Eternal Detention

  www.orchardbooks.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  A Message from the Dark Lord

  A Bit of a Squeeze

  The School Assembly (of Doom)

  Eternal Damnation Detention

  Elecdemonic Tagging

  Demons of the Forest

  Dark Visions

  Shadowshades

  Psycho Fools

  Skinrash

  Ambush!

  A Gobbling Goblin

  This Time, Chris Gets Stitched Up

  A Black Hag?

  Dark Thoughts

  Wine Gums and Storm Crows

  Mrs Purejoie’s Surprise

  Planting the Evidence

  DermatoGlyphs

  The Battle of Swinefield

  An Antidote to White Wizards?

  Tears of Grief

  The Helter Skelter of Doom

  The Lady Grieves – But For Whom?

  The Lair of the Black Hag

  Sooz, the Vampire Queen

  Love and Kisses, Darklands Style

  ‘Girlfriend’ Trouble

  The Headmaster’s Study…of Death!

  Epilogue

  Final and Last Epilogue (Honest)

  Acknowledgements

  The Author

  Sneak Peek

  Dedication

  Copyright

  If you liked this, you’ll love…

  For those foolish humans who have not yet read those great works of soaring genius – Dark Lord: The Teenage Years and Dark Lord: A Fiend in Need – here is a summary of previous events. I, the Dark Lord, was exiled to your pitiful planet by that meddling madman, the White Wizard Hasdruban. To make matters worse, he cursed me into the body of a puny human boy – oh, the indignity! I tried to tell everyone I was the Dark Lord, but, being stupid humans, they all thought I said ‘Dirk Lloyd’ and that became my name. Being fuss-pot meddlers, these ridiculous humans forced me to go to school, and live with foster parents.

  Sigh.

  At least I made some friends – or lackeys as I prefer to call them – Sooz and Christopher.

  At first, I’d planned to conquer your wretched planet, but soon realised that would be impossible. My legions of Orcs and Goblins were no match for your cunningly constructed tanks, jets and nukes. Instead, I turned my evil genius to the task of getting home to the Darklands. I concocted a nefarious plan, but things didn’t turn out as I’d intended and I burned down – no, wait, I mean the cricket pavilion got burned down! Nothing to do with me… Ahem.

  My next spell went wrong too, (not my fault, of course!) and instead of propelling me back to the Darklands, it sent my friend Sooz…

  Sooz took over my Tower of Despair and ruled in peace and harmony – she says. Bah, what a lot of do-gooding nonsense! Anyway, Hasdruban tricked her and imprisoned Sooz in his White Tower. Of course, me and my friend lackey Chris turned the tables on him, and found a way to get to the Darklands. Along the way, Christopher was covered in stinky paste, forced to wear pink underpants and nearly killed, which was funny! Well, I thought so, but Chris…well, whatever. Anyway, we sneaked into the the White Tower to rescue Sooz, and I had to cast a very dangerous spell to get her out. It looked like I was going to die so Sooz and Chris had to give me the Essence of Evil, the black goo I’d coughed up when I first fell to your to earth, to save me. It turned me back into a twelve foot tall, hoofed and horned Dark Lord, which was great! But then – how can I put this? I just got more and more…well, evil, until finally I lost it completely and locked them both in the Dungeons of Doom. Anyway, Agrash, my Goblin Chancellor, smuggled in a magic crystal which Chris and Sooz used to propel us all (including the monster Gargon and the Paladin Rufino) back to earth. Along the way, I turned back into the boy Dirk, coughing up the Evil Essence once more, which was a relief really, I can tell you. It’s quite exhausting being a proper evil Dark Lord… Anyway, we all got home safely. Chris had taken the black, oily Essence and hidden it away, so I couldn’t get to it. All seemed well.

  Except that the White Wizard had got there before us, taken over the school and made himself the new headmaster, Dr Hasdruban…

  Uh oh…

  ‘AAAAaaaarghhhh!’ howled Dirk. ‘That hurts!’

  The bathroom door swept open, and Dirk’s foster brother, Christopher, poked his head round the corner, a look of panic on his face. He was blue-eyed and yellow-haired, and would have been rather angelic-looking but for the livid scar that ran down one cheek.

  ‘Are you OK, Dirk?’ he asked. Dirk turned to Christopher, a plaintive look on his face.

  ‘Why does it suck so to be a human child?’ he said. ‘I mean, squeezing spots is such agony!’

  ‘Ohhh!’ said Chris. ‘Yeah, that hurts, doesn’t it? Still, not as bad as having your cheek gouged open by a twelve foot tall, horned and hoofed evil Dark Lord, though, eh?’

  Dirk turned away, unable to meet Chris’s eye. He looked for a moment as if he were going to… well, apologise. But Dark Lords never say they are sorry. Instead he scowled at himself in the mirror and said, ‘Are you going to upbraid me with this every time we talk, Christopher? I’m not that…thing any more. I’m not like that; it wasn’t me!’

  ‘It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!’ mocked Christopher, fingering his scar. ‘That’s your excuse for everything, isn’t it, true or not!’

  Dirk turned and glared at Christopher. ‘Do not address me in such tones! I am no petty-minded boy child who must justify himself or face detention. I am the Great Dirk, and you will address me with the proper respect I deserve!’

  Christopher raised his eyes. ‘Oh, pleeease,’ he said, before ducking out of sight and slamming the door.

  Dirk turned back and examined the angry face that was looking out at him. Suddenly, instead of a slightly podgy, dark-eyed boy-face in the mirror, Dirk saw a massive, skeletal skull, fanged and horned, like the face of evil itself. But it was fleeting, so fleeting Dirk wasn’t sure if it had really happened. Maybe it was all in his mind. He shrugged.

  ‘What’s a Dark Lord to do…?’ he muttered under his breath as he leaned forward into the mirror and put his hands up to the offending black-headed spot, and began to squeeze once more.

  His face knotted up in pain. ‘Might be worth considering spot squeezing as a new form of torture in the Dungeons of Doom,’ he said to himself.

  Suddenly, there was a disgusting plopping sound and the spot burst, spraying pus all over the mirror. Dirk’s face wrinkled up in disgust. How vile human children were. But then…

  ‘Wait a minute, that’s not pus!’ said Dirk. And indeed it wasn’t. It was black, and oily and shiny. Astonishingly, it began to move…drawing together…forming itself into a glistening blob of ebony mercury, hanging on the mirror like a parasitical egg.

  ‘Essence of Evil!’ whispered Dirk. He stared at it in fascination. He stared and stared. He reached out a hand to the glittering blob of blackness.

  Essence of Evil. There must still be some left inside me from the time I was a Dark Lord, thought Dirk. A magnificent, mighty, all-powerful, spell-slinging Dark Lord, commander of armies of Orcs and Goblins and ruler of the Darklands! Dirk paused, hand held out stiffly.

  But also selfish, cruel, and heartless. Thoroughly unpleasant, in fact.

  Dirk blinked, coming out of his reverie. He didn’t want to be that person ever again. The Dark Lord had imprisoned his friends and then almost destroyed them utterly. His friends – or minions, as he preferred to call them, though in his heart of hearts he knew they were really his friends – were all he had in this strange world. And all he had in the Darklands for that matter. He couldn’t bear to lose them, not now that he was Dirk Lloyd the human kid. Well, sort of human. His friends had used a special magical crystal – an Ana
thema Crystal – to bring them all back here to earth, turning Dirk back into a boy and ripping out all the Essence of Evil inside him. Chris had taken it, and hidden the Essence somewhere so that Dirk could never get his hands on it again. And that’s just the way Dirk wanted it; he didn’t want to know where it was, in case he got tempted once more. He had made his choice – he would be the boy, Dirk, who had friends, and went to school and lived in modern-day Earth, like everyone else. Well, probably. Maybe he’d go back to the Darklands and live there – he wasn’t sure. The important thing was that he’d decided to stay as Dirk. Not any old Dirk, mind you, though. Oh no! He would be the Great Dirk. Naturally.

  Dirk put a hand to his chin. That was all very well, but what to do with the Essence of Evil? Not much of it, true, not enough to turn anyone totally Evil, but still, it was dangerous stuff. He’d have to store it somewhere, until he could work out what to do with it.

  His hand reached for his foster mother’s – Mrs Purejoie’s – contact lenses case. He emptied the case, throwing the lenses into the bin without a second thought. Gingerly, making sure the Essence of Evil didn’t come into contact with his skin, he used the lid to scoop the gelatinous blob into the small contact lens case. He screwed the cap on tightly, slipped it into the pocket of the black, skull-patterned dressing gown that he wore over his Grim Reaper pyjamas and left the bathroom.

  He strode purposefully into his room (actually Dirk pretty much strode purposefully everywhere). On the open window ledge sat a gleaming, coal-coloured bird. It cawed at him.

  ‘Ah, Dave, how are you?’ said Dirk. Dave the Storm Crow (for that is what it was – an ordinary sparrow that had once tasted a little Essence of Evil and been transformed into a Storm Crow, a red-eyed, black-feathered Harbinger of Doom) hopped up on to his shoulder. Dirk absently stroked its beautiful, shiny black feathers. Well, he thought they were beautiful. Not everyone agreed… Actually, no one agreed. Except maybe his friend Sooz, but she was a Goth.

  Dirk placed the contact lens case behind a book on the shelf in his room. School next. How unutterably tedious, thought Dirk. Tedious – and very dangerous, now that his arch enemy, the White Wizard Hasdruban, was the headmaster. And today was the day when they’d find out how that was going to go. There was to be a big school assembly, with Hasdruban giving a special talk. Things were going to hot up. Eventually there could be only one victor – Hasdruban or Dirk.

  Dirk began to put on his school uniform. He had trouble getting his trousers on over the tag around his ankle that the petty and vindictive judge had commanded be put upon him, after he’d been taken to what the humans called ‘Court’. A Court of Justice? Pah! In reality, an absurdly biased-against-evil institution of stuffy old codgers who couldn’t be reasoned with in any way whatsoever. Well, ever since Dirk had lost his powers, that is. If he still had all his Darklands magic, then he’d have ‘reasoned’ with them, oh yes!

  Dirk thought back on how he’d been tagged. Sooz had been transported to another world and Dirk and Christopher had gone after her, to that alternate other land, that land of Orcs and Paladins, dragons and eagle riders, a land beyond time and space – the Darklands.

  Dirk had once ruled there as the Dark Lord, and fought an aeons-long battle against the Commonwealth of Good Folk and their leaders, the White Wizards, of which there had been many. The three of them had been away for a while, adventuring in the Darklands. Their parents, the police and the school had been frantically searching for them here on earth, assuming the worst.

  The three kids had made it safely back but what could they say? That they’d been in another dimension? Where Sooz was the Dark Moon Queen, and Dirk transformed into a huge demon-like Evil Overlord? No, nobody would have believed it, so they’d made up a story about playing a ‘live action role playing game’ in a nearby forest, where’d they’d got lost and had to camp out. But even that was scarcely believed.

  Naturally, they’d blamed Dirk for most of it, calling him the ‘ringleader’. The do-gooding meddlers at the juvenile courts had tagged him and put him on a special curfew and he was going to have to talk to those witless child psychologists, Wings and Randle, too. Still, better than being locked up in an asylum, as he’d have been if he’d told them the truth! And as for the tag…

  Well, we’ll see about that, thought Dirk.

  Once, long ago, he’d been chained up in the dark, deep places of his own land by the forces of so-called righteousness. Chained up for hundreds of years, but still he escaped. Dirk was pretty sure he could find a way around this petty electronic tag. His heart filled with dark purpose, and he said in his most imperious voice, ‘I will be free!’ He couldn’t help himself and he rose to his feet, steepled his hands together in front of his chest (in a gesture he called ‘seizing control of the environment’) and gave out his best, loudest evil laugh.

  ‘Mwah, hah, hah!’

  ‘Morning, Dirk, you’re up, then,’ said a voice from outside the door. A kind, caring voice, the voice of his foster mother, the Reverend Mrs Purejoie. Dirk sighed.

  ‘Let her not be waiting for me outside the door!’ said Dirk to Dave the Storm Crow, who blinked back at him, red eyes glowing. ‘She’ll want…by the Nine Hells, she’ll want cuddles and hugs or something!’

  It was time to go to school. No choice. Gingerly, Dirk reached for the handle. Carefully he gripped it…turned…swung the door open – and there in her full holy priestess regalia was Mrs Purejoie, eyes full of love and kindness, arms wide, ready for a morning hug!

  ‘NOOOOOOoooooooooooo!’ cried Dirk.

  November 17th, 2013 Rip-out-their-hearts 17th

  Grousammer? Medical grounds? Who are they trying to fool – everyone knows he went mad. As for Hasdruban – well, we shall see!

  The new headmaster stepped up to the microphone. He was wearing a white suit and a white hat, and he had a big, bushy silver-white beard. Improbably bushy white eyebrows sprang forth from behind the dark sunglasses he was wearing. In one hand he held a white cane with a curiously carved head on top.

  Dirk, standing at the back of the assembly with Sooz and Chris, smiled a half-smile at the sight of his shades. Hasdruban’s eyes were as black as night, with no whites at all. That’d freak the humans out if anyone saw them, hence the glasses.

  Behind the White Wizard stood another figure, also dressed in white with long white hair and pale, almost translucent skin – Miss Deary, Dirk’s old nanny, or the White Witch, as she was known in the Darklands. And behind her sat several teachers and school governors, seated in chairs.

  The Wizard headmaster gingerly tapped the microphone. ‘Is this magical device…I mean this…errr…microphone! Is it working?’ he said in a deep, commanding voice.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said most of the assembled schoolchildren, who looked on in amazement. Dressed completely in white, with that hairy face and dark glasses? Who was this guy?

  ‘Good. Then I’ll begin. I am your new headmaster. You may address me as the White… no, wait.You may address me as “Dr Hasdruban”.’ He paused and looked out over the assembled children. They stared back.

  ‘Today marks the start of a new regime, a new way of doing things! Our creed shall be hard work, discipline and dedication! To what end? Educational attainment, certainly, but that is only a secondary goal!’

  The kids blinked up at their new headmaster, confusion written on their faces. What was he on about?

  The headmaster’s voice grew louder. ‘No, our first goal, our most important task, is to root out evil wherever it may be! To crush it utterly! To find it under whatever slimy rock it lies and to destroy it once and for all!’

  Some of the teachers shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, eyebrows raised. But not the governors. No, they just stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed. Dirk frowned. Had they been enchanted somehow? Ensorcelled to be the mindless lackeys of their new ruler, the White Wizard?

  ‘And there will be rules! New rules! Rule one: All shall swear fealty and total obedience to the Whit
e Wiz…err, I mean to the headmaster!’

  Miss Deary put a hand on Hasdruban’s shoulder. The Wizard turned to look at her crossly.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  Some of the children began to giggle. The headmaster turned and shouted in commanding tones, ‘Silence, wormlings!’ Normally, they would have laughed even more at something like that, but Hasdruban did it in such a menacing, threatening manner that they all fell silent.

  Miss Deary handed the headmaster a note. She never spoke, you see, and always communicated with written notes. Hasdruban snatched it rudely from her hands and read it swiftly.

  Then he looked up. Sighed. And continued, ‘Well, all right, there won’t be any swearing of oaths of fealty and such, but still, I expect total obedience to my will, or there will be consequences!’

  His voice began to rise, and he started to rant madly, ‘And when I say consequences, I don’t mean your paltry, pitiful punishments like “detention” or “extra homework”, I mean death, dismemberment and decapitation, burning, beating and blistering – oh yes, the just desserts for heretics, traitors and the servants of darkness!’

  The teachers sat at the back were staring at Hasdruban, jaws agape. The governors, though, smiled indulgently, as if all was well and going to plan. The kids looked back up at him in astonishment too. None of them cracked a joke; no one whispered or made an armpit fart or blew a raspberry. They were too scared.

  Miss Deary leant forward again, handing him another note. Hasdruban turned and stared at her. She shook the note under his nose.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said and grabbed it. He read it, then threw it to the ground. He made a face.

  ‘By the Nine Hells!’ he barked, shaking his head in frustration. He put his hands on his hips and heaved another sigh. ‘Bah! Well… So then… I was just…joking! Yes, joking, of course there will be no…none of that. However, there will be discipline! Harsh and uncompromising! Detentions will be handed out! Extra homework assigned, to the letter of the law!’