The Stinal Countdown: Goosebumps HorrorLand #16: Weirdo Halloween

We're now four books deep into the second arc of HorrorLand. In fact, we're now officially in the halfway point. And of course, this would be where Stine drops a big one on us. In this case, it's the first "Special Edition" book. These being longer installments, now over 200 pages instead of the standard 130+. So, thankfully not frighteningly long, but meaty regardless. So, does a longer book equal better quality? Let's find out with Weirdo Halloween.

COVER STORY

So, interesting note, especially if you notice the header and the book cover posted above, there are two different covers to this one. No, not in any real earth-shattering, super amazing variants sorta way, just in how the wording is on the front, and the eyes of our weirdo, Bim here. One cover has green eyes, the other blue. Although, Dorman did originally paint Bim to be green, it wasn't used in any covers. As for the art itself, it's pretty good. I like the design of Bim, making for a rather freaky looking alien. Along with that is a good use of perspective, A little bit of classic Goosebumps cover warping, and some really nice detail on all the candy that's just overflowing in that bag. Good stuff once again.

STORY

PART ONE

Our protagonist is Meg Oliver. She and her younger brother Chris are the latest kids to visit HorrorLand. Chris is a year younger than Meg, but acts more immature because that's just the younger sibling gene in these books. The kids visit the Tunnel of Screams, which leads to Meg losing Chris, only to hear screams that sound like him. But when she thinks she finds him, she instead finds a kid with only a skull for his face. Before she can encounter him, the kid runs away, just as Chris shows up. Meg tells him about the skull-face boy, but Chris reminds her that this is HorrorLand, and it was probably someone who works at the park. Suddenly, the two kids run into Madame Doom, who when last we met was a fortune telling machine. She tells the kids that the boy wasn't someone from the park, but it might be a foretelling of their future.

She leads Meg and Chris to her cottage so that she can tell them their future. She pulls out a doll that looks exactly like Meg, down to the clothing she's currently wearing. Chris tries to take the doll, causing the two kids to scramble a bit for it, before realizing that Madame Doom is no longer here. The kids run off to find her, but end up running into a Horror that tells the kids that whoever they ran into wasn't Madame Doom. No, the real Madame Doom is the Zoltar machine. The dummy inside comes to life and hands Meg a white card. It's an ad to go to the Chiller House for gifts. A crummy commercial? Son of a-

Sure enough, the two kids head to Chiller House where we are once again introduced to Jonathan Chiller. Meg looks around and finds a strange doll. Green like a grasshopper with a fat body and chubby face with eyes that pop out if you squeeze it. Chiller tells Meg that it's a doll of a Floig. Meg likes it, what with being a doll collector of sorts. Chiller gives the Floig to her, gift wrapped with a small horror figurine and, as has been established, tells her that payment is not necessary now. She'll pay when she returns to HorrorLand.

PART 2

The next day, the kids return home from HorrorLand, but are upset that their parents are leaving town due to business and can't be with them for Halloween. But they'll be watched by Penny, a frail, elderly woman who the kids do like. Meg is particularly excited to be going to her friend Kelly's Halloween party. In the midst of all this exposition, Meg places her Floig doll in her room, on one of her shelves full of classic dolls, including one doll from the 1890s called Elizabeth. Boy, does this whole explanation feel like it's setting us up for disaster later. Penny arrives and brings with her a trio of goldfish named Arlo, Jeffrey and Meg, which she of course named after our protagonist. As she knits a three-armed sweater for her nephew (a case of bad eyesight), Meg and Chris head out to Kelly's party. 

Meg's costume is a vampire, while Chris just threw on Vulcan ears because he's lazy as hell, like me. Chris also mocks Meg, saying she'll likely bite her crush, Justin Goldberg, in the neck, which annoys her. But their banter is interrupted when they see something caught in the hedge nearby. At first they think it's a baby, but it's somehow even stranger than that. It has orange skin, while wearing a blue shirt over a diaper. When the kids get it out of the brambles, it weighs only like ten pounds. They try to talk to the kid, but he speaks strangely with a weird voice. He has tiny black eyes and three fingers. The kids think it must all be some really great effects for a costume, and continue on to Kelly's house. Suddenly, Kelly's dog Bubba attacks the kid, but smacks into almost a force field. Kelly shows up, angry that they hurt Bubba. They bring up the kid, but suddenly he's disappeared.

Kelly and Meg talk for a bit, particularly in that both dressed in the same vampire costume. Then another kid named Carlos shows up in his two-headed alien costume. Meg likes Carlos, despite him being a massive sci-fi geek, but he's funny. Kelly then turns her attention to Bubba, who is still cowering after the encounter with the strange kid. The kids resume the party until suddenly a package of some sort crashes through one of the windows. Kelly, not realizing that opening a random package that went sailing through your window isn't a smart idea, opens it, only for it to release an odor so foul it causes everyone to puke. Meg and the others manage to get out. Kelly is in a panic because of obvious reasons, but Meg offers to help her clean up the mess (forcing Chris to comply as well). They clean up as best they can and return home. However, they react in fear when they see the orange kid in Meg's room who asks if they got his message.

They're of course pissed about the aroma message, but the kid seems really happy about it. The kid introduces himself as Bim from the Weirdo Planet. Meg and Chris are more preoccupied with getting this kid out of their house to believe he's an alien. However, since they saved Bim's life with the whole hedge incident, he declares that he is home now. He is theirs now. They literally try to throw him out, but at first he's feather light, only to then turn boulder heavy. Still not convinced, they try to pull off his mask, but soon learn that there is no mask to pull off. Bim is telling the truth. Bim then vomits up a bird because of course he does. In fact, he has to puke food up three times before he can digest it as he only eats living flesh. Penny shows up, confused about Bim as you'd expect, but Meg and Chris say that his name is Max and he's just wearing a really convincing baby costume. Chris and Meg try one more time to tell Bim to leave, but Bim tells them to not make him unhappy, to which he reveals three rows of sharp teeth. And to prove he's not joking about not pissing him off, he takes one of Meg's dolls and chews it up. Well, called that one.

They decide not to tell Penny, since she's frail and all, so they'll just do what they can to keep Bim happy. In this case, rubbing Bim's back for an hour. Bim eventually goes to sleep, leaving the kids concerned that they'll never get rid of him. They try calling their parents, but get no answer. Meg returns to her room and sees no sign of Bim. At first she thinks that Bim finally left, but we're only at page 70 of this 212 page book, so of course not. Instead, Bim just went and ate Penny's goldfish! No, wait. Penny just moved them to a different bowl. In fact, Bim is still gone. Meg and Chris begin to feel relieved. Meg then heads to Kelly's to see how she's doing after last night's stink bomb incident. Turns out not very well. She's in a panic as someone left a dead rabbit on her bed. 

Meg runs into Carlos who is carrying Netflix DVD envelopes. That feels like the most dated thing I've witnessed in the GB revival and that says something. And yes, I know that they still rent DVDs. She tells Carlos about Bim, but of course he doesn't believe her. However, that changes when they head back to Meg's place and discover Bim on her bed eating a squirrel. Carlos runs off, since he's a massive coward and Bim forces Meg to eat some squirrel meat. Bim also reveals he gave Kelly the rabbit corpse because any friend of Meg's is his friend now. Meg loses it and starts beating the crap out of Bim, but his flesh turns into a strange goo that causes her hands to develop red warts. With Halloween tonight, the kids are worried they'll never get rid of Bim, but Chris has an idea. They can go to a Halloween party and ditch Bim. It's fool proof. Meg thinks it's a bad idea and tells him to go back to the drawing board. She returns to her room to see that Bim has now destroyed all fifty of her dolls, including Elizabeth. 

She calls Carlos to come up with an idea, but despite his vast knowledge of Sci-Fi, he has no idea what to do with a real alien. Meg returns to her room to see Bim had listened to the conversation. She makes her rub his back again, to which he reveals that he plans to invite all of his weirdo friends from his planet to Earth and make her rub their backs as well. That's all the motivation in the world for Meg to try Chris's idea to ditch the little orange brat. That night, they bring Bim along and begin to zig-zag around town until they find a Halloween party and bring Bim inside. The two then duck out and run off as fast as they can, hoping that this'll do it. They find Carlos and Kelly. Before they begin to trick-or-treat, they head up to Meg's room and sure enough, Bim's there. He has weirdo tracking apparently. 

Bim is angry about being ditched, as you'd expect. This causes him to grow larger and begin destroying Meg's room. Her computer, her walls, everything. The kids are panicked, when Penny shows up and begins to call him an idiot. Bim freaks out and begins to shrink. The kids realize that insults make him sad and sadness makes him tiny. They continue to hurl insults at Bim until he's tiny. But Bim tells them that all that did was just make him even more angry. He grows even larger, now ten feet tall. The kids run out of the house as it continues to be destroyed as he chases after them. He grabs Meg and tries to eat her, but Carlos lifts him up since he's feather weight. Well for a few seconds before he's heavy again. They manage to free Carlos and return to Meg's room, only to be confronted by Bim again, ready to eat Meg like living meat.

TWIST ENDING

However, Bim then notices the Floig doll and gets really excited. It was a toy of his from when he was really young. It's why he came to Earth in the first place, but the travel mixed him up. He takes the Floig and says goodbye to Meg and Chris, then disappears. The kids are relived, so is Penny. Later, after Carlos and Kelly leave, Meg and Chris talk about how crazy the night was, when suddenly more weirdos arrive, asking if they've seen Bim.

PART 3

Meg and Chris tell the weirdos that Bim has left, and thus they leave too. Well, that was easy enough. I guess we can call this a book... is what I'd say if I didn't have over 80 pages left. Sure enough, Meg's room glows, and she notices the small Horror figurine. She gets transported back to Chiller House and is greeted by Jonathan Chiller. He tells her that he brought her to HorrorLand to play a game. A masquerade game, what with it being Halloween and all. Meg refuses, since she's already had a bad night, but Chiller insists that he'll send her home when he's finished. All that she has to do to win is to prove that she is herself. He calls the game double or nothing (what is this, AEW?) and sends her out to learn about the rules herself as she visits the park. Meg uses her phone to call her dad, but just gets Chiller telling her that trying to escape won't work.

Meg continues to wander HorrorLand until she runs into a boy in a gorilla costume that tells her to head to The Haunted Pumpkin. She finds the place, which is a giant pumpkin that kids go inside. As she heads there, she sees another girl in a lizard costume staring at her. After going on the ride (which is essentially just a rocker ride with the sensation of a flame always on you), Meg exits the ride, only to see that everyone is staring at her, including the girl in the lizard costume. They chant "Are you wearing a mask" at her, making her think that maybe she needs to actually wear a mask for this game. She heads to a mask shop called "Make A Face" to find a fitting one. The Horror who works there suggests she wears a lizard costume, the same as the one the girl was wearing, and there are no other non-haunted options, so Meg complies and wears it.

After leaving the shop, Meg heads to Halloween Town. Sadly, no Jack Skellington or Debbie Reynolds here, but a haunted house. From living caterpillars to blood-curdling screams to shrunken heads, it's pretty creepy, and it gets worse for Meg when the walls begin to close in on her. She manages to break the ceiling and gets out before the Jill Sandwiching. She finds a dining table with a shrunken head on it that begins to ask Meg "who are you really?" Meg is sick of this and tries to leave, but the door's locked. A green-headed monster with red, gooey eyes, a pig nose and black lips shows up and says trick or treat. Meg compliments on his costume and tries for answers, but he keeps saying trick or treat. It tries to attack her, but in the scuffle, breaks the door open, allowing Meg to finally escape. She runs into the girl in the lizard costume again and this time pulls the mask off, to reveal herself underneath! Holy "It Takes Two" Batman!

Face to face with her face, Meg is confused, but begins to realize that this phony Meg Oliver must be part of Chiller's game. The two Megs wrestle at each other, trying to prove which one is the fake, only to then run into Chris, who somehow is at HorrorLand as well. Both Megs tell Chris that they're the real one, but the Meg we've followed in the story grabs Chris and gets him away from the other. He tells her to prove that she's the real deal, so she mentions their home on Rosemont Avenue and their friends Carlos and Kelly. Chris is confused. That's not where they live and there's no Kelly and Carlos. There's a cut on Meg's hand that she says came from a papercut, but Chris says it came from an accident cutting an apple. Meg panics, thinking that Chris has been told by Chiller to twist the truth, but he runs away from her. 

She chases him into the Halloween Hopper, a trampoline area, which just causes the kids to bounce higher and higher as more kids jump on. Eventually Meg flies up so high and lands with such a force that the net below her breaks. She sees Chris with the other Meg and chases after, eventually stopped by some zombies. One being a zombie woman with a voodoo doll that looks just like Meg that she then throws into a fire. Meg saves it in time, then remembers Madame Doom, the non-Zoltar one that had the doll that looked just like her. But in all this, she decides to call Chiller again to tell him she's sick of this game. But instead, he just hangs up on her. That's when she has a great idea. Her phone has all the information that should prove that she's the real Meg Oliver. She calls Chris, but gets the other Meg on the phone again. The other hangs up, and when Meg looks at her phone, all her contacts have disappeared.

She confronts Chris and the other Meg once more and begins to attack the other, wanting to know what's going on. Too bad for the both of them that they're atop a catwalk above a giant pumpkin pie and they fall off, landing into the pie. Meg begins to sink into the pie, unable to get free. However, both Megs manage to escape in time. Chris has had enough of this and decides that there's only one way to prove this. He drags them both to Chiller House where they all confront Jonathan Chiller once more. Chris asks the questions from earlier again, but this time when the other Meg says them, he says they're all correct. Meg is frustrated, not understanding what's going on and begins to grab at Chris.

TWIST ENDING #2

However, Chris' ears fall off. Meg realizes that this Chris was just a robot. The other Meg is a robot too. Chiller had scanned their DNA when they first entered Chiller House. Horrors arrive to take the defective robots as Chiller leaves the room. However, the horrors grab Meg instead of the Megbot, dragging her away. She manages to grab King Kong's Diaper Safety Pin (which I didn't mention earlier, but that's a thing) and stabs it through the Chris bot, then cuts herself to reveal real blood. The horrors stop and let her go. Chiller then tells Meg that shes free to finally go home. He gives her the horror doll which sure enough sends her home. However, when she gets home, she sees the Meg robot is in her room.

CONCLUSION

Special Edition books make me concerned. If you read my Wanted: The Haunted Mask review, you could see why. How it just went from one story to another, more boring story. Thankfully this wasn't the case for Weirdo Halloween. Well, sorta. I mean, we do end the whole Bim stuff at about the pace of a normal Goosebumps book, and then we stack on more stuff with HorrorLand for another 80+ pages. But at least that actually ties into everything in the book beforehand and also at least fleshes out some of whatever the hell is going on with Jonathan Chiller and his games. And what we get with that last part is some decent enough thriller stuff  (at least as far as Stine can go with it) that actually feels intriguing. Like, you actually begin to think that maybe this Meg isn't the real Meg. And then he just makes it all robots so that kinda feels like you just popped the balloon with King Kong's safety pin. But at least it's something after three previous books that just end with the protagonists being whisked away back to Chiller House, so props to that.

As for the Weirdo Halloween story part, it's not bad. Doesn't really feel like anything too fresh. It's kids who deal with a weird monster that makes their lives miserable. Really no different than lawn gnomes or Slappy, or whatnot. Only this one really wanted to amp up the gross, with more focus on how weird Bim is, a lot more vomiting, and a lot of dead animals. To the point that it goes from intriguing to "that's all you got, Bob?" Twist is also kinda dull, considering Bim already said this was gonna happen. It also unfortunately suffers because due to needing eighty pages to go to HorrorLand, we just sorta just end that whole thing with the other weirdos just leaving with no hassle. It goes back to my issue with My Friends Call Me Monster and how this arc format hurts any impact the book twists have. Regardless, I did like the last act of the main story, did get intrigued for most of the second story, found Meg to be a likable protagonist, and the book flowed well despite the added 80 pages. So it gets a passing grade. I give Weirdo Halloween a B-.