R.L. Stine returned to the world of GooseBumps with his twelve book saga, Goosebumps HorrorLand, which, while a unique way to tie the Goosebumps universe together, suffered for being extremely bloated and having a rather underwhelming finale. Regardless, it was successful enough for Stine to keep on truckin'. And since he tried once with this structure, why not stick around in HorrorLand for another seven books? It's time for arc two of Goosebumps HorrorLand as we kick things off with When The Ghost Dog Howls.
COVER STORY
So, the gimmick for this arc has changed slightly in comparison to the previous HorrorLand arc as stories are now broken into three parts. A prologue of sorts with the protagonist gaining a specific item from HorrorLand, the story itself, and an epilogue wrapping things up and giving us enough of a cliffhanger to take us into the next story.
PART 1
Andy Meadows is enjoying his time at HorrorLand with his family. The only downside being his very grabby, very annoying cousin Marnie Myers, who is the same age as him. Regardless, it's all been going well. That is until Andy and his family head to the Ghost Town Clown Show and are greeted by a large clown who introduces himself as Murder the Clown. I mean, that's a pretty on-the-red-nose name. Murder selects Andy and Marnie to perform in a clown show. Marnie's excited, but Andy isn't too fond of the idea. Especially when the two are decked in clown garb and put on stage with several other clowns. One with a skull face and clown makeup, another who keeps pulling out his own curly hair, and ones that just pull their heads off their shoulders. So, you know, fun for all ages.
But what freaks the two kids more is the audience, which is mostly consisted of zombies. Rotting flesh, broken limbs, no eyeballs, the works. Marnie and Andy panic and try to escape, but the exit is locked. The zombies lurch closer, wanting to be fed. Andy manages to grab a spotlight and flash it over the zombies, defeating them. *checks book*, no this isn't a copy of Welcome to Dead House. That at least had a guy get his head caved in with a giant flashlight. Murder the Clown shows up and tells the kids that they passed the first test. The kids ask if the zombies were real, but Murder, somewhat panicked, tells them that everything in HorrorLand is fake.
He then leads the kids into another room before leaving them again. This time it's a gift shop of sorts. "Chiller House: Gifts and Souvenirs Since 1496". Offering gifts like "Sour Gummy Germs", "Make Your Own Quicksand" and "Inflatable 800-Pound Gorilla". But is it a lawn gorilla? Andy and Marnie are enthralled obviously. The two are then greeted by the shop's owner, a Ben Franklin-looking man named Jonathan Chiller. One item that catches Andy's eye is a giant animal tooth. Chiller tells Andy that the tooth is powerful, then tells the kids the origin story.
In a highland village in Scotland, 300 years ago, a blue dog known as the Blue Kerlew Hound arrived, and ever since its arrival, horrible things began to befall the town. The villagers blamed the dog, but despite their best efforts, they couldn't get the dog to leave. Nor would they kill it for fear of what powers it possessed. So they go and get the nearby sorcerer (yes, a nearby sorcerer) to cast a spell to remove the dog's teeth, believing it to be the source of its power, but the spell only took out one. The dog howls and leaves. The sorcerer became a hero to the town, and he decided to keep the dog tooth. He soon learned the tooth could grant wishes, so he allowed people in town to grant the wish. One night however, screams could be heard from the sorcerer's house. The villagers discovered the sorcerer had been torn to shreds, the tooth left in a puddle, a sign that the hound had returned for his revenge.
Chiller tells the kids that being a collector, he managed to get a hold of it. The tooth can grant wishes. All wishes. So you know, Goosebumps Book #12. The only caveat is that you can't get the tooth wet, since given what befell the sorcerer, it's likely the blue kerlew hound could return. The two kids argue over who gets the tooth, but Andy ends up being the winner. Chiller also gives him a small Horror figurine. Andy goes to pay, but Chiller tells him that money isn't necessary. He'll pay him the next time they meet.
PART 2
Andy returns home with the tooth, but doesn't bother to test it out, as he believes that Chiller was just making things up. It's not until Marnie shows up and bugs him into using the tooth for some wishes. They start small, wishing Andy's mother would take them out for dinner, then go for a big one, wishing that Andy's dad would have a brand new Escalade. Sure enough, all the wishes come true. Marnie is obsessed with wanting more wishes, while Andy continues to worry, even more so when Marnie asks for him to take the tooth to school. Andy thinks about it during the night, but as he tries to sleep, he hears a loud howling from outside.
The next day, Andy brings the tooth to school, and of course Marnie wants to show it to others. He tries to tell her about the howling, and how it could be the Blue Kerlew Hound, but Marnie doesn't believe it. A wish granting tooth, she believes. Evil murder dog? GET OUTTA HERE! And then Marnie wishes that school would be cancelled due to a random cow being loose in the school. Wait what?
The next day at the mall, Marnie continues to pester Andy over wishing for everything. Angered, he wishes she would stop talking about the tooth, which turns her into a mute for some reason. Andy then undoes the wish, and to ensure that Marnie won't bother him some more, wishes for her to get all the shoes she wants. However, before he can make the wish, the tooth falls into his can of orange soda. He makes the wish, but instead of the wish happening, he feels a strange sensation from the tooth that causes him to pass out.
Andy awakens to see people standing above him trying to wake him up. He recognizes Marnie, but the man and woman say they're his parents, though they don't look like his parents. Another strange addition now is that he has a little sister named Margaret, or "Muggy" as she claims he calls her. Andy is confused, but Marnie mentions that this may have happened due to the tooth getting wet. He wishes to be ten thousand miles away from everyone, which then teleports him on a spacecraft away from the Earth. Oh we are in deep "What the hell is this book" territory already. Also, he wishes that Marnie could see the Earth from where he is, so she ends up there too.
Marnie panics, since she hates flying, and tries to grab the tooth, only to tear it off and send it floating in the shuttle. Before it ends up in the vents, Andy grabs it and wishes to be back in his bed. He wakes up, and he's in his bed alright, which is in a cage at the zoo? And sharing that cage with a gigantic gorilla. Not inflatable sadly. Andy tries to use the tooth, but the gorilla snatches it from him. After some struggle, Andy gets the tooth. Downside is it got wet again by falling in a puddle. He makes the wish to come back home, but feels another electrical jolt. The last thing he sees is the gorilla's eyes swell like giant balloons before he passes out yet again.
Andy wakes up, and he's back at the mall. He had passed out and seemingly nothing that he went through, the spaceship, the gorilla, had happened. However, he notices one thing that's different, Marnie is now wearing the tooth. She tells him that she was the one who got the tooth from Chiller and it was her that made all the wishes. Andy is still extremely confused, but ultimately just goes with it. He heads home and goes to bed, but once again he hears the howls. This time however, he checks online for any information on the hound. He gets the info given from Jonathan Chiller, but there's more. The tooth has been missing for 300 years. It is also believed that the tooth works as a signal, and every wish makes the signal stronger, until the hound arrives to destroy the wisher. He calls Marnie to warn her, but she doesn't believe him, thinking he's after the tooth. She then promises to have some real fun tomorrow.
The next day comes, and Marnie has been using the tooth to wish for new clothes, as well as passing any test she takes. She still doesn't believe Andy when he tells her about the tooth. Andy also learns from his teacher Mrs. Parker that an essay Andy placed in the essay contest might be winning him first prize of 500 dollars. But Marnie ends up winning it because, you know, tooth. When he gets home, he sees the bruise on his neck. The same bruise made from the leather strap when Marnie tried to nab the tooth off his chest before he passed out. Marnie lied to him about the ownership of the tooth. Shocker of shockers. Andy's now out for blood, and we get perhaps one of the best fake outs yet, as he tells his mom that he's going to murder Marnie, and she goes "that's cool. I don't like her either". This book is something else! Sure, the next page tells us that didn't happen, but wow.
Andy has visions of how he'll get his revenge, but then realizes that the only way to get his revenge with with the Blue Kerlew Hound. He tricks her into coming over and converting his computer into an arcade machine. Since she's drunk with power and just wants to win all the time, she decides to do so. When she arrives and helps, she begins to hear a howl. And sure enough, a large blue hound makes its way into the Meadows' garage. Marnie eventually panics and admits the truth, that she did steal the tooth. Andy finally gets the tooth back and tells her that the dog was a neighbor's dog he painted blue. However, upon further inspection, that ain't the same dog. It is indeed the Blue Kerlew Hound.
Andy tries to make a wish to get rid of the hound, but it doesn't work. The hound leaps on Andy and tries to bite him. He gets free, then wishes for he and Marnie to be invisible, so maybe that'll trick the dog. It works, and the two end up invisible. However, the two are so invisible that they can't touch solid objects, hence they can't open the door to escape. But since they're ethereal, they can just walk through the door. They try to use a phone, but remember they can't touch anything. They also see the tooth is missing. So, Andy has to go get it back. He goes to grab it, but, you know...
The hound corners Andy, but just in time, Andy wishes that he and Marnie were visible again. And sure enough, it works. He then tells the hound that he knows why he's stalking them. That the sorcerer never gave him back his tooth. And so, Andy hurls the tooth out of his house and the dog goes to take it before vanishing. The kids celebrate before being confronted by another giant blue dog, but it was the one Andy painted earlier.
TWIST ENDING & EPILOGUE
That night, Andy gets ready to go to sleep, but hears howling once again. He then gets a phone call from Marnie who tells him that the Blue Kerlew Hound never got his tooth back. She has it, but promises to share the wishes this time.
Andy can't sleep. But not just from the news, but from the glow of the small horror figurine he got earlier. The light glows over Andy until he sees that he's not in his room anymore. He's back at Chiller House. Jonathan Chiller greets him and say that it's time to pay up for all the fun he's had with the tooth. Andy says he didn't have any fun with it, but Chiller says that the fun is just beginning.
CONCLUSION
When the Ghost Dog Howls is a pretty decent story. With this newer format, they don't waste much time building to the acquisition of the hound tooth, so we get more pages that focus on wishes. Unfortunately, that means that we spend a bit of the book with the wet tooth that really doesn't seem to have had any consequences other than having Andy in a strange series of dream worlds to pad things out. Shame, as I was really into the just bizarre stuff until Stine made it clear it didn't matter that much.
Andy's a likable protagonist, if not a bit too bland, and Marnie serves as good antagonist. Not really evil as much someone who loves having unlimited power regardless of the consequences. And the Blue Kerlew Hound gets just enough time to feel like a real threat. All in all, it makes for a solid start to this whole story arc. Probably one of the first books in a while that I didn't find to be a slog to get through. Let's hope this continues. When the Ghost Dog Howls gets an A-.
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