Horror High 2 (6 page)

Jason-Jock smacked the next ball through the slips for a crafty single, and finally Fleabag was facing his first ball.

Fleabag was always scared to some fair degree but now he was peaking out. The whole team's future rested on his hairy head, and between the captain and himself they had to get another fifteen runs. He wasn't sure he could do it.

Fleabag had been scared stiff of the cricket ball until WG Grace came along. He and WG had practised heaps with a soft red Nerf ball, and soon Fleabag overcame his fear – of Nerf balls.

And that Nerf ball had been bowled by Fleabag's everlovin' coach, an elderly gent with a funny, flappy beard, and both gent and beard had been dead nearly 100 years.

Now Fleabag had to face a killer pace attack with a real, rock-hard ball, launched by an angry, beardless vampire who was his sworn enemy and a paid-up member of the Werewolf Wasters. Fleabag whimpered and his face crinkled up like an overstuffed taco.

He was about to cry.

Jason-Jock met Fleabag halfway up the pitch and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don't panic, Fleabag. What's the worst that can happen?'

‘I could be killed!' wailed Fleabag.

‘You're a werewolf! You can only be killed by a silver bullet – not a red ball.'

‘I could be severely maimed,' Fleabag countered.

‘Well,' replied Jason-Jock, ‘I'll take my chances with that. You'll be alright. Just try to block the ball and give me the strike. Just don't get out. I'll do the rest.'

‘Easier said than done,' replied Fleabag, gritting his teeth and facing up to the bowler.

First ball he faced was an evil in-swinger that literally shaved the bails and left them rocking in the dark. Had the slightest breeze blown, the whole show would've been all over Red Rover, call your aunt who lives in Dover.

Second ball was a yorker that luckily wasn't on stump, or it would've spelt death, D.E.T.H.

Third ball Fleabag played a blocking shot. It worked. Cripes, he thought – I'm not that bad. Which was a lie, but we'll let it go. Everybody needs a dream, even werewolves.

Considering what a monumental wuss he was, Fleabag did really well. Admittedly
he was very lucky, closing his eyes and poking his bat out mostly, but he didn't get out.

If there hadn't been so much at stake, Jason-Jock would've been enjoying himself. He cracked the ball to the boundary a couple of times and nearly hit another six, causing the vampire cheer squad to hiss and fizz with savage rage and exhibit symptoms of a broad spectrum of anger management issues.

JJ slipped as he played a cut shot and ran a snappy single, nearly getting himself run out, but finally they were level score with the vampires, and one run away from victory.

Trouble was, Fleabag was the batsman on strike. Could he hold out for one more run? Could he save the day, salvage their chances, rekindle their lives?

Oh, the tension. Oh, the humanity. Oh, my haemorrhoids.

 

The vampires sent their nastiest bowler in, desperate to uproot Fleabag. The vampire's
speciality bowl was dead-bodyline, and his even specialer specialty was slinging deliveries straight into the batsman's head. Now he slowly paced out his run-up, a full 200 metres, 200 steps, so far back he was starting from the ladies' queues at the members' toilets, in a neighbouring stadium.

Fleabag, meantime, was laying down skidmarks in his cricket whites that not even a full bore exorcism would ever remove.

The run-up began, slowly, gathering pace. Flecks of blood sprayed from the bowler's murderous fangs, jolting in time with the pistons that were his legs. Closer, closer, closer, the dark gleaming eyes, the fangs, the inevitability of Fleabag's horrible death.

Fleabag whimpered, closed his eyes, prayed.

The killer bowler fired a cannonball of death. The air sizzled with hate and craziness and too many bad metaphors. Fleabag threw his bat up in front of his
face, desperately fending off the red missile that would take his head off at the stump if it connected.

With Fleabag dead, the vampires would win by default.

The ball nicked the bat and sailed up in the air, a genuine Heavens-to-Betsy, lollypop catch.

No! No! After all the hard work, all the heartache, all the blood, sweat and tears … to lose in the final second.

Like most things in low-market books of gibberish like this (from the simplistic story summary on the back cover to the author's faked credentials on the front), the above chapter heading is bogus, spurious, erroneous and wrongus.

There's nothing unlucky in it at all …

The two vampire fielders raced for the ball, cracked heads, fell dead. The ball landed on the ground, rolling. Fleabag
opened his eyes, amazed to find himself still alive.

‘Run!' screamed Jason-Jock.

Fleabag stared down the pitch, saw his captain running and sprang out of his crease like a jumping-jack. Then he saw the kitten. It had wandered out of the crowd, meandered through the field looking for some attention and settled onto the pitch. Fleabag stopped dead in his tracks. He was petrified of kittens. Nothing could induce him to budge. His team screamed and howled from the benches. The vampire team hissed and spat and cursed from the sidelines.

Pandemonium reigned.

Screams and whistles. Shouts and incriminations. Threats of violence from parents. Unsavoury advice from old ladies.

It was deadset chaos.

Then, out of nowhere, Principal Skullwater streaked across the midnight pitch, his withered and wrinkled form as nude as the Creator created him. Bad form all round, from my observations, but I won't
get in the way of time-honoured cricketing traditions like streaking, and certainly won't put myself in the way of a streaking Skullwater.

He skipped across the pitch, aged bits and wrinkles flying everywhere, collared the kitten in one swift move and popped it in a sack. ‘Plump and young and juicy,' muttered Skullwater as he sprinted past on his naturalistic way. ‘This kitten will do nicely for my dinner.'

Then the naked principal was gone, vanished into the darkness. So had the kitten.

And Fleabag ran, ran like the devil was on his tail. The vampire fieldsman pegged the ball from the outfield, straight at the wickets. The stumps tore apart like the little pigs' house of sticks just as Fleabag crossed the crease.

But Fleabag was safe. He'd made it.

The werewolves had won the Cup.

The howls of joy! The yelps of delight! The baying for vampire blood! The capering of those delighted dogs as they
jostled and snarled and rough-housed and rolled and scuffled and scrambled and snapped their teeth, before completing the whole victory ceremony with a big, deep sniff of each others' butts.

It's a werewolf thing …

 

Next Monday the truck from Death Valley High delivered the portable classroom. It was a sweet victory finale for Horror High, a fully swish scene. I was supposed to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony, but the security guards wouldn't let me through.

The two flash portable classrooms now squatted side by side, housing all the overflow students, with their two portable toilets housing all the overflow from the students … the finer details of which we definitely don't need to examine here.

Principal Skullwater pranced about, grinning, gaping, slapping backs and praising the victorious werewolves. Now he was their best mate, their biggest supporter, head of their fan club, the one and only person who'd believed in them
from the very start, and never doubted they'd do it.

The shonky sod.

He'd checked the new portable classroom out, made sure everything was in its place and now proceeded around the rear to check the attached toilet block. This was the best part of all. These two extra dunnies would ease the chronic lunchtime toilet gridlock, discourage all those monsters ducking behind bushes and banish those interminable lines of straining students waiting for the can, man.

Oh yes, this was the highlight of winning the bet for Skullwater. He had a weird fixation with toilets and considered himself an expert in all things septic.

He sure wasn't an expert in etiquette. As far as good manners were concerned, Skullwater might just as well have been raised by wild lowland gorillas. He didn't bother to knock on the portable classroom's toilet door, just barged straight in. Perched on the throne was WG Grace, pants around his ankles, going
about his business 19th-century style and reading a cricket magazine.

It might have been WG's quick temper or it might have been that powerful and recurring gypsy curse – nobody who witnessed it could say for sure – but the final effect was there for all to see.

The new classrooms may have looked impressive, but the truly notable fixture was the toilet block and its bold, post-modernist approach to interior design – Principal Skullwater stuffed headfirst down the bog!

 

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.