Hello again faithful RAF reader! I just want to take this time to inform you of some changes and explain to you a brief history of this story. The original version was written in 2000, but just recently I started updating the writing in it. I didn’t add or remove a single scene, or change anything at all. I just fixed up the dialog and made the writing better, and that is it. I still want it to be the exact same story, complete with its crappyness, however I wanted to still be able to read it without tearing my hair out at the bad writing. I plan on doing that for all my old original stories. Now, here’s a bit of background info on the story. I’ll be doing this with all my re-writes on my older stories, explaining a brief history behind them, as kind of like a 'Special Feature'.
Despite the open ending of the previous one, originally the first School Day story was supposed to be the only School Day story. I never had any plans of doing a sequel. However, it was such a huge surprise hit among the people in my class, and among my friends, that I knew in the back of my mind that a sequel was now quite possible. Up until that point, only my closest friends would read my stories, but after School Day, I had people I hardly even knew come up and ask for a copy to read, or ask where they could find it online.
I went on to write a couple of other stories first, such as Terror in the Tunnels which was about giant killer alligators in the tunnels under New York, and Invisible Killer which was about a haunted camp ground based off a ghost story by dad used to tell me as a kid, but found my mind often switching back to School Day. In February of 2000, just two months after I had written the original School Day, I began work on School Day 2. Some things I had known right off the bat, such as wanting to have it take place while Jeff and Allison were in University, and that during the time between the first and second stories, Jeff and Allison had dated and since broken up and were no longer on speaking terms. Everything else about the story I pretty much made up as I went along.
However, I needed a school and I needed a cast of characters. The first story had all my friends from Alberta in it, so I decided to give my friends in Newfoundland the same, um, ‘privilege’, and so thus the characters in School Day 2 were based upon my friends and teachers from Newfoundland. From there, I decided to have the entire thing take place in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and have the University be MUN, the University of Newfoundland located in St. John’s, my old city.
Although since this took place slightly in the future (I was only in Grade Nine when I wrote it), I was not able to have any of it be based off real events that had happened, like the first half of the original story had been. The entire thing had to be made up, so it was a lot harder to write. On top of that, I needed to have a plausible way to get them all stuck in the University with the killer, and that was probably the most difficult part.
Like with most horror sequels, the character list has been raised, and with more characters then the first time around, I wasn’t able to have nearly as much characterization as I had hoped. Although, again like with most horror sequels, I tried to make up for that by upping the gore factor; this is a teen slasher after all. People read these things for the gore and not the deep thought-provoking characters anyway. One specific death in this story, involving a toilet seat, went on to become famous among my friends as one of the most inventive deaths ever, and even got nominated for, although I cannot remember if it won or not, an award on a Horror Fiction site during one of the site’s Annual Halloween Awards.
So here you go, I now present to you:
SCHOOL DAY 2
By: Jeff Long
The cloudy night sky covered the Newfoundland city of St. John’s like a black blanket. Somewhere under that blanket on a cul-de-sac that was located on the edge of a hill looking down at the rest of the brightly-lit city, was an upscale expensive house, which was currently housing only one occupant – 13-year-old Jacob Adams.
Jacob was lying on his bed, his door wide open which was something he never did when his parents were home as he loved his privacy, and he was in the middle of reading a stack of paper that was printed off from his computer, while chatting on the phone with his best – and only true – friend. Jacob had been in the middle of reading the stack of paper when his friend had called.
“Not too much,” Jacob answered his friend’s question of what he was doing that night. “Just reading this story I got in my e-mail.”
“What story?” the friend asked, not really caring but just acting like he did to further the conversation.
“You heard about the Wainwright Murders, right?” Jacob asked. When his friend replied with a solid no, Jacob explained, “Four years ago, in this small town up in Alberta, some people got stuck in their school during a snowstorm and one of them went psycho and killed the others. They never caught him. There was a story written by one of the other students before the incident, that the killer based his killing spree off of, called School Day. Apparently this is that story.”
“Dude, you’re so morbid. Why would you want to read something like that?”
Jacob shrugged. “Personal curiosity. Spent forever trying to find it. I can’t even count the number of message boards I had to leave messages at before some dude that was lucky enough to have a copy, e-mailed it to me.”
“Is it at least any good?”
“The writing sucks but the story is good. Some chick just got offed after going to the bathroom.” Jacob was a huge horror movie fan, and although as soon as someone was by themselves during a horror movie, such as to use the bathroom, he knew from a mile away what was going to happen, he still looked forward to the death just the same.
“You should let me read it when you’re done,” the friend gave in, admitting that it sounded at least half-way decent. Might just be good for a chuckle if nothing else.
“Sure,” Jacob replied as he flipped one of the pages over to read the next one. “I’ll bring it to school tomorrow.”
Jacob droned out what his friend said next, as he concentrated on a sudden distinct scratching noise drifting up to his ears from some place on the ground floor of his dark house. “Hey man, I’m going to have to call you back,” Jacob said to his friend as the noise stopped for a minute and then started again before stopping once more. “I think my parents are home.”
“A’ight dude, talk to ya in a few.”
Jacob hung up his phone. He called out and then listened intently for the reply that never followed. He called out two more times as he made his way out into the hall and then down the stairs, flipping on every light switch along the way to brighten the darkness all around him and to defeat any scary shadows.
After not getting any reply by the time he reached the kitchen, Jacob doubted very much that it was his parents who had just come home. He went over to the closet and pulled out a tall broom, which he grasped tightly in both hands as if it was a powerful weapon that would be used to frighten off any intruders that may be trying to break in to steal his mom’s jewelry collection.
“I’m armed!” Jacob called out loud enough for anyone that may have been hiding in his house to hear. “So you better leave right now!” To his surprise, he was actually given a reply this time, however it was only a return of the scratching noise from before, this time coming in through an opened window.
Jacob went to the front door and stepped out into the cool spring night breeze, still clutching the broom as if his life depended on it. He scanned the nearby area, and upon not seeing anything out of the ordinary, he slowly made his way to the side of the house, but saw only his mother’s prize-winning plants rustling against the side of the house from the breeze.
Content that it was only the wind and plants making the noise he heard, Jacob turned back around to head inside, but instead found his path back blocked by a figure dressed in a dark grey grim reaper costume, holding onto what appeared to Jacob, as a very realistic-looking scythe. The only clue to the identity of the figure, was that the hood revealed only a small portion of the chin.
“Who the **** are you?” Jacob asked, however quickly raised his broom in both hands again, to block Grim Reaper’s answer – which was nothing more then a simple raising of his scythe.
The scythe swung down and easily chopped the broom into two pieces as Jacob jumped back. “Holy ****!” Jacob then began shouting for help as he threw the two pieces of wood onto the ground and turned, breaking into a panicked run to escape his attacker.
Voice hoarse from screaming for help so much and legs wobbly from running so franticly as he made his way to the back of his large house, he finally reached the back door and quickly turned the handle, only to discover much to his shocked disappointment, that it was locked.
While he breathed heavy to catch his breath, Jacob quickly looked all around behind him, hoping to see the location of the attacker but seeing nothing but trees blowing in the wind and his well-kept lawn.
Just as he was about to make a mad dash back to the front of his house, he heard the sound of the back door unlocking. “Mom, dad!” he cried as the door swung opened. “There’s someone out…”
Jacob stopped short when he saw that it was not his mom or dad that had opened the door, but Grim Reaper. Jacob didn’t even have time to think any kind of ‘Oh ****’ thoughts, as Grim Reaper instantly swung his scythe and had it connect with Jacob’s soft face and sickly exit the back of his head.
[***
The thousands of students that attended the main university of MUN in St. John's, Newfoundland, were filled with happiness as for the first morning in over a week the sun was shining brightly instead of hiding behind thick rain clouds. Despite that however, many of the students still could be found wandering the halls inside of the gigantic university.
Among those students was a much older and more mature Jeffrey Long, now with longer hair on his head and facial hair covering his chin and mouth area in a rectangular shape. Walking with him were his two friends, the short and plump Ryan Miller and the taller and more fit Justin Lundrigan.
They pushed their way through the crowded underground tunnel hallway, away from where the hundreds of lockers were located, as they continued on with a discussion about how much Jeff hated his English class due to his overly-strict know-it-all professor.
“So glad I never went into that course,” Ryan said as they reached their set of lockers and started changing up their text books.
“I’m even more lucky,” the empty-handed Justin bragged as he straightened his glasses. “I’ve only got three classes during the day. The rest are all Spares.”
“Yeah, just wait until next semester,” Ryan warned. “You’ll be making that up then.”
“That’s what happened to me,” Jeff replied. "Last semester I only had a few classes but now this one I’m swamped so much, I can’t even party on the weekends anymore.”
“And man, you are missing some nice parties,” Justin informed Jeff for the billionth time. “This upcoming weekend there’s supposed to be a real killer one at Darryl’s place, if you can make it.”
“I’ll try,” Jeff smiled. He used to be such a huge partier, but the constant school work he had been getting swamped with recently put a real quick turn in that road, and he was constantly disappointed as he had to hear about all the fun times he was missing.
They closed their lockers and continued walking down the hall together, pushing through the sea of moving bodies crowding the hall.
“So did you guys hear the news this morning?” Ryan asked after a long silence.
“****, yeah,” Justin replied, but Jeff had to go the ‘No’ route.
“Some Grade 9 kid from MacDonald Drive got murdered last night,” Ryan explained to Jeff.
“Man, that was our old school,” Justin exclaimed.
Jeff’s heart instantly came to a grinding halt and his eyes filled with familiar fear as Ryan went on, “The police think the murder weapon was a sword or something cause of the long, deep, gashes all over the body.”
“Or a scythe…” Jeff whispered, stopping on the spot, not even realizing anymore that there were other people in the hall other then him and his thoughts. Grade 9 student…possibly a scythe…it was sounding all too familiar to him. The day had arrived that Jeff knew would happen eventually but still hoped against it.
“Go on ahead,” Jeff said to his friends as he came back out of his own head. “I’ll catch up with you guys later. I need to go talk to someone.” Before they could ask any questions, Jeff turned and headed back down the stairs into the locker tunnels at high speed.
***
Roberta Hammond brushed her long brown hair out of her eyes as she watched her friend turn the combination for her locker. A much older and more developed Allison Luk, with her previously-blonde hair now dyed bright red, easily turned the lock as Roberta waited patiently next to her.
“They’re saying that everyone should stay in large groups until the killer is caught,” Roberta continued informing Allison of the news from that morning. “They don’t know yet if it was random or if there was some motif behind it, but they want everyone to be safe just the same.”
Allison, trying really hard not to think about the murder, continued rummaging through her locker as she put her previous class’ books away and started the search for the next set. “What class do we have next?” Allison asked, quickly changing the topic. She had spent too much time in the company of killers. She hated thinking about that fateful day at her old school, and any topic that made her think about it even the tiniest bit, she’d either ignore or change to something else.
“Artistic Designs, then Folklore,” Roberta answered as she paused for a second in her relaying of the news, before continuing on with it again. Allison sighed heavily as Roberta went on, “Like really, what is this world coming to? A 13-year-old being murdered in cold blood like that. There are some real demented people out there, I tell you.”
Allison closed her locker a bit harder then she meant to, out of frustration at Roberta not catching the hint that she didn’t want to talk about the murder. Just as they turned to walk away, Jeff arrived right in front of them.
“Hey Jeff,” Roberta greeted, smiling. After the nightmare events that happened to Jeff and Allison in High School, they began dating and then when Jeff moved back to his home in Newfoundland, Allison followed. Shortly after however, they broke up and rarely ever spoke to each other again, even after Jeff started dating Allison’s best friend Roberta. It was a long time after, but they also eventually broke up. Unlike Jeff and Allison however, Jeff and Roberta remained close friends after the break-up.
“Hey yourself,” Jeff greeted back before turning to Allison and slightly nodding his head in a greeting gesture. “Allison.”
“Why are you here?” Allison asked frustratingly, brushing her neon-red hair out of her eyes and glaring at her ex-boyfriend. Jeff tried a few times to get back together with her, despite her lack of courtesy towards him, and if that was what he was trying to do yet again then Allison really didn’t want to hear it.
“It’s about what happened last night. And four years ago.”
Jeff and Allison never mentioned the Wainwright High School Massacre to any of their friends in Newfoundland, and so Roberta was completely lost and had the feeling she was being pushed out of the conversation. Those feelings were confirmed when Allison, not taking her glaring eyes off of Jeff, said to her, “Go on to class, Roberta. I’ll meet up with you there.”
Roberta sighed, fearful that Jeff and Allison were about to get back together, as she still had feelings for Jeff. Not wanting to upset her friend however, Roberta nodded and walked away, heading to class.
“The murder from last night has me thinking that…”
“I know what you’re thinking, Jeff,” Allison instantly cut him off. “They’re not connected. It’s impossible.”
“No it’s not, Allison!” Jeff exclaimed louder then he meant. They got a few weird looks from passer-by’s and Jeff lowered his voice. “They never found Dillon’s body.”
“This isn’t a horror movie or one of your stupid little stories. This is the real world. Start living in it. He more then likely crawled away before the cops showed up and then died someplace from loss of blood.”
“But what if he didn’t?” Jeff countered, annoyingly and pointlessly pressing the subject matter as far as Allison was concerned. “What if he’s still out there? It’s possible.”
“No, it’s not.”
“The weapon that killed that kid,” Jeff continued, not giving up, “could have easily been a scythe.”
“It’s not him, alright!” Allison shouted before running off down the hall, tears of pain and frustration flowing freely down her face.
Jeff was left alone in the hall, as other students by this point were already headed to their classes. He stared after Allison as she ran down the hall and around the corner. “Dillon is still out there,” he whispered to himself.