NNtG: Spooksville #01: The Secret Path

Time to take a trip to another book series. And it's been one I've been wanting to talk about for a while but never got around to getting to. I think it has to do with the author of said book series. Yes, it's finally time to talk about Spooksville, the Goosebumps-like that was written by our old friend Christopher Pike. Now, if you know me, I'm pensive around covering Pike since nine times out of ten I get struck with subject matter that I'd rather not have to review for the blog. But this being a book series intended for a child audience, I don't think I have to worry about stories surrounding abortion... I hope. 

Yes, in 1995, Spooksville was released by Minstrel Books and would go on for 24 books. Not a bad run. The thing that would differentiate this series from Stine and Goosebumps would be a continuing storyline that features the same characters in the same setting dealing with new threats and freaky stuff. I mean, it's not the first series to do so, Weird Zone being an example, but it at least feels like more of a hook than a lot of Stine's stuff. So let's see what we have in store and how Pike fared in the kiddy book scene as we take a trip down The Secret Path.

Apologies on the rather washed cover art, but finding like really good rips of some of these covers is surprisingly tricky. But what we get is a really cool piece of art. Lee McLeod creates some really impressive looking art that doesn't feel like it's just ripping from Jacobus. It's busy, but not in a way that's too distracting, more in you might miss stuff. You'll be so focused on the witch's face, or the bird, or the castle, that you might not even notice the skeleton arm rising from the grave. I love the colors coming off the setting sun, the random lightning over the castle and wafting mist over the tombstones. It's a great mixture of enough little elements that make you really want to read on and see what's going on in this book. So for that alone, it's a top notch cover.

Adam Freeman and his family have moved from Kansas City to the small town of Springville, or Spooksville as it's often referred to by the kids in town. Because strange things tend to happen in Spooksville and monsters are often abundant. Adam helps his dad move items into the house, all while talking about the possibility that Adam will find new friends and maybe even a girlfriend in this new town, when his dad pulls a muscle and is in pain. Adam notes that his dad is fat and loves junk food, which could have attributed to said pulled muscle. He's sent to the store to get a six-pack of Coke when he meets a girl there named Sara Wilcox, but says to call her Sally because it's easier to remember (???), who is described as having a sticklike figure that makes her look like a doll brought to life by a magic spell. I expect no less from Pike, but like I said about Stine, STAYINYOURFUCKINGLANEDUDE!

After trying to grill him on if he had a girlfriend back in Kansas and mentioning that she is going through a bit of an identity crisis, Sally tells Adam about Springville actually being Spooksville. No adult calls it that, but the kids do, because the kids in town know about strange occurrences and disappearances in town. Adam, being a skeptic, especially towards a strange girl he just met, isn't so willing to believe that people are disappearing or that there are any actual monsters. She mentions a girl named Leslie Lotte who used to fly her kite a lot. Usually in the graveyard near the park, which is also near the witch's castle, but we're not quite ready to explain that yet. Anyway, she was flying her kite, only to get caught in the wind and blown into a cloud and swallowed whole. And you thought Charlie Brown had it bad with the kite eating tree. She heard it from her friend Watch, who she also notes has no romantic interest in Sally, in case any of you shippers read this I guess. She also notices that the house Adam lived in belonged to an old couple who mysteriously committed suicide by hanging from their chandelier-YEP, THIS IS A CHRISTOPHER PIKE BOOK ALRIGHT.

Adam invites Sally over for dinner. Afterwards she shows Adam around town, noting again that things are weird here. Like you could see a woman with a baby in a stroller and she could be the monster who captured Leslie in the cloud and her baby is a robot. Adam says he doesn't believe in robots (??????) as Sally mentions other things like sharks and crabs in the beach water who bit a guy's leg off, and a deadly arcade and stuff. Really so far feeling like we're pointing at things in town and going "This could be a book plot. This could be a book plot. Oh, this could DEFINITELY be a book plot." Adam notices a shopping cart about to slam into a black corvette. He stops it in time and is greeted by the owner of the car. A mysterious looking young woman. She thanks Adam for stopping the cart, and says that she knows his name and that while some of what Sally's said about Spooksville is true, some isn't. Sally is not happy about Adam talking with the woman, who we learn is Ann Templeton, the great-great-great-great granddaughter of town founder Madeline Templeton. Oh, and she's a witch who lives in the castle by the graveyard. Sally notes that she's evil because there's no nice witches except in Wizard of Oz. Three chapters deep and Sally's facing the shit list for that comment. 

The two head to the arcade where we meet Watch. He's noted as lanky with long arms, large ears, thick glasses and two sets of watches on his arms. One for each time zone as different parts of his family live in other parts of the country, so he wants to know what time it is there. And, yes, this is a better nickname than Hat. Sally recaps them running into Ann Templeton and the whole Leslie Lotte story, to which Watch notes it was a fog, not so much a cloud. He then mentions the title of this book, the Secret Path and meeting with a man named Bum over it. He's called Bum because he's homeless, you see. The former mayor of Springville before Ann Templeton put a curse on him. Or he was a really bad mayor that was bad at money. But that would make this book series more "Inconvenienceville" than Spooksville. They go to see Bum at the pier on the beach. He too is aware of Adam already and tells the kids about the secret path. It's a test of courage and the path can lead you to other places. If you're brave, it will lead to fortune. If you're afraid, it could lead to danger. Sally says she's against the idea, to which Bum and Watch both note that she's been trying to find it herself, though she says it was only to try to get rid of it, which is impossible since it's like a portal-like thing that always exists. Not gonna lie, sounding very Shadow Zone-ish.

Bum mentions that to find the secret path, they need to follow the life of the witch who was buried facedown. And that's it, that's all he knows. Adam and Watch assume that this must mean the path in life that Madeline Templeton took, with the literal path being locations in town she was known to frequent. If each location is visited in the right order, that will open the secret path. The beach was the first place as Sally notes the story of Madeline being brought to Springville by seagulls. Next is the Derby Tree on Derby Street where Madeline managed to get inside of and caused the leaves to go blood red. There's a hole to go into the tree, but it can drive whoever goes inside insane. It was named that because old man Derby tried to chop it down for supposedly making some of his kids disappear. Also he has a wooden leg and the kids call him Mr. Stilts. From the witch slander to mocking the disabled, I think this is less Spooksville and more Shittykidsville.

Watch goes in the tree and comes out relatively fine, though time flowed faster in the tree. What took an hour outside was mere seconds inside. When Adam enters, the tree is super silent inside and starts to shrink, almost crushing him before Watch and Sally get him out in time. They head to the caves in the mountains where Madeline murdered a mountain lion with only her nails. Then the cathedral where she was married before it was built, then the reservoir, back to the beach where she was killed, then the cemetery where she was buried. That seems to be the secret path. We fast forward through all of the other spots and the trio head to the cemetery, which may have people not even dead buried within it because the local undertaker throws you in a casket if you so much as have a cold. That feels like a far freakier scenario had this book been published during COVID. Adam, despite still being skeptical to all this, yes even after almost being eaten by a tree, wants to leave, but is more or less guilt tripped by Watch and Sally to stay. 

The trio eventually find Madeline Templeton's grave, but still have no clue what to do. The three are tired and hungry and Sally sarcastically (I hope sarcastically) offers to rub Adam's feet. No! Bad Pike! Bad! Don't give the kids awakenings. Adam then goes into a trance, again seeing and hearing Ann Templeton. Sally wakes him up from the trance, only to then see that Watch has disappeared. They deduce that maybe he found the answer to the path by walking backwards through the cemetery and into the tombstone of Madeline Templeton. Adam and Sally do the same and they end up in a parallel world, shrouded in a red skylight. Oh they're in the later seasons of Ninja Turtles. Actually, it's more like their own world, but there's no sign of anybody. Not only that, but they don't know how to get out of this dimension. They head to Adam's house and there's no sign of his family. There are a pair of skeletons on his parent's bed covered in bugs, but Sally assures Adam that it's not his parents. At least not his actual dimension parents. Suddenly, the pair get knocked out by what looks to be a giant knight. 

Adam wakes up in a dungeon, with Watch there as well. No sign of Sally. They're in the witch's dungeon with this witch looking like Ann Templeton only with red hair instead, which they deduce may be her counterpart. Also time is moving backwards. It also appears that this witch has an affinity for human body parts as the boys see the giant knight with three chained girls, one missing a mouth, another her eyes and the last her ears, the places they would be being stitched up. So speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, I get what you're going for there, Pike. So this witch seems to collect body parts of kids for her own dolls, and given the witch's voice mentioned how Adam has beautiful eyes, he realizes he's screwed. The witch shows up, indeed looking like Ann Templeton but with red hair instead of black. She says that she isn't Ann Templeton but knows of that witch quite well. She tries to get the boys to say where Sally is, but they both refuse, mainly because they don't know where she is, but still. 

The witch takes them to a room to prepare for their body part removal. In the room is a giant hourglass that pours its crystal sand backwards. The witch notes there's one in their world that acts normally. After the witch leaves to prepare them a boiling water bath before their deaths, Sally is spotted in a window about twenty feet above. She manages to jump onto the chandelier, causing it to descend. She then knocks over the hourglass, breaking it. This causes the castle to start to fall apart. The trio head to the dungeon and see that the other kids have managed to escape so they do the same. They make it back to the cemetery where bony hands rise from the graves to try and pull Sally down, but she's saved in time. They return to Madeline's tombstone but can't exit it. Which is bad enough, but the witch and knight catch up to them. They try to fight off the knight, but are saved when a skeleton hand pulls the knight into the ground below. 

Adam grabs the knight's sword and confronts the witch, but her magic pendant causes the sword to burn his hands. The kids then realize that they need to walk straightforward into the tombstone on this side given the whole reverse thing. Before the witch can attack, Adam takes some of the crystal sand from the hourglass that he had grabbed and blows it in her face, blinding her. This gives the trio enough time to return through the portal back to regular Spooksville. The three head home with Sally mentioning that she likes Adam, which makes Adam joke about this being an alternate dimension Sally. Adam returns home and tells his dad that he'll definitely not be bored in Spooksville. 

This is a good first book. Not perfect mind you, but that's mainly for reasons that plague a lot of first books. Those being a wonky pace overall and the need to establish how these books work. Then you add in that given this is a serialized book series featuring the same characters in each story, you have to spend time establishing three characters, while also spending a good half of the book introducing the reader to the basic premise, and the town itself. But even with those issues, the book is still pretty solid, and some of the stuff they do set up early make you interested in continuing the series. Like what the deal is with Ann Templeton. Also the witch of the alternate dimension. Is she a reverse of Ann Templeton, is she Madeline Templeton, or another entity altogether? We don't get an answer, but given that this is a continuing series with confirmation that we will get more stuff involving the witch, it's not exactly something that Pike needed to reveal immediately. 

In terms of a horror story for kids, this is decent stuff. Nothing too gory, not as many attempted scares as other books do, but enough dark imagery and moments that still catch you off guard. Still wild to read about a suicide in a kids book. But this is Christopher Pike, so I'm not surprised either. The scene with the skeletons in the bed also worked for some good nightmarish imagery, as is the big scene with the skeleton hands in the cemetery. So when it comes to scares, the ones we do get mostly work. There's a couple weird dialogue moments from Pike like "robots aren't real" and "Sally is easier to remember than Sara". But neither are as stymie-ing as "Embryonic snowman" so not really a knock. 

Adam is a decent protagonist. Our out-of-towner who is presented as a skeptic who needs to learn about the many horrific goings on in Spooksville. But also someone clever and headstrong enough that he won't fully run away from a situation, that one scene in the cemetery notwithstanding. Sally is interesting. A very all over the place character who seems to be more superstitious and leery than everyone else. Also not fully reliable in her information given she seems to exaggerate a lot about the goings on in Spooksville. She also has feelings for Adam which do feel super rushed but not out of character for her either given some of her actions in the book. Watch is a solid third character. One who seems more in tune with what's going on in Spooksville, more so than Sally, and is even more willing to spring into action when it involves solving certain mysteries in the town. He's the one who really is the impetus for the search for the path after all. The witch is a solid antagonist for the story, constantly feeling like enough of a threat that survival for the protagonists felt slim. She's easily beaten, but not in the worst way a villain in these stories have been beaten.

So, for a first book, The Secret Path is a good first foot forward. It drags a bit, mainly in its first half, but can be forgiven given it's the first book in the series so we have to establish a ton of stuff early, while leaving enough for later books. And I think the premise works enough to make this a story with the same protagonists as they have to deal with one supernatural situation after the other. So it has me hooked on that as well. So, kind of wish I didn't wait so long on these, especially since what we got was pretty good. Maybe kid-friendly Pike won't piss me off as much? Anything's possible I guess. The Secret Path gets an A-.