For this addition, we're jumping ahead to Hall of Horrors. I was reminded of this one recently and I've had and idea for it stirring for a while now. So here it goes. This book has a fine enough idea but it all ended up being lazy in terms of the story and nothing really mattered in the end. The scene the book picks as the climax is not only anti climatic but could have been at any point in the story. Things like that dragged it down so let's see if we can really tighten this up.

So this book had a kid attending a boarding school run by zombies and the school has something called a Reviver. See, why they are indeed undead, they can die a second death so to speak, and through normal means, not just through light like the Dead House guys. Thus, they have this machine called Reviver that puts some extra juice if you're feeling even slower than usual, or it can stitch you up if you lose your hand and so on. It can only do so much though, as shown in a scene where a kid has a nasty fall and the Reviver doesn't take, and he's dead again. The saddest part is that Franny, who tells us this, just brushes it off because it's that common at this point. This is a fascinating concept ad of course nothing is done with it. We don't even find out if they have any master plan once they discover if Matt is a human or not. So yeah, we're jumping off this idea.

In this case I mostly have extra lore and an idea of how this thing will climax, don't really have a clear A to B story. But hey, neither did Stine apparently. Okay, that's mean. Anyway, some time ago, most of the students of Romero Academy died, along with a few teachers. How did they die? Eh, I couldn't think of a good reason that doesn't either rehash Dead House or touch on a subject this series has no business mentioning. So we'll keep it vague in story. The kids were restless, upset that they didn't get to live their full life. So they returned as zombies and tried to keep their cool in the graveyard and but become afraid they'd get hungry and attack the citizens elsewhere. So this guy who is the father of one of the students, Franny Roth, saw that their school was closed down and decided to use it to continue their schooling but make it exclusively for zombies to live on longer. The school generally tried to operate in secret so as not to get authorities snooping around, but they did send some ads hoping to find new lost zombie souls, doing interviews to make sure to covertly check if they are zombies.

But Matt's family had to move into town fast and so the interview had to be done online, with the plan to check on him for zombie-ness while he's at school and just expelling him on a random claim if he's still alive. Franny is able to tell he's alive right away but takes a liking to him and decides to help him pass as a human. Her deal is basically like this in the book, just so ya eventually she reveals that while at first they loved the school as a way to live with, it soon became a burden to some of them.

They've gotten what their want and want to die peacefully but Mr. Roth has become so attached that he's not allowing them to do so. He's still super bitter about losing his life early and wants to keep everyone in this undead state. The whole Reviver Room is a thing in this version so they've seen how they are all just hanging by a thread, barley being amble to live this weird life right anyway.

She wants Matt to help overthrow her father so they can back peacefully in their graves. At first they foolishly go to him on their own to see if they can talk it out, but he refuses to budge and he basically finds out Matt is human during this but Matt tries to keep up the zombie act. So to test him, he takes Matt and plans to throw him off a balcony. Okay, either way he'll still have a treason guy but this could mess up to the point where the Reviver fails so yeah.

Then all the other students arrive and form a mob to take him on for good. Franny pleads to her father, demanding that they let them lie. It's sad that they died early but as much as they try, they can't live a normal life afterward and need to accept that. She tries her best to get Mr. Roth on their side but alas, he still refuses to accept it and through an accident, he falls off the balcony and dies for good, the Reviver doesn't take.

With that, the zombie kids return to the graveyard and the school is empty once again. Franny thanks Matt for his help and they part ways. As for a twist ending...I got nothing fill in anything here. Maybe keep the silly "Matt goes to a vampire school" one from the book, as long as we don't ruin the nice bit. I actually just an idea for a plot twist where it turns out Matt is actually a zombie and just forget his death due to weird death amneisa thing this series loves, but I'm not sure how to work that into the story in a good way so we'll nix it.

But there we go, I just made a story about accepting your death, this was a very upbeat and cheery story. Mr. Roth's fate might be a bit dark even for the book with that student dying but eh, I think it works for the story I created. This one was so much easier to crack than the last one, I had the basic idea in my head but wasn't sure how to make something of it but once I started writing here, it all came to me.

But yeah, one of my better re-writes I think. See ya for the next one.