The Stinal Countdown: The Nightmare Room #05: Dear Diary, I'm Dead

Time for the fifth entry into The Nightmare Room. And another book about diaries and journals. Which means it's time for another cursed object story, which can go any which way. And so far Nightmare Room, if anything, has allowed for darker horror, so it might be interesting to see what we're dealing with here. Or maybe not. One way to find out. Let's read up on Dear Diary, I'm Dead. 

This cover is decent. Can't say it's the most incredible, but still works for presenting a creepy enough image of a monstrous hand reaching out of a book. And we get a decent shocked kid face from our protagonist, which works to sell it. Honestly, while I like the covers for Nightmare Room, they do feel less fun and energetic as Goosebumps. I get that's by design, trying to go for a preteen crowd with darker subject matter, but it's definitely noticeable in the wrong way. That aside, still a decent cover.

We start the story with Alex Smith and his friends Chip and Shawn camping in the woods. Despite their jovial attitudes, they are a bit worried. Especially at night when they hear monstrous howling. Suddenly, two men show up, claiming to be forest patrol and tell the kids to head out as soon as possible. But when the boys exit, they see no sign of the forest patrol, but what looks like werewolf prints! Oh, and none of this actually happened, this was all Alex's short story for his English class. His teacher, Miss Gold, thinks the story's good, but it's a real Daniel Bryan. A solid B+. Mainly in that Alex really didn't do much to flesh out Chip and Shawn in particular. That, and how are they wolves or werewolves and have leather jackets? Look, it's early 2000s, but furries did exist then too.

That last question was made by Tessa Wayne who Alex really dislikes for how much of an apple polisher she comes off as, always trying to sound smart for extra credit. Speaking of which, Miss Gold suggests that Alex should have a diary. Write in it each day and then at the end of the year it will count towards extra credit. and Tessa wants to do one as well because... well that's been established. She also likes to make bets with Alex, which she always ends up winning. This includes betting that Tessa could get the flag raised upside down. Now Alex is going to make sure he can beat her, betting a hundred dollars that his diary will be way more exciting than hers. Also, he  bets Chip five bucks that he'll win. In fact, that's all Alex ever does is bet people. So a gambling addiction at a young age. Well if the diary doesn't kill him, loan sharks will when he's an adult. 

When he gets home, Alex's mom shows him a desk in his room. An old antique desk complete with a nice chair. Alex isn't over the moon, but it's still useful. After she leaves, Alex checks the desk and finds something in one of the drawers. A diary. He writes about himself, Chip, Shawn and Tessa then talks with his parents about how his band practice is going. Yeah, they have a band, but it's mostly just guitars and no singers. So, going well. When he returns to the diary, Alex finds that suddenly there's been a complete entry for the next day in his handwriting, even though he didn't write it. It says that he'll mostly argue with Tessa, then their geography teacher Mrs. Hoff will give them a pop quiz they aren't ready for. Sure enough, that all comes true. 

So, now that he may have a future-predicting diary, Alex is now more interested in betting people that things will happen. After saving a kitten from being run over (Stine showed restraint? Wait. It's still early.)  Alex is excited to see what the diary will write next, since there's no way it could ever predict a BAD future. But this kid's already speedrunning going into debt, so not the smartest kid ever. Sure enough, another entry soon comes in. Saying the school team, the Ravens, win the upcoming basketball game at overtime. Oh, and that Tessa is getting suspicious about the diary. Sure enough, Tessa shows up and is indeed curious as to how Alex was aware of a surprise quiz. She also asks to join their band as singer, but he says he'll think about it. He then has a dream where every page in the diary reads the word DEAD. 

So, the basketball game occurs and Alex uses his knowledge from the diary to bet everyone that the game between the Ravens and the oddly named Hummingbirds goes into overtime. Sure enough, he wins that bet. Essentially he's Biff Tannen with the almanac, only he also makes sure to throw the next bet of the Ravens winning 34-30 even though the diary says 34-32. So hey, compulsive gambler but a clever compulsive gambler. Now on a high from his big victory at the game, Alex goes to check the diary again, expecting more good news to come. The next prediction mentions a substitute teacher with an algebra test and that Alex lets Tessa in the band on account of her uncle's large garage. However it won't sit well with Chip and Shawn since they don't want her a part of it. Despite pissing off Chip and Shawn, Alex is excited, but when he checks the diary again, he notes that the diary mentions that he's going to be hit by a car after school. 

He at first tries to pretend to be sick, but still has to perform with his band at lunchtime. The same band where half of it is angry about Tessa being involved. And when they perform at lunchtime, she turns out the be pretty damn bad. So, now his friends are angry, and he's fearing becoming street pizza in a matter of hours. As he heads home, sure enough the same kitten from last time is on the road with a car approaching. But despite this possibly being the car that hits him, Alex still bolts into the road to save it. He saves the kitten but still gets hit hard by the car. He doesn't die, but is busted up pretty bad. Of course, he then thinks about the most important part of being struck by a car and that's that he should have made a bet with Chip and Shawn that he'd be hit by a car. First off, what the hell, second, they probably would have thought he dived into the road on purpose, thereby fixing the bet, I guess? I really don't know what to think of Alex at this point. It'll be an interesting conclusion.

Of course Tessa also thinks that he only did it to make his diary more interesting. Which I guess isn't wrong. I mean, saving the kitten or not, Alex ultimately is doing so much of this stuff to come off cooler than whatever Tessa writes. Next diary entry mentions the junior Olympics being a mess and most of the eighth graders looking worse than the seventh graders. It also mentions Tessa still being suspicious. Oh and that Alex is going to get up on a roof, flap his wings and jump. So that escalated. He heads home after the games, having also made money on it because of course, when he runs into the kid with the kitten again, a boy named Billy, who now lost his Raiders cap up on his roof thanks to the wind. Alex, knowing full well what going up the roof means, tries to back out of it, only for other kids to show up and tell him to go up there and get the hat. 

Alex climbs up and manages to get the cap, but then has the gall to ask the kids below if he should jump because he can't turn that shit off. A gust of wind then hits him, causing him to flap his arms from the gust and start to fall off the roof. He gets saved by a nearby teacher and everyone cheers him on for not dying. Alex rushes off to get the diary, but sees that Shawn and Chip have it. He grabs it off them and heads off to check the next prediction. Next Ravens game goes well so he can make money on that. Oh, and Shawn is going to crash his bike and break his leg in two places. Swear to god if Alex says "Bet you'll break your leg" then I don't know what to even say at this point. He really can't turn it off.

No, this time Alex actually tries to stop it, but never really gets the chance as Shawn speeds off and crashes into a nearby van, breaking his leg like the diary predicted. So now Alex is really concerned about the diary. If it really is evil and, more importantly, if it can be stopped. Tessa asks how he could have predicted this, and even says that she isn't trying to compete with him, that she wants to be his friend, but he still doesn't give her any concrete answers. He goes to check the diary and this time it says that he, on a whim, decides to drive the school bus when the bus driver leaves for a moment. He thinks it impossible since this'll be the day his mom drives him home. It's not like some forces will put everything in place for this to happen. I mean, what are the odds? Look, I know he's a gambler, but he doesn't have any understanding about how odds work.

Sure enough, his mom has an appointment, meaning Alex is taking the bus before LITERALLY taking the bus. And, as if some force pushes him toward it, Alex ends up driving the school bus. He drives it erratically, almost hitting pedestrians and causing the cops to chase after. It all ends when Alex slips on the wheel, causing the bus to crash into a tree. Surprisingly, he isn't punished super hard, but still grounded for grand theft school bus. Tessa shows up again, saying she knows that his actions have to do with the diary. Not in that it's a future predicting diary, rather that he's doing these death defying stunts to make his diary sound cooler than hers. Paranoid, Alex throws the diary out in the trash. Realizing that may have been a serious mistake, he goes to get it back, only for it to no longer be there. And at school the next day (which, how is he not expelled for, you know, CRASHING A SCHOOL BUS AND ALMOST KILLING A BUNCH OF KIDS?) he realizes that it was Tessa who took it.

And, sure enough, this appeared to be the case as Alex finds what appears to be the diary at Tessa's Uncle's place. Only now all of the entries simply say "DEAD" just like his earlier nightmare. So now Alex is convinced that Tessa is in danger. He then notices it's conveniently storming and that Tessa, Chip and Shawn are performing in the open garage. Tessa holding a microphone which may as well be a lightning rod. Alex grabs the mic from her in time just as the lightning bolt hits him.

As he wakes up, he discovers that he's in his room again just as the desk is being put in. He checks and sees the diary in the drawer with the writing already inside. So... a time loop ending, is-is that how this is? Is that how this one's ending? Nah, not even ending this on an "It's an ending" that's just freaking lame. 

I'll get to the twist in a bit because that's really the biggest determent of the book, but I have to get the good out of the way, because there is some real good from it. I think the book's premise is Say Cheese and Die! done right. The biggest problem those books had were that the predictions were always bad. Hence actually ever using the camera after realizing that fact was always stupid. Here, it starts with good predictions, ones that Alex can benefit off of. As time passes however, the predictions get more and more dangerous. But instead of just never using it again, Alex has become so addicted to the predictions that he can't simply stop using it. It makes the story become about the pursuit of knowing the future being more trouble than its ultimately worth.

Alex is... well... frustrating is perhaps the nicest way to put it. Overall, he's a relatively good kid who is willing to help out when he can, notably saving Billy's kitten twice. Even when he knows it'll be him who pays for it. It's just his gambling addiction stuff goes from endearing to annoying. Like, when he moans over not putting bets that he'll get hit by a car is when you start to lose any sympathy for what befalls him. Not the worst protagonist ever, but one you really can't like much either. Tessa is a fine enough foil, while Chip and Shawn mostly exist. I guess at least Shawn gets hurt, nothing happens to Chip. So he's the superfluous Clay then.

Now for the problems with this book. Like other Nightmare Room books, there's this real feel of padding and dragging its feet. Feeling more like Stine had to ramp up incidents in the story to make quota instead of ever letting anything breathe. As such it just leaves the moments feeling like they're that important. Best exemplified when we just kind of gloss over the fact that Alex, again, drove the school bus and almost killed everyone. Like, nothing? No punishment at all for that? He just gets to go about his business? Stine, come on man. I'd say you're better than that, but nah. 

I kind of hate this twist. Mainly in that I don't quite get what Stine was going for. Did the lightning strike actually kill Alex? Did it send him back to the starting point of the story? Does that mean he wrote the entries in one version of the timeline and then they still happen? I swear to god when I first read this, I thought the copy I read just reprinted the earlier pages, only for me to turn the page and realize, "oh god, that's really the ending huh?". It feels like Stine didn't know how to end this in a way that would have seen Alex beat the predictions. So he hit a wall, or more like a tree while driving a bus. And thus we get a really lackluster way to finish this off. I guess at least it wasn't all just a dream. Or maybe it was? 

So this is a conflicting book for me. A lot I like, a decent amount of horror and tension, while having an annoying lead, a sense of wheel spinning and a wet, putrid fart of a twist. Nightmare Room has still yet to have that one book I love, and if there was a more cohesive narrative and better execution, this might have been the one to do so. Ah well. I guess even I couldn't have predicted what would happen. Also Stine opening a book bringing up narrative issues only to do the same isn't the brave witticism he thinks it is. Dear Diary I'm Dead gets a C+.