The Stinal Countdown: Goosebumps Hall of Horrors #3: The Five Masks of Dr. Screem

Two books down, four books to go in the Hall of Horrors series. And our third is a Halloween story, which usually bodes well. Although it is a special edition, meaning its longer than most and those have always led to disaster. Can Stine make this work? Let's find out with The Five Masks of Dr. Screem.

COVER STORY

Now this is a cover! Brandon Dorman often gets flack for his work, but when he offers a great looking cover with some great atmosphere, he can deliver on a Jacobus level. And this cover is indeed great. I like the decision to go with a black and white look to give it an old timey horror aesthetic. Nice detail on the background, giving us atmosphere of a creepy old cemetery. Then there's the masks, with the skeleton mask being the most prevalent. Nice detail on the face, or lack thereof. Easily one of the best later era covers.

STORY

We open once again in the Hall of Horrors and we meet the Story-Keeper once more. He introduces us to our protagonist of the book, Monica Anderson, who is looking freaked out, while holding an ugly mask in her lap. She tells the Story-Keeper that the mask brought her to the hall and that the experience was so frightening that she and her brother Peter will never go trick-or-treating again.

PART ONE

Monica is forced to taker her ten year old brother Peter trick-or-treating on Halloween night, despite the fact that the kid is a karate nut that constantly chops, kicks and pesters her. He's also taller than her and likes to use that to his advantage when bugging her. Monica is the captain of the gymnastics team and a star sprinter, so she's no slouch herself. She dresses in a gymnastics uniform for her costume while Peter dresses like a ninja. Monica meets up with her friends Caroline and Regina, dressed in catwoman and munchkin attire. They too have to deal with Peter's constant karate chops and general annoyance. 11 pages into a 173 page story and I already want to tap out. That's almost a record.

Peter freaks out over getting an apple and runs off to another house. Monica follows, only to see she's further in town than she normally goes. Peter ends up in the doorstep of a large house. A dark haired woman in a long dress greets Peter and Monica, telling them that she knew they'd come. She brings them into her home and introduces herself as Bella. Wait, another Bella already? Stine, you lazy hack! Bella knows their names because they were mentioned in a book. She shows them The Hallows Book, which indeed mentions two kids named Monica and Peter helping her out on Halloween. 

Bella mentions that five masks are stolen every year and this year Monica and Peter have to find them for her. What are these five masks? They are called the masks of Screem and contain powerful magic. Monica and Peter think to run, but soon see the book also mentions that they were going to run, but ultimately don't. Bella shows the kids the five masks. A skull mask, a werewolf mask, a mummy mask, a pig mask, and an insect mask. The masks then howl at the kids, making them more ready to book it. But Bella tells them that if they want to return home they have to listen to what she says. 

Monica and Peter have heard enough and start to make their leave, but suddenly Bella's door disappears, so they're forced to listen to her story

Bella tells them that she is one hundred and thirty years old. The five masks were created one hundred years ago by a sorcerer named Hallows. He was born on a Halloween and died on a Halloween. Before he died, he gave the five masks magic powers and gave them to a man named Dr. Screem. Screem steals them every year and hides them on a Halloween Night. Bella has tried to put a stop to this for a century, but due to a curse put on the masks by Hallows, if Bella touches the masks she'll turn to ash. She calls upon kids, ones determined by the book to find them for her. 

Suddenly, the house begins to shake and a man in a purple hooded robe with a square white beard enters the room. This is our Dr. Screem. He blasts a green beam at a book case where the masks are hidden and snatches the masks. He tells Bella that this year he'll win this game and their powers. He tells the two that they shouldn't have listened to Bella and that he also knows who they are. Monica and Peter, still wanting to part of this, run off for home. But when they arrive to where their house should be, it's an empty lot. Not only that, the fabric of reality has changed in where there never was a house in that empty lot. The kids begin to realize that this was the work of Dr. Screem and that maybe they really do have to play this game. 

PART TWO

Monica and Peter return to Bella's, now with no other alternative. If they want their family back, if they want their home back, they're gonna have to find those masks. She hands them a list of the masks. Ugly insect, Himalayan snow wolf, human skull, alien pig creature and mummy. Just mummy. Someone ran out of cool names. Like human skull isn't creative either, but jeez. These masks have the power to alter reality, just like how Monica and Peter's family were erased from existence, so they must be collected. They must be captured by dawn or Screem will win. Screem will try to steal them, so the masks have to be worn, even it means just slipping one over the other. "Screem is also the world's best liar, so don't listen to him" says Bella who didn't just make herself seem suspicious. 

It doesn't take too long for the kids to find the first mask, the ugly insect mask, on the ground. It looks like a grasshopper, but much worse than that, it is filled with bugs. So, if you wear this mask, you're gonna have bugs all over your face. Gotta admit, that's actually a nightmarish scenario. Monica puts on the bug-filled mask and suddenly gigantic mantises show up. Oh god, is the twist going to be that Monica and Peter are robots? The bugs grab the kids and begin to wrap them up in cocoons. Peter manages to use his candy bag to distract the bugs long enough to free Monica in time. They duck into the bushes and wait for the mantises to follow, but they instead find themselves back at Bella's house with one mask collected.

Next up is the mummy mask. Peter deduces that Screem may have taken it to the history museum. They make it to the back of the museum, but the door is closed. They then see a bunch of mummies coming at them, but they're actually just kids. Turns out the museum is holding some event called MummyFest. This gives Monica and Peter a chance to enter and search for the mask. After a few close calls involving guards, they manage to find the area containing the masks. And after some harrowing issues involving sarcophag-err, "mummy cases" and Monica being trapped inside one with a mummy, they manage to get the mask. Suddenly, security guards arrive, ready to grab them. Peter puts on the mummy mask and suddenly reality changes again.

This time the kids are strapped to stretchers in a strange room with hooded figures. They realize it's a mummification chamber inside an Egyptian pyramid and they're next to be mummified. Peter is raised over a cauldron when Monica, being a helluva gymnast, manages to flip and dropkick one of the priests, knocking him into the cauldron. While some hooded men attend to him, others give chase to the kids. They run out of the museum and into the cold desert. Suddenly, they return to the museum, now two masks down and three to go.

Next is the Himalayan snow wolf. They decide to check out the aptly named Wolf Hill. Monica falls off the side of the cliff, but manages to make it out okay. Unfortunately she finds the wolf mask on some snarling creature. She manages to get it off the creature, revealing it to be a feral dog. She plans to cartwheel out of there, but the dog bites her in the shoulder. She quickly puts the wolf mask on over the bug mask and it again takes her somewhere else. Deep in the snowy mountains. She can see pawprints in the snow and has a real hunger for dead rabbit she sees. She then realizes that she's turned into a snow wolf. She also sees Peter and, in full wolf mode, mauls him and prepares to straight up throw him off the side of a cliff. She regains her mind in time to let him go, but suddenly the two end up in an avalanche. 

But then they're back to where the lot where their home once was. Monica now back in human form, shaken by, you know, nearly murdering her brother. Three masks down, two left. Next is the human skull mask, to which they realize is in a cemetery. They find an open grave and by its marker, a yellow skull mask. Monica goes to grab it, but it's not a mask. It's a real skull. And the skeleton attached to it comes to life and throws the kids into the open grave. A grave filled with worms, which makes Monica panic because she's scared of worms. But also in the mask is a hooded man wearing a skull mask. It's Dr. Screem. 

Screem warns the two that they shouldn't have come and that he warned them at Bella's about this. Monica and Peter don't wait and exit the grave. Screem rises above the open grave and destroys the sentient skeleton. He tells the kids to give him their masks or they won't see their parents again, because it's actually Bella who's the evil one. She's the one who got rid of their family and if he doesn't get the masks away from her before dawn, the game ends for another year and her evil will continue. Bella's name is actually Belladonna, which means deadly night shade, a poison. The kids don't buy this, since Bella told them to not believe him, which is something a suspect would say. Peter tries to attack Screem, but fails. However, in the struggle, both fall back into the open Grave and suddenly disappear. 

Monica jumps back in the grave and notices a tunnel inside. She goes in, only to briefly get lost in the darkness. But she soon sees Peter who now has both the skull mask and alien pig mask. Aw man, we're not even going to do the pig mask? Like, that at least sounded like a cool scenario. With all five masks in tow, the kids run back to Bella's and show her their accomplishment. She celebrates her victory and asks for the masks. Suddenly, Peter begins to change. It was Dr. Screem all along. He tells the two that he let Peter go as he realized that Dr. Screem was indeed telling the truth. Belladonna had planned to use two kids to find the masks in hopes of confusing him, but she failed. Now he can keep them away from her forever to stop her wicked plans.

Belladonna attacks Dr. Screem, trying to snatch the masks from him. Suddenly, dawn begins as daylight fills the room. Both Dr. Screem and Belladonna vanish. Monica doesn't breathe a sigh of relief as now she worries if her family are still gone, including Peter. But Peter shows up in a robe. He was told by Screem not to appear until sun up. They now have one more concern, if their home has been brought back. It still hasn't. They return to Belladonna's and look at the Hallows book, which still says they're doomed. Monica grabs a pen and changes the book to say that their home and family had come back and for everything to snap back before they met Belladonna, with neither Peter nor herself retaining any memory of the events.

TWIST ENDING

The trick works and Monica and Peter return back to the end of Halloween night with no remaining memories of what they went through. They make it home and sure enough, their house and their parents are back. The kids then go to dump their trick-or-treat bags. But what fall out are the five masks who then laugh at them.

We return to the Story-Keeper who thanks Monica for her story (though if she lost her memory about the events, how does she know what happened?), which he'll keep in the hall. He then greets the next guest, a boy named Matt Krinsky, who looks a lot like a zombie.

CONCLUSION

I'm mixed on this book. It has one of the best premises for any Goosebumps book, particularly in the second era. The idea of a hunt for masks that warp the fabric of reality is a really clever idea. And the book does present some great freaky imagery. Particularly with the bug and wolf mask. And, even for a longer book, it doesn't really drag. It sets the plot up early and gives enough time for some solid adventure moments with the right amount of Horror. Even the swerve, while a bit predictable, still works. 

But what hurts this book is a lot of other stuff. Monica is okay, but bland as a protagonist, save for her gymnastics. When we first met Peter, I thought I was going to hate sitting through a book with this brat, but he turned out okay enough in the end. Aside from basic protagonists, the story feels super rushed. This is exemplified when the book can't be bothered to do anything with the skull mask and especially with the alien pig mask, which could have led to something interesting, but Stine clearly had no idea. This book honestly feels like it should have been The Three Masks of Dr. Screem instead. Also, we really have no idea the power or the danger of these masks aside from if you wear it you transport somewhere else for a couple minutes. 

We also never get a feeling of how either Belladonna or Dr. Screem could use these for any real world-shifting abilities, especially since Belladonna can do that herself when she erased Monica and Peter's family and house. If anything actually holds power it's the Hallows book. We see that it can both predict and alter the fabric of time and space. It feels like a more viable threat in the wrong hands. The masks just feel like MacGuffins to pad a book that didn't need the extra pages.

The book also ends up lacking a strong conclusion. We get Belladonna's reveal and brawl with Screem that just ends when dawn comes. And the twist is really lame with a wonky retcon punch that again devalues the masks. But at least some of the book's middle was okay. Essentially, the book has a dizzying high (the start), a terrifying low (the end) and a creamy middle. It's an irregular Oreo of a Goosebumps book. If it had enough time and thought put into it to actually make the masks matter, even with the extra pages that were allotted already, this might have been one of the better books in the series, but in the end, this book can't mask its mediocrity. The Five Masks of Dr. Screem gets a C+.