Ten chapters! Not a typo! Today, you get ten whole chapters of gosh dang Goosebumps! Because, well, we’re kind of at the point in the story where we’ve kind of stumbled into The Formula. Previously, Erin and Marty – two children who are huge fans of the Shock Street movies – get to test out the new Shock Street theme park that Erin’s dad is working on! And boy, things sure do just keep going wrong! So wrong, in fact, that Erin has begun to wonder if, perhaps, something strange is going on in this park. (Aside from the fact that the park is just one ride. And that the park is also the movie studio. In retrospect, uh, what exactly did Erin’s dad make again?)
You’ve figured out the drill by now. Something spooks them. They escape. Marty pretends to be dead, because Marty is a dick. We are in the midst of the gauntlet.
And today we are the judges.
Chapter 13
Erin and Marty are gettin’ spooked by two gigantic praying mantises, which only gets worse when they start gobs of black saliva at them which burns through their clothes. (Just their clothes, not their skin. This is children’s horror.) (Also also not through their clothes in a sexy way THIS IS CHILDREN’S HORROR.)
Erin suddenly has a plan that is – apparently – batshit enough to work.
“Marty—” I whispered. “How do you normally get rid of bugs?”
“Huh? Erin—what are you talking about?”
“You step on them—right? Don’t you usually step on them?”
“But, Erin—” he protested. “These bugs are big enough to step on us!”
“It’s worth a try!” I cried.
Erin and Marty stomp of the feet of the giant praying mantises, which is apparently enough to make them fall over in pain. Erin and Marty run away, although by all rights they should absolutely be dead by now.
Except while they’re running away, Marty cries out!
“Erin—help! Help! They got me! They’re eating me!”
Chapter 14
Not that Erin has wised up to Marty’s tricks.
“April Fools,” he said.
This fucking guy. Ugh, I can’t even. Time to rate the praying mantis. Judges?
Praying Mantis Scores
Spook Rating: 10/10! Not to blow the competition out of the water so early in the post, but this is a creature not the size it’s supposed to be (objectively the scariest thing!), there’s two of them, and a bonus point multiplier because bugs.
Escape Rating: 1/10! Yeah, don’t worry. It all evened out.
Marty Is A Dick Rating: Such a dick. He just escaped from being crushed, disintegrated, or eaten by giant bugs, and decided this was an appropriate time to trick his friend who was in mortal peril with him that he was being eaten. Such a dick.
Erin has a crazy idea that maybe “these creatures we were seeing were real”, but also thinks maybe she’s just “seen too many scary movies”. Nonetheless, she now has “the feeling that something had gone wrong here. That something was out of control.” Maybe.
Marty realizes they’re now on the part of the set that’s the titular Shock Street. The two geek out.
“Check out that empty lot,” I said, pointing. “That’s where The Mad Mangler hung out. Remember? In Shocker III? Remember—he mangled everyone who walked by?”
Oh, that Mad Mangler.
Marty runs over to the town cemetery and immediately falls into an open grave.
Chapter 15
I couldn’t believe that he was gone, that he had vanished so quickly.
Are you sure you can’t, though?
Marty calls for help, and Erin figures out what happened. She helps him out. Erin wants to leave, but Marty wants to check out the cemetery. He laughs at a tombstone with the name “Jim Socks” on it. He asks if we get it.
They get attacked by zombies.
Chapter 16
Green hands emerge from the earth, grabbing at them, moaning at them to “Come dowwwwwwwnnnnn. Come dowwwwwwnnnnn with us.” Maybe the twist is that the zombies are just trying to invite the kids to come down to the basement, Zombie John just got the new Nintendo 64 game and Zombie Neal brought over his controllers.
The zombies grab their feet. They escape by taking off their sneakers.
Zombie Scores
Spook Rating: 3/10. Unclear if they were spooks or just wanted to play Mario Kart.
Escape Rating: 3/10. Imagine the zombies’ debriefing about this spook and being like, “Not one, but two of you only got their shoes? What the fuck, you guys?”
Marty Is A Dick Rating: Less of a dick, but still a dick. He doesn’t figure out the shoe thing until Erin helps him out. Marty is going to grow up to be such a useless man.
Chapter 17
They run away from the cemetery. Erin wonders if maybe something has gone wrong here. The kids run into quicksand.
Chapter 18
They get saved by werewolves, which is really asking a lot of the reader.
Quicksand Scores
Spook Rating: 0/10 It was over too… quick! Yep, it took me two extra days to write this post.
Escape Rating: 5/10 Extra credit for the out of the frying pan into the fire angle here, but I absolutely do not understand why the werewolves are like, “oh my gosh, those humans are sinking! Quick, my brethren! We must set aside our species’ long conflict and save them!”
Marty Is A Dick Rating: Doesn’t even get any dialogue this time. A+
Obviously, this situation turns out to be a real mixed bag.
I turned to see who had rescued me.
And stared into the glowing red eyes of a wolf.
A human with the face of a wolf. […] She wore a silvery catsuit. Sleek and tight-fitting. As I stared in shock, she opened her mouth in a throaty growl.
I recognized her at once. Wolf Girl!
Erin and Marty plead to Wolf Girl and her companion, Wolf Boy, which is a real sentence I’m writing right now and why I insist on doing a Goosebumps every year. They beg them to help them get back to the tram or the main building, but they just growl at them. Marty yells at them that they know they’re just actors and to stop scaring them and help them. Erin reaches to pull their masks off.
The werewolves growled again. Wolf Girl snapped her jaws. A long pink tongue slid out, and she licked her jagged teeth hungrily.
“That’s enough!” I shrieked. “Stop the act! Stop it! Stop it!”
I was so angry, so furious—I reached up with both hands. I grabbed the fur on the sides of Wolf Girl’s mask.
And I tugged the mask with all my strength. Tugged. Tugged with both hands as hard as I could. And felt real fur. And warm skin.
It wasn’t a mask.
Chapter 19
Erin wonders if, look, this seems like a stretch, but maybe something is wrong here?
“They’re not actors,” I whispered. “Something is wrong here. Something is terribly wrong.”
They run away from the werewolves.
Chapter 20
They decide to try to shoot the werewolves just in case their stun guns are real.
Chapter 21
They are not real.
Somehow the tram reappears! They miss it.
Chapter 22
But they run after it, so it’s fine.
Werewolf Scores
Spook Rating: 9/10 Spooky werewolves! The main characters finally accept that something spooky is really happening here! I can’t decide if the fact that it’s not just werewolves, but a werewolf named Wolf Girl wearing a catsuit makes this less or more terrifying.
Escape Rating: ugh/10 I spared you all from like three whole chapters of “and then the werewolf almost caught me again but didn’t“.
Marty Is A Dick Rating: Admits he is wrong and owns up to his mistakes, like a real man. Perhaps he is truly growing from this experience, taking his first steps towards maturity. There is hope for him yet.
Erin wonders if maybe something is wrong here.
“We’ve got to tell your dad that this place is messed up,” Marty said breathlessly.
“Something is horribly wrong here,” I agreed.
“Those werewolves—they weren’t kidding around,” Marty continued. “They— they were real, Erin. They weren’t actors.”
I nodded. I felt so glad that Marty finally agreed with me. And he wasn’t pretending to be brave anymore.
Marty has cleared the low, low bar of acting like an okay man. Congratulations, Marty. Maybe you’ll even live long enough to listen to a woman next time.
“Marty—look!” I pointed to the front of the tram. “We aren’t the only passengers.” […]
The other passengers were all grinning skeletons.
