NNtG: Bone Chillers #20: Scare Bear

It's time to bear witness to yet another edition of Bone Chillers. And this time we have evil teddy bears to deal with. Which you could argue is a hell of a step down from like evil dummies or whatever. This is also a book Betsy Haynes didn't write so I'm not sure if I should brace for what's to come or not. But Bone Chillers has been consistent so far so I'm not super worried. Watch this book suck and make me feel a fool. It's Scare Bear.

Yep. That's a Tim Jacobus cover alright. All the elements on full display. Warped angle, garish colors, red Converse sneakers and freaky looking monster. Our titular Scare Bear's design is a little creepy, what with the scar over its head and the one shattered eye. But the creepiest part is the lips. Why does a teddy bear have weird human lips, Tim? I also love the little touch of the "Beware of the Bear" medallion in case you needed further confirmation that maybe this bear is evil. This is also one of several covers that make me think of the Give Yourself Goosebumps books, namely the story "Mr. Teddy" from the first book. This sense of if it were an alternate universe where Stine made a full book about Mr. Teddy, this would have been the cover. Solid cover that mixes creepy with silly. 

Timothy Bender recently turned twelve and is finally ready to shed his kiddy demeanor. For one, he doesn't want to be called Timmy anymore, but Tim. He informs his mother while she's watching some old romance movie, to which she quips that this will be the stuff Tim will need to learn soon given he's going fully manly man. Tim scoffs at that before remembering a classmate of his, Jane Wiley and feeling kinda warm. Mrs. Bender then suggests that if Tim is fully ready to grow up, he should get rid of all of his childhood toys. Which I mean, yeah it's about that time, but this is pre-Ebay so good odds he'll chuck out something valuable. 

Tim heads to his room where we see he likes to make models (which I'm sure will make it out of this book unscathed), including Freddy Krueger (written as Kruger here, could nobody get that damn name right?). He begins to throw his old junk in the trash, then notices his old teddy bear, Baby Curly. Baby Curly was his oldest possession, something he had as far back as he could remember. But the stuffing's all out of place now, an ear is missing and one of the eyes is now cracked. After hesitating, Tim ultimately decides to throw the old bear in the garbage then hears something screaming "Noooo, not me", but thinks he must be hearing something given he's a grown up now.

That night, a convenient storm rolls by with the thunder waking Tim up. He checks outside and sees the garbage can he put his old stuff in now knocked over, then sees lightning hit something in the yard. Thinking it must be an animal of some kind, he runs outside and grabs it in a blanket. However, when he sees what it is, it turns out to just be Baby Curly. The next day at school, Tim is almost picked last for a softball game and is mostly picked on by Ross Keelan, who used to be Tim's friend up until recently now that he's been a hit with the ladies, even Jane. Tim hits the ball and makes it to second base, but then gets clocked in the head with the softball and knocked down, which makes everyone laugh at him because it's funny that this kid got brain trauma I guess. Even Jane laughs at him, which hey, let's just give this kid more of a reason to turn into an incel.

As he lays in bed, sore and heart hurt, he hears a voice saying that they'll help him get Jane. Oh great, Baby Curly's a Cyrano De Beargerac. But Tim chalks this all up to softball-related brain trauma. After dinner he again hears the voice and soon discovers that it's coming from Baby Curly, who again tells Tim that he can help make Jane Tim's girlfriend. But Tim decides to go to the library with his dad instead. And while there he checks out the new Bone Chillers book. So Bone Chillers books exist in the Bone Chillers universe, huh? He then sees Jane and tries to talk to her, only to end up falling into a pile of books and have a gun pointed at his face. But nah, it's just a toy gun that Jane's little brother Ralphie is holding. Jane mentions the dance, but more importantly that she's going with Ross, so if you thought the eternal cuckening of Tim was done, you'd be mistaken. But he talked to her at least. Progress?

Tim starts to worry about going to the dance, that he'll embarrass himself, but Baby Curly ends up teaching Tim how to dance like a pro. Now normally you'd think, okay, this will backfire and Tim will end up looking like a dork with the dance taught to him by a talking teddy bear, but no actually. At the dance Tim dances so well that it impresses everyone, even Jane. Not so much Ross, who isn't fond of the idea of losing Jane, especially to Tim. Baby Curly knows this too and says that Tim needs to get rid of Ross, preferably by doing something like cutting the brakes of his bike. It's kind of amazing how quickly the bear went from helpful to masterminding an attempted murder. After being insulted by Ross again along with another girl named Rosalyn, Tim's a bit more eager to get even.

But he doesn't want to, you know, kill Ross, so Tim talks with Baby Curly, who says that it's not wrong to slap a bee that stings you. But what if someone threw the bees at me, could I slap them instead? But the point is, Baby Curly says that if someone wrongs you, wrong them right back. The bear then sort of hypnotizes Tim, making his suggestions more prevalent in Tim's mind. Tim heads over to Ross's garage and starts to loosen the brakes, but then realizes this was a bad idea, so he fixes them. The next day, after being emasculated again by Ross, the two kids start to bike, but when Ross brakes, he ends up sailing over the bike, smashing into a car bumper and breaking his leg. In front of Jane by the way, so sure add some trauma her way while we're at it. Tim's left dumbfounded, if he didn't ruin the brakes then who did? I mean, we know who, but we'll give Tim some time to clue in.

Tim returns home and tells Baby Curly what happened, angry about the attempted hypnosis. But Baby Curly says that all of this was just a test to prove that Tim's not evil. Not giving in and messing with the brakes was a good thing he did. But Ross' brakes were still messed with, to which the bear accuses Tim of maybe not fixing them right. Baby Curly is a real gaslighter here, telling Tim that he's his teddy bear and he would NEVER lie to him. And Tim believes him for now, even though there's enough evidence to case major doubt on that claim. So Baby Curly's next suggestion is that Tim should tell Jane the truth, that it was all his fault. I mean, an attempted murder is totally going to make her like him for sure. Tim opts out of doing that. But don't worry, she still gets a note from him saying that he totally did it. And guess what, IT DOESN'T MAKE HER LIKE TIM WHO'DA THUNK?

When Tim tells Baby Curly about this, he's happy because she'll only hurt Tim. So he then says to straight up poison her Diet Coke which, okay this bear's pretty fuckin' hardcore. That's enough for Tim to realize that Baby Curly was the one behind everything, so he throws the bear out in the trash can. But because I guess the bear can just teleport, Baby Curly is right back in Tim's room. The bear's cracked eye turns red and his head spins, which causes some of Tim's models to get destroyed. Hey, they didn't make it out in one piece, imagine that. The bear then makes Tim hop uncontrollably while also covering him in burning hives. So yeah, this bear is pretty damn omnipotent. Baby Curly says that he'll kill Jane and leaves in a cloud of smelly yellow smoke. Did... did the teddy bear just power fart? 

Tim rushes to Jane's house and sure enough Baby Curly's there. He goes to attack Jane, but Tim tries to fight back with the bear. Jane throws a book at the bear and it does nothing. Ralphie shows up with his toy gun and Tim takes it and points at the bear, then shoots one of the balls from the gun which somehow lodges into Baby Curly's head, causing it to blow up. Uhhh, what? So throwing a book doesn't work, but a plastic ball does? I take back my claim of Baby Curly being omnipotent I guess. Tim tells Jane the truth and now that she's seen the bear in action, can easily understand what happened. Also she's no longer with Ross anyway because he's kind of a jerk, even in the hospital he sucks. So the book ends with Tim and Jane as a couple I guess. This was a very weird ending and that's saying something.

So Gene Hult is our author, and if I'm right, this is also an author who uses the pen name of J.E. Bright, which links him to a lot of books based on kids properties. Stuff from DC, Marvel, even books based on Digimon. He wrote two Bone Chillers books, but I don't see much else he's written when it comes to kids horror. And he offers something that's mostly decent, but paced like a mess, especially in its ending. I feel like the biggest problem is the lack of balance in the power levels of Baby Curly. Him having these psychic powers work fine, but I don't get why a plastic ball would be enough to fell him like a rock to Goliath. I think if the bear didn't have all these superpowers and was just a living bear, then it would have been fine. But having him be the monster equivalent of a glass cannon really doesn't help make him feel like a threat.

Tim's an okay protagonist. I like that he wants to mature himself and still feels like a dumb kid overall. And for what little we get of Jane, Tim's relationship with her is cute enough, even if it does make Jane feel less like a character and more like a prize for Tim to win. That was my biggest gripe with How I Learned to Fly and it's just as bad here. I just wished we had more time to give to these two to want to see them have a relationship at the end and not just something Tim and Ross fight for. Ross mostly exists. Not Superfluous Clay, since he's important to the conflict, but also easy to forget exists. 

Then there's Baby Curly and he's a decent villain. Mostly because, being Tim's old teddy bear, he knows how to be emotionally manipulative and gaslight Tim into thinking that what he says will help Tim, only to then have Tim take the blame for everything. And while I can't for certain say that the book was going for it, there is this sense of the moral being to let go of your past, or that it can be tricky to just move on from your childhood, but it's a necessary evil in a way. Or in this case necessary to get rid of an evil. Though I am curious if Baby Curly always had these powers, or if the lightning storm gave him them. We know the bear was always alive, but was the lightning the source of his new psychic powers? Although if it wasn't and Baby Curly always had these powers, then why does a lightning bolt not kill him, but a plastic ball can? There's a real feeling of "It's an ending, that's enough" out of the whole affair.

So, overall this one was fine. Protagonist is fine, conflict is really good yet unpolished, only really suffers from a contrived conclusion to the whole affair and a logical explanation as to why the bear has these powers. But in the end, I still like the ideas the book was trying to present and it's yet another Bone Chillers book I like, so I can't be that angry with it. It's a book with potential, but is ultimately just full of fluff. Scare Bear gets a B-. 

Though, points for the Bone Chillers, Sweet Valley and Baby Sitters Club references, book. But where was the Goosebumps? I mean surely THAT exists right? ;)