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    Spook School
    Spook School
    Spook School
    Ebook72 pages48 minutes

    Spook School

    By Sue Purkiss

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    About this ebook

    What could be worse for a ghost than not being frightening enough? That's Spooker's problem as he faces his Practical Haunting examinations at the Anne Boleyn Secondary School, under the watchful eye of the Inspectre-ate and Sir Rupert Grimsdyke (who's definitely not Spooker's favourite teacher). He isn't helped by the fact that he's sent for training to a brand-new house in Buttercup Avenue - not at all the kind of dingy, creaky building in which ghosts feel most comfortable. Spooker must find a way to spook the most unspookable people imaginable . . . Or maybe ghosts don't have to be scary, after all?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJun 21, 2012
    ISBN9781408163825
    Spook School
    Author

    Sue Purkiss

    Sue Purkiss's first book, Spook School, was published in 2003 by A & C Black. She followed this with Changing Brooms and Spooks Away. The Willow Man was published by Walker in 2006.

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      Book preview

      Spook School - Sue Purkiss

      For Viv, who has been

      so generous with her advice

      and encouragement.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter One

      ‘In all my years of teaching, alive and dead, I have never, never, come across a result like this. One ghost in this class has scored nought in every single exam – I repeat, in every single exam. And that ghost is—’

      ‘Nooooooo!’ shrieked Spooker Batt, sitting bolt upright in bed.

      His mother appeared beside him. ‘Goodness, dear, what is it? Did you have a bad dream?’

      ‘The worst,’ groaned Spooker. ‘I dreamed that I failed every one of my exams, and Sir Rupert was having a go at me in front of the whole class – it was horrible, Mum, horrible! He did that thing with his eyeballs, where he gets crosser and crosser, and they stick out more and more, and then they pop out and roll down his face, and—’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs Batt hastily, ‘I do remember that.’ She too had sat and trembled in Sir Rupert Grimsdyke’s classes, and she remembered all his little habits only too well; they weren’t the kind of thing you easily forgot. Sir Rupert had taught at the Anne Boleyn Secondary School for hundreds of years, so he’d had plenty of time to perfect the art of making his students’ lives a misery.

      ‘You mustn’t worry about the exams,’ Mrs Batt said. ‘Dreams don’t always come true. You’ve been doing fine in – well, most of your subjects.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Spooker miserably, ‘but not in Practical Haunting. Sir Rupert really doesn’t like me. He shouts, and then I get all muddled up, and then I make a mess of things, and then he gets even crosser, and then—’

      ‘Sir Rupert doesn’t like anyone,’ said his mother briskly. ‘Never did. It’s not in his nature to like people. But there’s no point worrying about it. You’ll just have to put up with it, like everyone else does. Come on, it’s getting dark – you might as well get up and make an early start for once.’ She bustled off to wake the rest of the family up.

      Spooker sighed. The trouble was, Sir Rupert’s subject, Practical Haunting, was the most important one by far. After all, what good was a ghost who couldn’t get out there and haunt? So Spooker was perfectly right to be worried. If he failed Practical Haunting, he’d have to repeat the year, and that would be just so humiliating. Everybody else in his family was so good at what they did …

      Take his mother, for instance. She worked part-time. She had a nice little job, moonlit nights only, pacing the corridors of Heversham Hall as the Lady in Blue. The Lady in Blue was thought to have been Lady Alice Ponsonby, who died of a broken heart in the sixteenth century because her father wouldn’t let her marry the man of her dreams – a minstrel who had written a dreadfully soppy song about her, called, of course, Lady in Blue. Mrs Batt was supposed to have the strains of this song echoing after her as she paced, but she disliked it so much that she would only allow it on Hallowe’en and Midsummer’s Eve. Spooker had been to watch her, and thought she was brilliant. Her weeping and wailing really were to die for, and the way she wrung her hands – well! He just hoped that one day he could be even half as heart-rending.

      ‘Phanta, hurry up!’ called Mrs Batt impatiently. ‘Spooker’s exams start today – we really mustn’t be late.’

      ‘I’m never late!’ protested Phanta. ‘He’s the one who’s still in bed.’

      Phanta was Spooker’s little sister. Like many little sisters, she was a perfect delight to her parents and a perfect pain to her brother. She even kept her room tidy, which to Spooker seemed positively unnatural. Her parents

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