Goosebumps Hall of Horrors #4: Why I Quit Zombie School

Blurb
Poor Matt Krinsky! Not only are his parents making him move away from all of his friends, but they're enrolling him in a boarding school. It's not a strict place, but that doesn't mean things are normal. While Matt is used to being one of the better athletes in his class, these kids move at a dead-slow pace. It doesn't take long for him to realize that he's surrounded by zombies. And his classmates have begun to notice his heartbeat and warm skin. Can Matt convince them he is undead long enough to stay alive?

Plot
We open back in the Hall of Horrors, with the Story Keeper greeting us. After engaging in some stand-up that even a lobotomised 15-year-old scouser would groan at, he introduces us to Matt Krinsky, our protagonist for this evening/morning/whenever you're reading this. Matt is carrying a rubber hand, since it apparently saved his life. How, you don't ask? What do you mean "Who cares? Why does he even own a rubber hand in the first place?" Don't worry, Matt's here to tell us the hows and whys of his rubber hand. Well, OK, not all of them.

One day, Matt and his family moved house because the plot evicted them from their old property, then only gave them one house to look at. So, this meant that Matt had to go to a new boarding school, called Romero Academy. I'm sure that this school, named after the director of Night of the Living Dead, in a book called 'Why I Quit Zombie School,' contained nothing spooky, scary, or skeletons on its campus.

So, Matt got dropped off at Laemle Comprehensive (expect more of this throughout), which looked a lot like a castle and not very much like an educational facility of some form. As Matt strolled through the school to the reception, he noticed the students playing baseball v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Then he saw some more boys eating a dead squirrel. What is it with these books and squirrel eating? But, when Mum and Dad turned to look, the boys had melted into the shadows. Bat-Zombies!

In the office, Matt was greeted by the headmaster, Mr Craven, who was dressed in a grey suit, but not a knife glove. (Bang goes calling this place Craven High) Mr C asked another student, Franny Routh, to show Matt around the school. However, she described the place in a weird fashion, but also a boring manner. (How is that possible?) Matt then met 2 giant guys who suspiciously look like bullies, identical twin brothers Wayne and Angelo. As they exchange some pretty funny anecdotes about switching places (once, they did for a whole week, and no-one notices), but Matt was distracted by their completely white eyes. When he asked Franny about it, she just said "So?" They're very tolerant of appearances here at Carpenter Middle School, aren't they?

Wayne and Angelo, after a while, took over the tour, showing Matt the gym and the canteen. The most mysterious part of the whole place was the reviver room, behind a green door, like that burger place from season 3 of How I Met Your Mother. Suddenly, Wayne slipped on a book.... somehow... and fell down the stairs, splatting all the way. They may be tolerant here at Cronenburg E-ACT, but they're certainly not careful. He was simply carried off by the teachers, as some students laughed like idiots. From personal experience, I'm honestly not surprised.

Later, Matt called his family, who, like most parents, were adamant that everything was perfectly fine, even after Wayne's accident. His sister, Jamie, who wasn't mentioned by me alone until, says that everyone was probably in shock. What? I don't think that's how shock works.

Later, because he had as much life in him as his classmates (come on, we all know it’s coming), Matt decided to give some people a scare, by putting on some creepy makeup. As you do. He spied Franny in the doorway, who is unable to see his face, so he spun around to try to frighten her. She didn’t notice it. See, I said they were tolerant about appearances at Rob Zombie Grammar School!

Franny and Matt started strolling around the halls of William Castle Tech, and Franny revealed that, despite being taken to the reviver room, Wayne didn’t make it. Yikes. “Well, what’s the reviver room when it’s at St Kubrick’s?” you may or may not ask. According to Franny, one goes into the reviver room if they’re hurt or damaged. It usually involves a very high voltage - I mean, potential difference. Physics GCSE this year; can’t be too careful. Also, Matt noticed a fence the size of Hong Kong in the nearby field. “No-one goes there,” said Franny. “Too depressing.” Well, at least now we know where Raimi Private School’s music budget went.

A few days later, when Matt and Angelo, who’d showed no signs of remorse for the death of his brother, were walking to class, everybody in the vicinity stopped. They were standing under a balcony in the school courtyard or something. Then a guy jumped off it. Then another. And another. Oh, come on, no secondary school pupil is smart enough to come up with that! Angelo suggested that Matt come try this activity, known as ‘One-Way Bungee-Jumping,’ but Matt politely declined the offer. Matt called Jamie, but, you guessed it, she didn’t believe him! Don't worry, the kids who jumped off the balcony were fine. They just got up, and walked off, like nothing happened.

After a revolting scene in the canteen, which nobody would actually want to willingly read, Matt went to the Study Room, which I guess is Mario Bava Convant’s fancy name for their library, to meet up with Franny. After some stuff happened involving maths homework and Franny’s friend Alana, they started to leave. Suddenly, Franny asked Matt when he died. Matt was obviously confused by this statement, and Franny realised that this meant that she and Matt were the only people at Sam Raimi Comprehensive (I’m running out of school types, OK? I have to start repeating myself) who weren’t, well, dead. Turns out that Matt’s parents had officially hit rock bottom for these books. No,really. They didn’t check out Barker High School before sending Matt there; they just found it on the internet and sent him there over anything in a (at most) one hour radius. Even then, it’s a special kind of stupid to not notice that your son goes to a school full of ZOMBIES!! (Is that enough emphasis for you morons?) Franny explained that Matt that, in order to keep stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive, he had to pretend that he wasn’t alive in the first place. OK, it’s a solid plan (first time for everything). And Matt couldn’t escape, but not for the logical reason of “your house is a long distance away.” See, when Matt was walking around the place on the day he showed up, there were some crows dotted around the school.Those were a security system of sorts; if you go 10 feet away from the grounds, they yell like a teacher telling a bunch of moderately loud students to be quiet.

Matt called his parents to tell them - you know what, it’s obvious where this is going; let’s just skip it.

The next day, Matt tried out for the school football team actual football, not the American kind), and did pretty well. Until he kicked someone’s leg off, that is. Yeah, I think that would be worth at least a yellow card, ref! “Don’t worry,” said the coach in charge, “this happens all the time.” Maybe he was just not giving any bookings, offsides, or red cards in order to stop the supporters from shouting at him and chucking pie wrappers at him.

The following Saturday, Matt still couldn’t stop telling the reader/the Story Keeper that James Whale E-ACT was full of zombies. Seriously, it’s so annoying to read. It was also visiting day for the parents, so he got to not shut up about the zombies to them, too. He tried to get Franny to convince them, but she didn’t help either. Also, she told Matt that there was a “dance party” that night, too. Ooh, was some Drink Vodka, and maybe a nice round of Game Beer Pong there?

After Franny explained to Matt that she didn’t tell his parents the truth because they were, as you guessed, surrounded by zombies, they went to the dance party. Early on, one guy, Mickey, choked on a piece of meat, so Angelo, that big guy with white eyes from before, slapped him on the knocking his tongue out. OK, that was supposed to be funny, right? As Mickey ran off to the Reviver Room, the music changed all the kids started doing a dance called the stomp. I don’t know what it was; something to do with stomping, probably. Watch out, Conga! After Matt was knocked about during the Stomp like a pinball in a machine on a bouncy castle on a ship in incredibly stormy weather, he became acquainted with the resident obligatory popular jerks, lead by a bloke called Ernie. Franny explained to Matt that they ruled the school, and yet they hadn’t been mentioned until now. After a disgusting scene at the food table (it’s always disgusting when food is involved here) involving a girl called Evie, Matt asked the latter to dance. Unfortunately, when she grabbed his hand, she noticed that he was warm. I can’t believe that happened! I mean, Matt took so many precautions to protect his identity!

Ernie suggested a test to prove that Matt was dead, and that was by making him jump off the balcony. Well, it sounds like a win-win situation, really. If he was dead, he’d be fine. And, if he wasn’t, he’d be dead anyway by the end, and that would satisfy everyone. Suddenly, however, Matt remembered the rubber hand he had in his pocket.

BACKSTORY BREAK

Up until now, it didn’t seem relevant, but Matt is a horror nut. He brought a ton of Horror posters, etc, to Tobe Hooper Comprehensive. He happened to have brought the rubber hand with him to the dance party.

AND NOW, BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

Matt got an idea, and dropped the hand off the balcony, hiding his real hand. This apparently confirmed that he was a zombie to everyone. Either that’s one realistic hand, or everyone there’s really dumb. What with their age range, I’m going with the latter possibility.

As everybody headed back to the party, Ernie took Matt and his fake hand to the Reviver Room to fix him up. As Matt was placed into the electric chair (quality children’s literature), Ernie got called back to the party. Seriously, Matt’s guardian angel must’ve been working overtime that day or something!  Matt ran out of the room, deciding to tell Ernie that he activated the electric chair himself. As he yelled about how he was alive, Angelo showed up, but, because Angelo is actually zombie Beethoven or something, he didn’t hear him.

The next day, Matt realised that all the kids had a pale blue tint to their skin, so, he got some blue make-up out of his horror kit (it’s like Mary Poppins’ carpet bag, but with zombie disguise equipment), and rubbed it thinly all over his body. It went well… until PE, when he sweated part of it off. When grabbed by a student, who was not-so politely enquiring what was up with Matt, the guy realised that Matt had a heartbeat. This starts to raise the question: what’s keeping the zombies alive? Is it a curse? Is it magic? Shouldn’t this be in the Any Questions section?

Matt ran, and the zombies chased - well, stumbled, really - after him. Matt eventually vaulted over a gigantic, spiked fence with ease… because he eats the Heart Shaped Herb from Black Panther in a salad… and lands in a graveyard. The graveyard is full of gravestones, bearing the names of various students. What is this supposed to be telling us? We know they’re dead; they wouldn’t be zombies if they weren’t! There is, however, one new piece of information: Franny was actually a zombie the whole time. Are the Krinskies just really bad at noticing zombies? If they watched Dawn of the Dead, would they think it was just ordinary people attacking the protagonists?

Eventually, a rope ladder dropped down from the fence, so Matt climbed up it. At the top was Franny, who he immediately called out on being, well, dead. Alive-face is no joke, people. Franny explains that she was forced to. Apparently, each new guy at Burton Grammar School is spied on by a selected student. That’s kind of invading people’s privacy, right there. (Then again, so is installing security cameras without asking for anyone’s consent) Franny explained that she’d been helping Matt because she liked him. As a friend, I mean. As if romance would ever be brought up in Goosebumps! She informed Matt of the final test of his dead-ness - he would have to stay submerged underwater in an old quarry for 20 minutes, get run over by an SUV, and finally tossed off a cliff. Maybe this whole place was just an elaborate way of murdering Matt.

The next morning, Matt stumbled out of his room. Not to accept his fate entirely, though. During the night, he put on almost 10% of the makeup worn by a female Love Island constestant, to make himself look all Zombie-ish. There were various gruesome fake wounds over him, too. (Who the hell owns that much zombie makeup?) All the zombies applauded him, meaning that he passed the test, and not thinking, “Hmmm, Matt looks a bit different today.” Hey, wait a minute…

However, the students then escorted him to the Reviver Room, what with all the false gruesome injuries. There, he was met with an old man called “the Reviver,” who was never there before, for some reason. Just as it looked like it was all over for Matt, and the Reviver threw the switch for the electric chair, the Reviver came to a horrifying realisation: he used up all the power on the last guy, whom ended up as little more than a zombie shaped piece of burnt toast. Matt then yelled “I’m better!” and wiped some of his makeup off. And the Reviver bought it. Why is everyone in this book so gullible and unable to distinguish the alive and the undead?

Eventually, Matt got out of The Terence Fisher Correctional Facility. How? He begged his parents really, really, hard. And, for some reason, they relented. What kind of parent admits that a school isn’t actually right for their child? So, a few days later, it was Matt’s first day at his new school. However, there, a red liquid spurted out of the drinking fountain, and the students in the canteen were all eating a similar red liquid. Could it be ketchup, perchance? Matt was then greeted by the dean of students, who had sharp fangs and - wait, do middle schools have deans? Anyway, yeah, the school’s full of vampires. Sorry for interrupting the nice tension, guys.

Extra Toppings
Remember how I said in my review of the Escape from Horrorland PC game that Dracula is the only vampire anyone cares about? Well, we're keeping with that theme: Matt's new school is called "Dracula Middle School."

Any Questions?
Follow up: Why would Count Dracula, the greatest/only vampire in the world (come on guys, show Max Schreck some love) give his name to a middle school in the American suburbs?

Conclusion
Why I Quit Zombie School is decent enough. Romero has a sort of dark charm to it, mainly because of the unique idea, and all the crazy stuff that the students get up to. That being said, however, the plot is stretched out to snapping point, and the leads (Angelo not included) aren't that interesting. Overall, good enough for the zombies.

Next time: Since I couldn't get a hold of Zombie School, we're off to a haunted school instead! At least its possible to not notice if a school's haunted.