Horror High 2 by Paul Stafford Read Free Book Online Page B

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, goingabout 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!
    Â 

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 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 – thequality 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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜What do you want pocket money for?’ Mr G-R repeated, sounding now like a car radiator boiling over.
    â€˜I want to buy a pocketknife,’ replied Nathan, as reasonably as he couldmanage. Always attempt to reason with your recalcitrant parent, the Undead Teenagers’ Handbook advised; adults pride themselves on being reasonable, so try to act