Dunmore How to Survive a Horror Sequel

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78895-784-7
Verlag: Little Tiger Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 400 Seiten

Reihe: How to Survive

Can you be a final girl and survive your own horror movie - twice? Almost a year after the horrors of Harrogate, Charley and her mum find themselves stranded in a small village called Glendale, AKA 'The Devil's Punchbowl'. Then she befriends the local misfits and learns of her new home's ties to witchcraft - and realises that Glendale has even more secrets than she bargained for. However, the town's troubled past might just be the key to Charley understanding her ability to speak to the dead, especially with Halloween approaching. But after a series of disappearances, the ghosts acting differently this time, and the Harrogate Killer making a shocking return, Charley realises she might have taken on more than she can handle. Before she can flee town, a new terror is unleashed, placing her friends and family in danger. Charley's horror knowledge will be put to the test once more, and if she and the Harrogate Killer don't figure out how to work together, they'll be trapped in Glendale forever. Or worse - buried in it. How to Survive a Horror Sequel is a fast-paced horror comedy, perfect for fans of RL Stine's Fear Street, Christopher Pike's Midnight Club and Kat Ellis' Harrow Lake.

Scarlett studied English and Creative Writing, eventually finding a love for YA literature. When she's not writing, she can often be found watching scary films or exploring abandoned abbeys, old cemeteries and ruined castles in Scotland for inspiration.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dunmore, Scarlett

Leseproben

Sanguine pools flooded my vision. Blood and flesh seeping across white tiles, dripping down grey marble, spreading across black flooring. In my dream, there was a crack and a shattering of bone. A scream, short and sharp, replete with fear and—

“Charley?”

I startled awake, my forehead colliding with the car passenger window. I blinked and the road in front of me came into focus.

My mum gently touched my arm. “Sorry to wake you, but it sounded like you were having a nightmare again.”

A tang of the dream lingered on my tongue as I rubbed my forehead, wondering if it would bruise. When I turned, I saw Mum perched on the edge of the driver’s seat, her gnarled hands gripping the steering wheel so tight that her knuckles were bone white.

“Are you OK?”

“Storms like this make me nervous on the road. Why is it always raining here?” She tutted, checking her rear-view mirror then her side mirrors.

“Because it’s Scotland,” I grumbled. “I think it always rains here.”

The rain hammered on the window and spread like a spiderweb to all four corners of the glass. Storms like this didn’t really bother me. Not any more. Not since Harrogate, where I’d found myself on a rural and isolated island in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean for half a school year. It would have been longer if it weren’t for the crazed serial killers who ravaged the boarding school, butchering Sixth-Year students. Popping heads in fridges, splaying bodies on rocks, hanging corpses in cupboards. And by ‘crazed serial killers’, I meant my best friend and the love of my life. A double hit.

OK, fine, by ‘love of my life’, I meant the girl I’d had a crush on for five months – which in dog time is, like, five years. But Olive was my best friend, my roommate, my partner in crime. Well, not exactly; she committed all the crime on her own. But she was my everything at Harrogate. And now I was running from her. Sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. And sometimes I just couldn’t tell.

If you thought she’d died back at Harrogate circa Halloween 2023, you wouldn’t be in the minority. There were remains, yes, but whose, I did not know.

Olive ‘Psycho’ Montgomery did not die. I knew it in my bones. Because movie villains rarely died in an ending sequence, especially in Halloween horrors. The antagonists tended to survive the final battle. Hello, Michael Myers? Most horror movies had a sequel. They were all the rage (no pun intended), because sequels led to franchises and franchises led to money.

After I received the message on my bedroom mirror last winter of ‘Happy Slasher Saturday’ – a nod to my and Olive’s old weekend activity of watching scary films – Mum and I moved around a lot. We couldn’t stay long in one place, partly because of my paranoia and mainly because being the only survivor of a real-life high-school slasher film meant always looking over my shoulder, sleeping with the lights on and installing triple locks on house doors even when the house did not belong to us and was only an Airbnb rental. Oops. I really got into trouble for that one.

Today would be the furthest from Harrogate that we had ever got. We would soon be approaching the tip of the British mainland; there was no more north after this. Just water. A vast, endless ocean. And Iceland, maybe. Or was it Norway? My geography was questionable at the best of times.

We had circled a large town on the map, one with a population of around 15,000 people. A place big enough to hide in plain sight but small enough to know your neighbours, to recognise faces and establish motives. We’d been driving for days now, occasionally pulling over at services and petrol stations for snacks (mostly Skittles), supplies (a little hand sanitiser) and bathroom breaks (yuck). Last night we stayed at a roadside hotel called the Traveller’s Rest. A perfect location to stage a horror film like Psycho or Vacancy – maybe even The Shining. Without the snow. And Jack Nicholson. I stayed awake all night waiting for her, but Olive did not come.

We’d seen all four seasons since we started this drive. We even had a little bit of snow down in Wales last week just before we left. I liked it there. Grassy valleys and granite skies. It wasn’t the city where we were from, but it wasn’t an isolated rock in the middle of the North Atlantic. But then I thought I saw her – the psychopath I used to call my ‘slasher sister’. And so I made Mum move on. Again. Now she wanted some kind of normality back in our lives, which was understandable. But normality meant an end to our cross-country road trips, which worried me. I was not ready for stability, for settling down and unpacking the slippers. It was already October. With Olive’s favourite season of Halloween on the horizon, what I was ready for was a taser and grenade launcher.

“Shoot,” Mum grumbled beside me.

“What is it?”

“We need to stop for petrol again.”

I shrugged. “That’s probably good. Gives you a break from this rain. Besides, I’m out of Skittles. It’s officially a state of emergency.”

“Well, we can’t have that.” She grinned. The car slowed, the tyres catching on the surface water on the road. Mum began to turn into a petrol station as the rain gathered on the windscreen.

The road in front of us became pixelated, obscured by the rain and the mist. A screech of tyres sliced through the moisture as my mother sucked in a breath loudly. I gripped the edge of my seat, fingernails digging into the frayed leather, as headlights appeared – heading straight for us. Mum slammed on the brakes. I pitched forward but the seat belt yanked me back. Hair splayed across my face, I slowly peeled open my eyes and swept the strands from my cheeks. A dark-coloured car idled in front of us, the tyres zigzagged at an awkward angle on the wet tarmac. Had my mum not hit the brakes so hard, we would have crashed into it head-on. The car flashed its lights twice, then slowly pulled away, disappearing into the mist. The road became quiet again, but the frantic beating of my heart pounded my eardrums like the rain outside.

My mum’s hand slowly dropped from my shoulder, leaving a sore imprint. “I’m so sorry!” she gasped.

The adrenaline seeped out of my rigid body. “That’s OK. That guy came out of nowhere.”

“You didn’t see him either? Good, that makes me feel like a better parent.” She turned cautiously into the petrol station, then shut off the engine. She rubbed her chest, hands still trembling. “Holy mackerel, I just saw my life flash before my eyes, and it wasn’t pretty.”

I rested a hand on her shoulder, gently squeezing. “Thanks.”

She snorted. “Thanks for what? Almost killing you?”

“For all of this. I know how chaotic the past year has been, constantly moving around. And you loved your job back in the city.”

“And I’ll love this next job too. Assuming I get one. I’ll find something. Although I don’t think Driving Instructor is in my future.”

My bottom lip throbbed slightly as I bit down. What if my mum couldn’t find a nursing job where we were heading? What then? She was already sacrificing so much. My past was like a tapestry of trauma, and every time we packed up the car to move again it just added one more detail to the design.

Mum squeezed my hand harder. “Charley, stop worrying about me, you’re going to give yourself stress lines on your forehead. Which is not cute. Let’s just focus on finding accommodation and a school for you to finish up your final year.”

I nodded and felt a genuine smile peck at my cheeks.

She unclipped her seat belt. “Now, Skittles, was it? State of emergency, I believe you said?”

“You know, after that near-death experience, I might get a Snickers. I’m suddenly feeling brave.”

“Look at you, what a daredevil!” She got out of the car as a fragment of a memory bled into the corners of my mind. Me and Olive standing at the edge of the cliff where rock met sand and shore met sea. I could see her now, open palm to the gunmetal-grey sky, crumbs of bread fluttering in the salty breeze, gulls slicing and frantic. We’d often walk back from feeding the seabirds, trainers crunching on the coastal path, discussing what to buy in Shop for Slasher Saturday. Always Skittles for me, always a Snickers for her. We’d share a tub of microwaved popcorn, our fingers sometimes brushing against one another as we dug into the kernels.

Ephemeral memories of a once peaceful time melted like hot clay, reforming into a new shape. An image of my best friend standing over me on that same cliff, rage and revenge glinting in her eyes. A bloodied blade in her hand...