The Feral Peril by Paul Stafford

According to the note pinned to the door with a bloody dagger, the renovations in the rollcall room were complete and, for the first time in a fortnight, the class was allowed in. They entered cautiously, shuffling, peering over shoulders and panning slowly around the room. Confused mutterings drifted back from those in the front of the line: ‘There’s nothing different at all.’
    It was true. Nothing apparently had changed since they were last in there. Bloodstains still streaked the walls, as usual. Dried organs and freakish samples of human tissue were strung about like ghoulish Christmas decorations – no change there. The standard instruments of torture hung from the ceiling like rabbit traps in a furrier’s workshop, and the rusty gibbet swung above Mr Grimsweather’s desk.
    The gibbet was empty now , but the class knew it was only a temporary reprieve. Sooner or later someone would irritate the Rollcall Master sufficiently to be routinely slaughtered, their remains to hang in the gibbet till end of term. Soon someone would infuriate Grimsweather, forget their best terrified behaviour and push the Rollcall Master over the edge … please.
    On cue, Geoff Dandyline, grinning like the village idiot winning Nimrod of the Year, stepped forward through the knot of curious students. His buckteeth, whichlast year received radio signals from the Challenger Space Shuttle, now shot out from his mouth like the cowcatcher on the front of an old-fashioned steam train.
    â€˜Grimsweather’s not here.’ He beamed gleefully, dragging a tennis ball out of his pocket. ‘Let’s have a game of handball.’
    â€˜Are you mad?’ snapped Jenny Deaths-head. ‘ Are you nuts ? Grimsweather warned you last time that last time was the last time. If he catches you…’
    â€˜But he’s not here to catch me, is he?’ crowed Dandyline, flinging open his arms in an expansive gesture and pointing north, south, east and west like a demented, toothy compass. ‘Do you see a stinky, finky, hinky Rollcall Master with no brain and a big butt named Grimsweather anywhere here? Because I don’t.’
    A chill, polite cough echoed from directly above. In horrified slow motion, Dandyline peered in the one direction he’d failed to look before – up.
    He screamed.
    There was Grimsweather, coiled around the ceiling fan like a boa constrictor. Dandyline buckled to the floor in terror, moaning, shielding his head in his hands. Waiting. Then, when nothing happened after five long seconds, he cautiously opened his left eye.
    He shut it fast. Grimsweather had detached himself from the overhead fan and now crept slowly across the ceiling and down the bloodstained wall like a huge, venomous spider. With a sigh of death breath, the Rollcall Master’s feet found the floor.
    â€˜As you can see, class, this is the renovation,’ said Grimsweather, pointing up at the new overhead fan. Its blades were comprised of two arms and two legs, roughly hacked off at the joints. ‘Our new fan. Now we can be cool in the summer heat, thanks to Frank Hobgoblin’s generous contribution of limbs. And now to another person about to make a generous contribution – Dandyline.’
    Silence.
    Dandyline, subscribing to the theory that if you couldn’t see someone, they couldn’t see you, lay on his stomach petrified, head buried in his crossed arms. The class milled closer in silent delight. Good ol’ Dandyline.
    Grimsweather looked like he’d shake apart at the seams with rage. It seemed certain he’d lose it and either cuff or kick Dandyline, but the Rollcall Master managed to control himself at the last instant. He had to. The Department of Education After Death had recently instigated a strict new code of conduct for teachers: they couldn’t strike or boot a student, or they’d be in for it.
    As an experienced teacher of many moons, Grimsweather knew when to