The Tears of Teresa (Tales of Terror #2)

The Tears of Teresa

from

In Christopher Pike's introduction to this story he says that his greatest fear is becoming paralyzed, and that Christopher Reeve's memoir Still Me was partially the inspiration for The Tears of Teresa.

A man and woman come home from a late movie. Their 18 year old daughter is sleeping, and they sit in the kitchen talking for a little while. Suddenly, a figure rises out of the pile of dirty darks in the adjoining laundry room. The guy comes into the kitchen and forces the couple outside to their car at gunpoint.

Next, we meet Max, a 20 year old reformed high school nerd who recently avoided a life crisis using "gentle persistence and an occasional flash of anger" to convince his pregnant girlfriend, Teresa, to get an abortion.

Since the abortion, Teresa has been traumatized and unable to sleep. She hears a baby boy crying all night long. Max wants to give her money so she won't be so stressed out from college and her job, but he works for his father and good ol' Dad keeps hardcore control of all Max's money.

Max decides that he'll take Teresa on a trip to Las Vegas to help her unwind. He invites along his BFF David and his girlfriend Sandy to be buffers between Max & scary, cry-y, nightmarey Teresa, but Dave declines.

Meanwhile, the woman and man are still being held at gunpoint by the unknown man in their car. The woman drives, while the kidnapper sits in back. She tries the "I have to pee" routine, but does it half-assed. She didn't go for the gold with "I have my period"/"Do you like blood and piss?" I guess that wouldn't work because she's driving her own car and he's, like, sitting in the back, and hence wouldn't really be affected.

Teresa & Max have a great time in Vegas, until Teresa decides she wants to get married. Like, now. Max eventually agrees, and a drunken preacher performs the ceremony. Back in their room, Teresa wants to shower before consummating the marriage. Max stands on the balcony to clear his head in the night air. Suddenly, a hammer attacks his back, and some mystery being gives him the big boot over the balcony railing!!

Back to unknown woman, man, and kidnapper: the guy viciously ties up and beats his captives. He takes out a knife. He has the right to harm them... because of Max.

Max is semi-conscious in the hospital. A crying baby is hanging out next to him. He hears Teresa and his BFF Dave, and, man, are they plotting. 1! No abortion. Teresa's still pregnant. 2! Dave and Teresa planned this fakeass marriage/murder to get at Max's money when Max's dad realizes that Teresa is having Max's baby. 3! Max is awake enough to hear everything, and let them know he heard, but then he dies. 4! The crying baby grows up to take revenge on Dave and Teresa by kidnapping them as they get home from a movie 20 years later. Oh yeeeeah, this thing is going full circle.

So, even though Max dies, he WOULDA been a cripple if he'd lived, and that is the fate that Teresa and Dave have earned for themselves. But I have a question for the 20 year old baby man: Max's dad didn't give them any money, AND Dave raised Max's kid as his own... does that not count for anything? Past Baby/Future Crippler totally doesn't wanna hear it. He knifes both their spinal cords, and leaves Teresa and Dave to rot.


Anyweegie, still working on Last Vampire sextiligy. Sextology? That doesn't sound right... the rest of the Last Vampires. Those books don't read themselves. Uh, I read them. Right. So, those are coming up later in the week, along with some Pike short stories starring the fabulous Marvin Summers! Ok, he's not that fab. He was kind of a dumbass, but whatev.

The Last Vampire

This time someone is hunting her....

She thought she was the last vampire.

The Last Vampire - Christopher Pike
1994, 193 pages


Vampires
Alisa Perne - older than you, stronger than you, smarter, faster, better than you, and she's seen waaay cooler stuff
Yaksha - born of a demon

Mortals
PI Mike Riley - a detective investigating Alisa
Ray Riley - Mike's son
Seymour Dorsten - school nerd with a secret

Other
Krishna - yeah, that Krishna

Alisa was born in 3000 BCE. She was originally called Sita, but she uses a crapload of aliases in the book, so I'm sticking with Alisa because... that's what I'm gonna do. When Alisa was 7, a disease, pretty much swine flu times a million, infected her village. Her best friend Amba, who was 14 years old and 8 months pregnant, died of the disease - along with lots and lots of other people.

A dark priest shows up with an idea. Everyone is in a panic, so they listen to his shit even though they woulda ran his ass outta town straightaway under normal circumstances. His hypothesis is that a demon brought the disease & they have to get rid of the demon.

They decide to use Amba's body for their ceremony. She wakes up, except she's a hideous demon with a ridiculously long tongue, which she uses to lick the skin off of the priest's face.

After she lays back down dead, her stomach is still moving. The gathered townspeople have different ideas about what to do. Like, it's a baby. But it's probably evil. Except what if it's not, how would you feel then, murderer? Anyways, they take the baby out and it's a boy! Alisa names him Yaksha.

Years pass, and Alisa is now 15. Yaksha is 8, but he's the same size and intelligence as she is. Actually, he's the most beautiful, generous, and smart person in the village - and only 8 years old!

Suddenly, the townspeople who were there when Yaksha was born start to disappear, one by one. There were 5 nobodies, Alisa's dad, and Alisa, who had snuck/sneaked into the ceremony. When Alisa's dad was the last man left, he asked Yaksha to please leave town. He was creeping people out. Soon after, both Pops and Yaksha went missing.

So, time passes. Alisa grows up and meets a guy, Rama. They get married and have a baby, Lalita. It's all good until one night when Yaksha shows up. He pretty much immediately makes it clear that he's not only a violent creep, he's evil too.

He gives Alisa two choices: 1) Join him and become like him, or 2) Watch her family die, and then be killed as well.

So, Yaksha is a jackass and she hates him, but clearly she's gonna have to go with him. He performs a blood-mixing, which gives Alisa a crazy orgasmic reaction, as well as turning her into a vampire. It's like Yaksha is her god now. Sorry, Vishnu, you're like totally forsaken.

You know the catch though. Alisa needs blood to survive. And she doesn't wanna go there. She becomes weak and tortured, until Yaksha brings her a half-dead boy whose veins are already open. It's too easy, and she succumbs.

Another 50 years pass and the vampire colony starts hearing a lot of rumours about a guy, Krishna, who can slay demons and grant bliss. The whole "slay demons" thing puts off most of the vampires, but Yaksha is still young and cocky and he wants to check Krishna out.

The vampires march toward Krishna's 'hood. Nearly there, a brutal bow & arrow attack takes out most of the vampires, but the survivors keep moving. They meet Krishna's #1 babe, Radha, in the woods and take her hostage. Yaksha threatens to kill her unless Krishna will go one-on-one with him. Krishna agrees, but he wants to choose the type of combat.

Krishna challenges Yaksha to a flute duel. Yeah, the woodwind. They have to play for control of a pit of snakes. Like, keep them away from yourself and make them attack your opponent. The deal is that if Krishna wins then Radha lives and Yaksha must take a vow of Krishna's choosing. If Yaksha wins, he gets to keep Radha for whatever purposes he pleases.

So they play. Yaksha is good, but Krishna is magical. He wins. He has private words with Yaksha, and then speaks to Alisa. He promises her his protection and grace if she never makes another vampire. And remember, where there is love, there is grace.

It becomes clear pretty quickly that Yaksha's vow had to do with killing all of the vampires he'd made. Alisa flees, and lives a fun and colourful life throughout many times and places in history. Until the present.

Shit gets stirred up when a private investigator, Mike Riley, calls her to his office. He wants to know what her deal is. She's one of the richest people in the world. She's only, like, 18 years old but she's got deals and investments going back decades. She owns property all over the world. What gives?

Alisa kind of freaks out when Mike won't say who hired him to investigate her and totally kills the guy. You know, she's got the reflexes of the mother of all cats. Which is the goofiest description since Rela said her smile was a bar of white chocolate. Just before Mike took his final breath, he told Alisa that a man named Slim hired him. Seriously though, he was under extreme duress. Not only was his chest crushed and he was about to die, Alisa was threatening a picture of his son.

After setting up a new ID, Alisa poses as a transfer student and goes to all of Riley Jr.'s classes. He may have info she can use, plus that picture of him was pretty cute. She meets him in history class. Hey, did you know that Alisa was in France during the Revolution when Marie Antoinette was guillotined? But Alisa's been shot, hanged, and even crucified on four separate occasions. God, I didn't know she was a one-upper. Marie Antoinette died! I think you can let her win this one.

In gym class, Alisa makes the acquaintance of Seymour Dorsten. That's a lame name, but I could accept it... until I read that he wears that style of glasses that makes it look like you've got humongous freaking elephant eyes. It shoulda been Seymour Dorksten. Hahaha. Alisa suggests changing his name to "Marlboro", or "Slade", or "Bubba". Because these are all cool. (?)

Seymour gives Alisa deja vu. They're connected somehow. She can sense that his blood is sick and that he doesn't have long to live. She guesses it's AIDS.

Next Alisa has biology with Ray Riley. She asks him if he will help her move her furniture into her new place tonight. He doesn't really want to, but eventually agrees. Alisa notices that he has the same spirit in his eyes as Rama, her beloved husband.

Ray shows up at 10 PM to help with the furniture. Alisa gets an idea to seduce him in the hot tub. God, Christopher Pike was into that waaayy before Blind Date made it popular. "Many men and women have swooned just from the brush of my lips", so Alisa doesn't expect to have any problems getting into Ray's drawers.

But wait! First, hey, Ray, don't you think you should call your dad and tell him where you are? This is a different tactic. I guess Ray's dad is "out of town" on a case, but he hasn't called in a few days. Hmmm, wonder what's up with that. Yo, Alisa, any ideas?

Alisa suggests that they go to his dad's office to check his computer and see what cases he's working on, and then maybe Ray can figure out where he is. Ray's down with the idea, so they go. In the office, "the computer is equipped with a mouse." Oy. Ray boots up the system. When Alisa spots the file with her name on it, she fakes fright at a nonexistent noise and sends Ray to go check on it.

She jams the door and copies the files onto floppy disks before erasing most of the contents of the Alisa Perne file. After she lets Ray back in, he looks at the computer files for a few minutes, then Alisa plays tired and asks to be taken home.

Alone at home, Alisa reads the file. Riley's contact was called Slim, but only a Swiss fax number is included. There's no other info about him. She writes him a fax offering to meet somewhere. They arrange to meet at the pier... tonight... alone.

At the pier, Alisa waits until a man and woman approach her. Armed creeps surround the pier. Slim wants to take Alisa for a drive. From his behaviour she figures he must not know she's a vampire, so she decides to go along with stuff until she can meet Slim's superior.

The captors are pretty tough, but stupid. Alisa tricks them with the old "I have to pee... and I have my PERIOD!!!!" lie, and then kills a bunch of them when they stop at a gas station. She lets Slim live just until he describes his boss... it's Yaksha!

After disposing of Slim, Alisa calls Seymour Dorsten. At her request, he brings a change of clothes to her and then drops her off at her home.

Alisa thinks that Yaksha may try to get to her through Ray, so she gets him and brings him back to her place. They finish what they started earlier in the hot tub and it's awesome. It's almost dawn, and Ray sleeps all day. Alisa has a gun, but knows that it won't stop Yaksha.

When Ray wakes, Alisa tries to send him away for his own safety. He's better off away from her. He won't leave, so she tells him that she killed his father. And that she's a 5000 year old vampire. And that she knew Krishna. Krishna is protecting her, but also devastating her by making her lose Ray. Ray isn't protected, and should totally leave before shit gets ugly.

But it's too late. Yaksha shows up outside, playing the flute. Alisa approaches him. He explains that he is tired and wants to die. And to die with Krishna's grace, he must kill all the vampires. But if Krishna is protecting Alisa, she's going to have to break her word to him and make a vampire so Yaksha is justified in killing her.

Alisa isn't going for it, but Yaksha wasn't making a suggestion. He plays a note on his flute that shatters the window Ray is standing next to in the house. Ray topples out and falls 60 feet to the cement driveway. His head is crushed and his back is twisted, but he's still alive. Alisa has only one way to save him: mix their blood and make him a vampire.

While Ray rests, Alisa visits Seymour. She tells him all about herself. And that Yaksha will be coming back at dawn to kill her and Ray. Seymour has an idea to make it look like they will all die together, but actually she and Ray will survive. Alisa runs with it and concocts a dynamite plan to coordinate 2 separate explosions: the first to throw herself and Ray clear of the second, killer blast to take out Yaksha.

Seymour tells Alisa that he got AIDS from a tainted transfusion after an accident. Alisa mixes a portion of her blood with his, hoping it will heal him without turning him into a vampire. Or killing him. That would suck, too. Suck. Vampire. Well, I liked it.

Alisa spends the night preparing her plot. Ray is like a "vampire on acid", all mesmerized with his newly sharp senses. When Yaksha arrives, Alisa shows him the explosives. Yaksha is down with all of them getting blown up at once. The fuse has a 3-minute timer. Like Boggle. While they wait for it to burn down, Yaksha turns on Alisa and says that he knows what she's up to. Alisa begs Yaksha to let Ray live. He's so young.

Yaksha realizes that Alisa loves Ray, and that the only reason she agreed to go with him so many years ago was because of her love for Rama and Lalita. Where there is love, there is Krishna's grace, so Yaksha shoos them out of the house before the detonation.

But - whoa, dude - a piece of shrapnel from the explosion pierces Alisa through the heart as she flees. Ray tries to pull it out. Alisa feels so much pain and love, and maybe she'll die. But maybe she won't.


So, what's up? I liked this book better than I remembered. One thing I don't like is my long weekend being all rainy and cold. People who live in civilized climates have no idea how awesome they have it. In other words, brrrrrrr. But anyway, I believe I promised many Last Vampires in rapid succession, so I'm outta here.

Master of Murder

He wrote about his own murder...

No one knew he was famous.

Master of Murder - Christopher Pike
1992, 198 pages


Peeps
Marvin Summer - AKA Mack Slate, beloved mystery author
Shelly - object of adoration
Triad - Try-add? Tree-ade? Anyway, he's the Sir Jockenstein of this book
Harry - Shelly's former boyfriend and Marvin's rival. Dead guy.


Get this: Marvin's a famous mystery writer... but no one knows he's famous! Ha ha, *wheeze*, now he can sit smugly by while his classmates go apeshit about the books he's written. Oh, that Marvin! From the sounds of things, his mystery series is Fall into Darkness, written in the style of Final Friends, with a Nancy Drew-style title: The Mystery at Silver Spring, per the back cover, Silver Lake in the book's text. And the kids love it, let me tell you. It's like Harry Potter and Twilight combined. But with sex! Lots of sex.

So, Shelly. Marvin really likes Shelly. "Shelly had hair and she had skin - both lovely." Opposed to the bald skeletons in Bio class, I bet she looks pretty good? Or just other, uglier girls with un-lovely hair and skin? Man, Marv, you're making them feel so damn un-lovely/loverly (for British Like Pike reader/maybe readers?).

Flashback to the events of one year ago: Shelly is dating Harry. Buuuut, she decides to go out with Marvin - five times! And then Harry turns up dead in the river after being missing for 3 days. It's ruled a suicide by police but, man, if this happened in my life, I'd be totally suspecting... someone else.

Flashforward to the present: Marv stops to talk to Shelly after class. She's been sort of dating deceased boyfriend Harry's best friend Triad. Despite this, she agrees to a date with Marvin. Oh. My. God. Shell. Did you learn nothing at all from the events of one year ago?

Poor Marvie has the typical sad-sack family life. Like so many YA novel families of the past, there's an alcoholic mother who never leaves the couch, an alcoholic absent father who only shows up every couple months to rough Marv up, and an adorable little sister who is wise beyond her years.

In order to keep his sack of shit parents from stealing his Mack Slate fortune, only Marv's little sister, Ann, knows he writes books. No one else in the world, not even his agent, knows that he's a high school kid. Fo real? Mack Slate is mythically famous. Kids talk about him in class. They wonder if he's tall and dark, or blond with a matching pretty blond wife by the ocean. He's an enigma... I wonder what his "About the Author" says.

So, Marv and Ann spend a lot of time reading fan mail that his agents sends to him at an anonymous post box. Check out these excerpts from fangirl "Becky":
"...you are really god and we are all just characters in your stories..."
aaaaannnnnd, a pervy story about a dream (ack! no!) she had where she was in the school showers, and Mack Slate came in wearing a tux and had sex with her.
"You were like the devil 'cause you were so forceful, but it was so good, the sex, that you were like God as well."

Ok, girlfriend, you're skeeving me out. I wonder if Mr. Pike used to get this quality of fan letter. No time to ponder because Marv (and, yeah, I am the only one calling him that) has received a locally mailed letter saying only: "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE." Say whattt? No one knows who Mack Slate really is... unless someone does. You will not believe how little this whole letter plot adds to the story. Truly, it will blow your mind.

So, Marv's secret is out AND his deadline for the sixth and final Mack Slate novel passed months ago and he has no clue how to end the series. The story goes like this: Town treasure Ann McGaffer (yes, the dead girl in his novel is named after his own little sister) has been found dead by murder. Someone in Skank Spring/Lake is responsible. Her skanky best friend? Her skankalicious boyfriend? Her skankalicious boyfriend's skanktastic best friend? Her skankass brother? Her skank dad? Her skankariffic male confidante/fuck buddy? There are so many orgies in the plot, I can't even tell you who was doing who (or whom?).

It's date night for Shell and Marv. They go out on Marv's motorcycle. He falls asleep in the movie theatre. Marv, man, this is your date! If you're bored, think of how Shelly feels. Think of how I feel!!

Later at Shelly's, they make a bubble tub in the Jacuzzi and make some jokes about how un-gay they both are, and then make out. . Romantic! Last train to Sexin'town... until Shelly breaks down and tells Marv that Harry (her dead beau) didn't commit suicide - he was murdered!

Marv can't solve his own murder story, which ridiculously mirrors Harry's real-life death so much that Marv woulda had to be psychic or something when he wrote it, so he decides to spend the weekend demolishing the shoddy police investigation into Harry's "murder"/murder.

Anyweegie, Marv ends up doing crazy shit like dreaming about his Silver Lake characters, visiting the old man who found Harry's body, fist-fighting with his pisshead dad, and getting more anonymous fan letters saying "SHE DOESN'T LOVE YOU THE WAY YOU THINK SHE DOES" and "THEY ARE PLOTTING TO KILL YOU AS YOU READ THIS."

He drives to Shelly's to, like, see what's up. And finds her bubbletubbin' with Triad! That bastard! Marv dies in a ball on the floor of his own soul, then cries for hours while driving his motorbike. The wind will dry his tears.

No, really, it will. It's in the text. Page 113.

Just because he's at the point of all things obsessive, Marv goes back to the bridge where he suspects Harry died. I have no clue why he's doing favours for Shelly NOW, but, hey, that's Marv. He pretty much works up a reasonable theory that Harry hung from a rope off the side of the bridge, based on rope burn evidence on Harry's jacket and broken blood capillaries in his legs from hanging for an extended time.

And oil stains on his hands! ZOMG! That's it! Harry was lying in wait over the side of the bridge, after dumping oil everywhere and putting a rope across the lane. When Marv came by on his motorcycle, Harry was gonna use his own weight or something to raise the rope into a clothesline/tripwire and kill/injure Marv, and then hide the rope so it looked like the oil spill did Marv in. Ooohh, evil. But Harry got trapped in the rope over the side, and eventually fell to his death. Or hung to his death, and then fell.

Having solved Harry's accidental death to his own satisfaction, Marv decides that he will write the end of his novel series... as soon as he kills Triad.

So, one thing I didn't tell you about Triad is that he's after Marvin's bike. He's made several offers, and Marv finally decides to take him up on it. Cuzzz the best way to kill a guy is to copy the way a different guy tried to kill you but ended up accidentally killing himself. And you know what? This whole book people were talking about how smart Marv is.

Jockstrap Triad buys the bike, and Marv sets him up to have to drive across the deadly bridge and back to get the helmet.

Marv does the lying-in-wait thing with his rope and oil trap all set. It's awesome, man. Until... he notices that Shelly is on the back of the bike! There's no way he can go through with it. He realizes that Harry had done the same thing one year ago.

Triad stops the bike, and a fight erupts. Well, he pretty much shows Marv what he thinks of people who try to kill him with a fake-oil-slick-and-clothesline combo. Marvin realizes that just like in his story, the boyfriend's BFF wanted the heroine for himself. Triad killed Harry! Triad wouldn't think twice about killing Marv! Traid would probably freaking kill Shelly so no one else could have her!

Shelly chooses now to reveal that she's the one who knows Marvin's author identity. B-b-but how? Actually, who cares? Triad's about to commit a mass massacre. Bunch o' action: everyone nearly falls off the bridge, Triad beats up Marv and even bashes Shelly's face offa the bridge railing. Triad grabs Shelly and holds a knife to her, but Marvin don't even care. He steals Triad's new-previously-owned motorcycle and leaves.

So, then Marv goes to finish his book, The Mystery of Silver Lake VI: Night of Grief. Having escaped becoming a murder-by-jock-involving-bridge statistic, he's feeling pretty cocky. He calls his agent and tells him to book a big reveal and author reading at Sesa High - his very own high school!

He takes the stage, to complete silence and astonishment from the audience. He makes a speech and whatever. Shelly doesn't show up. Neither does Triad. Maybe he's in triage? Come on, gimme somethin'!

Shelly meets Marv at the bridge and tells him that she thought that HE was the one who killed Harry, because his books told the story so exactly. And she knew he was Mack Slate because she broke into his house and looked on his computer. Anyways, she won't tell what happened to Triad after Marv left them on the bridge, but let's put it this way: he was never seen again.



Oh, and check out this sleazy leg art meant to entice readers.

And I'll thank you to not check out the pudding stain directly above the sexy leg.

Thanks to everyone who stuck around/returned. I'm a knob, and I know it. I just got really into knitting this winter. Which is a poor excuse, but at least it's not jigsaw puzzles. I'll get the "Coming Up Next"-majig going again in the side bar once I'm all organized. See you soon!

The Thin Line

The Thin Line

from

Mr's Pike's intro:
He started this story shortly before the Jonesboro massacre, and it was weird for him to see the stuff he was writing about showing up on TV. He says that he's often been asked if he worries about his violent tales inspiring copycats, but he says no, because his heroes have strong moral centres. He also has a beef with the cover art of his novels. He doesn't like the scary covers that the publishers keep choosing; he'd like to see a beautiful painting with his name above it.

The story:
So, our buddy Tim Klane is a high school basketball player. And he's good. Actually "damn good". And he even looks good. He describes himself as 6-foot-2 with shaggy dark blond hair, and "eyes as blue as a gloomy Monday morning." And the ego of a poet, apparently.

Everything is all good until the day that he realizes his cosmic ownership of a certain girl in school: Jane, a popular cheerleader AND the coach's daughter. They go out for a while, and one night after a date they fall asleep on the living room floor at her place. Coach finds them together in the morning and goes apeshizzle. He tries to attack Tim with various living room accessories, and forbids Jane from seeing Tim anymore.

Tim still attends basketball practice, until one day when Jane's ex-boyfriend, Tim's teammate Steve, bumps into Tim while he's airborne making a dunk. Tim goes down hard and ruptures 4 vertebrae and breaks his tailbone. When the coach comes to check on Tim's injury, he hints that it wasn't an accident...

During two months of recovery, Tim doesn't hear from Jane at all. He is depressed and angry. The day before he is going to return to school, he empties his bank account and buys two guns on the black market. Tim acts like such a psycho while he's buying the guns that he makes the black market gun dealer uncomfortable. Yikes.

After school, basketball practice and cheerleading practice are scheduled in the gym. Which is mondo-convenient for Tim, who wants to take out all of his enemies at the same time. He chains the gym doors shut and starts menacingly showing off his weapons. Jane's ex, and the causer of Tim's injuries, Steve, tries to talk to Tim, only to be shot through the thigh. It's apparently pretty gory. In fact, it's so gross that Tim can't go through with his plan of killing everyone. Too much blood.

Jane was supposed to be one of the first to die, but she approaches Tim and isn't even afraid when he rams the gun up under her chin and screams in her face. She didn't visit him in the hospital! She didn't call! Does he mean nothing to her?!? No, she says that he is still her boyfriend.

The cops show up outside and call to see what Tim's demands are. Poor guy didn't even really realize that he was holding hostages. But he pulls it together quick and demands a half million dollars and a van to take him to a plane. He chooses five hostages to take with him, including Jane and her father, the coach.

In the plane, he forces the hostages to put on parachutes and prepare to jump. Jane tells Tim that she loves him, and even though he hates her, he loves her too, and asks her to jump with him. They land safely with all the ransom money intact.

Jane and Tim got plastic surgery to change their faces, rented an apartment, and had a whole life together. Tim's attack on his school was a big news topic, and they would sometimes see interviews with the survivors on TV. Steve had had his leg amputated after the shooting. All the hostages from the plane survived, but the pilot did not. He hit a tree when he jumped from the plane and broke his neck.

Even though they were free from trouble, had loads of money, and each other, Jane and Tim lived with horrible guilt. Tim felt that Jane was even more burdened that he was, because she had chosen to share his guilt. As time passed, Jane became reckless, often stepping into traffic, or standing at the very tippy-toe edge of the subway platform.

Four years after they'd jumped from the plane together, Jane tempted death for the last time. She was struck and killed by a bus. After the funeral, Tim went home to his mother, who didn't recognize him until he spoke. Tim had made a killing on the stock market, and decided to divvy up all his money and leave half on Steve's doorstep and half on the dead pilot's family's doorstep.

Lastly, Tim stopped at the high school gym and found Jane's father, the coach, shooting hoops alone. The coach offers him a game of one-on-one, without recognizing him. Tim has lived in horrible agony from his back injury and hasn't touched a basketball since the the day he was hurt. Despite that, he leads the coach, 9 to 3, until the pain overcomes him and he collapses, crying. The coach helps him to the bench, and says it's too bad Tim can't finish the game; he was about to win. Tim says that they are both losers, and thinks "Jane is dead. We both killed her." and decides not to tell the coach that Jane is dead.

The End.


So, I overestimated my free time this week - friggin' Christmas eve is tomorrow! Whaaatttt?! - so the rest of the Tales of Terror will be posted on the weekend or next week. Hopefully everyone is gonna be too busy having holiday fun to be reading silly blogs anyway! Have a good one, everybody!!

Bamboo

Bamboo

from

The Intro: Mr. Pike confesses that this story a) didn't take long to write, b) is strange, c) he enjoys strange things, and d) strangest of all, his novel The Visitor, which he acknowledges as being universally unpopular, is on his Top 5 of all time list. The one with the grave-humping? Really? The grave-humping one is your favourite, sir?!? Um, ok... on with tonight's story, then!

Three children - Gary, Teri, and Mark - grow up as best friends. They're also very close to their neighbour, Mr. Shambu, a man from India. Mr. Shambu plants bamboo and tells the children stories in his spare time.

One story goes like this: Five thousand years ago a guy was born into India's highest and most religious caste. But this was no normal guy. He was a demon. (Or "demond", as my boss says.) As a youth, he killed a bunch of animals and stuff. When he was 16, his parents got him a wife, who he also murdered.

Guy went to trial, but not before going into some kind of demond-anger-rage and killing both his parents. One of his sisters helped him escape and hide in the woods, but his other sisters turned him in when they found out.

He was beheaded and his soul was to walk the earth forever. Except his loyal sister found a way to put his soul into bamboo shoots, which popped and released his soul.

So, later in life, Mark falls in love with Teri. But - you guessed it! - she's dating Gary. Teri and Gary get married after high school, and Gary joins the marines. He dies in an explosion on his first mission.

At Gary's funeral, Teri tells Mark that she is four months pregnant, and that she never had a chance to tell Gary. She doesn't feel like she's able to be a mother. Mark tries to convince her that things will be ok, but that night Teri overdoses on pills and goes into a coma.

Mark goes back to university for 2 years, while Teri is still comatose in the hospital. After his graduation, he visits Teri and removes her breathing tube. After she dies, Mark goes to the field where Teri had overdosed and sets the place on fire. All the bamboo in the area pops and Mark feels relieved that Teri and Gary will be free.


Yeah, so that's, uh, a story. I didn't dig it too much, but props for having an actual Indian guy tell India stories. Up next: a school shooting goes all DB Cooper on us; a cult of witches wreak havoc; and home invasions, abortion, and torture collide.

The Tomb of Time

The Tomb of Time

from

Yes, the skeletons are reading Fall into Darkness and Scavenger Hunt. You know what I would have liked even more? If the skeletons were leaning against the MIKE gravestone from the Bury Me Deep cover. Eh?

Mr. Pike provided a short introduction to each story. Before The Tomb of Time, he writes that he loves end-of-the-world stories and thinking about what would happen if our world ended. As far as he can see it, there are advantages to the world ending. For starters, no deadlines, and no need to write these stinkin' introductions. Ha! Niiiiiice.

Now, about this story... recipes are popular. Wanna recipe?

The Tomb of Time

Ingredients:
- 3 condensed gender-reversed chapters of The Star Group
- dash each of The Immortal, The Midnight Club, and The Visitor
- ½ The Eternal Enemy, blended with outer space

Combine and serve.

And here's how it turns out:

Girl (Shannon) lusts after guy (Joel) who doesn't know she's alive. Girl feels oddly connected to the past, even believing that she would have felt "more at home in ancient Greece or Egypt". Yeah, that has nothing to do with anything. But it's in there!

It's graduation day, Shannon's last chance to tell Joel how she feels. While walking to school, Joel's aunt Betty stops Shannon in the street. Betty has exactly one minute to tell Shannon that Joel talks about her all the time.

Shannon continues on to school, only briefly interrupted by a minor earthquake. At her locker, she sees Joel kissing some blond-haired strumpet. The skank writes something in Joel's notebook, then leaves. And there's another wee little earthquake.

In class, Shannon finishes her chemistry exam, and then thinks about the girl she saw with Joel. She looked familiar, like someone Shannon knew in the past. Well. How about that. Are you surprised???

At lunch, the soon-to-be grads have a water balloon fight. Joel hits Shannon with a balloon, telling her, "You made such an appealing target." Shannon replies: "I'm not that fat." Ok, hold up. Wrong answer, wrong sentiment, wrong conversation. I love how, like, fatties are the only good water balloon targets. The fact that this story takes place at Sweet Valley High should have been advertised better.

The two kids sign each other's yearbooks. Shannon writes a rather forward message that Joel is sure to make lasting contributions in the field of science (Hawt!) and that he should call her sometime. Joel writes "Best Wishes (Nawt hawt).

Shannon is a goody-goody and actually goes to gym class. She changes and everything! It's the last day of school, Shan. Don't be lame. On the field, she practices some zen archery (oh, Pike!), and meets a little girl, Joel's niece. She's got one minute to make sure that Shannon knows Joel talks about her ALL THE TIME. Aaaandd then... there's another earthquake.

Suddenly, an arrows shoots from parts unknown and pierces the little girl through the chest.

Shannon runs to find help, and spots Joel. She tells him that his niece is dying on the archery field. Joel doesn't have a niece, or an aunt Betty, but he comes back to the field anyway. The girl's body and blood are gone from the grass. Joel's response: "You have a nice life, Shannon." Awkward. Oh my God, he thinks she's totally cracked! So much for calling her this summer.

After her sanity was questioned, Shannon goes home and naps. Yeah, there mighta been a dream. Whatevs. She wakes up to "the business end of a shotgun" being held by the mysterious kissing blond. Shannon looks closely at the girl... she has Shannon's face! But with better hair!

The girls says: "I'm the third you that you met today." The aunt and niece were really other versions of Shannon who harnessed the power of the earthquakes to travel from 55 million years in the future to make sure Shannon and Joel got together. They need to eventually marry, as Shannon's future wifely encouragement will cause Joel to invent some hyperspace thing that will stop the world from ending.

But this blond fake Shannon is from a race of negatives who want the world suffer and are gonna kill Shannon and Joel. Shannon's reaction: "This is confusing... Why do you bother telling me all this?" I hear you, sister.

The girl tries to shoot Shannon, but the gun backfires and blows her own hand off. Shannon strikes with a fireplace poker and kills her. An exact twin of Shannon appears and tells her to be nice to Joel.

The phone rings and Shannon and Joel have a very confusing and hostile conversation, because this event is being erased from their minds as they speak. They hang up, and Joel calls straight back, wanting to know if they'd made plans or something, because he was gonna call her but he can't remember now if he did or not. And they decide to go for ice cream! Awwwww!!!

Pre-Tales of Terror #2

Joys and evils to savor.

The Weird and the Wonderful.

1998, 207 pages


Some advice I got from a friend during the golden age of compact discs: Play a CD on random to see how good it REALLY is, without the corporately orchestrated song order manipulating your brain. I do the same thing with short story collections.

I started #2 Tales of Terror on the second story, but not before flipping the pages and noticing that Mr. Pike himself wrote a short introduction to each story! OMG - his own words! Not storytelling, or his about the author paragraph, but REAL thoughts and opinions and information!

Each story is like an unholy remix of several previous plots all crammed into 40 pages. It's as "Yikes!" as it sounds. I want to analyze it all properly, so every day this week check in for a post about a different Tale of Terror from this collection.

I hope you're totally in the mood to savor some evil, and to read some totally unexpected personal info about our beloved author. See you later today for the first story, The Tomb of Time.

The Midnight Club

Their stories became their lives...

They were all going to die.

The Midnight Club - Christopher Pike
1994, 211 pages

Midnight Club Members & Corresponding Catchphrases

Ilonka - "It's not a tumour!"

Kevin - "I'm boring, so I don't get one!"

Anya - "It's not the cancer, I'm always a bitch."

Spence - "You think you know me. You have no idea."

Sandra - "See ya, wouldn't wanna BE YA!!"

At Rotterham Home, a hospice for terminally ill teens, some residents formed a club to meet at midnight in the library to tell stories. Kind of like The Midnight Society, but with morphine.

All of the residents are literally in their death beds and are no longer being treated for their illnesses, only pain management is allowed per Rotterham's policy. Ilonka has a bunch of tumours, and is totally in love with Kevin. Ilonka's roomie, Anya, has bone cancer and has already lost a leg to it.

I found all this seriously depressing. Like, pain, and tiredness, and more pain, and dying, and - oh - shitty stories. I don't want to hear a bunch of amateurs tell stories. I never want that. Most people are not natural raconteurs. As for the rest of the club, there's Spence - he's got "brain cancer" and a shocking secret! (it's not actually brain cancer!!) - and Sandra, one who doesn't seem all that sick.

Kevin's other trait (yeah, one of his traits is being Ilonka's crush - he doesn't really have a lot going for him personality-wise) is that he's an artiste. And excuse me for getting angry, but he's the same motherfucking artist as Jerry in The Visitor. Like drawing a skeleton in a spaceship in the desert and shit like that. I'm not impressed, but Ilonka loves it: "Her heart skipped so high it almost crashlanded." But she doesn't know why she loves Kevin, just that "it had to do with the past. The ancient past." Someone's gonna need to hold my hair if this thing takes a turn for the ancient-Egyptian-Indian-Master-on-a-spaceship-ier.

So, yeah, they all meet nightly for storytime, but first there's a ritual to be completed: hugging each member tightly and saying "I belong to you." Maybe I'm getting cynical, but I don't like that. And then it's storytime:

Spence regales with a tale of Eddie, a Vietnam vet who kidnaps his ex-wife to the top of the Eiffel tower and starts shooting people with a sniper rifle, only to find that his ex had a kid after they broke up! He's a father. Woo hoo! Celebratory shooting ensues, and when the police arrive, he blames it on his ex-wife, who is shot and killed by the police. And Eddie is free to meet his kid. Great ending, top notch.

Anya tells a story about Dana, a teenager undergoing a strict upbringing from her parents. She meets the devil, who agrees to clone her, so one of them can go have sex with strangers, do hard drugs, litter, and do whatever else the morally loose tend to do, while the other one stays at home and gets good grades. The devil's only stipulation is that Dana has to stay cloned for a minimum one year term.

Dana II goes to Los Angeles and meets a handsome stranger. And you know what? Dana One can feel everything that Dana II does. Yeah, I'm talking sex. Orgasms while watching Wheel of Fortune with her parents. Kinda like: "I'd like to buy a vowel. Can I get an O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!!!"

Dana II becomes a cokehead, so it's just like Dana One is high or jonesin' ALL THE TIME. She goes to find her double, and when they meet they both pull guns on each other. One is killed and the other is crippled in the shooting. The devil pops up to tell the surviving Dana to kill herself. The end. The Midnight Club members protest the ending, but this little story was the only bit of the book that I truly liked.

Ilonka chooses to tell a story from one of her past lives. Kevin wants to know if any of the people present are in her past life. She lies and says no. Her story takes place in Egypt, 20650 years ago. Jeez, that's so precise, it just has to be true! Aaaaaannnd... I'm sparing you from the rest of it. Just trust me on this. There's a Master. I hate shit with Masters. Anyways, the main characters represent Ilonka and Kevin, cuz that's what things do in this book.

Kevin's got a story to top all stories. It's practically neverending. An angel named Hermes lives in the Louvre, painting copies of the masterpiece artworks all day. And he can never leave the Louvre. EVER! Then he meets a beautiful, young American tourist, Teresa. Hermes makes a deal with God to be able to leave the museum in order to take Teresa for a date, but he's gonna have to become human and lose all of his angelic advantages.

Before finishing the story, Kevin runs outta gas. He saves the end for another night, but really, guys, when you could all die at any minute, why risk it? Just finish the freakin' story. Cut some shit out if you have to.

Anya asks if there is life after death. The first person in the group to die should give a sign to the rest. I think they do a blood oath or something. Ilonka enjoys the "pagan flavor."

The next day, Ilonka has a tumour scan at the hospital. As you know, that is against Rotterham policy. You are only allowed to die. You are not allowed to try to fix your problem anymore. She thinks herbs have shrunk her tumours. When she comes back, she finds Kevin's girlfriend Kathy waiting to visit him. Ilonka rips into her, telling her that Kevin's gonna die - SOON! And it hurts him to have to pretend to be OK for Kathy. So... hit the bricks and don't come back to Rotterham again. You know, for Kevin's sake. Nothing to do with Ilonka's own monster crush on him or anything. Whoa, evil.

So, the other storyline that coulda been interesting was that Anya once sculpted a statue of herself and her boyfriend Bill, together. He caught her sleeping with another guy and smashed the statue, breaking off Anya's right leg. Shortly after, Anya was diagnosed with bone cancer and needed her right leg amputated. Spooooky.

Ilonka naps and dreams about the Rishi from Remember Me.

She wakes up in time for the Midnight Club meeting. Spence opens the meeting with a story of a vengeful teenage magician who burns down his school gym during a basketball game. His assistant puns that the gym was filled with "one thousand die-hard fans." Ha. But that's not my favourite "burning gym" play on words. The gym in my hometown burned down a while ago and my brother came up with, "They worked out until they felt the burn." It's funny because no one was hurt. And because I have a comically bad sense of humour. And no sense of when to stay on topic. Actually, I was seriously morbid from reading about these young, cold, weak, sick, dying kids. I needed to cheer myself up with wordplay.

Tonight the meeting is a little different. Someone brought booze. I like it. Ilonka tells an ancient India story this time. Yeah, this crap was jam-packed with symbolism (I'm guessing... I'm a dirty, rotten skimmer). Kevin continues his story of Herme, the recovering angel. Anya asks him to finish it, but he's too tired to make it to the end.

The next morning, Ilonka finds Anya dead in her bed. Traumatizing! Not to mention that there's a rumour going around: someone's not terminal! And Ilonka just had new scans! She's pretty much celebrating until she sees Sandra packing a suitcase. No one at Rotterham has ever re-packed their shit before. Turns out that Sandra's Hodgkin's disease was misdiagnosed as a worse type than what she really had. And Ilonka still only has 2 weeks to live. Two weeks! Suck it, Dawn Rochelle!

Ilonka is so stressed that the doctor gives her a shot. She dreams about Master. God, Pike, quit name-dropping Master all the mofo time. Just say that she had a dream about a certain young adult author with a massive ego who isn't R.L. Stine.

When she wakes up, Kevin is with her. He also dreamt about Master and now he welcomes death. Ilonka asks to hear the rest of Kevin's angel story, because Anya didn't get the chance. Herme and Teresa moved to New York, but Herme really lost his awesomeness once he became mortal. He finds out Teresa is cheating on him, so he quits painting and becomes a taxi driver. Then he moves to Colorado (??) and becomes a park ranger (???) and falls in love with another park ranger (<3) and gets paralyzed during a forest fire :( and dumps his girlfriend :(:(:( and goes to med school (???) and becomes a doctor in a free clinic in Los Angeles (?!) where he meets his old love, Teresa (!!!!!!!!!!!!!1) who is some kind of crackhead now (!) and she has AIDS :( but he paints a picture of how beautiful she was in her youth, and she realizes that her doctor is Herme, and then she dies. At some point, I needed to quit saying: "What the hell, Colorado?" and just go with it.

Ilonka is in tears after the story, and wants to sleep with Kevin. Unfortch, he's too weak from his cancer to do anything, so they just sleep naked in each other's arms. In the morning, he says he loves her, then dies.

After Kevin's death, Ilonka visits Spence. She wants to know what was up with the booze at the meeting the night Anya died. Was it drugged or what? Spence confesses that he actually has AIDS, and had infected his partner, who died painfully from it. In order to redeem himself for causing his partner to die that way, he agreed to help Anya die with dignity. He drugged Ilonka, then smothered Anya in the bed next to her.

Ilonka tells Spence about a dream she had where Kevin offered himself to God to share any punishment Ilonka was going to have to suffer. But it was all about witchcraft and symbols and junk. You know how it is. She tells Spence that if he is punished in the afterlife, she will be with him and share the punishment, just like Kevin will do for her.

Shortly after, Spence slips into a coma and dies. Ilonka invites Anya's ex-boyfriend, Bill to Rotterham. She gives him the broken statue, but wait! It's not broken anymore. Love conquers all. Love fixes shit. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. Yada yada.

Lastly, Ilonka dies. Then there's the obligatory epilogue, which takes place on the Space Beagle III. Yeah, you know what I'm thinking. Space travelers "Eisokna" and "Karlen" are done monitoring the situation on Earth and are ready to go wherever they're going. "Yes. I'm ready to leave."

So, how glad am I to put this depressing pile on the "read" list? Um, very. This book managed to combine every single thing that I hate about Christopher Pike books into one book, and make it into a really long, morbid, depressing, soul-sucking heap. My Christmas wish is for friggin' spaceships to be delivered to the plot device landfill and never seen again. But we know better than that, right?

And tomorrow (or Monday - being a recovering slacker ain't easy), I'll have the totally random offering of Tales of Terror #2.

The Grave

Eternal life, eternal death.

The grave is not the end of the story.

The Grave - Christopher Pike

1999, 194 pages

This thing is a disaster/failure/nightmare of the epically highest order. I don't even know how this book, The Grave, was allowed to happen. It's like: you read it, and you think you're down with it even though it sucks, and then there's a major whammy and you're all: "WT...F?"

The book opens with 19 year old knob Ted meeting and dating Dara, who has permed long hair "the color of simmering corn on the cob, invisible steam rising through blond curls". How - who... I mean, whaaaa?? Only page two, and this prose is pukeworthy ALREADY. How'm I to cope?

After three dates, you know what it's time for... yeah, not that. I wish. Actually, three dates means a midnight hike to a "burial ground". What Ted doesn't know is that he's gonna be the one initiatin' this here burial ground. A gang of creeps attacks Ted, cutting his clothes with knives and ripping them off: "Tearing was followed by atrocity - his pants and underwear were pulled down...". Ted's junk is atrocious? OMG, I love it!

Ted is covered in pig's blood, buried in a sealed coffin, and left to die.

Next we meet Keri, who works in a CD/DVD shop, where she meets Oscar. I'm just gonna tell you now that Oscar is the new incarnation of Ted, so you won't be surprised later.

Their meetings at the shop included such conversation gems as:

Keri: "You're different from most of the guys who come in here."

Oscar: "I'm grave?"

Yeah, Oscar, you're grave. And from beyond the grave. I get it. *gags*

Keri already has a boyfriend, Clay, but it doesn't really work out with them. She wasn't that into him, actually. I only bring him up because he went to a movie one night while Keri was working. It was called Kill the Cop and starred rap star Chrome Shoes. Friggin' Chrome Shoes! Man, what were you smokin', Pike? I know it was 1999 and you couldn't keep mentioning David Bowie, but there's no need - there's NEVER a need - to call your "rap star" Chrome muthafuckin' Shoes.

So, Keri and Oscar go on a date. The destination: his place. That was fast. He's an artist, and he's totally colour-blind. He can only see black and white. He owns a boat, so he and Keri go sailing. After he "raises his mast" (you know what I mean), we're told that Oscar isn't human: "No, Keri Weir did not understand that she'd just made love to death itself."

After this, Keri experiences menstrual symptoms, but it's not near her special lady time. There's a cold ache in her gut. She doesn't have much time to worry about it, because later that day she is grabbed, drugged with a chloroform rag, and stuffed into the back of a car.

Since Keri was getting ready to meet Oscar for a date when she was grabbed, she's understandably not wearing any underwear. Go, Keri. Hawt and classy. Her captor pulls down her pants - OMG - more atrocity?! Nah, Keri doesn't have issues with her biz, and the guy is just injecting her booty with some kind of serum.

The guy puts Keri into a grocer's freezer. It's not just for toaster strudels anymore! She realizes she's going to die. This freezer will be her grave, but... the grave is not the end of the story.

Keri dies, then wakes up. She finds that she is super strong, ripping the door off the freezer. The grocery store is closed, so she helps herself to, like, 9 rotisserie chickens and some other assorted snacks.

Outside the shop, a gang of hoods give her trouble. The leader gropes her chest, so Keri knees him in the groin. However, a superstrong knee to the groin shatters bone(r)s and ruptures organs. The guy bleeds out on the ground while his pals run off. Except for one, who Keri catches. She gets in his face and tells him to stop being a jackoff and to grow up to be a doctor... she'll be watching!

In addition to being strong as hell, Keri can't cry, can't see colour, and can't "know true unconsciousness". Eternal safety from comas!

Keri remembers where she'd seen Oscar before - in the newspaper, as dead boy Ted. She goes to his place, where he's waiting with Dr. Gary Schelling to explain why they kidnapped her and left her to die with the Carvel ice cream treats and rising crust pizza.

This whole dying-then-not-being-dead-anymore thing came about when Dr. Schelling, a geneticist, discovered a way to manipulate the human genome so people can live forever. Inject his discovery into someone, kill them, and they'll be on their way back just moments later, ready to live forever unless they are incinerated. Even if decapitated, a new head and brain will regenerate, but the brain cells will be different. Maybe even evil...

The purpose of the experiment was to save his daughter, Dara, who was dying of leukemia. After her dose, she changed. She was evil. She dosed and killed her brother, Eric, who became evil too, and started an army of "two dozen fiends."

Oscar's post-death abilities include having a super smeller. When he met Keri, he knew she was fertile. He had impregnated her on the boat. Hiz jizz iz awesome, so there's no way it wouldn't find what it was looking for.

Keri's metabolism is crazy-rapid now, which is why she needs to eat 24/7. Dr. Schelling tells her that her pregnancy will be only 9 days long.

"What followed next was like a scene from a bad movie." I love how Christopher Pike himself sometimes had to acknowledge that what he was writing was, like, cheesy as hell. Oscar, Schelling, and Keri are hanging out when the door knocks. OMG - is it fiends? The guys grab some semis from the hall closet, just as Dara and her fiend goons bust in with their own guns.

Oscar, Keri, and the Doc escape to Oscar's boat, but there's trouble in the air. Evil Eric is in a helicopter shooting at them. Can you just picture this? Dara captures Oscar and Keri and takes them to a cave in the desert, where they are to be held until Keri gives birth. Dara wants the baby. She calls it The Dark One.

The baby arrives and proud parents Oscar and Keri decide to name him John, after both of their fathers. In just 20 days, he is full grown and "built like a god". Dara still hasn't let them leave the cave, but does provide John with learning materials. He even uses the internet to learn stuff. When John asks for seeds, Dara brings them. John can make plants and fruit grow in the dark cave just by talking to the seeds.

One day, there's a ruckus at the back of the cave. Dr. Schelling and the government have finally come to save them! They bomb the cave and Keri burns to real death.

In the epilogue, Oscar speculates that John is an incarnation of Pan, king of the fairies, sent by God to save the rainforest.

"Humanity has polluted every corner of the globe. Maybe John will be able to fix the damage."

After all the shit this book put me through... it's about the environment?!? I hate the environment. I do. It's everywhere, and it's always annoying me. Ohhhhh, the disappointment. It hurrrrttts!!! I don't know if I can go on reading these treacherous late '90s titles. My verdict: Pike should have quit life after The Midnight Club. Which probably isn't even as good as I remember it. Let's find out next week!

Spooksville Marathon: Part 1

Spooksville #13 - Creature in the Teacher

"Their teacher was not normal."

"Adam never imagined his first day of school would be so bad."

So, a down-on-his-luck alien tries to find a home on Earth for his race of alien people whose home planet has been destroyed, but the Spooksville gang is all: "Nuh uh, we don't think so", because these aliens, like, eat hamsters and disguise themselves as schoolteachers, and the alien teacher kidnapped the class wimp and took him to outer space.

After transporting the brave kids onto the alien spaceship to rescue Wimpy, they land in Africa, and then use a time travel thing to send the aliens back in time to live on Earth in dinosaur times, on the condition that they don't change anything and find somewhere else in live within ten thousand years.

The end.

Spooksville #17 - The Thing in the Closet

"It was real. It was scary. It was not nice."

"Most kids are afraid there might be a monster in their closet."

So, by being afraid of her closet, Cindy opened a fear portal into a land called Centrae. An elf boy helps her find her way while she waits for her friends to rescue her. The others show up in time to help Cindy and elf boy sort out some turmoil involving evil beings who can only be defeated by being laughed at, then they all go home.

The end.

Spooksville #23 - Phone Fear

"The evil was in the phone lines."

"The gang did not understand who or what was calling."

So, Bryce, this candyass kid with a cell phone, starts getting crazy calls telling him to do stuff that he's obvs not gonna do, like burn down his mail carrier's house. The caller is named Nernit. Watch leaps to the conclusion that it's actually spelled "Neernitt" and it's the Internet calling. OMG - the internet is after us! I guess after everything else I've accepted from Pike, I can't start nitpicking now.

Neernitt has an army of followers who hold Watch, Bryce, and their friends captive until they agree to build Neernitt a body. Being the internet is cool and all, but moving around is apparently better.

Watch - I dunno - makes a body out of a robot friend he had who died in an earlier book, and then rigs it to trap Neernitt inside it once he puts his - I dunno - mental prowess into the body.

More to come...

The Star Group

To be human and to be touched by the stars.

They thought they were normal. They thought wrong.

The Star Group - Christopher Pike
1997, 182 pages

This book is easily the worst yet. The best thing about this book? It didn't crack the 200 page mark!! It wasn't loathsome, it was just boring and didn't even try to explain itself or make any sense.

The back of the book description says: "There are seven of them, three guys and four girls. Driven to return to a lonely spot where tragedy struck before". Then it goes on to mention alien contact, and I was like: "Chain Letter meets The Visitor? This could be... good?? Bad? Neutral? Or really fffreaking terrible. With a triple F. I never know with stuff published after '95."

Oh, and: there's only 6 characters. One must have gotten written out, which is probably the best thing that has happened to my life in weeks. Unless I miscounted. Or fell asleep. Or died, then my neighbour/brother/cat/boyfriend/goldfish gave up their life force so I could come back and finish reading the book. Why, oh, why couldn't they have just let me stay dead?!?

Does it always have to be aliens, by the way? Can't it ever just be lizard people? Wait a tick... maybe it can be both! Check it out -> -> ->

Meet The Star Group
Daniel - has crush on Gale
Gale - hot chick
Sal - black guy, Teri's boyfriend
Teri - valedictorian/entrepreneur
Jimmy - guy, Shena's boyfriend
Shena - her face was mangled in a car battery acid accident

Imagine forty pages of surfing and suicide threats. I'm gonna skip all that. The interesting points:

1) surfing can be dangerous,
2) it's unusual for black guys to surf,
3) Shena's face is messed up and people at school call her "Toast,
4) kids can be cruel,
5) Dan is into "esoteric literature" and always refers to it as such,
6) Dan is a pompous fucker.

Dan has had a crush on Gale for four years, and now that it's graduation night, it's his last chance to ask her out. He approaches her as she sits on a picnic table outside school wearing Peter Nichols from Remember Me's death outfit: baggy white shorts and a red t-shirt. Christopher Pike = the opposite of Ann M. Martin (and her infinite ghostwriter army). He ALWAYS uses the same goddamn outfits. He has never described a pattern printed on a garment. Sometimes I think that's what these books need: more paisley.

Gale agrees to go to the Safe Grad (except that's not what they call it - is there a special name for it in the US?) event at Disneyland with Dan. Yay! Dan celebrates by visiting his favourite used book store to browse the New Age/Occult section. I wish he woulda bought a copy of that Sylvia Browne book about where animals go when they die. That would have changed the rest of this book, fo' sho'.

But he didn't. He bought "The Magnetic Reality" and learned how to use a magnet to communicate with... E.T.!! He gets a message from "Mentor", an alien thing that "is Dan and is not Dan." It lives 642 light years away in Ortee. It is Dan's soul. Dan and his pals are all from space and need to be awakened to their purpose. Get me outta here.

Dan takes the news pretty well and goes to Disneyland with his friends. Shena has a breakdown when her boyfriend, Jimmy, flirts with another girl. She tries to commit suicide on the Matterhorn. It wasn't as exciting as it sounds.

After the park closes, Dan goes to Gale's house. She's got incense and is into meditation. Dan's especially interested in that because he reads "a lot of esoteric literature". What a bunch of phonies these kids are. I wish this book had a bully. Just pop into the scene and give Dan a wedgie.

But wait! Now it gets explicit. Even - raunchy? I'm suddenly wayyyy more into this! Dan and Gale get jiggy in the hot tub. Nudity! Touching!! SEX!!! Daniel admits it was his first time. Gale says she's slept with someone from school, but won't say who.

The next afternoon, Dan is home alone. He contacts Mentor, who instructs him to set up a tape recorder and relax. Dan channels Mentor. Mentor speaks through Dan's voice as Dan goes into a trance.

He listens to the tape and it's the exact same crap as the Ouija board said in The Visitor. Right down to the different density beings. Dan's made a sacrifice and given up his outer space self to live in a human body on Earth. But this is the first he's heard of it, so it's not that bad. Evolution. Reincarnation. Dan's friends - "They, too, are spacemen."

Oh, good. Gale shows up. Mo' sexxxin'. Dan does his thang (first asking, "Are we using any form of birth control here?" How responsible.), then goes to sleep. He wakes up to find Gale listening to the Mentor tape. The Mentor had instructed the 6 (I was right!) of them to gather in an isolated location. The power when they all get together and learn their mission will be apparently extraordinary.

So, Shena rents a cabin in the woods at Crystal Lake. Christ, that's where Jason Voorhees killed everyone! Well, we know Dan and Gale aren't going to make it. Skaaaaanks!

The gang gathers on the porch to talk. Sal brought a gun. You can take the black male character out of the ghetto... but apparently Pike wants to leave him there. Dan brought copper sheets and gemstones, per Mentor's orders. They start talking, the way friends do, about outer space and the sky. It's so nice and quiet. Until *GASP* - sorry, false alarm. Nothing exciting. Just Jimmy going off on a tangent about how NASA is bullshit, science sucks, space exploration benefits no one, and galaxy pictures have "no relevance to daily life". And the moon landing was faked. Ok, he didn't take it that far. I wish! Maybe next outburst. This book needs more conspiracy theorists. And bullies. And paisley. Maybe a few Cosby sweaters. I'm gonna have a whole wishlist to send to Mr. Pike!

Dan segues into talking about Mentor and, oddly, his buddies don't heckle him. He sets up the gemstones and channels Mentor for everyone to hear. He talks about God, the periodic table of elements (again, this is supposed to thrill teens?), yantra, akasha (don't ask), and the seven centres of the body. Spine, groin, gut, heart, throat, forehead, crown. Dan's mind E X P A N D S !

The next day, no one clearly remembers what had happened. Dan checks in with his friends. Sal seems to have superhuman strength. Jimmy can somehow see a bag of gold buried 3 feet underground one mile away.

The girls don't seem to have any special symptoms... but wait! Gale fell and cut herself. Teri gives her a head massage and her cuts heal instantly. Shena begs Teri to try to heal her face, but it doesn't work.

They contact Mentor. Jimmy wants to know if he can keep the gold he found. Sal wants to use his strength to play football. Mentor can only guide. He can't control what they do. Dan envisions 6... I dunno - things which represent all of them. But one is different: vaguely reptilian. Suuuuure. Now you bring the lizards into it! There's only 30 pages left. God, I only ask for one thing, Pike: lizard aliens and you do it half-assed! And Mentor WON'T fix Shena's face. Now is not the time. Shena freaks out in anger and runs away.

Dan searches the woods for 3 hours before stopping to drink from a tranquil woodland stream. The water is red. He notices that Jimmy is facedown in the water with his head bashed in. Dan runs back to the cabin, meeting Gale on the way. There are so many suspects. Angry Shena, Super-strength Sal, Dan himself unknowingly being controlled by Mentor. Or, like, anyone else for any reason that could possibly materialize in this plot.

Shena still hasn't shown up back at the cabin, so Sal gets his gun and heads a search party to find her. Everyone pretty much thinks she attacked and killed Jimmy. They find her in a cave and Sal shoots her in the side. He says that she made a lizard tongue of flames try to burn him. Ok, guys, I think it's time to take the gun AWAY from Sal. The kids carry Shena out of the woods and take her to the hospital.

At the hospital a bunch o' stuff (finally!!!) happens. Sal tries to run from cops and gets shot and killed. Teri uses all of her healing life force to bring Shena back from her terminal life-support gunshot wound condition... and dies. Holy crap, it's a mass massacre (of characters that were, like, barely necessary to the story).

Later, Dan is typing the whole story of the Star Group and Mentor to send to Shena via modem. Gale shows up and takes control of Dan's free will. She forces him to keep typing. Dan compares Gale to a snake. Gale says that she mangled Shena's face on purpose so she would look scaly and Dan would suspect her of being the evil reptile and not Gale.

And you remember how Gale wasn't a virgin? Turns out she's slept with EVERYONE. Sal! Jimmy!! Shena!!! She blackmailed them all into keeping quiet.

Gale wants Dan to shoot himself. He is compelled to shoot his right thigh. Now Gale tells him he can: A) Kill himself, or B) Become evil with Gale for the next billion years and kill Shena at the first opportunity. Dan sends his story off to Shena, then shoots himself in the mouth.

The epilogue is Shena at the fivefold funeral. Everyone is dead now. She is the only survivor. Her face is back to perfection from Teri's healforce. She has Dan's story on her computer and has kept it secret. No one needs to know what happened because she, Shena, was the real mastermind who set all this shit up to stop Gale, and just figured that her friends wouldn't mind being sacrificed for the cause. Or something.


So, that's The Star Group. Back next week with Final Friends: The Party.

The Immortal

The Goddess wanted a human body....

The ancient artifact was cursed.

The Immortal - Christopher Pike
1993, 213 pages


The Immortal: It's a book, and, like, stuff happens. I stopped taking notes halfway through because I was too busy watching election results and being depressed. So, this recap could be kinda iffy. I apologize in advance.

GODS:
Sryope - awesome storyteller, daughter of a muse
Phthia - father unknown

MORTALS:
Josie - almost died a year ago from some kind of cardiac condition
Helen - almost died a year ago from a suicide attempt
Tom - Oxford student who chills in Greece during his vacations
Pascal - French guy, Tom's buddy
Josie's Dad - washed-up Hollywood screenwriter
Silk - Josie's dad's girlfriend, booze-aholic

Back in the time of Greek gods there were two friends, Sryope and Phthia. Sryope liked this guy, and so did Phthia. Phthia made the guy swear a pledge to be faithful only to her. I don't remember the details, but basically she started screwing everyone and he was sad and lonely. So Sryope challenged Phthia to a storytelling competition. If Phthia lost, she would release the guy from his oath, so he and Sryope could hook up.

Sryope gathered a crowd and told a crazy story about a Fury disguising itself as a dude and knocking up a goddess. This hits a sore spot with Phthia, since that's the story of her own parentage, and being half-Fury would REALLY be frowned upon. Phthia goes ballistic and runs off, losing by default. Sryope and dude are free to be together... or are they??

In the present, Josie is on a flight from L.A. to Athens, along with her dad, dad's lady friend "Silk", and Josie's BFF Helen. They're flying Swiss Air. I'm going to segue outta Pikeland for 2 seconds and tell ya that Swiss Air flight 111 actually CRASHED into the ocean near where I live. It was 10 years ago last month, which is crazy to believe, because it happened the night before my very first day of high school. I'm getting oooold.

Aaaannnd back to the story! Let's get the parallels out of the way. Helen used to have a boyfriend, Ralph. They kind of broke up, then Josie and Ralph dated. Scandalicious! Helen was weird about it for a while, but it's all good now that's Ralph's moved away. There's more to come on the boy front, btw. Also, Josie's a master storyteller. The only reason her dad's career isn't totally in the can is because she helps him with ideas. For example, right now he's working on this thing about the future, and humans, and aliens, and earth is destroyed and the spaceship captain's wife is leaving him, now he's gonna have a tender moment with an alien woman (named Vani, same as in The Tachyon Web), and blah blah I am so tired of this unnecessary crap every single book and I won't be speaking of it again.

So, they arrive in Athens and take another flight to the island of Mykonos. Helen met a guy, Tom, when she vacationed in Greece last year and can't wait to see him again. Tom works in a bar on the beach, which is convenient because Josie almost drowns and he saves her. To Helen's anger and chagrin, Tom and Josie bond. Josie wants Tom's bod and doesn't even care who gets hurt. Whoa. Drama.

The girls make a date with Tom and his friend Pascal. The four of them hang out until late. Pascal leaves first. Helen wants Josie to leave too, but Josie pretty much says that she's a California girl and she wants to bang Tom, so suck it, Helen because Josie isn't going anywhere.

Tom pays more attention to Josie than Helen, so Helen figures that since she can't out-interesting Josie, she's going to out-drink her. Helen orders many scotch and sodas, then PUKES all over the floor/Tom's sandals. Josie estimates the vomit volume at a half-gallon. That's a pretty precise Imperial measurement. I can't even look at puke long enough to assess the amount, so good on Josie, I guess.

They carry Helen out of the bar, and Josie tries to kiss Tom. He responds by running away.

Josie and Helen make it back to the hotel and go to bed. Josie dreams about wearing a toga and being served as a goddess would be. She wakes up with no hangover and believes that her dream kept her from feeling the effects of her boozin'.

The plan for the day is to visit the nearby island of Delos. It's uninhabited and covered in ruins. Josie touches the pillars and feels an electric jolt. There's something special about the place. Helen had noticed it too, when she came here after her suicide attempt. "Things change when you almost die."

Back at the hotel, Helen naps, so Josie takes the opportunity to go see Tom. She wants to go out with him... alone. Then she realizes she's being "horribly bitchy" to Helen about the whole situation. Hello! Helen has a history with this guy, and yer bein' a ho, Jo.

When Helen wakes up, she says she'd like to call Tom and Pascal to go out again. Really? You friggin' chucked all over Tom's sandaled feet. I would avoid someone forever if I did that. For-ever... For-ever...

Josie tries to convince Helen that Pascal is interested in her, to make her back up offa Tom. This conversation has the potential to go really sour, but Helen changes the topic by insulting Josie's dad. Hey, whatever works to keep the friendship alive. And from what I've heard, he actually is "such a hack".

Josie naps before they go out. You know, there's a lot of sleeping in this book. Naps, full night sleeps, the works. The first couple sleep sequences were DREAMLESS. Then it took a turn for the severely lamer and now it's ALL DREAMS. How dare Pike fake me out with no dreams, then - suddenly - dreams!

This dream is about the origin of Apollo, and Josie is a goddess, and she's praying to other gods to get help for her human devotees. Whatevs.

So, the four of them go out again. Josie tells Helen that she spoke to Tom earlier and made plans to pretty much ditch Pascal and Helen together and go off alone. Helen screams that Ralph (remember, the old boyfriend they shared?) died of natural causes last year after he moved. She didn't tell Josie because she didn't deserve to know. These girls are the worst best friends ever!

Helen storms off, so Josie and Tom take a romantic row boat ride. Tom's rowing, and they're talking, and it's so nice... then shit gets real. The wind picks up and their oar floats away and Tom tries to swim after it and is carried out of sight. Josie, alone in the boat, tries to bail out water and, like, not die. She washes up on Delos, which is totally deserted at night. She climbs the embankment and sees the ruins in the moonlight. Except... they're not ruins. It's all brand new and there's people. What. Josie walks toward the archeologist's shed for shelter, but the people there think she's a goddess and want to serve her.

When Josie awakens, she finds the island in the same condition that it's always been: old and crumbly. Next to her, there's a small statue of a goddess. Josie feels connected to the statue and comes up with a plan to sneak it off the island and keep it.

She waits for the tour boats to come over, then goes back to Mykonos on one of the return trips. Her dad just happens to be on the beach talking to a police officer. There are boats everywhere searching for her. Tom is ok, and he's out looking for her with Helen and Pascal.

Turns out that while Tom frantically searched the seas for Josie's body, Pascal and Helen flirted and rubbed each other with lotion. Um, inappropriate much? BFF is presumed dead, and this is how Helen acts? While she's supposed to be looking for the body!?!? The good thing is Josie is alive and now she can have Tom all to herself!!

Josie and Tom celebrate their survival by going to a secluded nude beach. Josie gets naked right away, but Tom won't and actually runs away from her. God, what is up with this guy? Josie says something rottenly bitchy, like that she knows about him and Pascal being lovers. But apparently that's not it. Tom just doesn't want to do anything without condoms.

Josie shows Tom the statue she'd stolen from Delos, but she won't let him touch it. She thinks that if he touched it, he would die.

Back at the hotel, they have a "Josie Lives" celebratory BBQ. Silk and Helen make burgers and chicken and lamb and other foodstuffs. Afterwards, it's either night or naptime because Josie's all up in dreamland's grill... AGAIN. She dreams of the goddesses. Sryope is on trial for the murder of Phthia. B-b-but how? Phthia is a goddess, how could she ever be killed? She is immortal.

When Josie wakes up, she is in terrible pain. She goes for a walk, and calls Tom when she gets home. He's also ill. Josie rushes to his place to find him in awful shape. Pascal takes them both to the medical centre. While Tom is being examined, Josie collapses and resumes her dream:

Sryope is questioned about her friendship with Phthia, her relationship with the dude they both wanted, and her interference in the lives of humans. There are about 2000 modern day humans that she helps and inspires with their creative lives. The lawyer, or who/whatever is questioning her, brings out hidden camera footage of Sryope innocently helping Josie's dad with his screenwriting, helping Josie with school assignments, etc.

But then this trial shit gets real: the lawyer presents footage of Josie and Helen having a sleepover. Sryope comes in from the ceiling, reaches into Josie's chest and grabs her heart, drags her to the can, makes her empty a bunch of pill capsules into a cup of water, drags her back to Helen's side, and forces Josie to force Helen to drink it. This hardcore heart-grabbing is what caused Josie's medical troubles last summer.

And it gets worse. There are images of Helen in a hospital bed, gravely ill. While holding Phthia by a noose of thorns, Sryope descends from the ceiling, spits on Helen, which causes her monitors to all go crazy, then shoves Phthia into Helen's body. Phthia is now mortal!

Sryope knows she is innocent, and that the only type of being who could do this shapeshifting thing is a Fury, like Phthia's father. Who also carries a noose of thorns. Sryope can't prove her innocence, so she must be sentenced.

She is to be given the same fate she forced upon Phthia: to become mortal. She is pulled through space and time, and put into Josie's body, as she lies in the hospital.

Josie wakes up in the hospital. Helen is by her side. Josie asks Helen what she did, poison them or what? Helen says she ground up glass and added it to Josie's BBQ burgers. Josie and Tom's insides have been finely shredded and there's no way to repair it.

Phthia, as Helen, is still pissed that Sryope told that story about the goddess with a Fury for a father. She enlisted her Fury father to help her set up Sryope for revenge, now she needs to pay her father back by giving him what he wants: human flesh. She plans to sacrifice Pascal on Delos... tonight! Just like she sacrificed Ralph a year ago when she first became mortal!

Josie writes a letter to her dad, telling him how to end his screenplay and telling him that she's gonna die. She tells Tom what's going on, and even though he thinks it's hella farfetched, he leaves the hospital with her. They steal a boat and drive to Delos. Tom is really sick by the time they get there, but Josie is able to climb to where Helen and Pascal are.

Helen has a gun and has mesmerized Pascal into thinking the gun is her. Like, touch the gun, lick the gun, kiss the gun. I don't get this book sometimes. Josie distracts Helen with the flash from her camera, then shoots her 6 times in the chest. Gun shooting, not photography shooting. That wouldn't be effective in this situation at all.

Since Josie took the goddess statue from Delos, it's turned from stone into crystal. She cracks it open and it's full of fluid. Her blood. She gives it to Tom to drink, saving his life. Then Josie's body dies, with Sryope inside.


There's a bunch more stuff throughout the book about the gods, but it's way too detailed for me to mess with in this recap. I wasn't thrilled with this one. For an entirely different and much much more entertaining piece of fiction about the Greek gods and goddesses, check out Gods Behaving Badly by UK author Marie Phillips. That's all for now!!