The Northern Frights Read online

  While the students were fast asleep in the spider-web beds, it occurred to me that the students at Scary School could be having their own problems with the exchange students from Scream Academy. I decided to go back to make sure none of my friends had been eaten.

  I hitched a ride on a polter-bear (us ghosts can interact with one another) and made it all the way Rory back to Scary School in time for recess. It looked like all my friends were still alive, so I used the time to get to know the exchange students.

  Since arriving from Scream Academy, the three exchange monsters were trying their best to fit in at such a different school. One was a Cyclops named Cy Clops. Super convenient! Another was an invisible kid named Scotty. Nobody saw him the entire week. The third was a nine-year-old monster named Rory.

  During recess, Rory was sitting all alone by the alligators at the bottom of Scary Slide, throwing them little fish snacks. He was hoping someone would join him, but he was very scary-looking, and everyone was afraid to come near him.

  Being near those man-eating alligators didn’t help.

  At Scream Academy, Rory was considered one of the least scary-looking kids, but here at Scary School, where scary kids were more rare, he looked absolutely terrifying. He was the size of a human adult (already pretty scary), shaped like an apple, and covered in blue fur. He had only one part to his body, so he looked kind of like a giant head. His long arms jutted out where his ears should be and went all the way to the ground. He had short, stubby legs that were all but useless. His mouth took up half of his body, and his teeth looked like unpeeled bananas. Plus he had eyeballs the size of baseballs and a furry unibrow that stretched across his forehead.

  Sitting by those gators, Rory was feeling more and more homesick with each fish he threw in their mouths. He wished over and over that he could just go back home.

  That’s when he heard a voice from behind him. “Hey, you!”

  Standing there were Johnny the Sasquatch, Peter the Wolf, and Ramon the Zombie—probably the three coolest kids at Scary School. Next to them was one of the exchange students from Scream Academy, Cy Clops the kid Cyclops, who held a baseball bat over his shoulder.

  “Hello,” said Rory, in a voice that sounded like a tuba because his mouth was so big.

  Johnny remarked, “Cy Clops here says your name is Rory. Is that true?”

  “It true.”

  “You wanna play baseball with us? We need another player.”

  “Baseball? I can no play. Helmet no fit my head.”

  “That’s too bad. Cy is the bes—” Ramon’s tongue fell out of his mouth, and he quickly picked it up and reattached it. “Sorry. My tongue is loose today. We thought you might be as good as Cy. He’s the best hitter we’ve played with.”

  “That’s because I always keep my eye on the ball,” said Cy.

  “I’m no good,” said Rory.

  “Say,” said Ramon the Zombie, “you have the biggest head I’ve ever seen. If your brain is just as big, could I pleeease have just a small bite? You wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Uhhh . . . no, thank you. I think I need every piece of my brain.”

  “Smart move,” said Peter the Wolf. “The last kid who let Ramon try his brain forgot all his multiplication tables and thought his teacher was his mom. But since you can’t play baseball, how about another game?”

  “What kind of game?”

  “With a name like Rory, you must have the scariest roar ever. How this game works is each of us will go around the school yard and roar as loudly as we can. Whoever can scare the most kids off the playground wins.”

  “Okay, I can try that one.”

  Johnny, Ramon, Peter, Cy, and Rory strolled over to the quicksand box, where a group of third graders was building quicksand castles. Johnny let out his scariest Sasquatch roar, and a bunch of kids scattered. Except for one kid who sank into the quicksand and popped up in the middle of Scary Forest, where survival was highly unlikely. Life lesson, kids. Don’t play in quicksand.

  Johnny did a quick count. “I scared eight kids right out of the box! All right!”

  “Ahh! Eight such a small number!” said Rory. “Remember to use Monster Math and say eight million, or I might have heart attack.”

  Next, Peter the Wolf did his best werewolf howl at the monkey bars of doom. “Nine million kids got scared. I’m in the lead!”

  Ramon the Zombie did his best zombie growl at the possessed merry-go-round, but only five kids got scared. “Kids just aren’t as afraid of zombies as they used to be,” grumbled Ramon.

  Cy Clops tried his cyclopsian growl at the Pit of Scarflakk, and twelve kids ran away screaming. “Ha-ha! Twelve billion! Beat that!”

  Rory stomped over to the slayground area. There were at least fifty kids running across the bridges and dodging the swinging ax blade. If he let out a good roar, he could totally smash the others for the win. The four friends grinned in anticipation.

  Rory sucked in a deep breath, reared back, and tried to roar the loudest he ever had. But all that came out was a flimsy wheezing sound: Hfffafafa. Hfffafafa.

  Oh no, not now, Rory thought.

  Rory had a bad case of monster asthma, which always seemed to flare up at the worst possible moments. He reached into his backpack and pulled out an inhaler the size of a thermos. He took a deep puff on it and tried roaring one more time. It was even worse than before. Pffff! Pfffff! Then he started coughing and fell over face-first onto the fire-ant hill. The ants were biting him all over his face, which was his entire body.

  He rolled away, brushed himself off, and took two more big puffs on the inhaler, gasping for breath.

  The four friends glared at him with severe disappointment.

  “Well, that was a bummer,” said Ramon.

  “Let’s go, guys,” said Johnny. “He’s not scary at all.”

  Rory took another big puff on his inhaler and felt like crying, but he held back, not wanting to be embarrassed any further. He couldn’t believe he had had his big chance to make some friends and he blew it.

  That’s when Rory noticed a girl lying next to him who appeared to be dead. He nudged her, but she didn’t move.

  Uh oh, thought Rory. I hope I didn’t accidentally squash her when I rolled over. He reached over to feel her neck for a pulse, but as soon as he touched her, Penny Possum leaped upward, which scared Rory half to death. Rory made a wheezy sound, spun around, and fell back on the ground (and yes, I’m a ghost poet and I know it).

  Penny giggled on the inside. She had played dead when she saw Rory next to her because he looked so scary, but now he didn’t seem very scary at all.

  She helped Rory up and brushed a few remaining red ants off his blue fur.

  “Hoofah! Thank goodness you not dead,” said Rory. “My name Rory. What’s your name?”

  Penny was always ready for this question. She took a penny out of her sweater pocket and held it up.

  “Your name Penny?”

  Penny nodded.

  “I like your name. You no talk?”

  Penny shook her head.

  “That okay,” said Rory. “I think humans and monsters make too much noise anyway.”

  Penny smiled. It felt good to have an exchange with someone. She wouldn’t admit it to herself, but she missed having Charles around to not talk to.

  “Well, since you no talk, I guess I go back to feeding gators. Nice meeting you. Hopefully you bring me good luck just like a penny.”

  Penny had seen what happened earlier when Rory tried to scare the kids on the playground. A brilliant idea came to her. As Rory turned to walk away, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him over to the tetherball court. There, Frank (pronounced “Rachel”) was playing a game of invisible tetherball with Mr. Grump. Unfortunately, the tetherball had broken free from its pole earlier in the week and was currently lurking around the school yard bopping unsuspecting kids on the head to show them how it felt.

  Frank was very good with any game using invisible ropes and won her
tetherball matches every time, even though there was no ball and no string. When she beat Mr. Grump with one mighty pummel, she turned to the girls at the hopscotch courts and demanded, “All right, who’s next?”

  Everyone backed away in fear, not wanting to get lassoed by Frank’s invisible ropes.

  Next, Penny brought Rory to the benches under the poisonous apple tree. There, a group of fifth graders was reading a new story Steven Kingsley had just written. After surviving the monster attack last semester, he finally had the courage to start writing scary stories, and the kids loved reading them. They made Scary School seem not quite so scary by comparison. The kids huddled close as they read Steven’s stories while he watched from a distance, enjoying their reactions.

  Finally, Penny brought Rory to the shores of Scary Pool. A group of angry seventh graders was chasing Fritz for making them lose yet another basketball game. To evade them, Fritz jumped into the water, where he felt much more comfortable. “Come out of there!” the seventh graders yelled. “You can’t stay in there forever!” A moment later, Fritz rose out of the pool riding on the neck of his friend Nessie the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie shot a stream of water out of her nostrils right at the seventh graders. They tumbled across the shore, then ran away screaming.

  Rory turned to Penny and said, “Ohhh, I get why you show me this. You trying to teach me that there are lots of ways to be scary beside roaring.”

  Penny nodded vigorously.

  “Hoofah! I never thought of that. Thank you!”

  Later that day, Johnny, Ramon, Peter, and Cy were playing baseball during lunch period. Johnny pitched the ball to Cy, who took his eye off it for the first time, and it clonked him in the head. But Cy didn’t even flinch because he was too distracted by what was coming toward him.

  Three alligators were charging right at them. Standing on the middle gator’s tail was Rory, holding on to three ropes tied to each gator’s head as a harness.

  Rory took a puff on his inhaler and commanded, “Full speed ahead!”

  The chariot of alligators stormed across the baseball field, bellowing and snapping their jaws. Johnny, Ramon, Peter, and Cy shrieked and dove out of the way. Next, Rory turned the gators around and drove them across the school yard, clearing the terrified kids away from every single piece of playground equipment.

  Johnny, Ramon, Peter, and Cy were so impressed that they stood up and cheered Rory’s incredible feat. Nobody had ever been scary enough to frighten all of the kids off the playground before. Even Penny was so scared that she played dead, but she enjoyed every second of it.

  Once he was finished, Rory hopped off the gators, threw each one a fish, and gave them a pat on the head. When he turned around, the entire school was cheering for him.

  Ramon said to Peter, “Let’s make that guy an extra-extra-extra-large helmet so he can play baseball with us!”

  The next day, all of the kids were begging Rory to come play games with them and teach them how to ride the gators. The kids took turns squeezing Rory’s inhaler for him whenever he felt wheezy.

  Just yesterday, Rory couldn’t wait to go back home. Now he never wanted to leave.

  14

  Swimming with Sharks

  Charles the Seal sat in the sanctum replaying Marlin’s words in his head: “One last thing. Watch out for sharks.” Charles had wanted to scream back, “If there are sharks, why did you turn me into a seal?” but Marlin had swum away. Swimming with sharks was still the last thing he wanted to do. So he spent a whole day trying to find another way out of the cave. There was none.

  Since Marlin believed Charles was going to die fighting a dragon, in his fizard mind, there was no need for Charles to worry about swimming through shark-infested waters. That didn’t make Charles feel any better about it.

  Before facing the icy ocean, he practiced seal swimming in Marlin’s fish tank to get the feel for it, and the next morning, he took his chances and dove into the ocean with his backpack strapped to his flipper. Millie was stowed safely in the backpack’s airtight pocket.

  As soon as he entered the water, he scanned for sharks. Fortunately he didn’t see any. He began swimming around, looking for an opening in the ice above, but couldn’t find one. Then he saw a creature swimming toward him. It was another seal! Charles barked, “Do you know the way out?”

  But all it barked back was, “What are you doing? Swim!” It quickly swam by, and Charles turned to see that a school of blue sharks was swimming after it. Without a moment to think, Charles followed the seal, swimming as fast as he could. They soon met up with the rest of the seal’s pod. All of them began swimming for their lives, but Charles was the least experienced and was lagging behind.

  The sharks were right upon Charles, already nipping at his seal tail. He was running out of energy, and the weight of his backpack was a burden. He cursed himself for not leaving it behind.

  The sharks caught up with him. Two of them swam next to him, one on each side, and lunged forward, jaws-first, for their strikes. But right before they could chomp down on his seal flesh, something caught on Charles’s flipper and yanked him upward.

  Charles rose quickly through the water and was pulled up through a circular hole in the ice. Silence the Yeti looked at Charles the Seal dangling on the end of his fishing hook and exclaimed, “Yummy! Breakfast!”

  It was out of the frying pan into the fire.

  15

  The Witches’ Brew

  That morning at Scream Academy, the five Scary School kids walked down Corridor Two for the day’s class. Charles had still not shown up, and his friends were very close to giving up hope, but they still held out a glimmer that Charles might be sitting in the classroom waiting for them when they got there.

  Unlike the previous day’s corridor that made the kids scream by freaking them out with falling insects and moving paintings, this hallway had a different method. The armor of past monster knights stood against the walls, holding monstrous swords and maces. It was quiet. Too quiet.

  The Scary School kids decided to huddle together and walk as a unit. Jason and Fred were looking straight ahead when something moved. They immediately shouted, “Sword!”

  All five kids ducked in the nick of time as a knight swung its broadsword over their heads. Then Wendy shouted, “Claw!” and all five took cover on the ground as a claw from above reached down but grabbed only air.

  Then a monster walking in front of them screamed, “Waaaaah!” as it fell through a trapdoor that opened in the ground. It was now clear what this corridor was all about: booby traps. While the walkers were distracted by knights swinging their maces, trapdoors would open, walls would spin around, and claws would reach down to snatch you!

  A scary moment occurred when a trapdoor opened right under Petunia’s feet. But the Scary School kids were all holding on to one another’s arms, and they were able to keep Petunia above ground so she didn’t fall into the darkness.

  The classroom door was dead ahead. It seemed like more than half of the students who had entered the corridor were already gone. The Scary School kids were just steps away, thinking they had made it through the worst, but then a barrage of arrows shot out from the doorway straight toward them. The five closed their eyes, thinking it was all over, but when nothing happened, they realized that Lattie had caught the arrows in mid-flight using her lightning-quick ninja reflexes.

  “Wow! Thanks, Lattie!” they all said.

  Lattie snapped an arrow in half and said, “A single arrow is easily broken, but not five in a bundle.”

  When all five Scary School kids entered the classroom, they looked around for Charles, but he wasn’t there. The monster students who had made it looked shocked when the human kids entered.

  “Greetings, young ones,” they heard from three voices speaking in unison.

  The teacher was already there, but it wasn’t just one teacher. There were three old witches with long gray hair and black robes. None of them had eyes.

  “We are your teach
er, Ms. Coven,” said a witch with a shaky voice, holding what looked like an eyeball against her forehead.

  “Give me the eye!” shrieked one of the other witches. “I want to look at them.”

  One of the witches grabbed the eyeball from the hand of the first witch and placed it against her forehead. “Ah yes, humans are adorable at this age, aren’t they?”

  “Adorable and delectable,” said another witch, causing them to cackle in unison.

  “Please take a seat. The brew is almost ready,” said the witch holding the eye, offering them an aisle of empty seats.

  “Hey!” grunted a furry brown monster with fangs jutting up from its lower jaw. “Yesterday there were six thousand human kids. I count only five million now.” The kids did some quick Monster Math and deduced he meant five.

  “One of our friends fell down a chasm yesterday,” said Petunia as she took a seat in the front row.

  The class erupted in laughter. A troll girl with pink pigtails on her lumpy gray head giggled, “Hardy-har-har! Dumb-dumb human. Can’t avoid a chasm!”

  “Mmmm . . . they look sooo delicious,” said a spotted monster who drooled and licked its chops.

  “I bet the purple girl tastes like grapes!” said a rotund ogre.

  “Patience, students,” said Ms. Coven. “There will be no eating of the exchange students. Unless, of course, we give you permission.”

  The Scary School kids gulped. The witches were slowly stirring the bubbling liquid in their cauldron and throwing in ingredients that ignited sparks.

  Then vents opened in the ceiling. The sounds of screaming drew closer and closer until monsters started dropping through vents and into chairs at their desks. They were the same monsters who had fallen through the trapdoors and gotten snatched up by the claws in the corridor. It appeared the trapdoors were tunnels that led all the way back to the classroom. Now the Scary School kids were upset they didn’t fall through. It seemed like a lot of fun!

  “Now that we’re all here,” said Ms. Coven, “it’s time to teach you how to make a potion that should be in every monster’s arsenal. The potion of—whoops!”