How to Survive a Horror Movie

Book 0: How to Survive...

by Scarlett Dunmore

Genres: YA Horror; YA Mysteries & Thrillers

Synopsis

Horror movie buff Charley Ryan isn’t expecting much when she’s enrolled at a girls’ boarding school on a remote island. That is, until someone starts killing off the senior class. From elaborate scare tactics to severed heads in fridges, these gruesome murders are straight out of Charley’s favorite films. To top it off, she’s also seeing the ghosts of her former classmates.

No one’s surprised when Charley’s taste in movies makes her the prime suspect. Determined to clear her name, she sets out to find the killer before her campus becomes more graveyard than school. She’s equipped only with her encyclopedic knowledge of horror cinema and the help of her trusty cinephile best friend, Olive—oh, and those pesky ghosts, if they can shut up long enough to lend a helping hand.

With a plot twist sure to make you SCREAM, this is an addictive love letter of a slasher that will keep you guessing until the very last page.

Release date: September 9, 2025

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 352

Sample

They stood before me, backs against the lockers, hands on hips—perfection from head to toe.

Gabrielle was wearing the cobalt-blue blazer I’d been eyeing in Zara over the summer, wishing the price tag would magically lose two digits. It was slightly open, revealing a top that was cut way too low for the teacher not to notice. Annabelle stood beside her—the eternally loyal sidekick, never doubting, never questioning, always following. She was the kind of girl that would run you down with her mom’s car just because her friends told her to. She wore whatever was leftover in the wardrobe they dipped into, no matter if that wardrobe was her own. And leaning against the wall by the water fountain, perched in the lead position as always, was the feared Rochelle Smyth.

Her blood ran deep in these walls and in the very foundation of the boarding school. Her mother had been a student here, her grandmother, maybe even her great-grandmother. Rochelle’s parents had been very generous over the years, lining the pockets of administrators. All for the sake of educational resources, of course, no one could—or would—accuse the Smyth family of anything other than that. Even if their daughter was suddenly now class president and captain of the volleyball and field hockey teams, and she and her friends were the only ones in our year who enjoyed back-to-back study hall periods after lunchtime on Fridays, which meant that come 1:05 p.m., they were done with school for the weekend. The rest of us mortals had our study period sandwiched between humanities and PE, which meant most of it was spent in the changing rooms sorting shoelaces and squeezing into too-tight sports bras in the fear that by the time we actually developed anything worth admiring in the chest region, it would already be stretched down to our kneecaps.

Rochelle looked particularly goddess-like today, compressed into an above-the-knee black-and-white floral dress, cut low enough to show off a glistening collarbone that even I was staring at. Thank God this was an all-girls boarding school; who knew what would be going on in this hallway if boys were here gawking too.

“Charley, you’re gawking.” Olive, who’d been my best friend since day one, nudged me.

I closed my mouth and diverted my eyes back to the classroom door, as we all stood waiting for Mr. Gillies to let us in for wood shop. “I wasn’t gawking.” I snorted. “I’m just stunned the Elles are allowed to dress like that.”

“It’s the last Friday of the month—lighten up. It’s the only day we don’t have to wear a uniform. They’re just ‘expressing themselves.’” Olive grinned, pumping her fingers into exaggerated quotation marks.

“I can see Annabelle’s belly button, and I dread to think what I could see if Rochelle dropped a pencil and bent over.” I shuddered dramatically, shaking the skinny rose-gold bracelets on my right wrist, which were the only thing at all trendy or cool about how I dressed. Today, Olive and I wore matching cotton leggings with graphic sweatshirts emblazoned with images from our favorite horror movies. Mine had Christian Slater and Winona Ryder from the cult classic Heathers (such an underrated movie), while Olive confidently wore the face of Cujo. Only Olive could pull off a rabid Saint Bernard.

“I heard there’s a party at Eden tomorrow night,” Olive buzzed.

I groaned and rolled my eyes. Eden was Harrogate’s counterpart, an all-boys boarding school about three miles along the coastline. Both schools were as secluded as was humanly possible, miles and miles from towns and even farther from cities, perched on a cliff edge overlooking a deadly plummet of dark blue waves and gray limestone caves that became completely submerged when the tide came in.

We were isolated out here on Saltee Island until the holidays, when we were shuttled onto rickety boats and ferried back to the mainland, where parents would reluctantly let us crawl into their cars with bags of dirty laundry, knowing their child-free evenings and weekends were over until school resumed.

I wasn’t always a student at Harrogate, and I wasn’t always a boarding school resident. I went to a normal school once, where I awoke in my own bed at home and at three o’clock walked back there. I even had friends at that school—note the plural. And I had a girlfriend, but she was long gone. Now all I had left were memories and a thin gold necklace with her initial on it. Not that I was lonely now—Olive was a fantastic friend, and without her I’d have definitely packed a bag in the middle of the night and scaled a cliff to get out of here—but she was my only friend. At my last school I had been kind of—yes, I’ll say it—popular. Not in a Rochelle Smyth kind of way, but definitely floating somewhere in that realm.

I twirled the necklace pendant between my fingers as I pushed back memories of the life I had before, some more painful than others. Suddenly the classroom door swung open and slammed off the lockers, sending a clanging echo reverberating down the tiled hallway. Mr. Gillies stood in the doorway, his eyes fixed on Rochelle’s, Gabrielle’s, and Annabelle’s scanty outfits, which showed blatant disregard for school policy. Olive and I exchanged eager glances. Mr. Gillies hated these girls, the loathing visible in his eyes and in the slight tremble of his grizzled hands. He parted his lips, and I waited hungrily for Rochelle’s first-ever public telling-off, but then his eyes drifted to the floor and he closed his mouth, opting to brush aside whatever was left of his teaching ethics. He knew who ran this school, and if Rochelle complained to her parents about a staff member, then it was well known that person’s position would suddenly pop up in the job ads the next day. Rochelle Smyth ruled the school, and I ruled… wood shop.

I had become fairly decent at crafting objects from wood in Mr. Gillies’s class, so much so that I typically got a nod of approval from him and the occasional sought-after handshake. If only I could have fashioned a wooden bat to smack the Elles over the head with.

“Do you want to take a walk down to the cliffs after school?” asked Olive, who was gluing back together two pieces of wood that she’d accidentally hacked through. Her safety goggles slid down her face with the sweat.

I gave her a thumbs-up and went back to my disc sander, the wood beneath the machine thundering and vibrating in my hands. It was finished with a final buffing to smooth out any splintering sharp edges and a quick polish to make it shine. I stood back to admire my work, nodding with a grin.

Overhead, the bell roared, followed by the cheers of oppressed teen girls in dire need of a weekend of debauchery. Olive heaved her heavy book bag onto her shoulders, slightly tilting back with the weight, then sauntered over to my worktable. “Nice work, Sullivan… what is it?”

“A DVD stand.” I smiled, running a finger over the crescent-shaped shelves. We had one just like it at home, where Dad had kept our home movies of days spent bathing in sunshine and salt air down at the beach by our old caravan. I didn’t know where those videos were now, probably packed in a box somewhere in the attic or maybe even thrown out, discarded after I was sent away to boarding school to rectify an academic future I’d apparently thrown away the months after Dad’s death.

“Fitting, considering that’s the extent of our weekends usually.” She sighed, heading for the exit.

“I thought you liked our horror movie nights. You’re the one who nicknamed them Slasher Saturdays,” I argued. “Or does partying with the Elles interest you more these days?” I playfully poked her in the ribs as I caught up to her.

“The partying not so much, but the boys…” She swooned. “A boy would be nice, for a change.”

I laughed and opened the door, the smell of ocean and seaweed hitting our faces and tickling our noses. Hopefully we’d get some sun-filled days this weekend, meaning we could lie out on blankets, read Stephen King, and forget all about the mundane humdrum of high school life, where the most exciting conversational topic was the length of Rochelle’s skirt. We headed toward the ridge, where tide met rock and cliffs formed underfoot, and seagulls squawked over crashing waves. The dry grass crunched and snapped beneath the soles of my sneakers, which were about ten years older than the minimum style needed to fit in here with this crowd. My mom used everything she had—everything my dad left us and everything my aunt could offer—to secure me a place here at Harrogate. There wasn’t much left over for limited-edition Hokas or tailored Zara blazers. If only my mother had known just how much more fashion mattered here than education, she may have thought differently about sending me.

We trudged to the sea ledge, our toes balancing on the edge of the big rock formation that jutted over the cliffs below, allowing us to drop scraps of food to the gulls and the crabs. Olive gripped a bag of torn bread in her hands, letting it bounce off her hip as she walked. She reached in and grabbed a handful, opening her palm to the sky.

Hungry gulls squawked and gathered overhead. I tipped my head back and watched them.

Gliding.

Soaring.

Waiting.

Their wings sliced through the crisp September air. If I were one of them, I’d fly as far away from here as possible, and not look back. Away from the mean girls, away from restless nights in cold dormitory beds and lukewarm showers in communal bathrooms. Away from myself, from the girl who probably deserved to be here, isolated like this, because of who I was before.

In the distance a boat horn ripped through the gulls’ feeding frenzy and they scattered, startled at first, then curious, searching for something more than bread scraps.

“Think that’s a new girl?” I asked, pointing to the red-and-white vessel on the waters, fast approaching the port.

“Nah, you’re the new girl.” Olive shrugged. “Can’t have more than one in a school year. Messes up the dynamic.”

“I came last school year,” I corrected, knotting my hair up in a bun.

“And now I can’t get rid of you.” She smirked, tossing the last of the bread to an empty beach down below.

“What are you getting from Shop this week?”

Shop was an antiquated system which allowed us deprived Harrogate girls one “frivolous” purchase a week, usually something not covered by the odd care package sent from the mainland. For those with money, Shop was usually a time to buy nail polish or a lip balm, and for those without money (example: me and Olive), Shop was a one-pound purchase of a bag of M&M’s or a soda. The type of junk food neither of our moms would send us, for fear the sugar might distract us from our academic endeavors.

“Dunno,” Olive muttered, gazing up at the gulls, who had returned to the skies above our heads, soaring and diving. “I might go crazy and buy a Snickers.”

I gasped. “You daredevil! All those nuts!”

“You know I need the protein for all my gym workouts.” She snorted. “How about you?”

“I might do something equally crazy. I might get… I can’t say it…”

“Go on, tell me. I’m ready for it.”

“I might get a bag of Skittles!”

She opened her mouth wide. “Shocking! Skittles?!”

“We’re just too adventurous for this school,” I said, shaking my head.

“That we are—Shit!” she wailed, covering her head.

“What?”

“I think a seagull just pooped on me!”

“Knock, knock.”

I turned to see Olive standing at the dresser next to the curtain rod we’d hung between our two wardrobes when we’d first been paired up. We didn’t have a door for privacy, but the curtain did its job when one of us had to get dressed. Out of all the rooms I could have been assigned, I was very lucky I ended up in Olive’s.

If we stood side by side in front of the mirror, we were complete opposites in every way. I was awkwardly tall and lean, with gawky limbs and pin-straight hair. I had my dad’s dark eyes and lips that always seemed turned down like I was perpetually sad. Olive, on the other hand, was short and had broad shoulders, wild curly hair, and contact lenses that made her eyes a fierce green. Her face was bright, and unlike me, her mouth was always turned up—she was a forever smiler and, unfortunately, a people-pleaser too. When I first arrived, she had been vying for the Elles’ attention like all the other girls in this school. She even did their homework, although she denied that for a long time. But something brought me and Olive together on day one, during our first-ever conversation, while she watched me unpack my DVD collection.

“DVDs are defunct in the world of streaming platforms,” she told me, which made me question my future at Harrogate. But when she skimmed through my collection, her fingers lightly grazing the spine of each box, she revealed the most desirable trait a roommate can have—a fondness for the horror genre. Actually, “fondness” didn’t do it justice: it was a passion, a fervor, a compulsion.

We spent that first week watching the numerous Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, discussing in great detail who played the best Leatherface, before moving on to the Halloween franchise (all thirteen films), soon establishing Slasher Saturdays, where our obsession with Romero, Cunningham, and Craven grew. We ate popcorn with melted butter; realized we both liked to mix Skittles into the kernels, just like they did in the movies; curled up on the floor with pillows and blankets; and talked horror. Sadie had tolerated conversations about horror, but I never really knew anyone who shared my enthusiasm for it, until now. It was what brought Olive and me together. It was what kept me from running for the ferry every morning after I woke up and remembered where I was.

“How’s Elizabeth Bennet coming along?” Olive asked now, leaning against the dresser.

I moaned loudly and pushed my laptop away. I had been frantically trying to finish an English essay on Jane Austen, when all I wanted to do was read another chapter of Stephen King’s Misery. I gazed longingly at my stack of horror novels and anthologies, which sat on the edge of my desk tempting me to forgo Austen and the Brontës. Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson were great, but Stephen King was literally the king. If I met him, I’d drop to my knees and kiss his shoes. Well, probably not, because that’s incredibly unhygienic, but I would thank him for his very generous contribution to the world of literature and to my most favorite genre when it came to reading and watching and breathing.

“She’s boring my brain cells into dust, even after the first page. Why are all her books just about a woman trying to find a husband? Nothing exciting ever happens, and there are always balls and dinners with fancy goblets. I want—”

“Heads in freezers? Bodies in cupboards? Serial killers in masks?”

“Excitement.”

“Well, this will be as exciting as it gets at Harrogate—the coast guard is here. Big assembly in the school hall. We all have to be there.”

“Why?” I asked, pushing out my chair and grabbing a warm cardigan to cozy into. The assembly hall was always freezing. It was like the headmistress purposefully turned on the cold air in there to keep us all alert and awake.

“Apparently there’s a big storm headed our way.”

“Storm? Isn’t that normal?”

Storms were definitely not normal on the mainland, especially in the city, where the weather was milder than the people. But over here, the Irish seas were wild and the terrain was unpredictable. The islands were like another world entirely. There was a reason places like this had such low population numbers. Here, you only went to the mainland to go home for school break. Olive relayed a few occasions when she and the other students had stood on the rickety wooden dock in the freezing cold and peppery rain waiting hours for the ferry, which resembled an old fishing trawler. In the city, if the train was three minutes late, commuters would riot. But this was “island life,” as Mr. Terry said, and “people move on island time and at island speed.”

We were ushered into the assembly hall by Mr. Gillies, who regarded the sea of students woefully, probably wishing the storm would come and wipe us all out. We positioned ourselves at the back wall, where the axe and the “Use in Case of an Emergency” sign hung. Of course, I clocked the axe on my first day here and memorized its location. You never know when you’ll need an axe at an all-girls boarding school, so it was best to be prepared. That was another one of my interests—recounting the survival skills taught to us by the best film directors. Craven taught us to never answer the phone when home alone, Hooper strongly encouraged us to refrain from exploring abandoned farmhouses while road tripping with friends, and Gillespie reminded us to always report a crime, particularly one that involved accidentally running over a vengeful fisherman on the road. Other rules were conveyed through the horror genre—such as always keeping the car topped up with gas, and avoiding crowded areas during a zombie outbreak—many of which were likely to keep us alive in most modern survival situations. In fact, I had been considering putting in a request to the headmistress for a new unit to be taught here at Harrogate. But perhaps I’d wait until after the storm passed to propose it.

I scanned the last few clusters of girls streaming into the hall. The whole school was here, all five hundred of us. At my last school there were five thousand students. Eden School for Boys, on the other side of the cliffs, apparently had only three hundred enrolled students, which meant that on this island, girls far outnumbered boys, much to Olive’s dismay. For me, there were five hundred girls but only one that made me turn an embarrassing shade of coral every time I passed her.

Saoirse Quinn.

Even her name sounded amazing, with long flowing consonants and silent vowels.

She was in the year below, so we didn’t have any classes together or share the same study periods, and she was housed over in the Alexandria Wing, far away from our dorm. I didn’t have much opportunity to talk to her and, so far, hadn’t even tried. Every time I saw her, I froze. I wasn’t used to feeling like that, so powerless in the grip of my emotions. Relationships were easier to navigate on the mainland. People were more open about their sexuality in the city; it was easier to be myself. But here I was suffocated by the isolation, the dark skies, and the waves of testosterone that transmitted across the island from Eden School.

I glanced quickly at Olive as she nibbled on her thumbnail like it was a ham sandwich, then gazed out at the sea of students sitting in chairs, looking for that familiar mane of red. But I couldn’t see her.

On the stage, where Olive had auditioned for My Fair Lady with a Cockney accent that would certainly offend any Londoner, stood Headmistress Blyth. She was flanked by the entire faculty, who were all female bar Mr. Gillies. Two men in navy waterproof gear were up there, too. They must have been the coast guard officers, although one looked way too young to have already devoted his life to the abandoned seas and barren islands. Half the hall had already clocked him and were now twisting and curling their hair around their fingers and blinking abnormally fast. Beside me, Olive stopped chewing on her nails and started breathing heavily like a dog in need of water.

Perhaps he was somewhat attractive, with spiky hair and a cheeky grin, in a Christian Slater/Heathers kind of way. But he was no Winona Ryder. The piercing dark eyes, that delicate jawline, and those cheekbones? Swoon! Everyone was so obsessed with her performance in Stranger Things, but for me, she totally smashed the role of Lydia in Beetlejuice.

“As you know,” started the older coastie, “the weather is turning tonight. Nothing to be afraid of, just a little storm. Should pass over us in a day or two. But given our surroundings and our distance from the mainland, we’ll be following some simple protocols. Windows will be boarded up to prevent any glass damage, the back-up generator has been fueled and safety checked, and all shoreline activities such as fishing and swimming will be suspended until further notice.”

Headmistress Blyth stepped forward, clearing her throat loudly so we all knew she was the speaker and we were the listeners.

“Just to expand on that last one, all outdoor activities will be suspended until I say otherwise. That means indoor PE and recess only, no outdoor recreation. And that includes walks along the coast, not just scheduled after-school clubs.”

The whole school groaned in protest, my voice the loudest. Time outside, even just a few minutes of fresh air, was my only chance to get out of the school. For a moment I was back on vacation on the Devon coast with my mom and dad, with the wind in my face and the lapping of waves down below. Olive and I always went for a walk after school, and she’d feed the greedy gulls while I’d just breathe in the air, which was so thick with salt that it would crust on the sleeves of our coats. Now we were stuck inside indefinitely.

“Well, that sucks,” whispered Olive.

“The power better not go out this weekend for Slasher Saturday.”

She nodded. “Best keep the laptops cha. . .