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 of 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.
“Strange,” 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.