Time for another journey to Shadyside. Like the old saying goes, "no rest for the wicked". But in the case of our next Fear Street book, it's definitely a narcoleptic nightmare. So let's find out what's going on with The Sleepwalker.
Definitely one of the more dynamic covers we've had so far. Very simple, but still works to sell the concept of our sleepwalker, Mayra Barnes. The lucid, zombie like look on her face, her walking in water, the fog sweeping over Fear Street, covering it up. It's a cover that can best be described as "eerily calm".
Mayra Barnes' summer is off to an interesting start. She has a summer job working for an old woman named Mrs. Cottler. Her mother, a nurse named Amy says that she's shocked that Cottler would giver Mayra the job on account of her being the old woman's nurse. She didn't like Nancy and even got her fired. So, you know, the best boss to have. Mayra heads off to her first day on the job for Mrs. Cottler who lives on, where else, Fear Street. But, despite the concern, Mrs. Cottler seems pretty nice, at least to Mayra. She takes Mrs. Cottler on a walk to the lake every day, which seems to make Mayra feel cold and strange. Doesn't help when Mrs. Cottler tells her that her three year old son Vincent died in the lake by running into it and drowning. Back at her place, Mrs. Cottler asks Mayra to get her a sweater upstairs. When she searches, she finds some weird black candles in Mrs. Cottler's drawer, but more concerning is Mrs. Cottler's black cat Hazel staring a hole into her. If this book ends with the cat being a witch who cursed a can of toy slime I'll be very upset.
As Mayra heads home, she's stopped by her ex-boyfriend Link who still hasn't gotten the clue that she's now with Walker and has said all she wants to say. She had gotten together with Walker some time ago after being impressed by his interest in magic, wanting to be a magician himself. Things from simple tricks to hypnosis. She tells him to get a life and he promises that she'll be sorry. The next day, Mrs. Cottler gets a visit from her neighbor Mr. Kleeg (who she keeps calling Mr. Clean) about her peach tree dropping peaches in his yard and that's somehow this serious inconvenience that ruins his yard work. After he leaves, he forgets his handkerchief in Mrs. Cottler's house. The old woman takes it to her room. Hazel once again hisses at Mayra, but weirder, Mrs. Cottler is in some sort of trance, holding the handkerchief. This is enough for Mayra to suspect that she may have been employed by a witch.
Mayra relays her theory to her friend Donna Cash. She also mentions Link's sister Stephanie (who they mention a few times looks similar to Link) who is into occult stuff, who once told Mayra that a witch could possess someone as long as they have an item of theirs. They used to be friends with Stephanie, but ever since Mayra broke up with Link, they haven't communicated with each other since. The next day, as Mayra heads to Mrs. Cottler's, she sees Mr. Kleeg being carried into an ambulance. She asks Mrs. Cottler, and the woman says that Mr. Kleeg broke his hip. So, safe to say those suspicions aren't going to go away any time soon.
Walker returns from his trip in the west. And if we didn't establish that he likes magic, this chapter lets you know that he really likes magic. He even says that his hands have grown longer. You know what they say about big hands, right? That's right, he can palm a rabbit. Mayra returns home and goes to sleep. She dreams about the lake near Fear Street, the one Mrs. Cottler's son Vincent died in. She dreams of pulling a Jesus and walking on the water, all while someone is in the shadows staring at her. She wakes up, and realizes, this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful bed. She seemingly sleepwalked her way to her front lawn.
After finishing with Mrs. Cottler the next day, Mayra walks through Fear Street and notices a large man with a blonde flat top staring at her as if he recognizes her. When he starts heading towards her, Mayra makes a run for it. She makes it to the pizza place and looks through the window and sees Walker sharing a pizza with Suki Thomas, who we met back in The Overnight. Looks like Walker's been playing a lot more tricks than "pick a card any card". She confronts them, but Walker says that he was teaching her a coin trick, that's all. Knowing Suki's past as being sort of the "school hussy" if you will, she believes that Walker and her aren't an item, but has her doubts.
Mayra tells her mother about the sleepwalking incident and she believes her because she's a nurse and this is a thing that's happened. Wow, I'm just so used to the parents not believing their kids that it feels alien when they do. But she does joke about it, so not exactly a sterling parent either. Stephanie shows up and gives Mayra her scarf back, before laying into Mayra for breaking up with Link and how it's ruined his life. And, just like Link, Stephanie says that Mayra will be sorry, then leaves, taking the scarf with her. So, being vague creeps really runs in the family.
Mayra has the dream about walking on the lake again, and once again sees a strange figure staring at her. She wakes up and realizes that she sleepwalked again, only much further. She sleepwalked her way to Fear Street. A cop takes her home and this time Mrs. Barnes is more concerned. Mayra's ten year old sister Kim still mocks her over it. So, now Mayra has no clue what's going on with her, and she worries what will happen to her the next time she falls asleep. She goes to Mrs. Cottler's and notices that one of the candles she saw has been burned down. She also sees her beads that were ruined by Hazel on her first day now in Mrs. Cottler's jewelry box. Not exactly full witch proof yet, but getting closer. Especially when she realizes that Mrs. Cottler knows who Mayra's mother is.
After an awkward drive with Link in his red pickup delivery truck, Mayra talks to Donna about things, when Donna mentions that a man named Cal was looking for Mayra. The same man who chased her a few nights prior. That Mrs. Cottler gave him the address. So, that leaves Mayra now more convinced that Mrs. Cottler is a witch that cast a spell on her to make her sleepwalk, that she might be trying to kill her to get back at Mayra's mother. That the beads were the items being used to possess her, and that she may have a fate similar to Mr. Kleeg. The Barnes' along with Donna and Kim's friend Andy, head to their uncle's lake house for the weekend near Fear Street lake. Kim mocks Mayra's sleepwalking, but the stranger thing is when Andy throws a toy car into the lake, Mayra begins to have a massive panic attack, but she can't understand why.
Despite wanting to quit working for Mrs. Cottler (which, you know, piss off the possible witch more), she heads there for her next day of work. She talks to Donna who leaves in Mayra's Toyota. When Mayra arrives, she learns that Mrs. Cottler is going to visit her sister for a while, so Mayra will have to just house sit for a while and take care of Hazel. Mayra heads home and gets a phone call from her mother at the hospital. Donna got in a car accident. Not fatal, but she's banged up pretty bad regardless. When Mayra speaks to Donna, she learns that someone tried to run her off the highway. In a red pickup truck just like the one that Link uses for deliveries. Maybe he saw Mayra's Toyota and tried to kill her by knocking her off the road. So now Mayra doesn't just have a possible witch to worry about, but an unhinged ex. Hell of a summer so far.
Mayra and Walker investigate Mrs. Cottler's house, trying to find anything. They find her library and more damning, books about sleepwalking. They then find something else. A photo of Link and Stephanie, along with other stuff mentioning their "Aunt Lucy". That's when they figure it out. Link and Stephanie's aunt is Mrs. Cottler. And given that Mayra broke up with Link and he took it poorly, Mrs. Cottler and Stephanie have been casting spells on her as revenge. All while Hazel the cat is hissing at them. Mayra heads up to the jewelry box to get her beads, but they're gone.
After talking with Donna who still doesn't believe her, Mayra goes to Link and Stephanie's house to talk with Stephanie. And she finds Stephanie chanting in a chalk circle with Mayra's scarf on her head. She accuses Stephanie of casting a spell on her, but Stephanie claims she's not doing anything. She also mentions Mrs. Cottler being Stephanie's aunt, but Stephanie told her that before Mayra got the job, so that's more a case of Mayra really not being that attentive I guess. They argue for a bit, with Stephanie saying that maybe the sleepwalking is Mayra's conscience for mistreating Link, especially now that Walker is with Suki, which Mayra still doesn't believe because, well at this point, we can see she's not really good at seeing warning signs.
That night, Mayra has another dream about the lake. Only now she can see the person staring at her. It's Walker. As he disappears, she begins to get pulled down into the lake. She wakes up and sure enough, she's deep in the water. She almost drowns until a fisherman saves her. The next day, Mayra heads to the hospital to speak with a man named Dr. Sterne who is an expert on sleep issues. When she arrives, she sees Cal, the large man with the blonde flat top, in the psychiatric ward. He begins to chase her again, but she makes it to Dr. Lawrence Sterne's office. While he doesn't really believe her about a man chasing after her, he does think that the sleepwalking is caused by some form of trauma. Something from her past that she's tried to repress that's causing her mental stress and is making her sleepwalk.
Finally tired of everything, Mayra heads back to the lake to get some answers. She starts to walk in when Link shows up. She accuses him of injuring Donna, but he doesn't have any idea what's going on. He tries to get her to leave with him, but she runs off. After she jumps back in the lake, something finally snaps into her head. She asks Link to take her home and he does so. She goes to her room and in her head recreates one particular Saturday night with Walker. She and Walker were driving in his mom's car. Walker was driving fast and erratic, and it caused a car accident which sent the other car into the lake with the people still inside. One man came up and was screaming at them, but while Mayra wants to help, Walker dragged her away. And it's there where now she knows exactly what happened.
Mayra and Walker return to Mrs. Cottler's house and she asks Walker to hypnotize her. He does so, and tells her to forget about the accident. That's all she needed to hear as now she knows the truth. Her sleepwalking was never from Mrs. Cottler or Stephanie. It was Walker. He hypnotized her to make her forget about the accident. He tells her that he knew she would call the police and that he didn't want his life ruined by a simple mistake. He also tells her that one man died in the accident, and the man's brother was the only survivor. He also realized that Mrs. Cottler being into witchcraft could be used to trick Mayra into thinking that she was the one behind the sleepwalking, not him.
Now that Mayra knows everything, Walker grabs her and takes her to the lake to finish the job. Suddenly, Hazel claws Walker's face, giving Mayra enough time to call the cops. He finds her, his face covered in bloody scratches. Mayra grabs a meat cleaver and tries to defend herself, but he overpowers her. She escapes, but makes it to the front door as Cal is there. He starts to choke Walker, saying that he killed his brother. He then tells Mayra that it was Cal and his brother Jerry in the car that night. Jerry had drowned, and ever since then he wanted revenge. He believed it was her that did it, even trying to run her off the road in a red truck, but now knows the truth that it was Walker all along. Police arrive and Mayra explains what's happened.
One week later, Mayra is back with Link who apologizes for being a creep. He was just concerned about her, that's all. Still a creep, but a concerned creep, so I guess that cancels each other out? Mayra asks if Mrs. Cottler, his Aunt Lucy, really is a witch, but he says that she's really a professor who studied the effects of sleepwalking. Mayra gets her paycheck and her repaired beads back from Lucy Cottler, then leaves. But she wonders one thing, did Hazel the cat know what was going on, and why did she save her?
So, why does Mrs. Cottler study sleepwalking? Well, the book doesn't bring it up, but the safest bet is that it has to do with her three year old son Vincent, who we learn died by walking into the lake. Good odds that he was a sleepwalker himself and she couldn't wake him up in time. So she studied the works of Sleepwalking. And everything else was just red herrings or coincidences. The candles, the broken beads, Mr. Kleeg's injury, her spacing out. Although the only one that the book seems to lean on being supernatural of any kind is Hazel the cat, making it clear that the cat knows something, or might have powers of her own.
Mayra is a good protagonist. Not the most unique, but you do feel for her plight. Her issues with the sleepwalking, her repressed memories, her issues with Link and Walker. Link and Stephanie are interesting, but they do also feel clingy, especially Link. Makes him not feel all that comfortable a character for Mayra to end up with either, but at least he wouldn't hypnotize her like Walker. Walker also works well as our villain. A person who knows how to manipulate others, both emotionally and mentally. His interest in magic and dreams of being a famous magician work to create a character with sinister characteristics. Like, it's bad enough that he hypnotized Mayra to forget the accident, but consider what else he could do with those powers. It isn't beyond my thoughts that he's the kind of person who would rape someone and hypnotize them to forget all about it, making him our most villainous character yet. And given what he did to Mayra, imagine what he'd have done to Suki? Hell, was he hypnotizing her to be with him? That's the kind of stuff this book's left me thinking.
So, in the end, it's another solid Fear Street book. Not perfect, but I think the book flows really well, works its twists and turns well, and while it does make things too obvious, the book builds to the reveal really well. It's another recommend for me. This one's not one to sleep on. The Sleepwalker gets an A-.
It was acceptable in the 90s: Walkman, "The New Tom Cruise Movie", Hard Rock Cafe Shirts
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