Retro Reading - Freeze Tag

All the neighbourhood kids hate Lannie. But she has a gift that makes her dangerous and powerful - she can freeze people with a mere touch of her hand. So when she extracts a promise from a young and frightened West, he knows everyone he loves is at risk unless he agrees. As the kids grow up, they forget how dangerous Lannie really is...Until she comes to collect.

Freeze Tag is one of the Point Horror books I remember most vividly. I read a fair few Caroline B Cooneys, and I love her dreamy, almost surreal style, and I think this is the book where that style is at its most elegant and memorable. It helps that the storyline is compelling too. We all knew a Lannie, I think. That weird kid that nobody really wants to be friends with, but everyone kind of feels guilty about ignoring, because clearly her home life is shit.

And her home life is shit. Throughout the book, over and over, we are told that nobody loves Lannie. Nobody ever has. Her parents don't want her. The neighbourhood kids are flat out scared of her. She has nobody to hug her, play with her, include her, or care for her. But on the flip side, she can literally freeze people with a touch, and has definitely murdered at least two people and one dog this way. So is Lannie unloveable because she's a monster, or is she a monster because she's unloveable?

It's a question the heroine of Freeze Tag, Meghan, battles to answer. Meghan's boyfriend, West, is the object of Lannie's sociopathic affections, and she blackmails him into dating her by threatening Meghan, and West's younger siblings. Meghan is the antithesis of Lannie. She's loved by her parents, has a handsome, considerate boyfriend, close friends, and is doing well in life. As she struggles to win West back from Lannie, she grows to understand how much she's taken all that for granted, and her hatred for Lannie is tempered by empathy for her. It's a pretty nuanced portrayal, and makes Meghan a wonderful heroine. As Lannie sinks her claws into West and casts her shadow over Meghan's happy life, Meghan fights to stay compassionate and kind, to find a solution where nobody gets hurt.

Between Meghan's warmth and Lannie's coldness, we have West. He starts out doing his best to protect Meghan and his siblings by giving into Lannie. But as the book progresses, we see Lannie's icy cruelness rub off on him. Is he still acting, or is Lannie changing him for real? Does evil spread, and can someone be pulled back from the edge? By the end of the book, West is not the same thoughtful, generous person he was at the start, and his dispassionate cruelty seems to be infecting his younger brother and sister too as they fight to get rid of Lannie.

Ultimately, this story isn't about defeating Lannie. It's about Meghan deciding what kind of person she wants to be. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing," as they say. Meghan has a choice - she can passively allow her boyfriend to "end" Lannie. She doesn't have to be involved - she just has to do nothing. Or she can save Lannie, even though Lannie would never save her. What's the right call?

If I have one frustration with this book, it's that we never learn if Meghan makes the right choice. We see her act, but we don't get a resolution. At the end of the book, Meghan has decided that she can't be passive, she can't be hateful, and she can't let West's own growing malice infect her. But is her compassion and bravery going to change Lannie? We don't know. I don't have a problem with ambiguous endings under the right circumstances, but the facts remain that Lannie has killed and blackmailed her way through life. Will one kind act change that?

We don't know, and I guess maybe that isn't the point, because this isn't Lannie's story and her redemption isn't the point. The point is that Meghan rises above the hatred and poison of the people around her, that she fights to be a good person and succeeds. That's pretty cool.*

*Puns always intended.

Retro Reading - Spoopy Edition the Second

I read a lot of RL Stine's Point Horror books, and because I knew he also wrote Goosebumps and Fear Street (even though I never read them), I had this impression of him as A Big Fucking Deal. Like it was probably really cool of him to come and write for Point Horror because, you know, he was RL Stine. Books like The Boyfriend and The Girlfriend, and the Babysitter trilogy (which I also never read) seemed...important to the Point Horror catalogue to me for some reason. I didn't know why at the time and after reading Halloween Night, I'm not the wiser because this book is a shit show.

Let's begin by meeting our heroine,  Brenda. She's your typical American teen, I guess. Just living her best life, dating a guy called Ted, hanging out with her friends and having to share her house temporarily with her cousin Halley, who's living with Brenda's family while her parents work out their horrendous divorce. Brenda is really sympathetic to her cousin during this difficult, traumatic time.

Wait, that's not a great example. Brenda is our heroine, after all. I know the book opens with her picking on Halley, but we're going to follow Brenda through this whole book, so surely Stine is going to show her more empathetic side, right? So we can relate to her when the horror starts. Right?

Right. Okay, well, sure. I mean, it's tough having to give up your room to family in need. I'd probably be angry too, but it's not like this is Halley's fault. She didn't ask her parents to get divorced and pack her off to live with her cousin. She didn't make Brenda's parents give her Brenda's room. This is a rough time for Halley, her life uprooted, her parents in a vicious custody battle, her entire world turned upside down! Surely, even if Brenda is resentful at losing her own space (temporarily), Brenda's friends will try to make her see reason?

Okay, well, never mind.

In any case, Halley is kind of a bitch, managing to steal both Brenda and Traci's boyfriends from them. I personally wouldn't count this as much of a loss, especially in the case of Ted, who's dull at best:

And a downright fucking moron at worst, which is all the rest of the time, to be honest.

Anyway, the crux of the plot is that Brenda, driven mad by Halley inconsiderately being the child of a broken home right under Brenda's goddamn nose, decides to write Halley into a murder mystery story which she and her friends Dina and Traci have to write for a school assignment (what?). Traci is all for it. Dina is more reluctant since, as the child of a broken home herself, she has actual empathy for Halley.

As the story unfolds, strange, threatening things begin happening to Brenda. Someone writes in actual blood on her bedroom wall. She finds a dead bird in her room. She finds maggots in her fucking bed omg. All these warnings seem to point to one thing - someone is coming for Brenda. On Halloween night. Brenda thinks Halley is the one behind it all. Brenda's parents don't really give a shit either way.

"Hey baby girl, sorry someone crept into your room and painted a threat on the wall in actual blood. I couldn't figure out how to fix it myself, so I hired someone, but they no-showed, so...eh. The couch is free, though."

Okay, I kind of understand Brenda a little better now.

Anyway! As tensions come to a head between Brenda and Halley, and Brenda's Halloween night costume party approaches, Brenda figures out who's really behind all the dead birds and whatnot and formulates a convoluted plan to out the creep.

Okay. Spoilers now. It was Dina. It was Dina, you guys, and you may not be surprised to learn it's because Brenda is an empathy vacuum who can't fathom other people being in pain and needing support in difficult times.

Ugh. So fucking inconsiderate of Dina to make Brenda feel uncomfortable with her traumatic experiences, amirite? Fuck Dina.

So yes, Dina stalks Brenda because she sees Brenda being a dick to Halley just the same way she was a dick to Dina, and she wants Brenda to finally understand what it's like to suffer so much. Which...you know, fair enough.

But here's the thing, and the reason why I'm giving away the plot of this twenty-four year old book. The resolution to the plot is so fucking overbooked it's ridiculous. Here's what happens:

1. Brenda figures out Dina is behind the threatening messages, etc.
2. Brenda and Traci agree between them to pretend they still think it's Halley and that they're going to actually murder Halley at their Halloween party like in their story.
3. They think this will force Dina to confess.
4. She doesn't confess.
5. So Brenda and Traci actually proceed as if they're actually going to murder Halley and set up a ludicrous plot involving costume swaps so that (in theory), they can stab Halley at the party and then have the "culprit" apparently disappear because everyone's in costume and therefore nobody can know who really stabbed Halley.
6. On the night of the party, Brenda convinces Halley to switch costumes with her.
7. Dina gets wind of this and stabs Brenda, but doesn't kill her because Brenda sewed extra fucking foam into the costume she borrowed from Halley at some point.
8. Everyone pulls off their masks and shouts AHA! And Dina confesses in a scene I imagine to be like this:


Now, here are the things that didn't happen on page during this sequence of events:

1. Brenda and Traci agreeing to set up Dina.
2. Brenda telling Halley about Dina.
3. Brenda convincing Halley to swap costumes with her.
4. Dina overhearing this conversation and thus knowing who to stab.

And here are some extra things that happened for no fucking reason whatsoever:

1. Brenda convinced Ted to come to her party in a Frankenstein costume because her plan (as she relates it to Dina) is to stab Halley whilst wearing a Frankenstein costume, then get changed to provide herself an alibi. So now anyone who sees the stabbing think Ted did it.
2. Brenda comes up with this side-plot and enacts it without telling anyone else she's manipulated Ted to getting involved, because obviously she isn't really going to stab anyone but she still decides it would be fun if her ex-boyfriend potentially got framed for murder, even a fake murder, even her own fake murder because she's planning to swap costumes with Halley, even a fake murder she can't actually guarantee is going to go down because she has no way of knowing that Dina knows she's planning to swap costumes with Halley and she has no reason to believe Dina would actually stab either her or Halley in the first fucking place.

I can't. I can't even, you guys. Brenda's entire plan is contingent on...what? WHAT? WHAT WAS THE PLAN? Dina refuses to A) go along with "murdering" Halley and B) confess to being Brenda's stalker, so Brenda and Traci are just like, "well, shall we go along with the fake murder anyway? Cool!" AND THEN Brenda decides to costume-swap with Halley even though she has no way of knowing Dina would know about the swap. So what's her thinking here? That Dina, who refused to get involved with the fake murder would decide at the last minute to stab Halley anyway even though Dina has been specifically doing all this shit to Brenda because SHE FEELS SORRY FOR HALLEY?

WHAT?

WHAT?

I just want to spell this out again because it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Brenda does not know that Dina knows they switched costumes. It's revealed AFTER the stabbing that Dina overheard them agree to swap. As far as Brenda knows, Dina thinks she's stabbing Halley. Brenda, for some reason, knew Dina would stab whoever was in Halley's costume even though Dina has been on Halley's side throughout this whole fucking mess.


THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE.

Does Brenda just hate Halley so much she assumes everyone else does too, and that Dina just won't be able to pass up the opportunity to stab her once it's presented? One of the reasons it's taken me a week to write up this post is that I keep hoping I'll suddenly understand Brenda's plan, and I can't because there is no fucking plan. It's just everyone hoping the right person will get fake-stabbed. I don't even know if there's that much thought behind it, to be honest.

And even if everything else did make sense, why the fuck did Brenda get Ted involved? Like, I know he cheated on her and I'm not condoning that, BUT BRENDA WAS PREPARED TO FRAME HIM FOR A FAKE MURDER IN REVENGE AND THAT IS NOT A PROPORTIONATE RESPONSE OKAY.

Even Vince McMahon might have refused to book this story line.

The Hook on the Hand

So one of the things I didn't get around to mentioning in my The Cemetery post is the use of the urban legend commonly known as The Hook. It comes up twice - once when Rick is telling ghost stories at the Halloween party* and again when Dorian is killed by the Ripper. Just before his death, Cyndi finds a hook attached to Dorian's car:

If you're not familiar with the story, The Hook dates back to roughly the 1950s, and like most urban legends, serves as a morality tale for hormonal teens, much the same way fairy tales like Red Riding Hood warned young women against predatory men of court back in the day. The quick and dirty version of the story is thus:

A young couple are parked up down some lovers' lane. The radio plays while they make out. A breaking news story announces that a serial killer has escaped from a local mental institution and can be identified by the hook on his hand. The couple decide to leave, with various spins on the end of the story following. Either they get home to find a bloody hook dangling from the car door, or for some reason the man has to leave the car, and the woman later finds him dead. Some variations see her hearing strange thumping on the roof of the car, only to discover said serial killer up there with her boyfriend's severed head. One version sees her finding the boyfriend hung from a tree over the car, his nails scraping the roof as his body swings back and forth.

However the story ends, the message is clear: keep it in your pants, kids!

Now, clearly this is a warning against loose morals and sexual experimentation, and we could even link to back to the real-life Phantom Killer case of 1946, but I'm not here to talk about horny teens and the fates they richly deserve. I'm here to ask questions. Two questions, specifically.

First - why is the killer an escaped mental patient?

And second - why the blazing hell would someone who'd been instutionalised be allowed to keep a hook on their hand?

I mean, look, I know mental health care in 1950s America wasn't the best, but we were seeing a move towards more community-based care and less underfunded, understaffed, brutally poorly-run institutions. In any case, I have to assume that even the worst asylum going wouldn't let someone with a hook for a hand just keep that hook. Especially if that patient was also a serial killer and also certifiable insane as the story implies. That's just...really bad practice, you guys.**

Also, for the record, I think a hook is probably a really inefficient way to serial-kill people.

But let's circle back to question one. Why does the story conflate mental illness with murder? Why is a mental patient automatically dangerous, or a killer?

I noted with Help Wanted and The Mummy that there is a tendency in Point Horror books to make the villains "crazy." I guess it's an easy literary shortcut - they're doing bad things because they're mentally ill! Case closed. And of course nowadays you don't have to wait long to hear "was he mentally ill?" whenever a lone white male goes on a mass shooting spree. This clearly completely ignores the fact that many of us with mental health problems never bloody kill anyone***.

We can blame it on the era. Like I say, mental health care in the 1950s was undergoing a change, but the change in treatment options wasn't necessarily followed by a change in understanding. The stigma surrounding mental health continues to this day, and the understanding of conditions evolves slowly, with social understanding tending to lag behind medical understanding, because let's face it - "sociopath" is just such a cool term to throw around.****

You would think, for a 1950s warning against whipping your dick out in public places, you wouldn't need the added "scare" of the killer being a crazy guy. We can talk about the abnormal psychology that might lead someone to become a serial killer, for sure, but there are always exceptions to the generally accepted "signs." I'm not here to say serial killers are not mentally ill, though. I'm here to say mentally ill people are not destined to become serial killers, and that the conflation of "mentally ill" with "dangerous" is itself a damaging stereotype. And it's so prevalent in the news, in literature, and even in old spoopy urban legends, that it feels worth reiterating as often as possible. Psychotic is not psychopathic. Depressed is not dangerous. Hooks are not good murder weapons.

*Even though this is categorically not a ghost story, Rick, you moron. I'm glad someone knocked you out.

**And don't tell me he could have got the hook after escaping. Where's an escaped asylum inmate going to find a hook? Like, how much effort is that kind of person going to put into find a hook they can attached to their wrist and use to kill people? There are easier ways to kill people, that's all I'm saying. 

***Even if Karen is super annoying.

****That was sarcasm, by the way.

Retro Reading - Spoopy Edition!

Well, t'is the season, right? I figured October was a good excuse to ramp up the retro reading with some Halloweeny pulp horror, starting with one of my top five Point Horror books, The Cemetery!

Also known as The Ripper, apparently? I guess that was the American edition.

Also also known as Le Griffes Meurtrieres, which is French for "The Griffes Murders," which is admittedly not as catchy as The Ripper or the Cemetery, and also has nothing to do with the plot barring murder.

Anyway! The short version of the plot is that a bunch of edgy teens have a party in a cemetery on Halloween, raise the dead or a demon or a vampire or possibly Jack the Ripper, and murder ensues. There's more to it than that, with sibling rivalry, class warfare, broken hearts, and old whaling journals all featuring, but that's the quick and dirty take, which I could have given you from heart, because I must have re-read this book hundreds of times. I remember it as being really sharp and witty, and there are lines that have stuck with me all my life, like this one:

Teenage me thought that comeback was the height of sophistication. Every character always has something clever or pithy to say no matter how terrifying things are getting. I suppose it's sort of Whedon-esque, which normally I'm not keen on, but I read this book long before I ever heard of Joss Whedon, so it passes.

I want to get to the characters, though, because I kinda love them all? Except Foy, I guess. Here's a quick breakdown of our players:

Cyndi: the rich bitch hostess of the Halloween party. Cyndi is a bad girl with an abrasive personality, tons of money, and bags of attitude. She organises the party at Point Cemetery that kicks off our slasheriffic story. Cyndi is great.

Dade: Cyndi's sort-of-boyfriend, although he's not really that into her:

Dade likes to party and possibly owns a gun. He owns an old Chevy, which isn't important at all, but for some reason I developed the impression from this book that Chevys are ultra-hip cars and I still believe that to this day even though I know nothing about cars at all.

Wills: Cyndi's ex, now dating her best friend, Lara. Wills thinks Jack the Ripper is an admirable sort of guy. Apparently his break-up with Cyndi was brutal, which leads many to suspect she set up the Halloween party to murder him in revenge. (Oh yeah, Wills gets murdered).

Lara: Lara's family owns a garden centre. She nopes out of the book after Wills dies, to be honest, because she thinks she saw the killer and sensibly decides to hide in her room until the whole thing blows over.

Jane: Jane is rich and a good girl. She's embarrassed by how nice she is, but comes out of her shell by hooking up with Dade even though he's sort-of-dating Cyndi, because these kids are just buckets of hormones.

Foy: Foy is rich and Jane's best friend. That's all I've got on him. He doesn't really contribute anything to the book.

Rick: Rick is not rich. His dad is the town mortician. Rick makes inappropriate jokes to hide his fear of dying. He seems to hang out with Foy a lot, but I don't know why. In retrospect I wondered if they were dating, but neither of them are remotely dateable, so probably not (and I also don't think Cyndi would invite guys she couldn't hook up with to her party).

Charity: Charity is awesome. She takes no shit and turns out to be the heroine of the book in a roundabout way. She hates Cyndi and is best friends with Jane.

Jones: Basically Van Helsing. Wears a cowboy hat.

Georgie: Georgie is poor. Her dad makes vodka out of potatoes, which she steals. She hates Cyndi and crashes the Halloween party with Cyndi's older brother. She performs the seance which probably raises the demon-ripper.

Dorian: Cyndi's older brother. He hates Cyndi and may have tried to kill her as a child. She definitely tried to kill him later. He's dating Georgie in the most casual sense of the word.

That's our team! The story begins with Cyndi's Halloween party at Point Cemetery. Lots of bitchy one-liners are exchanged, because basically everybody is just hear to snipe at each other and hook up with someone's ex if they can. After Georgie shows up and performs a seance, Cyndi decides they should play a game of hide-and-seek. Charity, sensing something is amiss after the seance, legs it. Everyone else hides/seeks.

We cut back and forth to different view points a lot in this book, often with no breaks to indicate it's happening, and whilst the head-hopping can be confusing, it's done well in this early section to create tension. We know something is out in the cemetery with the kids, we know it's going after someone...But who? The changes in perspective keep us guessing - is that Cyndi about to leap out on Dade, or the Ripper? Is Lara about to stumble upon Wills, or something else entirely? Who or what is Charity running from? We're kept guessing - until the screaming starts.

Wills is the first to go, which is great, because he's frankly been a dick the whole party. Our heroes, being relatively sensible as characters in horror stories go, get the fuck out of the cemetery and go straight to the police.

Cyndi is a suspect because of her nasty break-up with Wills, but despite some initial wild accusations (nobody died before Jones came to town!), everyone is quick to agree that something supernatural is at play. Charity, being down-to-earth and also open to new ideas, goes researching the history of the cemetery and finds this:

I mean, that's basically Dracula's arrival in Whitby, right? It also touches on the theory that Jack the Ripper fled to America at some point. Based on the American version of this book being called The Ripper, I assume the parallel is deliberate. We do also get some confirmation from the Ripper itself that it took the form of Jack to kill Wills (what with Wills being a big fan), but I don't really know if we're supposed to think that A) this is Jack and B) Jack is therefore a supernatural being. I don't think it matters; it's just an interesting thread in the book.

Anyway! While Charity is researching and Cyndi is driving madly around town and everyone else is making out with someone or whatever, Georgie and Dorian go back to the cemetery because Georgie thinks it'll be neat to check out a real-live murder scene, and Georgie gets murdered. Dorian abandons her to her fate, because he's a fucking asshole, and drives home to cower in the garage. After a confrontation with Cyndi, Dorian finds himself face-to-face with the Ripper, who has taken Georgie's form to fuck with him. Trouble ensues, and a fire breaks out.

I have to mention this, purely because of Dade. Up til now, Dade has been a fandom Draco Malfoy type, all smooth lines and handsomely evil, hooking up with Jane behind Cyndi's back and dismissing Wills's death as no big deal. But from this point on, Dade is the MVP of this book behind Charity. He's making out with Jane when they realise there's a fire at Cyndi's house, because of course he fucking is, and he drives over there like a bat out of hell and rescues Cyndi from the burning house by himself even though there are already firemen on the scene. Later, when a heavily-medicated Cyndi takes off for the cemetery to find the thing that killed her brother, Dade goes after her, chases her down (even though she could be the killer) and basically saves her from either tripping over a headstone in the dark and breaking her neck, or probably getting murderised by the Ripper.

Guys. I mean, he's still a cheating jerk-face who judges girls for not putting out, and I cannot emphasize that enough, but Dade steps up when the stakes are high. Maybe it's because he (possibly) owns a gun.

However, Dade is not the true hero of The Cemetery. That title goes to Charity, who actually defeats the Ripper. Sort of. I mean...this is part of the book that really confused me as a kid. Our surviving teens take off to the cemetery after Cyndi. It's dark. The Ripper is out there. Everyone is holding hands for safety, until Cyndi emerges from the dark and starts taunting them. We know by now that the Ripper can shapeshift, so...is it Cyndi? Either way, Dade takes off after her, and Jane follows him, and someone punches Rick and Foy is also there, not really contributing. And Jones and Charity, who have both read up on this shit, are left to confront the Ripper.

There are some beautifully creepy touches of ocean folklore in this book. Not nearly enough for my tastes, but hints at pacts with demons, ghosts ships, and suicides are woven together to bring the book to its climax. Its...super-confusing climax. Basically, Charity is possessed by the spirit of a woman from the 19th century who defeated the Ripper before, when it first came to town. The woman...just...like...hangs onto the Ripper while it shifts into different forms, and...that...banishes it? It's Tam Lin, basically, except much less romantic. Charity just...hangs on, until the Ripper is like, "FINE THEN! NO MORE MURDER!" and that's that.

It's confusing. It confused me at fifteen and it confuses me at thirty-four, because it's not really a resolution. I don't know why this woman's spirit can defeat the Ripper. It's hinted that she might have been a witch (and since Charity was dressed as a witch for Halloween and they have the same name, this seems to be why she chooses Charity as her vessel), but that's me extrapolating. The book pretty much ends with Charity hugging the Ripper into oblivion, then cuts to her and Jones making out. After she's asked him if he's some kind of Van Helsing and he avoids the question, which basically means yes, anyway.

It...I...I don't know? I love this book. I still love this book, but I still don't fucking know how and why Charity beat the Ripper.The answer is clearly tied to Jones. He's the new kid in town. Nobody knows anything about him. He hints at a mysterious past and clearly knows straight away that the Ripper is inhuman and can only be defeated through supernatural means. But he never tells anyone anything outright, and instead pulls the strings from behind the scenes. Who he is and what he does isn't really of interest to the author, it seems. He's just there to be silent and intriguing and guide Charity toward the answers. I feel like you could easily have Jones popping up in other books to slip you an ancient diary that explains your haunted house problem, or to leave you the mysterious locket that will help you summon the dead, idk. Jones has seen some shit. Jones knows things, man. And in the end, Jones isn't any more explained to us than the Ripper.

And nobody died before Jones came to town.

Huh.

Retro Reading - April Fools

Okay, I thought I hadn't read this one before. I certainly never owned it. But once I started reading the sarcastic old British butler's lines, I realised I must have borrowed it from someone, because all the repressed memories came flooding back. Yes, there's an old butler in this book. SPOILER: he turns out to be the true love interest.*

April Fools is the story of what happens when you're involved in a hit and run and try to cover it up. So, first up, this book has nothing to do with April Fools' Day beyond the prologue. I did wonder if Cusick's book was so named to avoid confusion with RL Stine's Point Horror magnum opus, Hit and Run, but that actually came out a year later, so I guess Cusick just thought April Fools had a sinister connotation begging to be explored.

But beyond the story opening with a sort-of-flashback to the night of April Fools, where our intrepid teens, Belinda, Hildy, and Frank, are driving home from a party and Frank tries to run another car off the road "as a prank" because he's the fucking worst, the plot has nothing to do with April Fools. Basically, the other car does go off the road, there's an explosion, and Belinda runs to try to help despite her friends telling her not to because, and this cannot be emphasised enough, Hildy and Frank are the fucking worst. But Belinda can't get close to the car because, you know, it's on fire. So she's left staring helplessly at the fiery wreck when she becomes convinced someone is watching her...someone who saw Frank trying to run another car off the road, who saw the second car go up in flames, and who can identify Belinda as being there because Frank and Hildy keep yelling her name and telling her to get back in the car and abandon the scene of the accident because THEY ARE THE FUCKING WORST.

So that's the set-up! This is a Point Horror book, so Belinda starts receiving creepy packages and messages indicating someone blames her for the car accident. She's freaked out and traumatised and guilty, and the only people she has to help her cope are Frank and Hildy.

 

Oh, okay. So Belinda is all alone with her trauma, then. The trauma of knowing she was involved in a drunken hit and run where people burned to death. I mean, that's a hard thing to deal with as a teenager, right? That's scarring! Surely Hildy, who was there, and whose boyfriend was the driver, must understand...

Oh, okay. But maybe Hildy is in denial! I mean, her boyfriend might be directly responsible for the loss of innocent lives! Surely she understands why this is troubling her best friend so much and she's just trying to protect herself from the reality of the situ...

Never mind then.

Anyway! Belinda is distracted from her guilty conscience, terrible friends, and creepy stalkerish packages by a tutoring job. A rich, annoying woman asks Belinda to tutor her step-son, Adam, because HE WAS RECENTLY MUTILATED IN A TERRIBLE CAR ACCIDENT and she doesn't want him falling behind on school. Stop me if you see where this is heading.

Adam is a prototypical Byronic menace, brooding around in the dark, making cryptic threats and harassing people by screaming "DON'T YOU FIND ME HIDEOUS?" at them whenever they ask how he is. He torments Belinda and glares at her through his bedroom window when she leaves the house, like an asshole. Everyone in this book is terrible apart from Belinda and Cobbs the Butler, basically. Adam does have a nice, gentlemanly step-brother called Noel who is, of course, just dashing and treats Belinda nicely. Like Help Wanted, there's a strong theme of "rich families have weird secrets," although it was nice to see the villains in this book aren't mentally ill, just greedy and murderous in a normal way. And, to be honest, their motivations are logical.

You know who's not logical in this book? Frank and Hildy. Plot twist: it turns out Frank was the one sending creepy packages to Belinda, because he's such a character and thought it would be hilarious to compound her trauma over the fatal accident he caused.** So Frank is a sociopath and Hildy completes enables this because Frank is cute and hilarious, allegedly, and so Hildy allows her best friend to be terrorised by her boyfriend because boys, I guess. Hildy sucks. But Belinda forgives her after they both nearly get killed by the bad guys, and then Hildy dumps Frank, so maybe there's hope for her.

But Belinda should kill off their friendship anyway.

I like Cusick's books, and I liked April Fools, but god fucking dammit, Belinda, you can do better! If there's a lesson to be taken from this book, it's that your friends suck and you should get rid of them and get a butler instead.

*In the sense that the last lines of the book are the teenaged heroine and him saying "I love you" to each other in a way that could totally be interpreted as a declaration of romantic love. It's literally like, "Oh Cobbs, I do love you." "And I love you, miss," and that's the end of the book, so I choose to believe this May-December relationship blossmed from there on.

**Actually, it turns out the villains deliberately caused the car accident, but Frank was literally and actually trying to run the other car off the road "as a joke" so of course Belinda believes him (and indirectly herself) to be responsible until she learns that, and even if Frank didn't actually cause the car crash he was still drunkenly trying to run another car off the road AS A FUCKING PRANK.

Retro Reading - The Wish

We're going back to Nightmare Hall! I hope you're all ready.

Be careful what you wish for . . .

“Wishes granted, fortunes told,”promises the sign on the booth at the back of the campus pizza place. Inside the booth sits a mechanical fortune-teller called the Wizard. His cold glass eyes give Alexandria Edgar the creeps. Her friends at Salem U think she’s crazy—they’re busy making wishes for the Wizard to grant.

But soon, their wishes turn into their worst nightmares: Alex’s roommate, who wished to look less ordinary, is disfigured in an accident. Another girl who wished to shed a few pounds can’t stop losing weight. As her friends face the consequences of their wishes, Alex suspects that her fears about the Wizard are becoming a reality. And she has good reason to be afraid: The truth is even more diabolical than she could have imagined, threatening the group’s very lives.

I loved all the Nightmare Hall books, but I remember this one as being particularly creepy, probably because I'm weird about puppets and dolls and robots and basically anything that looks sort of human but isn't (including chimpanzees but I don't wanna talk about that). It's no spoiler to say that the big bad villain of The Wish is a mechanical wizard (it's right there in the blurb, after all), who is creepy in the extreme, not least because he's sentient and has magical powers.

The Wish is basically the Monkey's Paw of the Nightmare Hall series. Innocent teens, joking around with the old mechanical fortune-teller, make silly wishes that actually seriously reflect their inner desires. At the start of the book, Julie wishes her face was more interesting. Gabe wishes he didn't have to walk everywhere. Immediately, our group of intrepid college kids are involved in a terrible car accident, leaving Gabe with crushed legs and Julie's face ruined by breaking glass.

This is just the start, as despite the utterly inherent creepiness of the Wizard, and our sensible heroine Alex's innate understanding that something is fucked up here, the group keep going back to the damn thing and making more wishes. Kiki wants to lose weight, and is suddenly struck with a wasting illness that lands her in hospital. Kyle wants peace and quiet and ends up in a coma. Marty wants to get out of his class speech and loses his voice (I guess he got off lightly, really). You see how it works here.

Alex wants to stay the hell away from the Wizard, but her revulsion towards it and her suspicions that someone is actively harming her friends, lands her in danger. Then she witnesses an attempted murder that casts suspicion on several people close to her, plunging her even deeper into trouble.

What Point Horror books do a lot is mix a supernatural explanation with a mundane one. The Wish is no exception. The Wizard absolutely has powers and, for some reason, hates teenagers. But he's also a mechanical toy and can't get out and about to actively terrorise Alex, so of course there's a human accomplice. Hoh does a good job of throwing out red herrings - Julie's twin sister, Jenny, for example, suddenly gets a new lease of life after Julie is hospital-bound. She borrows Julie's clothes, dates a football star, and suddenly seems very unconcerned with her mutilated twin. Is she involved, or just selfish? Or both! Who knows? (Spoiler: she's just selfish and really wants to date a football player).

The reveal of the Wizard's real accomplice ends up being something of a bait-and-switch. We're guided, right up until the last second, to believe it's one character, and then it ends up being another. I don't particularly have a problem with that, as the actual reveal genuinely surprised me when I first read the book all those years ago. Revisiting it now, I found myself laughing at the villain's motivation for attempted murder and stalking, which basically boils down to "I wanna be good at sports."

Kyle and I have a running joke if you're Good At Sports in America, you can get away with anything. The Wish shows that being Good At Sports is worth doing anything, including trying to murder your friends. I don't know how much I believe that as motivation, but Hoh does a good job of showing how important being a big football star is to the boys in this book. They're all former high school football heroes, struggling to keep up with their peers on the bigger college stage, and their self-worth is all tied up in that. So in the context of the book and that framework, I guess you can buy that one particular guy might get desperate enough to team up with a mechanical wizard who really hates teenagers and do his dirty work for him in exchange for being Good At Sports.

Maybe.

Retro Reading - The Perfume

Clearly from a young age, way before I owned a snake or starting wearing perfume, I was drawn to both, because I remember very clearly being fascinated by this book cover when I first saw it.

Caroline B Cooney wrote a lot of my favourite Point Horror books, so it seemed only fair I give at least one a re-read and see how it stands up. And since I now own a snake and make perfume, THE PERFUME felt like an excellent choice.

When fifteen-year-old Dove Daniel’s friends discover the new perfume called Venom, they become infatuated. They have Obsession and Poison; now they simply must have Venom. When they discover it’s available at Dry Ice, the coolest store in the local mall, they rush over after school. But to Dove, Venom seems inexplicably terrifying, as does the store that carries it. If she breathes in its potent scent, she is sure something terrible will happen. At first whiff, she senses something primitive and dark. Once she’s inhaled the scent, she begins to feel something . . . different . . . and her heart beats in double time. What has Venom’s bite awakened inside her?

I don't really remember how I felt about Dove when I read this book as a teenager, but as an adult I like her a lot. She's introverted, anxious (checks under her bed every night for monsters, and has to carry her address around in her purse because she forgets where she lives), and sweet. She longs for a life full of colour and romance, but is afraid to break out of her orderly, grey existence. But once the mysterious perfume, Venom, comes into her life, everything changes as she's possessed by the spirit of an ancient evil...or her twin who died in the womb. One of the two.

It's never made clear whether Wing (our villain) really is Dove's unborn twin or something more supernatural, and that annoyed me. Sometimes Wing seems like an impulsive teenage girl, unable to grasp the consequences of her actions when she takes charge of Dove's body, and sometimes both she and Dove think as if Wing is something ancient and genuinely Evil with a capital E. There's no resolution on that, so you're left to draw your own conclusions, but frankly I would have liked to be lead one way or the other by the end of the book.

This is largely because there is another explanation for Dove's sudden "double personality," one that does play a key role in the plot, and that is that Dove is having a breakdown. Makes sense, right? This quiet, good girl suddenly starts swearing at her parents, being cruel to her friends, dressing differently, acting differently, and uh...trying to murder people. She has conversations with herself in different voices, talks about finding victims and insists on being referred to as Wing. Wouldn't you think she was undergoing a psychotic break? And indeed, Dove's parents do think this, and Dove is institutionalized for "a rest" towards the end of the book.

When I was a teenager, I didn't really appreciate that this is the true horror of THE PERFUME. Not that an evil perfume has unlocked an evil being inside Dove, but that you can lose control of your mind to the point where your freedom is taken away from you. That Dove could well be suffering a psychotic break, that Wing could easily be a figment of her imagination, and that Dove doesn't even realise this. The set-up is there - Dove is shown to be anxious and neurotic before the events of the book kick in (bad memory, checking under the bed for monsters, deciding not to eat porridge with raisins because her stomach will be "full of eyes"). And clearly from an outside perspective, Dove's sudden and radical change in behaviour fits a lot of the symptoms of a psychotic break (delusions, violent outbursts, inability to tell reality from fantasy).

So yeah, re-reading this book as an adult, with a greater understanding of mental health, psychosis, depression, and anxiety, I felt there was a missed opportunity with this book. Defining Wing one way or the other could have added a great depth to THE PERFUME. It's still creepy as fuck, don't get me wrong, but I felt there were some "what ifs" left to explore. The ending doesn't help you decide whether Wing is a vanished twin, an evil apparition, or a figment of Dove's imagination, because at the end, Dove simply decides to "cast Wing out," which she does by...dancing in a fountain and yelling "get out!" pretty much.

That said, I still enjoyed revisiting it, and I know not every book should be an Issues Book, nor would I want them to be. The writing is sparse but graceful, and there are some cool touches, like the shop where Dove buys Venom being gone when she tries to go back. "It served its purpose," Wing tells her (I guess this adds weight to the "Wing is an Evil Ancient Spirit" theory). I am reminded that Cooney wrote another Point Horror about evil twins, and now I want to re-read that and do a compare-and-contrast. Maybe we'll get to the bottom of the eternal question: is one twin always destined to be evil?

Retro Reading - The Mummy

After thoroughly loving my re-read of Help Wanted, I decided my next Point Horror should be one I didn't read as a teenager, so as to view it without those rose-tinted nostalgia goggles. I remember seeing The Mummy in bookshops during my Point Horror years, but I never picked it up. I'm not sure why, because I love Egyptian mythology, so this should have been a must-read for me. Maybe I was already weaning myself off Point Horror by the time this one came out?

Anyway! Our story is simple enough. Egypt-obsessed aspiring archaeologist, Lana, volunteers at her local museum to help run a priceless Egyptian exhibit. As she becomes more and more fascinated with the mummy of the boy-prince, Nefra, creepy things begin happening to and around her. Part of the exhibit is stolen. Someone - or something - is stalking Lana. And they may not be human - or even alive. Throw in some dreams that might not be dreams and a too-smart cat, and you've got a recipe for spookiness!

Honestly, I started out thinking I wouldn't like this. The writing felt more juvenile than Help Wanted or The Silent Scream, but I think some of that is down to the nostalgia goggles. Lana came across at first as very young, and her Egypt obsession was painted as kind of childish. As the story develops, she improves, but I could never really get a feel for how old she was supposed to be, and she could have been anywhere between fourteen and eighteen based on her behaviour.

The central mystery - who stole the necklace from the exhibit and who is stalking Lana - is handled well in that there are several suspects who all seem equally likely. Disappointingly, it's another case of "the villain is psychotic!" and I really think there should be a disclaimer in these books somewhere that reads PSYCHOTIC DOES NOT EQUAL DANGEROUS/CRIMINAL. But I liked that the answer wasn't obvious, and that Lana pieces the clues together herself, without any wild last-minute confessions from the bad guys.

The Egyptian elements rely heavily on the motif that Egypt is an exotic, mysterious country where everyone believes in magic and curses, which...I don't know, probably isn't entirely a sensitive presentation. But I think any story written by a non-Egyptian person is probably going to take that route, because it's an idea that's so entrenched in Western society. There are paranormal elements in the story that turn out to be genuine - Lana's cat is the reincarnation of Nefra, and Lana's dreams really are dreams of her past life as an Egyptian princess. I liked that, in the sense that it was cool that it turned out the spooky stuff wasn't all Scooby-Doo style "bad guy in a mask" shenanigans.

There was a heavy emphasis placed on how Lana could so easily pass for an ancient Egyptian without anyone ever addressing what an "ancient Egyptian" looked like. I guess it's entirely possible Lana is a WoC, but mostly it just seems like she wears her hair a certain way (it's not said, but I'm assuming she's gone for the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra cut), and everyone says "wow, so Egyptian!" I found that weird, especially as there are two Egyptian characters in the book who are explicitly described as "not white." It irked me that Lana, who is presumably white, is lavished with praise for being so beautifully Egyptian-looking.

What I did like was this:

There's a nasty tendency for certain Westerners to mock the broken English of people who speak it as a second language. I am always going to champion a book that makes the point that - hey, how many languages do you speak? So just going to leave that there.

That aside, this turned out to be a fun read. Hey, it had a magic cat! And I can definitely relate to a heroine who just wants to stay home with her cat.

Retro Reading - Help Wanted

If you asked me to name my major literary influences, off the top of my head I'd say Tamora Pierce and HP Lovecraft. With some more thought I'd talk about CS Lewis, Laurell K Hamilton, MR James, and Patricia Leitch. I would almost certainly have never mentioned Richie Tankersley Cusick.

Yes, it's more Point Horror! After enjoying the nostalgic kick of The Silent Scream last week, I decided to indulge my inner teen a bit more with Help Wanted. This is another of my favourites, and I always remembered it fondly when I thought back, but it wasn't until I re-read it yesterday that I realised Cusick may be the greatest literary influence I never knew I had.

To briefly recap the plot, Robin Bailey is a smart and conscientious student looking to make some fast cash for a Thanksgiving vacation with her friends. She answers a "help wanted" ad and finds herself cataloging books in a creepy old house for a creepy rich family with plenty of creepy secrets. Shenanigans ensue! I am simplifying it somewhat, of course. There are moments of genuine unease and disquiet throughout Help Wanted (like how did I not realise the school janitor was an actual sexual predator the first time round???). There are also some unintentionally uneasy moments, like sort-of love interest Parker Swanson casually dismissing his step-sister's suicidal tendencies as like "eh, she's weird, whatever."

But it holds up for me. I adored Robin as a teenager and I adore her more as an adult. I mean:

She's clever and caring. She defends her best friend, Faye, against boys who label her as "that airhead." She looks after Parker's step-sister, Claudia when everyone else dismisses her and slags her off. She works hard and is unassuming and earnest and I want to be friends with Robin, basically.

Another thing I always liked about this book was the romance - or lack of it. It's too easy to cram a pointless love angle into any book, and I do remember Point Horrors being replete with awkwardly timed teenaged fumbles. Like, look, you're running from a madman/vampire/crazy roommate. You have no time for flirting! Help Wanted skips this. Parker and another guy, Walt, are both obviously interested in Robin, but she has no time for their shit. The book ends with both guys gentlemanly escorting Robin home from a traumatic night of nearly being murdered, and lightly teasing each other about being competition for her, but Robin just sort of rolls her eyes and ignores them. I have to admit, I always kind of assumed that she ended up dating both and they formed a happy open relationship, as this seemed the most logical conclusion to me. On re-reading, I agree with my younger self.

So what are the things that made me realise how much Cusick influenced me? The setting - there's a gothic vibe to this story, with mediums, ghosts, and huge spooky houses playing central roles. If you've read any of my work from UNDERTOW to NIGHT AND CHAOS or my Brides of Darkness books, you'll know I dig that classic gothic vibe. Small towns with dark secrets, the undead, creepy locations, yes. Give me that. I doubt that all came from Cusick, but re-reading Help Wanted made me realise she definitely contributed. There's also the element of doubt in here - is it really something supernatural or is there a rational (but horrible) explanation. That appears in PHANTOM FEARS, for a quick example.

This is also the first book I remember reading where mental illness was a plot point, and an important one at that. I think I'd probably always gravitate towards characters who suffer or have suffered mental illness, because I have myself and it fascinates me, but Help Wanted was probably the earliest book I read where it was addressed and discussed openly. Does it handle it well? No. Claudia's paranoia and suicidal tendencies are dismissed as attention-seeking at best, and (spoiler!) she turns out to be the villain, so there's that nasty undercurrent of "crazy people are bad!" in there. Even so, it was...illuminating for me, a depressed and anxious teen, to read about a paranoid and anxious character in any context.

Thinking about Help Wanted lead me onto another Cusick book, Teacher's Pet. I haven't re-read this one yet, but it's another story that features a dark and gothic-esque plot with the whole "creepy setting, dark family secrets, mental illness" thing going on. If I remember correctly, I was outraged by the ending, in which the character I fell in love with turned out to be the villain (and mentally ill. I really need to write something about the presentation of mentally ill characters in Point Horror books, I guess). And the character I thought was a milquetoast wet blanket got the girl, even though he was considerably less attractive and interesting. Bah.

From Teacher's Pet, I think I drew a love of unconventional characters and love stories, in a strange way. I like darker, prickly heroines and romances. Is that all down to Cusick? Probably not, but throughout Help Wanted, I kept thinking "I love that trope! I write that trope!" and it was pretty cool to think about how I've used those tropes in my own work.

Next on the retro reading list? Probably Caroline B Cooney's Freeze Tag. We shall see!

Retro Reading

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling sorry for myself. I can't remember why, but I expect I was probably having a flare-up of my wrist/arm/shoulder problems and in a lot of pain, since that's the most common reason I would feel sorry for myself. My usual solution in such times is to buy myself something nice, like a new bag of loose leaf tea or a huge bar of chocolate. This time, however, inspired by a Facebook post, I headed on over to Amazon and searched for "Point Horror."

I must have read hundreds of Point Horror books as a teen. My parents were leery of letting me read Stephen King, but I guess they figured books like The Window couldn't possibly be psychologically damaging.

Eventually I ran out of bookshelf space and sold all my Point Horrors on, and mostly forgot about them. But once I remembered, thanks to said Facebook post, I was suddenly seized with an urge to revisit my childhood favs. It turns out there are a lot available for the Kindle now (sadly, The Cemetery, my hands-down favourite, is not...yet). But a fair few of my most cherished reads are there, including this one:

I absolutely loved the Nightmare Hall books (although they probably left me with a really warped view of American college life). I actually started with book two in the series, The Roommate, which I borrowed from a friend. Then I went back and read the series in order, although you don't really need to. Starting with The Silent Scream does give you the full story on why Nightmare Hall is so-called, though.

Anyway! I snapped this one up to make myself feel better. Then by sheer coincidence I discovered a podcast called Teen Creeps which recently did an episode on this very book. I decided to read the book, then listen to the podcast episode to get that full nostalgic whack. It was really fun to revisit this series, and I'm definitely going to pick up some more. The book is a lot shorter than I remember, but I guess when I was thirteen or so, it probably seemed like a pretty thick tome. I remember really loving the female friendships in The Silent Scream, and I was pleased to find on re-reading that they do hold up. Our heroine, Jess, is smart, relatable, resourceful, and kind. The horror is...well, it's teenaged horror, so it's definitely not psychologically scarring, but some scenes are still pretty creepy even to 33-year-old me. Like Jess finding her clothing drawer full of fucking worms omg, or being locked in a basement that's slowly filling with gas.

The villain, I think, got scarier with time, because I'm better able to appreciate now that a controlling, dominating man is a figure of genuine fear. When I was a kid, the villain's motives and actions seemed a bit lame, but experience has taught me that, no, this kind of thing actually happens. Maybe not the way it plays out in this particular book, but there are guys like him out there, and women are vulnerable to them.

I'm now trying to figure out which Point Horror to revisit next. I remember adoring Help Wanted (but being disappointed that the love triangle didn't turn into some kind of open relationship) and Freeze Tag, but there are a fair few available that I never read, so I'm debating picking up something brand new and seeing if those nostalgia googles affected my feelings on The Silent Scream. We'll see! Now I'm off to nurse my wrist/arm/shoulder, because typing thos post off definitely made it all hurt, which I guess is sort of poetic. Stay creepy!