I've covered a lot of Goosebumps for this blog. It's essentially the only Stine-labeled item I've covered so far. But it's time to at least delve into the other items with his name on it, and what better one to do than... with another horror novella series aimed at 8-12 year olds. Oh, and this is Stine in name only, he didn't write any of these. These are confirmed ghostwritten. Okay, so this should be a treat.
Before Goosebumps, Stine made his name in horror books through Fear Street, a series of books aimed at an older teen market that were about a street where horrible things often happen. The books were a huge hit. Hoping to continue to keep the Fear Street brand hot while also getting in the Goosebumps kids who were making him megabucks, Stine would give us Ghosts of Fear Street in 1995. The books lasted until 1998 with 36 books under its banner. So, it was a moderate success. Now, since Stine was already pumping out books (plural) monthly for Scholastic with Goosebumps and its various spinoffs, these books were handled exclusively by ghostwriters. Can they improve on Stine's faults, or is this a case where the OG is OP? Let's see with the first entry in the series, Hide and Shriek.
COVER STORY
STORY
Our protagonist is a girl Miranda Clay, but everyone just calls her Randy. She gets awakened by her sister, the oddly named "Baby" as she has to get ready for school. Randy and her family just moved from Maine to Shadyside and are living in the ominously named Fear Street. Randy has no clue why it's so ominous, but it does have some sort of reputation. Things being even more curious when her family visited the post office, only for the woman at the desk to warn her about the tenth of June. She makes it to Shadyside Middle School. She has an issue with the door for a sec, but manages to get in. As she looks for the principal's office, she sees a calendar on the wall that's counting the days to Saturday, June 10th. It's Pete's birthday. Who's Pete? Miranda doesn't know, but thinks it's sweet.
She wanders some more, but gets bumped by a kid with a gaping wound on his head. She later learns from a girl named Sara Lewis that this was for a play and Lucas was playing a murder victim. She introduces herself to her new sixth grade class and seems to hit it off well with most of the kids, including two kids named Megan and David. Although two girls, Laura and Maggie, seem to be staring at her, giving her weird vibes. The next day, she notices another notice on the bulletin board for volunteers to bake Pete's birthday cake. She tries to ask Sara on who this Pete is, but gets snuck up from behind by Laura who tells Randy to watch out. At the cafeteria, she then sees Laura threatening her about the tenth of June.
She sits with Lucas at the table who tells her that he too lives on Fear Street and not to believe the stories. Particularly the ones about the cemetery. His neighbor was riding his bike in the dark and was blocked by a strange old woman. But when he tried to slam the brakes, he went through her. All of this, of course, is adding to Randy's paranoia. Randy heads home from school and decides to cut through the woods. This leads her right into the cemetery. She wanders through, but keeps hearing footsteps behind her. Panicked, she runs through the cemetery and straight home. We get a scene where Baby wants to be called Barbara now and she's also a big fan of Batman. Like, the 90s cartoon, or the 60s show? That's the biggest mystery so far in this book. Randy goes to Sara's house for a sleepover with some of the other girls from Shadyside Middle School and once again hears them talking about Pete and June 10th. She presses them for information.
They tell her that Pete was a boy who mysteriously died in Fear Street Woods. One year later, his ghost was said to have been playing hide and seek with the kids of Shadyside. He supposedly possessed one boy, causing him to howl at night for a year until he suddenly stopped. He was unable to sleep and his hair turned from brown into bright white. He said that it was from when the cars had smashed him soooo hard... no wait, wrong thing. Actually it's because he was supposedly possessed by Pete. Pete would do this every year, possessing another kid. Each year, Pete forces the kids to play hide and seek with him. If he doesn't get that, he haunts them for the entire year. So, the kids have to appease Pete with a birthday party every year and play Hide and Seek with him. Pete is always it and the first person he tags is the loser and will be his new vessel for the entire year.
Randy is obviously skeptical of all this, even after the girls mention more stories about Pete's possessions. She asks the obvious question 'why even play'? They say that it's actually pretty fun. Sure, loser has their life become a living hell, but sometimes it's just really fun to throw caution to the wind like that. That Monday at school, she counts that there's only five days left until Pete's birthday. She runs into Lucas again who has dark circles under his eyes and is really pressing her about the hide and seek game on Saturday. Randy begins to suspect that maybe Lucas is the one whos being possessed by Pete. She asks David to help her spy on Lucas, so the two stalk him for a while. They hear him whistling the funeral march, then suddenly lose him as he heads into the woods. They hear the sound of kids playing hide and seek and panic. They run off, only to realize it was just a bunch of random kids playing regular hide and seek, and not the evil ghost version.
Undeterred, Randy intends to stalk Lucas yet again. At school, the kids are all being picked for square-dancing. Lucas chooses Randy, which puts her in a panic, fearing that she'll be dancing with the dead. She fakes an illness and manages to escape, raising the ire of Lucas. That night, after a trip to the mall, Randy heads through the cemetery again, but this time spots Lucas digging up worms, which makes her high-tail it faster. She goes to bed, but notices a figure outside her window. She's now certain that Pete has chosen her. The next night she babysits Baby, and things go fine enough until both kids see what appears to be Lucas at the window. They panic, but it then turns out to just be their dad.
We finally arrive at the fireworks factory. It's June tenth and Randy is still in a panic. Now that she feels that she's Pete's next victim for sure. She arrives with the other kids to Fear Street Woods, while trying to avoid the gaze of Lucas. The rules are that there are to be no flashlights and that they have to try and keep from being tagged by Pete. The game begins and the kids enter the woods. She manages to hide in a tree and wait. But suddenly she feels breath behind her. She turns to see it's David. Randy is relieved until she starts to smell something rotten. She notices it's coming from David, and that a giant stain-like hole is on his shirt. A hole that turns into a bloody wound. David lets the mask slip. Lucas isn't the boy possessed by Pete, he is!
Panicked, Randy leaps off the tree and makes a run for it. She almost makes it out of the cemetery, but trips and falls. Pete begins to advance on her, but suddenly Lucas shows up and starts to mock him. He gets a little transphobic, mocking Pete for daring possess a girl. Randy and the other kids manage to escape, but Sara and the others don't believe that David could be Pete. Monday rolls on and no sign of David. After school, she runs into Lucas and is ready to apologize for the whole "I thought you were Pete" thing. However it doesn't take long for Lucas to reveal that he is Pete. He grabs at her, saying that he really wanted to possess her this year. She manages to get free and run into the cemetery.
TWIST ENDING
Suddenly, ghostly figures begin to rise from the ground and start to confront Pete, mocking him for not wanting to play hide and seek with them and screwing with humans instead. They continue to mock Pete, angering him more and more. Randy sees Pete's real form, a rotten, decayed ghost, start to leave Lucas' body, but he goes back in, saying he doesn't want to leave. Soon, the ghosts manage to suck him out of Lucas and back into his grave. Randy and Lucas recover from this whole ordeal and promise to never play hide and seek ever again. And they didn't.
CONCLUSION
Hide and Shriek is okay. For the first in a new series, it's a solid first foot out of the door. It does suffer from a lot of the Goosebumps trappings, to the point you could think this was actually Jovial Bob, but it's not the case. Ghostwriter Emily James does a fine enough job in emulating his style of work. But what I think makes this work over much of Stine's work is the mystery and the build throughout the story. We set up the big climax early on and get enough time to where when we reach the conclusion, everything falls into place. Granted, the actual hide and seek game is over super fast, with the Pete reveal being a bit too obvious. Lucas was an obvious red herring and given how much Randy fawns over David, it seemed like a given as to who Pete possessed. I do kind of wish that the hide and seek game lasted longer, giving it time to build on the suspense. Randy constantly fearing her demise until we get there. But it's not super rushed, so it's not horrible.
As for Randy, she's an alright protagonist, if not a little too bland. The story flows well enough and never really feels like it lulls. And while there's no real twist, the conclusion is a solid way to end this with the ghosts going after Pete. It wraps up the story just fine. I do wish they had elaborated more on the whole ghost woman thing earlier in the book, felt like that just stopped mattering. And I guess David's just dead, we didn't elaborate on that either. Other than that, there are really no complaints. It feels like a safe way to start off this series. Not in a dynamic way, but enough to try to lure in interested kids to what this series may be all about. In other words, this was a book with nothing to hide. Hide and Shriek gets a B.
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