Bumping Geese 14: The Werewolf of Fever Swamp

 What can I say about Goosebumps 14 'The Werewolf of Fever Swamp'?

I'm not actually sure that's a picture of the werewolf

No, really, what can I say about it?

I read this book last week and I've basically forgotten everything about it. Let's see... Um...

'The Werewolf of Fever Swamp' is about a family who moves into a new home in... Well, there are swamps, and it is probably in the USA, so I'm going say Florida. Somewhere in Florida. In the small town of... I'm going to call it Dark Falls. Not because that's the name of it, but because I think that's the name of the town in 'Welcome To Dead House' and all Goosebumps towns are basically the same.

Uh... Where was I?

Oh right.

So this family moves into a new home in a new town, this time in Florida, and the house is near some swamps. And they've moved here because the father is a scientist studying swamp deer. There are no swamp deer in Florida, but he has brought some from... I want to say Africa? From somewhere with swamp deer. I definitely remember swamp deer because I'd never heard of swamp deer and after I write this I'm going to Google whether or not swamp deer actually exist.

I won't be surprised if they do exist. They're probably not from Africa, though. But nature has turned out some weird stuff, and a swamp deer totally...

Hold on. This isn't about swamp deer. This is about Goosebumps. Let's get back to whatever this book was.

So this family has moved to Dark Falls, Florida, to study how swamp deer will manage being moved from Swampistan, Africa to the swamp in Dark Falls, Florida. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the swamp is called Fever Swamp. Yeah, that sounds right. Something about a local legend of settlers going crazy with a fever? Oh! And the main character gets a fever... and that sub plot doesn't really go anywhere...

But anyway, this family moves to Dark Falls, Florida with their swamp deer, into a house at the edge of Fever Swamp, and the main character is the son and youngest child of the family... whose name is... Well, I'm going to call him Gabe, which is the name of the kid from 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb'. On the first day moving to Dark Falls, Gabe and his sister Lindy (not her real name, and I need not remind you who Lindy is...) go exploring in Fever Swamp, get lost, run into a swamp hermit... Is there a swamp hermit? Pretty sure there is a swamp hermit. For some reason Gabe and Lindy get scared and run out of the swamp and are fine.

After a few days, Gabe makes some friends... Their names are... Kim and Jerry. And it would be cool if they were the Kim and Jerry from the last book and this book finally confirmed the Goosebumps extended universe, but they're not. Pretty sure that's not even their real names. But they could be.

Because I don't remember anything about this book.

And speaking of things I don't remember, I don't remember how many times Gabe and Lindy and Kim and Jerry go exploring in the swamps, but it's a few times and in a few different combinations of the characters, but it's definitely one of those Goosebumps books where scenes kind of repeat a few too many times. At least I think it is. I can't remember. But on one of these occasions, when I think it's Gabe and Kim and Jerry, they get chased by the swamp hermit and Gabe gets bitten by a snake and he's fine but he also gets swamp fever and that doesn't really go anywhere, like I said.

Um... What else...

Oh! So I googled it and it turns out swamp deer are a real thing. But they're not from Africa, they're from south Asia, around the Indian Subcontinent. So that's cool. They're big and floofy but it sounds like they're a threatened species, which sucks. And I don't know if this part is true, but in the book they have these, like, webbed hoofs to walk on swamps, which...

Oh shit. The book. We were talking about a book. The Goosebumps book. Uh... Let's see... Where were we...

Oh yeah! Y'all, there's a werewolf! There's a werewolf in this book! 

So Kim thinks the swamp hermit is the werewolf and the swamp hermit claims to be the werewolf while chasing them, but then says he was just joking to scare them. And Gabe keeps hearing howling at night, and dead animals keep turning up, and Kim insists there is a werewolf in the swamp but Jerry doesn't believe her.

Oh, and Gabe finds a big stray dog and adopts it, and I don't remember what name he gives the dog, so I'm just going to call it Red Herring. So Red Herring is a big friendly boofer of a dog but one night he goes a bit wild and knocks over some furniture while trying to escape the house. After that, when animals start showing up dead, including one of the swamp deer, Gabe's father decides Red Herring must be the killer. And could it be true? Red Herring seems awful intelligent and there are dog shaped paw prints near all the dead animals. Is the real werewolf the pets we adopted along the way?

No.

Obviously not.

So Gabe sends Red Herring away before Gabe's Dad can take Red Herring to the pound. And then one night Gabe goes sneaking out into the swamp for... reasons. I think he wants to prove Red Herring isn't the werewolf. Jerry also sneaks out for... reasons. And off they go together to find the werewolf. And I assume I must be remembering this wrong in some way because this is a terrible plan.

Anyway, it turns out Red Herring isn't the werewolf, but surprise! Jerry is the werewolf! And Jerry attacks Gabe! But Red Herring intervenes and saves Gabe! And the Jerrywolf is driven back! Or maybe killed! I don't remember! But the story ends!

After the attack, Gabe tries to explain all about what happened and how Jerry was secretly a Jerrywolf and Gabe's Dad goes to visit Jerry's house to find out what's up and it turns out the house is empty and nobody has lived there for years.

Oh, and Gabe becomes a werewolf. Yeah. He gets bitten by the Jerrywolf in the climax and so the big twist is that even though Jerry is now gone, Gabe is now the werewolf of Fever Swamp and likes to go hunting on the full moon with Red Herring.

And rather than a shocking horrible twist, it actually sounds like kind of a sweet deal to me. I don't know why the Jerrywolf attacked Gabe, but when Gabe is a Gabewolf he seems to be pretty much in control and just likes hunting with Red Herring and isn't out to hurt anybody. I can only assume Jerrywolf was just always a Jerkwolf.

Anyway, I don't remember much of this book but what I do remember, I remember liking. It's definitely one of the more generic Goosebumps books. All the characters and the premise and the locations feel a bit like a re-tread, and it doesn't do anything exciting with werewolves as a concept. But like with ghosts, I'm just always on board for a werewolf story. Werewolves are cool.

So, yeah. Even though it all kind of slipped through the cracks in my brain as soon as I started reading the next book, I can confidently say this one was fine and I enjoyed it.

Plus, it gives me an opportunity to talk about werewolves from a Marxist perspective. Usually when it comes to a Marxist analysis of the world, vampires are the go to monster metaphor. But I think it's worth looking at how the werewolf mythos gives us an all together different and unique take on...

Um...

A unique take on...

Wait.

What was I talking about?

Bumping Geese 13: Piano Lessons Can Be Murder

 Last time on bumping Geese...

"Well you know what I wish?  

I wish I had a better Goosebumps to read.

And somewhere, a monkey's paw curled its finger..."

I'm going to be honest, I really wanted to have some kind of pay-off to that setup, some kind of monkey's paw answer to my wish. But I don't. Did it come true? Yeah. But it was bound to happen eventually. There's a lot of books to go...

There is an unfathomable amount of books to go...

You have no idea how many books there are to go...

My God, there are so many Goosebumps books...

But is the sheer number of Goosebumps books I have to read the wish's down side? Nah. I already knew I'd be doing this until I or R.L Stine die. Sooo... Yeah... Kind of a failed joke.

Which, when talking about Goosebumps, is entirely appropriate!

The next book.
Presented without segue.

Goosebumps 13: 'Piano Lessons Can Be Murder' is a return to creative creepy shit for this series.

This book follow Jerry Hawkins who moves into a new house and discovers a piano left in the attic. But that night, he is awoken by the sound of sad piano music. Jerry investigates and follows the sound to the attic, right to the old piano, but when he reaches the attic, there's nobody in sight. It would seem the piano was playing itself.

Jerry's parents take his fascination with the self-playing piano as a sign that he would like to learn to play piano and Jerry is like "sure, why not." And in typical Goosebumps parents fashion, when Jerry mentions his concerns that this piano plays itself in the middle of the night, they ignore his concerns and rationalise his experiences as some kind of anxiety to do with moving house.

Jerry's parents hire Dr Shreek to be his piano teacher, and he's a friendly but odd sort of chap who is just a little too obsessed with the quality of Jerry's hands. But he's a decent teacher and Jerry enjoys learning piano, even if he wishes he could learn more interesting music and skip boring stuff like learning scales. Eventually, Dr Shreek invites Jerry to come practise at his private music school at the edge of town, rather than having lessons in his home. Jerry's parents are very proud and Jerry is like "sure, why not."

Meanwhile, weird stuff is still afoot. Jerry mentions to his neighbour and new friend Kim that he is being taught by Dr Shreek and Kim immediately runs away from Jerry and the conversation. Later he coaxes out of her the reason: stories that Dr Shreek's school is home to monsters, and that children who enter are never seen again. Spooky stuff, but not enough to scare Jerry. He has been to the school by now and knows the "monsters" are just the large automatic cleaning machines the school's janitor, Mr Toggle, has built. And Jerry has been to the school and obviously hasn't disappeared, so that can't be true.

Although there was that one time he was in Mr Toggle's workshop and walked by a large metal cabinet and heard somebody inside cry out for help. But Mr Toggle says it's just malfunctioning machinery and Jerry is like "Sure, why not."

After all, he has much bigger concerns. Like the piano in his home which keeps playing itself every night. And the discovery that the piano isn't playing itself but is actually being played by a ghost. And the ghost is angry and doesn't want anybody to go near the piano, and every time Jerry tries to play it, the ghost sabotages his performance. Jerry tries to tell his parents but they don't believe him, and he tries to tell Kim, and she thinks he's lying. After all, ghosts don't exist. Not like the monsters in Dr Shreek's school. Which are real. Monsters are real. But I guess ghosts don't count as monsters. Because they're not real.

Kim's world view is inconsistent and she needs to sort her shit out.

Anyway, after one-too-many run ins with the angry ghost at the piano - who, in one encounter, is revealed to have no hands - Jerry decides to quit playing piano and his parents tell him that's fine, but they've paid for one more lesson at the school and he needs to tell Dr Shreek, so he should go to one more lesson and Jerry is like "sure, why not." So he does. And after the lesson he tells Dr Shreek he's quitting, but Dr Shreek won't have it. He explains he needs Jerry's hands, so Jerry cannot leave. They get into a scuffle and a chase, and Jerry runs into an auditorium full of pianos, all being played by floating hands. Jerry calls for help and Mr Toggle arrives to aid him. Mr Toggle turns off Dr Shreek and explains that Shreek is also a machine of his creating. So, it happens, are the hands. You see, Mr Toggle, for all his genius, cannot make good hands to play piano, so he takes them from children and then turns them into automatic piano playing hands.

But he could make Dr Shreek's and the other instructor robots' hands and presumably they play the piano at least a bit as part of their lessons with the children before Mr Toggle does his kidnapping and murdering. But sure. Why not.

Anyway. Mr Toggle still plans to take Jerry's hands, but before he can, the piano ghost appears and summons all the ghosts of the handless children Mr Toggle has murdered and they attack him. The ghost tell Jerry to leave and never return and Jerry is like "sure, why not" and legs it. Never to return.

His parents sell the piano. Jerry gets a new hobby. Life returns to normal. And the twist is the most unique of twists in Goosebumps for some time. The twist is...

There is no twist.

And that's fine. This one doesn't need a twist. It's good enough as it is.

I like this book. It isn't great, but it has a lot going for it. In particular, it has ghosts. I always like ghost stories. It also has some creepy shit R.L Stine has made up and those are always the best kinds of Goosebumps books. When a Goosebumps twist, or a whole book, is built around a well trodden trope or idea, R.L Stine rarely brings something new to the table. And that's understandable. His target audience probably hasn't read 'The Monkey's Paw' or 'Third From The Sun' or seen their adaptations, so why bother spicing them up? Big snobby literary nerds like me aren't who these books are for. But since I am reading them and since I am a big snobby literary nerd and since I do recognise these ideas, they read as a little lazy.

But when R.L Stine does put in the effort, or when the horror is very much his own creation, not only are they often fresh and unique ideas for horror, they're effective. They're exciting. They're scary. And Mr Toggle, with all his horrific tinkering and child-murdering, is unsettling. It's R.L Stine doing what he does best. That's not to say this is 'Stay Out of The Basement' quality, just that it's a decent entry in the series and I appreciated return to form after how dull the last book was.

I also appreciate that this book gives me a handy example of good foreshadowing and bad foreshadowing.

Allow me to do my own return to form and discuss something I used to talk a lot about on this blog: what makes for good writing. And I'll do that by presenting a couple of passages from 'Piano Lessons Can Be Murder'.

"'Okay, Jer,' he said, patting my shoulder. 'Remember - in a few weeks, you'll know I'm right. In a few weeks, this ghost business will all seem silly to you.' Boy, was he wrong!

This shit. This shit is lazy.

Foreshadowing is, partly, the art of enticing your audience to keep paying attention with hints of excitement to come. One way of doing that is to just tell the audience what is coming. When a story starts in medias res, then tells the previous events in flashback, that's this kind of foreshadowing. A recent example of this is the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

And it can work. It's not an innately bad way of enticing the audience to keep watching or reading, but R.L Stine frequently does it in possibly the worst way. He will have a character suggest things are going to happen, or not happen. Usually it is somebody saying everything will be fine. Then the narrator will say "But it actually wasn't going to be fine!"

And the problem is that this doesn't actually foreshadow anything. It foreshadows a negative. He tells the audience "actually, what we just said will happen, is not going to happen!"

Okay. But that means the possibility of what will happen is literally everything else. There's nothing to be excited about here. And I can just assume things wont be fine because the book has more than one page left after this point. If everything was going to be fine, the story would be over.

On the other hand, good foreshadowing is a little more specific. It poses interesting questions to the audience and promises to fulfil them (pro tip: asking your audience a question and promising an answer is literally all good story telling). R.L Stine can do good foreshadowing. I know he can. He does it in this book.

"Her mouth dropped open in horror as she sated at me. 'You're doing what?' she cried. 

'Taking piano lessons with Dr Shreek,' I repeated.

'Oh!' She uttered a soft cry, spun around, and began running toward her front door.

'Hey, Kim!' I called after her. 'Kim -- what's wrong?'

But she disappeared out the door."

This passage hints at some terror in the future. Just the mention of Dr Shreek's lessons is enough to frighten Kim and make her run away. Presumably she knows something we and Jerry do not. What does she know? Why is it frightening? Will we find out? What will happen at the piano lessons?

This is a different kind of foreshadowing. It doesn't tell you what will happen exactly, just hints at what is to come, and it gives you a reason to care. And the possibilities are not infinite (or infinite minus 1), the possibilities are constrained by the foreshadowing. What will happen is frightening, what will happen involves Dr Shreek. Kim might tell us what she knows. And since we also know Jerry is going to take those lessons with Dr Shreek, we know he is in some kind of peril. That is something that will definitely happen, but there is a frightening shadow hanging over the specifics, a shadow we have been promised will be lifted.

R.L Stine isn't a bad writer. Like I said last time, he's inconsistent, but he was working to an incredibly demanding schedule, and so I'm not surprised he doesn't give every book his all. Buuuuut I find it hard to overlook the sort of laziness in his foreshadowing when I know he can do better. When he does better in the same book. Even young readers deserve better than that.

Still, it's a fine book. And I always enjoy a ghost story.

You know what else I enjoy?

Werewolves. And speaking of werewolves...

See you next time.*

*This was foreshadowing. The next book is about werewolves.

Bumping Geese 12: Be Careful What You Wish For

In the back of my copy of 'Be Careful What You Wish For' there is a short interview with R.L Stine in which he is asked what he would wish for if he had three wishes. R.L Stine says he only ever had one wish, which is to be a writer.

And somewhere, a monkey's paw curled its finger.

R.L Stine was cursed to spend the rest of his life writing 20 Goosebumps books a week. An impossible task to complete and maintain any consistent level of quality. And so, sometimes, R.L Stine was forced to resort to that most terrible of literary crimes: cliché.

Reader beware, you're in for a cliché

I'm being hyperbolic, of course. There's nothing inherently unsalvageabley wrong with clichés. Everybody uses them. Their wide recognisability is both their flaw and their utility. And let's not forget that subverting a cliché can be a great delight... Until that cliché subversion becomes cliché in itself. But the point is, a cliché lives or dies by how you use it. There is a good way...

And then there is this book.

Stop me if you've heard this before.

Samantha Byrd is a regular girl with hard life. What's so hard about it? Everybody around her is an awful person. She's tall and clumsy, she's bad at basketball, and her family doesn't take her seriously. Her classmates tease her, and when they do, even her one friend Cory laughs with them. They call her "stork" because she is tall and her last name sounds like "bird", and they tell her to fly away. And one day, after her regular bully Judith knees her in the gut during basketball practice, Samantha reaches her limit. She gets on her bike and thinks she might just ride forever, run away and leave her shitty life behind.

But when she gets to the edge of her neighbourhood, she encounters a strange woman named Clarissa. Clarissa is lost and asks Sam to help her find her way. Samantha does and, to return her kindness, Clarissa grants Samantha three wishes. Samantha doesn't believe Clarissa can grant any wishes, but to get Clarissa to leave her alone, she agrees to makes one wish.

Sam wishes to be the strongest player on her school basketball team.

Come the next game, Sam isn't any better at basketball. In fact, she plays worse than ever. But all her teammates become physically weak and lethargic. They can barely stay upright and walk, let alone play basketball. Samantha's wish had come true but with horrific twisted consequences.

The next day, nobody on the basketball team shows up to school. They've all become weak and sickly, but doctors can't explain why other than calling it a bad case of the flu.

So you know how this goes, right? Samantha makes wishes, doesn't think the consequences through, terrible things happen as a result, Sam feels guilty, rinse and repeat.

Clarissa agrees, as part of Sam's second wish, to undo the first wish. Clarissa genuinely wants to make Samantha happy in return for helping her, but she explains magic is unpredictable, so it's not really her fault when things work out wrong. Sam must consider her wishes carefully. And what is Sam's second wish?

In a fit of rage, she wishes her bully Judith would disappear. But the next day, her entire town has disappeared and Sam is all alone. Angst, guilt, and drama ensue.

Clarissa shows up again and offers to reverse the wish as part of the third and final wish. Samantha proves to be an unbelievable dunce and wishes that everything be returned to normal, all wishes undone, except that Judith should think Sam is the best person in the world.

And the next day at school, Judith has changed from bully to obsessed stalker. She follows Sam everywhere, imitates her, dresses like her, breaks into her house to spend time with her. It is, of course, not what Sam wanted. Although I honestly don't know what she wanted or expected from this wish. Sam is a buffoon.

Still unhappy, Sam seeks out Clarissa one more time to ask the wish be undone. Clarissa offers Sam one more wish and since we're near the end now, it's about time for the horrific nightmare inducing Goosebumps twist cliché. Samantha wishes that she had never made any of the wishes, never met Clarissa, and that it had been Judith who met and helped Clarissa, Judith who had three wishes. Sam reasons that any wish Judith makes will ruin her life, like they did for Sam. And the wish is done. And Sam sees Clarissa talking to Judith, and hears Judith make her first wish.

Judith wishes that Samantha Byrd would fly away. And Sam, after pecking at a worm she spots in the dirt, flaps her wings and flies off, watching Judith and Clarissa beneath her, sure that Judith's life will now be terrible as hers.

What the fuck...

When I started this, I did not expect there to be quite so much body horror in these books.

Not that I'm complaining. Body horror is my jam. It never fails to super creep me out.

But as for the rest of this book. It's cliché. Its premise is cliché. Its execution is cliché. Its characters are cliché. And that makes it a real slog to read. It's boring. I've seen it all before. I don't even want to do a deep dive because I feel like I've wasted too much time on this book already.

And even if I wanted to, what would I say? There isn't anything worth unpacking and exploring here. What are the deeper themes of this book?

It's in the fucking title. "Be careful what you wish for". Yeah. Thanks, R.L Stine. Never heard that before.

Well you know what I wish?

I wish I had a better Goosebumps to read.

And somewhere, a monkey's paw curled its finger...