School for the Dead - a concept for a children's novel

This is the very briefest of ideas, which might be developed as a dark picture book, graphic or text novel...

Cross Hatch school is run down, damp, leaking, crumbling and depressing. Not very different from many other schools. But Cross Hatch School is special, in its own sinister way. It is a school for the dead. Everyone there is dead, teachers and pupils alike. From its decaying Headmaster, Dr. Darkmoor, right down to the smallest of festering boys, every inhabitant of Cross Hatch has already passed out of this world and into the next. No one questions the arrangement, and everyone simply gets on with his or her own (after)life. Until the day when a pupil arrives to upset the school’s ordered routine; a pupil who, unlike the others of Cross Hatch’s inhabitants, is very much alive….

© 2008 Martin Cater