NNtG: Shivers #7: The Awful Apple Orchard

It's time to go back into the world of M.D. Spenser and Shivers. For our first outing, we went pretty far into the series and learned just what's going on in The Forgotten Farmhouse. And, hoo boy, was that an intense read. We're dialing it back to the single digits this week. Will we be in for a golden delicious book, or is one just a rotten apple? Let's see what's going down at The Awful Apple Orchard.

COVER STORY

Cover is okay. Not the most scare provoking. I mean it's no skeleton horseman on a fire farm, but it still succeeds in some great color and atmosphere, particularly with the glowing light beaming from the house in the distance. And, like almost all Shivers covers, we get our random skull, but it's in a nonsensical shadow. Like, what would even emit that? Regardless, it's a fine enough work.

STORY

It's the middle of Fall and Daniel, his younger sister Sara and their parents are headed to a cabin in the Catskills. Why are they going in the middle of fall? Well, they had planned to go in June, but Daniel nearly killed himself crashing his bike into a hydrant, so they had to postpone. On the way there, their mom suggests they all take a trip to the nearby mill, mostly in hopes of getting some cider while dad tells the kids that there are stories of the mill being haunted. They stop at the mill, get some cider, stop chasing Bart and Homer in the parade float and begin to drive to the cabin, only for an apple to hit one of their windows. But when they stop to see who could have thrown it, there's nobody around.

The family arrive at the cabin and the next day the parents send Daniel and Sara back to the mill to get some cider and other apple-related products. They arrive and get their stuff, when Daniel loses Sara... only to see she entered the mill where the apples are being pressed into cider. Daniel panics and runs off, only to realize he's scared of mill machinery. They return to get the rest of the apple products and Sara gets a scare when she eats an apple and sees a worm inside. However, after she throws the apple on the ground and begins to leave, Daniel notices the apple looks normal all of a sudden. No wormhole, no worm.

Daniel tells Sara about the phantom worm and she worries more that people will think they're crazy. She's against going back to the mill, but since these kids are now their parents' cider pack mules, they have no alternative. They return home and suddenly see the family car filled to the brim with apples. Daniel and Sara deduce that they're the only ones who can see these ghost apples, so they have to be the ones to get rid of it. But not before their father tells them a bit more about stories about two kids who died at the mill by being crushed by machinery. When the two kids go to check on the car later, not only are the apples gone, but so is the car! But, actually the car is there, but it's invisible to them. 

Deducing the only way to make the car visible again is to get the apples out from inside, so when they manage to find the door and open it, they end up with all the apples inside falling over them. They manage to get the apples out, which also brings the car back to visibility. The kids celebrate, only for their mom to immediately show up and tell them to go get apples from the mill for a pie. So the pair go back yet again to the mill. However, upon riding there, Sara crashes into something and takes a bad spill. However, there's nothing in sight. But the kids soon see some kind of fence that is barely visible. Oh thank god, because if she had crashed into a pile of ghost apples or something, I'd have tapped out of this book.

Panicked, the kids come to the conclusion that it must be the ghost haunting the mill that's screwing with them. They make a break for it, going in the safest place to evade evil apple ghosts, the orchard. Yeah, finally, about almost three quarters in we enter said awful apple orchard. And they don't have much time to think as they get bombarded with more apples. They make it to the back of the mill and are met by a man riding a tractor. He takes the kids inside the mill and shows them how the machinery inside crushes the apples to make cider. With Sara's ankle too hurt from the accident, she tells Daniel to get the delivery to their parents while she stays there to wait. However, not long after leaving the mill, Daniel hears the machinery running again and heads back, seeing his sister is caught in the conveyor belt, about to be squashed. He manages to save her in time and the two make an exit.

When they get closer to home, Daniel asks what happened, to which Sara just recalls something grabbing her. The kids have trouble sleeping, realizing that they still aren't done with whatever is haunting them and yet again they have to go to the mill. They return to the mill, Sara leading Daniel this time without saying much. They reenter the mill and she leads her brother back to the conveyor belt.

TWIST ENDING

It's there where Daniel notices it. Two bodies jammed inside the machinery. Their bodies! They hadn't actually escaped in time. Sara mentions that when they returned home, she didn't feel right, as if she realized they didn't actually make it. And, despite being ghosts, they actually get a good laugh about the whole "dying" thing. They turn off the lights and decide to wait until the next day for someone to find the bodies. For two other kids to show up at the mill. For them to have some real fun. 

CONCLUSION

Well that took a turn. This book is kind of a mess. And I mean more than the mangled corpses of two children messy. It has an okay premise with the haunted mill and the strange occurrences, but I'm sorry, apple-related scares don't exactly work all too well. Because they're apples. In the past I've said it's a stretch to make some things scary, but apples? Come on. The other damning sin of this book is the real sense that the mystery never matters in the end. We never get an answer as to things like the ghost apples, the invisible car, things just vanishing in thin air, how Daniel and Sara appear to still have physical bodies despite their original forms being crushed. I guess it's supposed to be the actions of the boy and girl that died beforehand and maybe by killing Daniel and Sara, they were able to move on? Was it the man at the mill, was he the ghost? Again, we just drop everything once we reach that conveyor belt because that's where Spenser decides to go super dark.

And speaking of super dark, we get a twist ending which feels nothing like how Goosebumps would handle something. Well, kind of like Headless Halloween, but obviously far less gory. Another case of where maybe this is a bit too far for the recommended age group. But maybe that's just me being way too uptight again. It would have likely gotten me, especially after 100 pages of apple-related nonsense. In the end, it's a book that takes a while to reach its grisly conclusion, and its apple dumpling shenanigans might make you tap out before you reach there. It leaves us with a book that's a few apples short of a full pie. All I know is, if it's clear and yella, you got juice there, fella. If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town. And if it's red and metallic tasting, you... you probably should stop drinking it. The Awful Apple Orchard gets a C+.