Ghoul School

"Ghoul School" is a story in Goosebumps Triple Header: Book Two.

Plot

Liam Erdman is starting his first day at a new school. As he walks towards his desk, he can't help but notice that the other kids are a little different. His first hint is when one kid has solid green eyes. Then the girl in front of her starts licking the wall. Another kid eats and then regurgitates a stick of chalk.  His teacher, Ms. Barker, however seems normal, with her horrifying trait merely being a mousy disposition and schoolmarm-looks.

At lunch, Liam sits with a kid who outside of wearing a dog collar seems normal, until he starts barking like a like a seal. Liam runs back to the Room 5 classroom and asks Ms. Barker why he's not popular enough to sit at the ghoul kids table. She calmly tells him that it's because his classmates are monsters. After all, Liam is enrolled in Ghoul School! Ms. Barker insists that Liam's parents were quite insistent that Liam be enrolled in this school and that if Liam wants to survive, he should not let on that he's not a monster. Ms. Barker then shoos Liam out of her classroom so she can finish her ham sandwich in peace.

Out in the recess yard, Liam briefly tries to mingle with the kids and almost gets his arm bitten off. He retreats back inside and tries to sneak back into the classroom, only to discover that he misheard Ms. Barker. She's not enjoying a ham sandwich, she's enjoying a hand sandwich.

After somehow surviving the rest of the school day, Liam tries to reason with his parents, but they insist that they specifically wanted him enrolled in that school because it was closer to the house. Liam's dad, an undercover cop, gives Liam a special silver "panic button" which he is use only in an emergency.

Back on the school-grounds the next morning, the ghouls crowd around Liam and force him to prove he's a monster by eating dirt. Since he won't eat dirt, the kids insist he transform into his monster form.

The kids are incredulous to his portrayal and it looks like curtains for Liam until a wild-haired girl named Marnie breaks up the angry mob by dragging the boy away from the rest. Marnie tells the angry crowd that she's seen Liam's monster-form.

Marnie arranges for everyone to meet the next day at midnight on the playground, when the moon will be full. Liam tries to get out of the engagement by arguing that he has an existing conflict at midnight, as that's when the scarecrow walks. One of the ghoul-kids tells Liam that if he doesn't show up, the rest of the ghouls are going to throw a party and eat his entire family. Liam is relieved that he won't have to go grocery shopping for the party but is obviously still a little uneasy about the rest. Marnie tells him that she thinks he's just like her, which he takes to mean another normal human.

During a science lecture, Liam gets passed a note from Marnie, telling him to meet her after class outside the grocery store. Liam sighs, as now there's no upside to the promised family-eating party.

Luckily, Marnie only asked him to meet her there because she lives in an apartment above the grocery store. She runs upstairs and comes back with a box of halloween costume parts. Liam spends the next day practicing applying the werewolf disguise and gets the process down to seven seconds.

Marnie meets him at the playground at midnight. Liam tries to keep his distance so he can turn around and chance, but the ghoul kids run after him and he attempts to apply his costume while running. He drops half of his parts and all that's left is a wig he puts on backwards and plastic fangs. The other kids laugh at him and then transform into horrible monsters with tentacles and wings. Liam figures this probably constitutes an emergency and pushes the panic button. Suddenly he hears the sound of a police siren. Dozens of cops swarm the monsters and begin shooting them with darts. As the cops haul the monster kids into the police vans, Liam's dad explains that the silver button was actually a microphone. Liam's dad secretly works for PUMS, the Police Undercover Monster Squad and thanks to Liam, the cops can finally shut down the monster school.