over-protective father who refused to allow his son a pocketknife, pocket money or even a pocket.

It was Saturday morning in the Grim-Reaper household, and Mr Grim-Reaper was embroiled in an argument with his son, Nathan.

It wasn't that old man G-R wanted an argument. Au contraire, he just wished to relax over morning coffee and the weekend edition of the
Tombstone Times
– the quality newspaper for the well-read undead – but Nathan was on the bug again. Lately it seemed he was constantly on the bug about something.

This time Nathan reckoned he needed pocket money.

‘I feed you, clothe you and pay your school fees; what do you want pocket money for?' Mr Grim-Reaper hissed irritably, in a voice reminiscent of the Ringwraiths from
Lord of the Rings
.

Boy, was he sick of comparisons to
that
film. Everyone he met these days, first thing they'd say after he'd introduced himself, “
You sound just like those spooky Ringwraiths from the Rings Trilogy
.” He couldn't wait to get his death grip on that fatso Kiwi film director and feed him and his Oscar to an orc.

‘What do you want pocket money for?'
Mr G-R repeated, sounding now like a car radiator boiling over.

‘I want to buy a pocketknife,' replied Nathan, as reasonably as he could manage. Always attempt to reason with your recalcitrant parent, the
Undead Teenagers' Handbook
advised; adults pride themselves on being reasonable, so try to act like an adult.

‘What do you want with a pocketknife?' Mr Grim-Reaper hissed. ‘You don't even have a pocket.'

‘Well, I
would
have a pocket if you let me wear jeans like all the other kids at school,' reasoned Nathan.

‘Seven hundred generations of Grim Reapers have worn menacing black robes,' growled father G-R, ‘so why should you be any different?'

He took a sip of his coffee. It was cold.

‘Yeah,' agreed Nathan, ‘and seven hundred generations have carried a scythe. I wouldn't need a pocketknife if you let me carry a scythe. Why should I be the first not to have one?'

‘I've told you a hundred times – you're too young. You'll get one when you're older. Scythes are dangerous. You'll cut yourself, or take somebody's head off, next thing you've got a lawsuit on your hands. First you prove yourself responsible, then you get a trainer scythe.'

A trainer scythe was made of rubber, and the equivalent of trainer wheels on a bicycle – baby stuff. Nathan frowned appropriately in response.

‘Then in the meantime let me have a pocketknife,' Nathan begged.

‘But you don't have a pocket.'

And so on …

Nathan was notoriously argumentative, his father was worse, and if you know anything about Grim Reapers and arguments you'll know they're like a dog with a bone: they just won't let it go. And you know how the saying goes – lay down with dogs, get up with fleas, start chasing cats …

All of which is totally irrelevant and beside the point.

The point was this: Nathan was chafing
under his father's over-protectiveness. His dad wouldn't let him do
anything
. Wouldn't let him take any risks. Wouldn't let him act like a normal teenager.

Same old story.

Nathan tried telling his dad straight but the silly old geezer didn't get it; he'd just turned 50,000 years old and his teenage years were way too far gone for memory. Nathan consulted his teenage advice book, which was also useless; it suggested proving you were responsible through responsible behaviour, and demonstrating reasonableness by acting reasonably.

Big help. Thanks a bunch.

Nathan even resorted to watching
Finding Nemo
on DVD with his dad, pointing out how Nemo's over-protective father was just like Nathan's over-protective father. But Nathan's over-protective father didn't get the message at all, cried at the soppy bits, got scared at the scaredy bits, scarfed all the M&Ms and raved about how clever the animators were: ‘Those images look so lifelike …
they
should've
got the Oscar, not that fat
Lord of the Rings
swindler.'

It was useless. Nathan had to do something or he'd go completely bonkers. Something had to change; he needed some freedom, some independence, some control over his life, and soon.

And then, when all hope seemed lost, Nathan was thrown a lifeline from a most unexpected source – Parent-Teacher Night at Horror High …

Every kid on the planet loathes and dreads Parent-Teacher Night – fact. Makes no difference if the kid is an academic genius or the class clown or the red-headed school dunce, they all hate Parent-Teacher Night equally and for good reason.

The rationale is obvious. Even the never-muck-up, always-suck-up students know that on Parent-Teacher Night their
teacher won't resist the opportunity to fully shank them and load up their parents' heads with all kinds of horrible lies and fallacious gibberish.

On that night, teachers will hoodwink parents of even the finest students into believing their kids are lazy, brainless, fat-witted and completely incapable of any future employment, except maybe night shift in a dog food factory.

Why do teachers say these rotten things?
Because they can.

The simple truth is that Parent-Teacher Night is the only night of the year when a teacher can get revenge for having a job worse than sewer inspector or rhino bum scrubber. And if you think they're going to body-swerve that opportunity, you're nuts.

Teachers all over the world sharpen their poisonous tongues all year in anticipation of that one night of revenge, knowing for that one night they'll get to fabricate the most insanely outrageous falsehoods
and get away with it
.

Notice that? Doesn't matter that your parents totally realise your teacher would steal the stink off a goat's behind and sell it to a blind man as a sports jacket. Doesn't matter that your parents regard the teacher as less trustworthy than Saddam Hussein's moustache; when it comes to Parent-Teacher Night, suddenly
everything
that teacher invents about your doings in class becomes gospel truth.

And you're in for it …

 

Teachers are born bad and grow steadily worse with age. Everybody knows it, and even the Teachers' Association has given up refuting it. A teacher has the shifty morals of a potbellied hyena and the low stinky habits of a backward jungle ape.

This explains why they become teachers in the first place and why they scratch and sniff at themselves and squabble over the last banana, but it doesn't explain why Nathan's teacher told Mr Grim-Reaper the biggest whopper of
the lot – that Nathan was a good student in class and a pleasure to teach.

I mean, what was
that
about? Nathan was a rubbish student and an all-round pain in the neck. He never did homework, cheated in class tests, stole loose change out of the teacher's desk, made life hell for substitute teachers and scrawled rude words on the chalkboard – a normal, typical student, in other words, just like yourself.

What Nathan
wasn't
was a good student and a pleasure to teach, so why did Mr Fearbody, Nathan's Maths teacher, spout all that bilge to Mr Grim-Reaper at Parent-Teacher Night?

I'll tell you why. Old Fearbody was a timorous and delicate chap with a face like a peapod and spindly hands like your granny. After a hard day at work he liked nothing better than settling down to a quiet evening of knitting by the radio, listening to old waltzes. The highlight of his night was a cup of warm cocoa before bedtime, with a marshmallow on top on his birthday.

And he was scared to death, scared beyond death, of Mr Grim-Reaper. The hissing voice, the black robes, the razor sharp scythe, the icy fear that gripped his heart when the man addressed him, made Fearbody's faint soul nearly abandon his body and flee north to return to its Maker.

So although Fearbody was prepared to grass up all the other students in his class on Parent-Teacher Night, he didn't dare dump on Nathan. No chance was old Fearbody going to tell Nathan's dad what a fully heaps crappo student his son was. If the teacher was haunted by Mr G-R's agreeable mood, which he was generally in when he wasn't being bugged by Nathan, Fearbody sure wouldn't deal with a negative response delivered in that death hiss.

No way was the truth coming out this Parent-Teacher Night. For the sake of self-preservation, driven near mad by the deepest, coldest, starkest, clutching fear, old Fearbody told Mr Grim-Reaper that Nathan was a prize student his parents should be proud of.

‘Then why,' hissed Senior menacingly, ‘did Nathan get straight F's on his last five report cards?'

‘Those F's?' stammered Fearbody, his withered old heart striking only one beat in five. ‘Those F's are good. V-v-very good. They s-s-stand for
Fantastic
.'

And Father G-R believed him.

Ha.

Now here's a thing. Mr Grim-Reaper was desperate to reward Nathan for something –
anything
– and frantically searching for a valid reason to justify it. He needed to crank some up-beat vibes with his son, and fast, because as a father-figure his recent record was shoddy to say the least. The timing of Nathan's positive report on Parent-Teacher Night was a godsend.

Mr G-R felt wicked guilty about his rotten behaviour and the completely dodgy example he'd been setting his son. And so he should have. The man was old enough to know better.

Ironically it was the age of the man – 50,000 years – that had spawned the bad behaviour in the first place. Old man Grim-Reaper had celebrated his 50,000th birthday and almost instantaneously experienced an explosive mid-life crisis. He was halfway to 100,000 – prehistoric. My god, where had the time gone? Where was his youth?

He started behaving irrationally, striving to recapture lost youth in an embarrassing series of foolhardy adolescent blunders. He ditched Mrs Grim-Reaper, took up with a belly dancer named Bambi from the Hellfire Club, bought a red Ferrari convertible and hit the road, yahooing and partying in a shocking display of mindless buffoonery. He realised too late what a ridiculous jackass he must look to his son. What sort of example was he setting the boy?

Mr G-R was desperately searching for a way to make it up to Nathan when Parent-Teacher Night provided the ideal opportunity. The old boy wanted to bestow on Nathan something they could bond over – something unique, something that'd reconcile the gulf between them – but was worried his son was too young for the scythe he kept begging for.

What Mr G-R wasn't worried about presenting Nathan with was the Grim-Reaper ancestral book. I mean, how dangerous is a book? What's the worst that can happen? A paper cut? Smudgy fingers?

Boo-hoo.

Traditionally a child didn't receive the special Grim-Reaper family book until they were eighteen centuries old and technically an adult, but he felt he could rationalise the gift on the basis of his boy's great class results and make an exception in this case. Mr G-R
had
to make an exception – he would've done anything to overcome his sense of shame.

The heaps exceptional ancestral book would settle it.

Yes, it was a cheap cop-out and a quick-fix solution that stank to high heaven, but so what? Most parents wouldn't pass the sniff test if it was supervised by a police bloodhound and a qualified stinkologist from Smellwrong University. I know mine wouldn't. Parents are as on the nose as a 3-year-old cheese, they can't appear to help it, and Mr Grim-Reaper was no exception.

He chose his moment carefully. Nathan was hanging in his room. He'd just completed level five of
Grand Theft Auto: Holy Orders
on the PS3, and was crowing about running a busload of nuns off the highway into a swamp full of crocs just as the level finished.

The timing was perfect.

‘Come into my study a moment, son,' Mr Grim-Reaper hissed gently, ‘I want to give you something.'

When they'd both settled into comfortable chairs in the study, Mr G-R began his
big suck-up speech. He chose his words carefully.

‘I know I've been behaving rather … oddly … of late, and haven't exactly been an ideal role model. Let's just say I've been working through a few issues of my own, issues that a man can't avoid as he starts to get …'

‘Old?' offered Nathan, and watched his father wince as though taking a bullet in the bum.

‘Well, not
old
, as such, just – old
er
than he used to be. I mean, 50,000 years isn't
old
these days, not with modern medicine and Botox and such. A bloke doesn't even retire from my game until he's at least 75,000 years, so let's have no more talk of old. But certainly, as a man reaches the prime of his life, there are certain
readjustments
to make. And I realise in retrospect that I may have handled these readjustments quite poorly.'

‘Like ditching Mum and shacking up with a tart only a few years older than me?' offered Nathan helpfully. It didn't appear
to help. The old man dropped his head into his hands.

‘I'm sorry, son,' he moaned through clenched fingers. ‘It's the biggest mistake of my life. I want to make it up to you.'

‘How?' asked Nathan eagerly, sensing the advantage. ‘By letting me have a scythe?'

‘No,' replied his father. ‘By letting you have something even better.' He opened his top desk drawer and carefully retrieved a thick, leather-bound, ancient looking book. He stared fondly at it for a few seconds before leaning over to drop it in Nathan's lap.

‘This is your ancestral legacy, son. This is the Grim-Reaper family book. It is older than Time itself, and immensely powerful when used properly. Traditionally it's handed from father to son on their 18th-century birthday, but in your case I'm making an exception. This is your birthright, my boy.'

Nathan stared at the front cover, disappointed. A book? What use was a book? He wanted a scythe. He examined the cover,
fighting hard to disguise his disinterest. Embossed in heavy gold-gilt, gothic lettering was the title
The 101 Damnations
. The illustration on the cover showed two adult dogs, white with black spots, surrounded by puppies the same colour.

‘That,' hissed Mr G-R pointing at the cover illustration, ‘is the King and Queen of Bohemia with their family. They were the first people to fall foul of your ancestor, Count Augustus Black Grim-Reaper. The barking of the palace dogs used to keep him awake at night. He tried complaining but the Queen told him to stick it – said they were royalty and their hounds would howl as they wished.

‘Count Augustus Black Grim-Reaper used the book to transform the royal family into a pack of spotted dogs. The pups ended up at the pound and the royal couple scavenged scraps from the bins around town, until they were trapped by the dog catcher and minced into dogwurst. Hee, hee, hee,' he finished, the hissing laugh like a slow tyre puncture.

Now a surge of energy coursed through Nathan. He peered sideways at his father, grinning maniacally. Suddenly he understood precisely what it was his trembling self beheld.
The 101 Damnations
was a book of curses.

Sick!

‘Look after it, my boy, and when you come of age I'll initiate you in its many diabolical uses,' hissed Mr Grim-Reaper. ‘Until then, do naught with it. There'll be plenty of time – and abundant opportunity – to use it in the future. Plenty of time.
Do not use it yet
. Promise me.'

‘I promise,' promised Nathan.

Yeah right.