The Stinal Countdown: The Nightmare Room #12: Visitors

All things must come to an end. Case in point The Nightmare Room. Not entirely by Stine's choice this time as things just fell through. I'll talk more about it when we get to the Horrific Hindsight, but 9/11's impact on the world was massive in late 2001 and yes, it even affected books. So, by the time Stine penned the twelfth (technically fifteenth) book, that was when it ended. But did R.L. Stine end on a high note? Did Nightmare Room's finale land better than Goosebumps? It's Stine so take anything he does as a likely flop, but we'll have to see for ourselves, huh? It's time to talk about Visitors.

Okay this cover is freaky and I love it. Our titular visitors look like walking nightmares. Covered in hair, eyes aglow and teeth jagged and freakish. Genuinely nightmare inducing. Not skeleton picnic level, but this would have been a cover that would have made me jump at least.. It not being saturated to hell also helps in giving it slightly more unsettling and, for lack of a better term, "realistic" feel to it. If Nightmare Room had to end, it at least ends with one hell of a cover.

We open this book in the most frightening way possible, a child in a chat room. Ben Shipley is on a chat room reading a notice from someone named Zandor warning about an alien invasion. The signs are such, strange plant life, lights in the sky, people acting weird, replication, blue lights and bugs appearing out of season. Of course, Ben finds this all to be bunk, but he tells the reader that he kind of wishes it to be true given he's never met an alien before. Something he hopes could happen given he lives in Bitter Lake, New Mexico which is close to Roswell. He believes aliens exist, but thinks that Zandor is overblowing it. Replicating aliens? Like salamanders or something? Yes! "Lizard People" Stine is back, baby!

So, being a kid in a Stine book, Ben's family sucks. His parents hate that he's obsessed with alien stuff and his younger brother Will loves to mock him over it. Also they have a dog named Biscuit. Oh and Will has a frog named Godzilla that's gone missing and he thinks the dog ate it. Ben heads to school and gets accosted by our bullies for the book, Rikki Mosely, who is described as looking super punk-ish and Dennis Corcoran (no relation to Bobbi and Corky I'm sure) who is described as husky with a pudgy face. Anyway, they like to pick on Ben for having an outie belly button, because I guess kids were really bored before Youtube. 

Ben gets saved by Summer and Jeff Larkin, his best friends. He then shows them his proof that aliens are real. A strange white stone that's making a beeping noise. Of course, nobody hears it but him. He also gets mocked by his class for being a space case, as you'd expect. He tries to get Jeff and Summer to hear the stone, but Rikki and Dennis show up and throw the rock around before tossing it out the window. He heads to photography class to talk with the teacher Ms. Crenshaw. He shows her his new digital camera, then mentions the stone, to which Ms. Crenshaw oddly tells him to be careful who he divulges that information in a way that totally doesn't scream "possible alien."

Ben returns home to see Will chatting with Dennis' sister Sophie, who wants to see Ben's belly button. That's going to play into the twist, isn't it? WAY too much talk for it not to. Ben checks the chat messages and sees a not from a Professor George Grant saying that what Zandor said was correct. There is an alien invasion. Another woman, Mary N., claims that mosquitos are everywhere in the middle of January. I mean, it could be aliens, could be climate change. Also, Ben has a radio he uses in hopes of contacting an alien. He ends up getting a message loud and clear from two aliens saying they're ready to make contact on Earth. It's just Sophie and Will behind him because of course. Though I could buy that Ben is so hyperfixated on this that he didn't notice two people literally talking behind his back.

Later, Ben is forced to take a walk outside. He finds a strange figure-eight pattern in the grass and walks inside. The force causes him to feel like he's electrified and his hands are glowing. He heads hom to get his camera but is forced to eat dinner instead. Later after dinner, both Ben and Will notice their parents seem to have went off somewhere. Summer and Jeff show up and Ben takes them to the figure eight. They hear a loud boom and Ben sees a blue light fly by. Of course, nobody else heard any of them. Later that night, he gets a message from Zandor, saying to not trust the aliens. Ben then sees his parents are back and won't mention where they suddenly went. Later that night, Ben sees that his parents aren't in their room, in fact there's a whole furnished room in the attic. And in the closet is the blue light.

As Ben tries to get his bearings, his parents show up and say that there's nothing to worry about, he shouldn't be up here anyway and they're totally just tidying the attic. So in other words, Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weeeeird. He then has a dream about talking with scaly aliens at the figure-eight, only to wake up when he touches Godzilla the frog. He then finds hundreds of frogs in his dresser. His parents wake up, don't see the other frogs, but just Godzilla. So now Ben's determined to see what's going on in that attic. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I was reading Stay Out of the Basement 2. Actually, that would be a cooler book. Anyway, the attic door ends up padlocked so no luck there.

Later, Ben gets accosted by his parents again, them telling him to drop all the alien stuff. He then goes skating with Summer and notices a strange holly plant that shouldn't be native to New Mexico. Rikki shows up, now sporting blue hair, which makes Ben think that she must have been the blue light. He tries to get her to admit it, but she starts to attack him, telling him to Ssssstay away, with her eyes glowing blue before Ben slips and passes out. He wakes up and again, nobody believes anything he's said about Rikki. When he heads home, he sees his parents out of the patio and hears them mention something about a home planet. Things are no better when he heads into his room and sees his alien stuff all destroyed and a warning note saying to back off.

His parents are surprised to see all of the damage and they call the cops thinking it's a burglar. Of course, Ben says it's aliens and nobody believes him, we're really running in circles at this point. Or a figure-eight to be more precise. So Ben's grounded, but undeterred. He suspects that Rikki might have something to do with this so he sneaks out and spies on her, seeing her enter a plant food store and leaving with fertilizer that she starts to eat. Okay now I'm really convinced this is aping Basement just a little. He runs into Summer and Jeff and they just call him weird again. The last person he has left to try is Ms. Crenshaw so he heads to her photo lab, but instead sees a bunch of cages with strange furry egg creatures drooling a blue liquid. He then hears three voices enter the room, saying they have to deal with Ben. Those three being Rikki, Summer and Jeff.

The three mention that they aliens need to find hosts soon. They'll die if they don't find hosts. For now only "the leader" is keeping them alive. Ms. Crenshaw, alien too, enters and mentions that they need to find "the one." They find Ben and force him to eat one of the eggs and that tomorrow will be important. Ben heads home, all while the alien inside of him is in agony. Oddly, he's not under some sort of alien control. He can still think and act independently. He then tells his parents, who tell him the truth. Ben's an alien. Not like the other aliens but one from a different planet. The last of his kind. The one. Twelve years ago, his parents saw a blue light in the woods and discovered a spaceship shaped like a figure-eight. It vanished quickly after, but left Ben there with a hologram of what would be his family, asking for whoever found him to take care of him. The aliens don't have ears but they had a plastic surgeon apply them to Ben when he was a baby-wait WHAT?

Anyway, this is why they were worried about Ben's alien obsession. Worried he'd someday discover the truth. Oh, and Will's a normal kid so that doesn't matter. But what does matter is that Ben is the key in stopping this alien invasion. At picture day the next day, Ms. Crenshaw and the others start jamming the eggs down the throats of the other kids. Ben finds the cage with a giant egg. The egg of the leader. He then grabs the egg and eats it, eventually killing the alien and causing all of the kids to collapse in pain. Ben blacks out, then wakes up as everyone is back to normal, no longer suffering from the effects of the alien invasion. He says that he too is an alien, but nobody believes him. And that's our ending for Nightmare Room. Not on a twist, but on a jape. Smart call, Stine. 

I liked this one. Not like a lot, I do feel it rushes itself a shade by the end, and oh boy there is a lot of wheel spinning in the middle, but the sum of all its parts work quite well to be honest. It's a better Invasion of the Body Squeezers alright, though that's not a challenging feat. The story and mystery are better contained in this book, the alien invasion idea done more interestingly, and the one sticking point I had with Body Squeezers is definitely fixed here. The alien obsession actually matters to the plot. In Body Squeezers, Jack Archer is constantly being called "Saucerman" on account of his alien obsession but it never actually matters to the plot. Stine must have realized it and actually makes this matter, makes Ben an alien, and it does work, even if it just feels like a way to make everything work for the rushed finale.

Ben's a decent protagonist. His alien obsession is his only real defining trait and it's handled well enough with the reveal of him being an alien at least making sense in the overall scheme of things. Especially given the book seems to really play into his belly button being important. Surprised it didn't play into the finale. Everyone else is an alien or part of Ben's family, or just a side character lacking that much importance so they just blend in to the mystery pretty much. I like the concept of the aliens, these strange egg monsters with fangs and stuff. Shame they look nothing like the aliens on the cover, so yet another bait and switch cover issue, but not as bad as the worst cases of this happening. Horror is mostly minimal save for the whole "alien egg eating" stuff. 

I do wonder if there were more ideas thrown to the wayside from the original draft. The plants and insect life stuff for example. I really wish that had played at all to the story, especially with Rikki eating the fertilizer. Or Ben seeing all the frog creatures in his drawer, or the beeping rock. All things that feel like remnants of wherever this was originally leading. Thankfully what we get still works fine. And, for once, Stine sticks the landing. Well, technically it's a bit lopsided, but it still landed with more grace than he usually does. Makes me wish we had more Nightmare Room to talk about. To see how he REALLY could have ended on something bad. Alas.

Overall, Visitors doesn't feel too unique, but does everything fine enough for a decent enough story. I will say it, again, feels like something out of Goosebumps more than this new edgy, ramped up, follow up to Goosebumps, but I'm not complaining when Stine doesn't manage to completely botch things. I have a lot to say about Nightmare Room, but I'll save that for another time. But at least we end one of these series NOT feeling short changed. Now that feels alien to me. But no, seriously, the hell was up with the ears thing? Visitors gets an A-.