The Northern Frights Page 9

  That’s when Lattie noticed that sitting on a small platform, right beneath the high ceiling of the hall, was the box of cookies. But it was so high up!

  Master Three Claws appeared next to Lattie and asked, “Would you like a cookie?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Very well. You may take one.”

  “But the box is too high up.”

  “That never stopped you before, now did it?” Master Three Claws winked. It seemed like permission to use the trampoline, so she ran to the crawl space to pull it out, but came back empty-handed.

  “The trampoline is gone!” Lattie said, on the verge of tears.

  “Why would you need one? I didn’t need one to put the cookies up there. When you can reach the cookies without a trampoline or a ladder, you will be a true master.”

  Then Master Three Claws smiled and walked away. Lattie gritted her teeth, looked up at the shimmering box of cookies . . . and began jumping.

  For the next several years, Lattie stood in the Combat Hall every morning and jumped for the cookies for hours on end. She couldn’t climb the walls because they were too flat, but she found that she could gain some height by pushing off the sides with her strong legs.

  After practicing, Lattie would be exhausted. At bedtime, she could hardly keep her eyes open. But every night, Master Three Claws would go into her room and tell her a fable before she went to bed. A fable is a story with a moral or lesson at the end. Lattie’s favorite one was about the Sword of Gold.

  “Tell the Sword of Gold fable!” Lattie would say.

  “Very well,” said Master Three Claws, stroking his wrinkly face and twirling his long whiskers. “Many years ago, when I was a young monster, the terrible Mountain Dragon attacked this temple. She didn’t like that we lived on ‘her’ mountain and declared that she was going to burn our temple to the ground. I warned the dragon that the mountains belong to everyone and are to be shared. She didn’t listen and started blowing streams of fire. I warned her one last time that she would pay dearly if she didn’t fly away. She just laughed. She was an enormous dragon and thought no tiny monsters could possibly hurt her. But she knew not that we had acquired the Sword of Gold so we could protect the mountain villages. Armed with the sword, I dodged the dragon’s fire and snapping jaws and plunged it into her snout. With her last ounce of strength, the dragon flew away to perish beside her Elder Dragon sisters. Now, can you tell me what was the dragon’s mistake?”

  “She thought she couldn’t be defeated,” Lattie replied.

  “That’s right. Always remember, real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

  Seven years after she first started jumping for the cookies, Lattie was finally able to reach them. She bounced up the sides of two walls until she was able to leap upward and grasp onto one of the mounted swords. In one swift move, she pulled the sword from its sheath and jabbed it into the wall, still hanging from its handle. Then she grabbed another sword with her toe and flung it so that it stuck at a higher place on the wall. She stood on it and then bounced off the first sword like a springboard, landed on the second sword, sprang off that sword, and landed on the platform.

  Lattie opened the box and took her first bite of a cookie in seven years. It was as stale as cardboard but still tasted like heaven. Millie crawled down her arm and gobbled up the rest of the cookies before Lattie could even enjoy them.

  Lattie laughed to herself. “There’s always someone who’s hungrier than you.”

  “Well,” said Master Three Claws with a grin, “it seems as though we have a new master at the temple.”

  All of the ninja monsters roared and applauded. That night at dinner, Lattie was presented with her first all-black ninja uniform and a black mask to go with it. It was the happiest moment of her life.

  But later, Master Three Claws came into Lattie’s room with a serious look on his face. “Master Lattie, I have taught you all I can. It is time for you to leave us and go to school with children your own age. Here.” Master Three Claws handed her an envelope. “This is your letter of acceptance into Scary School.”

  “No!” said Lattie. “I don’t want to go! This is my home. I am a ninja. Not a schoolgirl.”

  “My dear, a flower is happiest when it is among a garden of other flowers.”

  Lattie ran out of her room and dove into her crawl space, shouting, “I’m not going, no matter what you say!” She couldn’t bear the idea of leaving. Master Three Claws was like a father to her, and she knew she would be homesick without him there. She had no clue how to relate to other children. Especially human ones. She curled up with Millie, sobbing her eyes out, thinking: Some ninja master I am.

  Suddenly, a horrific noise shook the entire temple. Lattie heard screaming and roaring, crackling and smashing. She peered out of the floorboard, where Master Three Claws was staring her right in the face.

  “You stay there!” he commanded as he pulled the kitchen cabinet off the wall and put it over the floorboard so she couldn’t get out even if she wanted to.

  Above her, she could hear a tremendous battle raging. She had no idea what would be dumb enough to attack a ninja temple. Then she heard a terrifying voice say, “Where is the sword that slew my sister? Where is the Sword of Gold?”

  It was one of the other Elder Dragons!

  Lattie began punching through the floorboard to try to get out. She had to help.

  There was more fighting, more screaming. She felt chilly gusts of wind blowing through the cracks.

  Then she heard her master’s voice: “Do not hurt them!”

  “Only you possess the wise wizard’s full prophecy,” replied the dragon. “Give it to me and I may spare your life.”

  “Never!” replied Three Claws.

  “So be it. Then you shall be my prisoner until you decide otherwise.”

  Finally, Lattie’s hand broke through the board, but now the commotion had ceased and there was only an eerie silence.

  She leaped out of the floor and saw that the dragon was no longer there. All the monster students were frozen in ice, their eyes lifeless. She ran to the Combat Hall and saw the Sword of Gold was missing from its glass casing.

  Lattie searched desperately for Master Three Claws but could not find him anywhere. She prayed he wasn’t eaten. She ran out onto the mountain ledge and saw the terrible Ice Dragon flying toward the horizon in the ghostly moonlight. In one talon—the Sword of Gold. In its other talon—the limp body of her master.

  Sitting on her bed in shock, Lattie reached for the envelope her master had tried to give her just a half hour before. She opened it and found the acceptance certificate to Scary School, along with addresses of former temple pupils who would take her in. Also inside the envelope was an old piece of parchment paper. Written on it was the only copy of Marlin’s original prophecy:

  A dragon slayer shall emerge,

  Of human heart and human mind,

  To fight the dragon made of ice

  And save all monsterkind.

  Lattie had no idea where the Ice Dragon was hiding her master, but she figured the best place to find answers would be at school.

  So now you know why Lattie began growling upon hearing that the Ice Dragon was coming. However, it was not a growl of fear, but of utmost anticipation.

  17

  Severed Head of the Class

  The third day of class, the students walked down Corridor Three. There didn’t seem to be anything scary about it at all, which made the students more scared of this corridor than all the others combined.

  When the students got to the middle of the hallway, it filled up with a thick mist. Nobody could see an inch in front of their faces. Then two glowing red eyes appeared in the mist. There was a loud clopping sound combined with shrieking laughter as the glowing red eyes approached them.

  “Run!” shouted Jason.

  Everyone began running forward as fast as they could, until they crashed through their classroom doorway and fell on top o
f one another.

  The glowing red eyes continued toward them, and then the impression of a man riding on a big black horse came into focus. The horse leaped over the pile of kids and galloped around the classroom. The rider was wearing a cape and a riding suit that looked centuries old.

  “Good morning, class,” said the rider. “I see we have new victims—I mean, students. My name is Mr. Dullahan. Come in and take your seats.”

  That’s when the kids noticed that the voice was not coming from the usual place. It was coming from a detached head being held in the teacher’s arms. On top of his neck, there was nothing.

  “You may know me best by my other name . . . the Headless Horseman!”

  The headless teacher tied his black horse to a hitch next to the teacher’s desk. Then he turned to the students, holding his severed head high over his neck. His eyes peered down at the students disapprovingly. He had long, stringy black hair, thick dark eyebrows, and a long scar across his cheek.

  “Tell me,” said the severed head of Mr. Dullahan, which spoke with a noticeable Irish lilt, “why are you not reading chapter five of your Monster Compendiums?”

  Tommy the Troll raised his hand and said, “Because we just got here.”

  Mr. Dullahan became angry. His body threw his severed head at Tommy the Troll, who caught it softly in his hefty hands. The head said, “Normally I don’t abide excuses; however, that was a particularly good one. Be warned: anyone who disobeys the headless horseman will soon find themselves just as headless!”

  Mr. Dullahan pulled out a wooden ax with a long jagged blade. He swung it back and forth. The students in the front row had to duck out of the way.

  “Throw me back!”

  Tommy threw the head back to its body.

  “In my class, as in life, the most important thing is never to lose one’s head! Ha-ha! Now, everyone take out your monster compendiums and turn to chapter five.”

  In a unified movement of remarkable swiftness, all of the Scream Academy students pulled out their compendiums and flipped to chapter five. Unfortunately, the Scary School students were not given compendiums.

  Enraged, Mr. Dullahan threw his head toward Fred. Fred was not expecting this, and the head clonked him right on the noggin. He fell backward onto the floor. Mr. Dullahan’s head was resting on his chest, sneering.

  Fred exclaimed, “Ew! Gross!” He picked up the head and tossed it behind him.

  As the Scary School hockey goalie, Jason had lightning-quick reflexes and caught the head before it landed on his desk.

  “I’m glad someone was paying attention,” said Mr. Dullahan. “Tell me, boy. Where is your Monster Compendium?”

  Jason replied, “The six of us are exchange students from Scary School. Nobody gave us our books yet.”

  “I see. Normally I don’t abide excuses. But that . . . is a remarkably good one. Turn me to the girl in front of you.”

  Jason turned the head around to face Wendy Crumkin.

  “You! Go to the cabinet and get the spare Monster Compendiums for your friends, on the double!”

  Wendy nodded and ran to the cabinet.

  “Turn me back around for heaven’s sake!”

  Jason turned the head so it faced him.

  “One last thing. Hiding your face is against the rules in my class. A mistake worthy of a beheading. Why are you wearing that hockey mask?”

  “Because,” explained Jason, “everyone says I’m better-looking with the mask on.”

  “I see. As I said before, I don’t abide excuses in my class, but that . . . is the best excuse I’ve ever heard. You may keep your masked head attached to your body.”

  Wendy gave Monster Compendiums to each of her classmates.

  “Throw me back!” the head demanded.

  Jason tossed the head casually over his shoulder, and Lattie caught it.

  “I didn’t mean backward,” grumbled Mr. Dullahan. “I meant back to my body!”

  Lattie hurled the head back at the body, but due to her stupendous ninja strength from years of throwing ninja stars, the head flew back to him much harder than he was expecting. Mr. Dullahan’s head slipped through his hands and hit him in the gut, knocking the wind out of his body. His head fell on the ground, and the blunt end of the ax conked it as it rolled across the floor.

  Everyone was expecting Mr. Dullahan to be furious and go on a head-chopping spree, but instead, his cranium laughed with delight while rolling on the floor. “My oh my! When it comes to you Scary School kids, it looks like I’m in way over my head!”

  Everyone laughed, but the laughter ceased instantly when Mr. Dullahan held up his head and spoke: “Everyone open your Monster Compendiums to chapter five. Perhaps one of our visitors would do us the honor of reading the first page?”

  Wendy Crumkin’s hand shot up.

  “Go ahead.”

  Wendy confidently stated, “Chapter five. Elder Dragons. The Elder Drag—”

  But before Wendy could finish, a swirling dark cloud rose from the pages of her book. The cloud quickly formed into a mini-tornado that started sucking out all the words on the page. Then the pages were torn out of the binding and sucked into the funnel.

  “Hey!” said Wendy. “Don’t eat my book!” She tried to reach into the cloud to pull the pages back out, but vicious jaws snapped at her hand as if a pack of rabid dogs were inside the twister.

  Within seconds, her entire book had disappeared inside the funnel, and all that remained were a few tiny shreds of paper floating above her desk.

  The class was staring agape. Nobody had ever seen anything like that before.

  “How strange,” said Mr. Dullahan. “It seems your book had a curse placed upon it. Some sort of storm curse, maybe?” Mr. Dullahan turned his head to Charles and said, “You read!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Charles.

  Charles began reading from the same chapter, but as he spoke, the same tornado rose from the page and gobbled up his book.

  “Egads!” shouted Mr. Dullahan. “Is it possible that two books have been cursed? There’s only one way to find out. Everyone read at the same time. Go!”

  The whole class started reading chapter 5, “Elder Dragons,” together. But as soon as they spoke, the tornadoes rose out of each student’s book.

  The twisters sent each student’s book flying into the air toward the center of the room. The twister was growing larger, vicious teeth were heard snapping from within, and papers were flying all over the room.

  Mr. Dullahan’s horse was so spooked that she started bucking up and down.

  All of the desks and chairs in the classroom lifted into the air, along with the students sitting in them. The twister had grown to the ceiling and was swooshing about the room, sending backpacks, pens, pencils, and papers flying into the air. Wendy’s glasses even flew right off her nose!

  The trolls tried to tackle the twister but got sliced up with paper cuts. The witch girls tried to fly on their brooms, but it was too windy to have any control, and they crashed into the walls. The rest of the students clung tightly to their chairs, and they spun around the room faster and faster like a merry-go-round of certain doom. Nobody could stop it.

  Meanwhile, far away on the pristine beach in the Bahamas, Marlin the Fizard was having a relaxing swim in the warm tropical waters and enjoying scaring away all the tourists who thought his dorsal fin was a shark fin. It wasn’t long before he had the whole beach to himself.

  Then he noticed something on the shore. Beside his beach blanket, the crystal ball he brought along was glowing. He flipped out of the water, dried himself off, and gazed into its murky depths. Inside, he saw the tornado whipping around the classroom.

  Marlin had only told Charles the crystal ball was a fake so he wouldn’t look into it and see his own future. That could cause a terrible timequake that would tear apart the fabric of the universe. At least, that’s what the guy at the swap meet told Marlin when he sold him the crystal ball for twenty bucks.

  “Stra
nge,” Marlin said to himself. The future always happens much faster than I remember it. His vacation having come to an abrupt end, he dove back into the water, heading toward the icy Arctic waters of Scream Academy.

  Back in the classroom, as soon as all the textbooks had been swallowed, the tornado vanished just as quickly as it had arisen. Everyone’s desks and chairs came crashing down to the ground in a totally different part of the classroom from where they started.

  “What was that?” asked Wendy, placing her glasses back on her nose.

  “Those,” said Mr. Dullahan, “were bookeaters. They are the nastiest, most dangerous creatures in all the land. They feast on knowledge. They crave it like a zombie craves brains. And that’s just one pack of bookeaters. There could be more hidden in any book in the world. The question is, why are they so hungry for our Monster Compendiums?”

  The kids looked at one another and scratched their heads. Charles and Wendy were the creature experts, and not even they had any clue.

  “Uhhh . . . ,” said Tommy the Troll, “maybe they don’t want us to know about a monster in the book.”

  Everyone looked at Tommy in shock. It may have been the smartest thing a troll had ever said.

  “Of course!” said Mr. Dullahan. “The bookeaters appeared only when we started reading the chapter on Elder Dragons. And they arrived in a vicious storm. So that means . . . oh no.” Mr. Dullahan turned as pale as me and dropped his head on the ground.

  “Ouch!” exclaimed his head. “Be careful!” Picking up his head and wiping the dust off his hair, Mr. Dullahan walked over to a red phone hanging on the wall.

  “Principal Meltington,” Mr. Dullahan said, speaking into the receiver. “The Ice Dragon is coming.”

  As soon as Mr. Dullahan said the words Ice Dragon, Charles felt the same sinking feeling in stomach. Was everything Marlin the Fizard said actually true? If so, was he going to die fighting the dragon? He wanted to hide in a corner so he’d never even have to see it.

  Once again, the low, guttural growl of Lattie was filling the room.