Title: The Nightmare Room #6 – They Call Me Creature Author: R.L. Stine Cover Artist: Vince Natale

Introduction



Speaking of bittersweet, my fondness for this book deprives me of an excuse to postpone reviews for the series.

From my previous review:

That was about six months ago. The saddest part is, I don’t even have a good excuse for leaving. Maybe I lost morale after blowing the deadline on a (now dead) holiday-special. Maybe I tried to write a couple of reviews, but ended up shelving them. Maybe I was simply disappointed with the quality of my own writing and wanted to take a break.

Or maybe I took a six month break in honor of this being the sixth book in the series! Totally intentional.

I don’t know how many more reviews I have in me. All I know is that I got my wisdom teeth pulled a few days ago, and the unending pain has put me in a susceptible-enough headspace to warrant returning to this series.

Story review

Laura’s dad lives in a dream, and—even though she think he’s the best—he seems so far from everything. One day, Laura is tending to an injured crow. Her father, much like Mike Love, is unconcerned with the crow cries. This is especially odd because he’s supposed to be a veterinarian. After helping the crow, Laura and her friend Ellen prepare to head out into The Woods.

Ellen reminds me of a delicate, graceful doe.

If she’s a doe, I’m a fox.

The Fox.

And her own pond she was headed to quick. You see, Laura is working on a science project involving the fLaura and the fauna around Luker Pond, a small body of water within the local woods. Sadly, the duo’s escapade is interrupted by a typhoon of birds erupting from the woods. Laura’s dad sprints out to his secret shed/laboratory, and the birds fly away, nothing suspicious here. The girls leave, this time accompanied by Laura’s pet dog. While walking, the canine quickly uncovers a beastly finger in a pile of leaves.

Ellen, remembering a tennis game she promised to play in, decides to skedaddle. Soon thereafter, Laura bumps into her crush, Joe. Laura want’s to invite the boy to a party for Ellen’s birthday, but the two children are swarmed by an armada of bats. After having his face bloodied by the creatures, Joe gets skittish and slinks off. Laura—far too unfazed by the severed finger that her dog found in the woods—goes home and starts making dinner. The book spends multiple lines describing the process of gutting a chicken, but it doesn’t bother to mention Laura washing her hands after holding a severed finger that her dog found in the woods.

Noticing her father still hasn’t returned, Finger Girl ventures out to his inconspicuous lab/shack. (Lab Shack, baby!) She opens the door and witnesses her father sticking a small, pink, squealing creature with a hypodermic needle. Laura’s father yells at her. The girl leaves in total shock, wondering, “Why did he yell at me like that?” (This child has a very strange barometer for what is and is not weird.)

After a painfully awkward dinner, Finger Girl and Needle Man bond over a game of familial Scrabble. When Laura tries to pry for answers, her father threatens to send her away to live with her mother. Laura is only allowed to stay once she promises to stop asking questions about her father’s research, never go near the shed, and alternate the dinner music because her father is tired of Lawrence Welk.

“Promise,” I said.

But there was no way I was keeping that promise!

Laura will make an excellent politician, someday.

The book spends a tedious amount of time setting up threads and having the protagonist go in circles. I’ll do us both a favor and just bullet-point the strange phenomena:

Ghostly lights in woods.

Laura visits the animal hospital and learns her father was let go.

Laura is almost attacked by her own dog, but Joe saves her.

Men in woods with rifles, hinting they caught something.

Punctual blues.

Things really hit the fan when our protagonist finds a piglet-like creature in the woods, and it glomps onto her throat and starts leaching her blood. Laura’s father saves her and takes her to a doctor, but he keeps trying to convince the girl that it was merely a chipmunk or maybe just a malicious gust of wind. Next, Laura’s father announces that he’ll be sending her away soon. While lamenting this decision, Laura hears a wail outside. Her dog is being attacked! The following text is the actual wording used to describe the dog’s leg:

The fur had been ripped away. Chunks of flesh had been torn off. Blood flowed onto the grass. I could see veins pulsing in the chewed-up mess, and a white bone poked out.

I’m sure that when Stine wrote this dialogue, he thought to himself, “Man, this is totally different from the Goosebumps books… The teens are gonna love this!” In actuality, no.

The dog is taken to a hospital, and Laura goes home. Joe stops by, and Laura finally invites him to the party for Ellen. Joe agrees to attend but leaves hurriedly. Laura decides she’ll secretly follow Joe to find out where he lives (and maybe root through his closet or something if she has extra time). Instead, she ends up lost in the woods. Laura sees strange lights—which turn out to be headlights. Her father is driving around in a truck, and he demands that Laura ride back with him. More strange phenomena ensues:

Laura finds dead deer in woods, suspects her father was involved. (Elon Musk laughs.)

Ellen’s party happens. Joe shows up for, like, a minute. Laura doesn’t get to see him because she’s busy looking at a dead deer.

The former employer of Laura’s father, a woman named Dr. Carpenter, says he had been experimenting with genetics and fired for suspicious activity.

Loud howls from woods. Laura explores.

Finds large truck in woods. Sees pig-like monster trapped in trailer. Possibly man-pig hybrid. (Al Gore laughs.)

Sadly, the men with rifles from earlier see Laura and give chase. In order to escape, our protagonist hides inside of a dead deer. Our protagonist hides inside of a dead deer. Is this a fever dream?

I grabbed a flap of the deer’s skin. I tugged it up. It felt heavy and wet in my hands. […]

I pulled the skin flap up as far as it would go.

And I climbed inside the deer.

Laura overhears the goons talking to her father and figures they’re in cahoots. She makes a slick getaway, pun intended. I half expected our protagonist to immediately go home and make some more chicken, but she doesn’t get the chance. She bumps into Joe. Apparently, he doesn’t care that she’s (presumably) covered in deer remains. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he’s a man-pig-monster in a wig!

Yup, that’s the big twist. The love interest was secretly a pig-man. Joe Bob Piggs. Cattle in the Woods. Boy is a pig-man. / Girl in a carcass. / Goo goo g'joob. This book has broken me.

Joe begins expositing. He was the one scaring all the animals. He’s a monster that needs to feed. Laura seeks out Dr. Carpenter at the animal hospital where her father used to work. There, our protagonist discovers a plethora of animal hybrids in cages. Dr. Carpenter returns and says she wants to experiment on Laura. Joe appears and helps detain the girl. Turns out, Dr. Carpenter had been the one trying to create hybrids, and Laura’s father had been trying to stop the program, looking for cures. Thankfully, Laura’s dad bursts in and starts destroying stuff. Dr. Carpenter gets electrocuted by her own equipment before, ultimately, running off with Joe.

Despite the fact that there might be a wild pig-man terrorizing the nearby woods, it’s decided that Laura doesn’t have to move away. Everything seems totally normal… Up until, one night, Laura sees something fluttering by her window. The creature is a hybrid… A mix between a bat and Dr. Carpenter…

The Verdict

This book is almost the polar opposite of the first five books in the series. Rather than having a book filled with rinse-and-repeat storytelling, this one bombards the reader with an endless stream of weird occurrences that make very little sense—until the end. If I had to compliment They Call Me Creature, I’d say it’s ambitious. But the story just seemed to drag on forever. Plus, the multiple descriptions of animal gore were tasteless and largely unnecessary. Worst of all, we never get to find out if Laura’s dog heals up.

Speaking of abandoned threads, this blog’s update schedule. I don’t plan on ditching this blog any time soon, but I’m officially abandoning my schedule. I’ll post whenever I muster up the energy to make something that I can be satisfied with.

Best Quote

The phone rang. I jerked my hand out of the chicken and tried to wipe the guts off on a dish towel.

Then I picked up the phone.

Take me down to the salmonella city.