Rereading My Childhood - Goosebumps by Amy A. Cowan

Goosebumps: Stay Out of the Basement! by R. L. Stine

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

Podcast Coming Soon

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

by Amy A. Cowan, 2021 August 29

My parents were not anti-vaxxers because they were responsible parents. My sister and I were current with all our shots, no matter how hard it was to get us to sit down and actually take the damn shot. We used to cry and cling to our parents and engage in futile begging, but our tenacious parents still forced us to receive our shots. After it was all done, the pain a distant memory, we got a prize from the hospital.

That's where I saw it --- a green hand wrapped around a door. Leaves and vines grew around the hand as if something escaped the confines of the basement and was now poised to take over the upstairs. Goosebumps: Stay Out of the Basement by R. L. Stine sat on the highest shelf, most of which featured boys with dogs or girls with dolls. Maybe one or two with arm-crossed children rolling their eyes as their apron-clad mother held a rolling pin and chastised them. The hand stood out. The hand grabbed my attention. The hand scared me, but I needed to know what was happening.

Rereading this as an adult, I'm happy this one was my first Goosebumps book. My copy has the new cover that fails to live up to the original, but I'm still happy I own this scary book that holds up as fine children's horror.

I realize this is the new cover, but Goodwill only has so many old covers.

Casey and Margaret Brewer are tired of their father's excuses. They want to play Frisbee with him, but he's always busy. And he's been working every day since he moved his family out to California, a place that Margaret doesn't like because it's "the middle of winter; and there isn't a cloud in the sky, and Casey and I are out in jeans and T-shirts as if it were the middle of summer." Oh no, how terrible it must be to have temperate weather in the second-best state in the union. (First is Nevada --- don't @ me.)

Margaret thinks that Mr. Martinez, their father's boss, fired their father for some experiments that went "wrong." She gets curious and encourages Casey to come with her to find out what their father is doing deep in the basement. When they are halfway down the basement stairs, their father appears.

> He glared up at them angrily, his skin strangely green under the flourescent light fixture. He was holding his right hand, drops of red blood falling onto his white lab coat.
>
> "Stay out of the basement!" he bellowed, in a voice they'd never heard before.
>
> Both kids shrank back, surprised to hear their father scream like that. He was usually so mild and soft-spoken.
>
> "Stay out of the basement," he repeated, holding his bleeding hand. "Don't ever come down here --- I'm warning you."

I think the kids just slink away because the next chapter starts with Mrs. Brewer leaving to help care for her sister for a few days. She says she's not worried about the kids, but is worried about Mr. Brewer, particularly that he will become so engrossed in his work that he won't eat. The man himself appears, his hand bandaged despite it being a few weeks after he yelled at them. He takes their mother to the airport as Margaret's friend Diane arrives for some adult-free childhood banter.

Diane is also the one who dares Margaret to go into the basement, because what's a Goosebumps book without some kids daring each other to do some stupid shit. I remember being a kid. We always dared each other to do stupid shit. It's the most realistic thing in the series.

In the basement, they find a "rain forest." It's so hot and humid that Casey decides to take off his shirt and drop it on the floor, just like an actual kid. That's when they notice a tall treelike plant actually breathing. Casey touches it and he goes into convulsions!

Of course, it's just a prank. At least the fake out is at the end of chapter three when I'm already invested, instead of the first chapter. The children think the plants are moving and they decide to go back upstairs. They think that their father will never know they were down there, but Casey remembers that he left his t-shirt on the floor.

Casey goes back into the basement to retrieve his shirt, but their father comes home. Margaret is standing at the top of the stairs, urging her brother to return before their father walks through the door. He grabs his shirt but some tendrils grab him. It's not a trick. Actual tendrils grab Casey. They wrestle free, but not before their father catches them.

They insist they didn't touch anything and while their father is disappointed, he is not stark-raving mad. They ask their father about the weird plants, but he refuses to explain their bizarre appearance and behavior to them. The next morning, Margaret finds a lock installed on the basement door.

Dr. Brewer is working so hard to impress his boss, Mr. Martinez, and prove that the university was wrong to fire Dr. Brewer. However, Margaret clings to her idea that something is askew, especially since she sees his research as putting his career ahead of his children, something he hasn't done before. Her suspicions are exacerbated when she sees him devour something from a bag "greedily" and stash it under the sink before returning to the basement.

> When she was sure he had gone downstairs, Margaret walked eagerly into the kitchen. She had to know whether father had been eating so greedily, so hungrily.
>
> She pulled open the sink cabinet, reached into the trash, and pulled out the crinkled-up bag.
>
> Then she gasped aloud as her eyes ran over the label.
>
> Her father, she saw, had been devouring plant food.

Oh, shit, Margaret! The call is coming from inside the house! Get out of there!

She tries to confide in Casey her findings, but, like every shitty man, he doesn't take her concerns seriously. There are more frustrating scenes wherein others excuse Dr. Brewer's neglect as something he's doing for the sake of his career while dismissing Margaret. This whole book is like a metaphor for women's struggles. A young woman is supposed to just accept a man's egregious behavior for the sake of his own interests even to her detriment. I feel ya, Margaret. We cuz.

While Margaret is growing up with a distant father, Dr. Brewer is growing green hair. He is also skulking around the house and scaring his daughter and sleeping in a bed that is covered in earthworms and wet, black clumps of dirt. Finally, he tries to feed his children a strange substance bearing a resemblance to dirt. This is the straw that breaks Casey's back, so to speak. He is finally curious enough to investigate the basement with Margaret.

They get their opportunity when Dr. Brewer leaves. In the basement, they find a jacket belonging to Mr. Martinez. They come to the conclusion that plants may have eaten the big boss man (the character in the book, not the wrestler), but their father insists Mr. Martinez just got hot and left his jacket. A few days later, they also discover Mr. Martinez's shoes and pants, hurting their father's theory that he just got hot. You don't just take off your pants in someone else's house, even the house of your subordinate.

During another excursion into the basement (and after some heavy lock destruction), they peer deeper into the experimental jungle.

> She took a deep breath and held it. Then, ignoring the moans, the signs, the green arms reaching out to her, the hideous green-tomato faces, she plunged through the plants to the back of the closet.
>
> "Dad!" she cried.
>
> Her father was lying on the floor, his hands and feet tied tightly with plant tendrils, his mouth gagged by a wide strip of elastic tape.
>
> ...
>
> "It can't be Dad!" Casey said, still holding her by the shoulders. "Dad is at the airport --- remember?"
>
> ...
>
> She reached down and tugged at the elastic tape until she managed to get it off.
>
> "Kids --- I'm so glad to see you," Dr. Brewer said. "Quick! Untie me."
>
> "How did you get in here?" Casey demanded, standing above him, hands on his hips, staring down at him suspiciously. "We saw you leave for the airport."
>
> "That wasn't me," Dr. Brewer said. "I've been locked in here for days."
>
> "Huh?" Casey cried.
>
> "But we saw you-" Margaret started.
>
> "It wasn't me. It's a plant," Dr. Brewer said. "It's a plant copy of me."

Holy shit! It's a plant! Metaphorically and literally! The story continues with a classic, "I'm your real father! Shoot him!" "No, shoot him! He's the impostor!" only with a little girl holding an ax, which is my new aesthetic.

Margaret figures out who her real father is when she stabs the father from the basement in the arm. He bleeds red blood, so she hands him the ax. Then her real father cleaves the impostor in two! Take it back. A father who was held captive by a sentient plant cutting his captor in twain with an ax from his daughter is my new aesthetic.

In the end, the Brewers destroy the plants and return the equipment to the university, but R. L. Stine isn't finished.

> It's so peaceful now, [Margaret] thought happily.
>
> So peaceful here. And so beautiful.
>
> The smile faded from her face when she heard the whisper at her feet. "Margaret."
>
> She looked down to see a small yellow flower nudging her ankle.
>
> "Margaret," the flower whispered, "help me. Please --- help me. I'm your father. Really! I'm your real father."

Fucking perfect. This book was perfect.

I'm happy this was my first Goosebumps book. I'm happy this was the book I chose from all the other books on that bookshelf at the doctor's office. Thank you to whoever put that book on that shelf. This book started my lifelong love of all things scary and creepy. I'm even happier that this book holds up. I like the punniness. I like Margaret. I like the mystery. Everything about this book is perfect.

Stay Out of the Basement was the second book of the Goosebumps series and, especially with Welcome to Dead House as the first, I can see why this series is revered in the Pantheon of Young Adult Fiction, exactly where it should be.

Night of the Living Dummy

For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I’ve done, go to RereadingMyChildhood.com or follow RereadMyChildhd on Twitter. For more information about me, Amy A. Cowan, visit my website AmyACowan.com or follow my Twitter: amyacowan.

Monster Blood

by Amy A. Cowan, July 29, 2021

Most of my teachers had some kind of twenty-minute quiet time after lunchtime recess. At around 11:30, my entire class and I piled into the hallway and stood in line (if you wanted hot lunch). We paid the lunch lady our $0.75 each at the front or used one of those punch cards the kids with pre-paid lunch had. We grabbed our food, sat down, and ate as fast as we could so we could get outside and run around like little idiots as quickly as possible. After a full thirty minutes of mindless laughing and cavorting with our fellow classmates, the bell rang and forced us back into the green walls of the school, away from the sun and into tedium. Then our teacher made us read. At least we got to choose the book.

“Read one chapter of a book,” she demanded.

We had a book. We had a popular book. It wasn’t cool to read unless you read R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps.

“Read one chapter of a book.”

I see why these books were popular — there are 128 pages in Monster Blood and 29 chapters. That’s an average of four pages a chapter.

“Read one chapter of a book.”

That was easy and only took a minute.

Of course, I wasn’t that child. I had a cold lunch, so I had to sit by myself on the other side of the cafeteria. The school separated “hot lunch” students (those who paid money) and “cold lunch” students (those who brought their lunch from home). All my friends brought money to school (eventually, I started asking my mother for money just so I could sit with my friends), and we had to sit in specific seats that a fifth-grader designated for us (it wasn’t a bully situation — the school lunch ladies bestowed onto them that power). I enjoyed the thirty-minute recess because I could read whatever I wanted, instead of what my teacher wanted me to read. When the bell rang, it was more of a relief for me. It was time to get up from the ground, brush off the dirt, and read inside — a minor location change. I didn’t mind a long chapter and I never stopped reading after only one chapter. I read until I was the last one still reading and my teacher had to ask me to come back to the boring real world.

I don’t remember the small chapters of Goosebumps, but I remember the cliffhangers. For a while, I was convinced that every horror book had to have a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter and each book. Some writers haven’t grown out of this, as evidenced by adult novels with knives and guns and scantily clad women victims on the covers. R. L. Stine’s cliffhangers are on full display in Monster Blood. There are some good ones with genuine danger — mostly at the end of the book. However, the most prevalent ones are the frustrating ones where it turns out to be someone making a sandwich (really) or a dream sequence. I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t going to like this one until I reached the end. Everything goes bonkers. The cliffhangers involve actual danger, and the short chapters are a minor inconvenience, rather than a jarring interruption.

Okay, a couple problems. 1. It’s not a monster blood drive, it’s more like a monster canister. No monsters are giving blood, and there isn’t a monster disaster and they need blood. And 2. It’s more like a ball or Flubber than a runny substance.

We start with Evan Ross and his dismissive mother. Mrs. Ross is dropping off her son at his Great Aunt Kathryn’s spooky house. Aunt Kathryn is a deaf septuagenarian who raised Evan’s father. Evan doesn’t want to stay with her because he thinks she’s “weird.” That’s no reason to not want to stay with someone, but I guess Evan’s apprehension is not unfounded — she does pose a danger to our young protagonist. What this book says about weird people is not particularly hopeful, especially for weirdos like me. (I didn’t call myself a weirdo. I accepted my weirdness. I was proclaimed a weirdo when I wanted to read instead of play tag and enjoyed the quiet time after lunch recess.)

At the end of the first chapter, a mere seven pages later, we have our first cliffhanger:

And as she said this, facing Evan with her back to the house, the front door was pulled open, and Aunt Kathryn, a large woman with starling black hair, filled the doorway.

Staring past his mother, Evan saw the knife in Kathryn’s hand. And he saw that the blade of the knife was dripping with blood.

End of chapter one. Even a child wouldn’t be fooled by this obvious cliffhanger. Stine is not going to kill off the protagonist and his mother in a brutal stabbing at the beginning of page eight. Although, if that did happen, it would be surprising.

“I was slicing beef,” she said in a surprisingly deep voice, waving the blood-stained kitchen knife.]

I’m reminded of a slasher flick from the early aughts whose name escapes me in which a yellow-haired lady was spooked by a coat rack. She literally bumps into a coat rack and screams. I don’t remember anything else about the movie, but I remember that coat rack. I think I audibly cried, “Oh, come on!” when it happened. I felt the same way at the end of these fake-outs. As bad as the beef slicing is, there is another one later that made me want to put down the book and go back to the Baby-Sitters Club, where Martin doesn’t try to fake me.

I don’t see as many fake-out scares in horror movies anymore. The fear comes from an actual threat. I just want to take a moment and tell modern horror movies that don’t do bullshit scares that I appreciate their efforts.

While Mrs. Ross speaks with Aunt Kathryn, the old woman grabs Evan’s arm and jerks it around. Evan complains that she hurt him and Mrs. Ross completely dismisses her son’s concerns. I get that Evan is a whiny kid, but if he thinks the woman was rough with him, she should listen to him and admonish Aunt Kathryn. If Aunt Kathryn is worth anything, she’d apologize and promise to try to be softer with her nephew.

Mrs. Ross doesn’t do anything. She’s a terrible mother. There. I said it. She drops her kid off with this woman she barely knows so she and Mr. Ross can look for a house. I think Evan should have some say in the house they choose — after all, Evan is going to live in it also. Of course, if she were a better mother, we wouldn’t have this book.

She leaves and Evan explores his temporary living quarters. He finds a library of science books and assumes Aunt Kathryn was once married (hey, Evan, women can like science, too, buddy). Then a demon attacks him at the end of the chapter. No. Not a demon. No actual danger. It’s a cat — Aunt Kathryn’s cat named Sarabeth. At first, I read that as “Scarabeth.” I wish it was “Scarabeth.”

Evan takes his dog (Trigger) out for a walk and a hand touches his shoulder. End of chapter. The hand belongs to a neighborhood girl named Andrea, but she hates that name and prefers “Andy.” I liked that she went by Andy and liked to joke around. Evan quickly sexualizes her and describes her clothing every time he sees her, but as a character, I found her bravery and sense for adventure interesting. This stark difference between the two made me wish the book was about her instead of Evan. Intrepid Andy and her new-kid-in-town sidekick Evan.

Andy takes Evan to a toy store run by a misanthrope who seems to especially hate children. Hey, guy, if you hate children, don’t open a toy store. When a child expresses interest in something, he won’t sell it to them. Evan finds a container with the words “Monster Blood” on it. He is willing to buy it, but the owner says it’s “not good” and won’t sell it to the boy. If he knew there was something cursed with the monster blood, that would make sense. It would force Evan into theft or some other plot point. However, the owner acquiesces and sells the container to him without much coaxing. I don’t know why the man didn’t just sell it to the kid. I don’t know why R. L. Stine spent so much time with this man. The store closes later in the book and we never see this guy again. It’s no surprise to me why the store shut down.

Evan takes the monster blood and Andy to Aunt Kathryn’s house. He shows his old Aunt the container. She rolls it around and gives it back to him without any trouble. They pop it open and it falls out like Flubber. It bounces around and they take it outside to play with it some in a charming scene that ends with Trigger swallowing a large chunk of it. They wonder if it’s poison.

The next chapter starts three days later, so I guess Trigger is okay and the monster blood isn’t poison. Evan brushes his hair and thinks obsessively about a phone call he received from his parents sometime between when Trigger swallowed monster blood at the end of chapters eight and nine. I honestly thought his parents weren’t going to return and used “house hunting” as a ruse to lose the kid and start new lives in Europe as jewel thieves.

Later, Evan meets the neighborhood bullies — two hulking twins named Rick and Tony. Andy intervenes before the twins can attack Evan, but they steal her bike. They go back to his house and find Trigger suffocating. He rips off the dog’s collar and the kids notice that Trigger has doubled in size.

Chapter thirteen starts with Trigger running after Rick and Tony as Evan tries to catch up with his dog.

Suddenly, as Evan watched in horror, the dog raised up on his hind legs. He tilted his head to the sky and let out an ear-piercing howl. Not the howl of a dog. A creature howl.

And then Trigger’s features began to transform. His forehead burst forward and enlarged. His eyes grew wide and round before sinking under the protruding forehead. Fangs slid from his gaping mouth, and the uttered another howl to the sky, louder and more chilling than the first.

“He’s a monster! A monster!” Evan cried.

Oh, boy, this is getting good!

And woke up.

Fuck you.

A harmless dream. Except that something still wasn’t right.

The bed. It felt so uncomfortable. So cramped.

Evan sat up, alert, wide awake now.
And stared down at his giant feet. His giant hands. And realized how tiny the bed seemed beneath him.

Because he was a giant now.

That makes sense. The monster blood made Trigger larger, so, logically, it would make him bigger. I see wacky giant-child shenanigan afoot.

Because he had grown so huge, so monstrously huge.

And when he saw how big he had become, he opened his mouth wide and began to scream.

Oh man! A cliffhanger! Is Evan now going to wreak havoc on his crazy aunt? Will he get revenge on the bullies? I can’t wait for the next chapter.

His screams woke him up.

This time he really woke up.

Oh, fuck off! Slams book down. Walks out the door. Leaves her life free from dream sequences. Starts a new life book-free in the mountains of Oregon. Is a lumberjack now.

I was livid. Something interesting was finally happening and I was interested to see how Evan deals with his new demon dog. It was all a dream. Fine, whatever. Then I wanted to see how Evan acclimatizes to his new size in what would be a wonderful, yet obvious, allegory for puberty. Maybe he could overcome the neighborhood bullies and stand up to his mother (“how could you leave me with a crazy woman and not ask for my input regarding a house — I live there, too!”) — it’s all part of growing up.

No. I get a dream fake-out.

I wanted to give up. I wanted to put the book down and give my review without having read the rest of the book. But I kept going. I kept reading. I recently read the first Goosebumps book Welcome to Dead House (long before I decided to write these, I’ll get around to it). I loved Welcome to Dead House. It was the kind of spooky book that got me into horror as a child. I had to give him a second chance. And, well…

The ending is okay. It’s an improvement over the dream fake-outs, but my expectations were pretty low. Let’s get to the ending, but first, we have some quick events to get through.

Evan and Andy take Trigger to the veterinarian. I don’t know who paid for the visit. I can’t imagine the kids footing the bill and there wasn’t a scene where they abscond with the dog — like a vet visit and dash. Aunt Kathryn has nothing but disdain for Trigger, so she’s not paying. The vet says that Trigger is healthy, but he is a little large for the breed. Nothing to worry about.

The monster blood gets bigger and spills out of its container. The twins actually beat up Evan. Andy helps with Evan’s injuries. They knock over the monster blood. Andy goes home. Evan stumbles around the garage. He falls into a bathtub filled with the monster blood. Andy shows up. They haul the monster blood in a garbage bag back to the toy shop. The toy shop is shut down. They drag the monster blood back. Trigger is the size of a pony.

Got it? Now we’re at the end.

The monster blood spills out of the garbage bag and turns into a huge ball. It starts to move like it has a mind of its own and consumes everything it touches. As it bounces around, it swallows the bully twins, and corners Aunt Kathryn. We are treated to this twist:

Andy’s hands tugged at the sides of her hair, her eyes wide with growing fear as the seething green blog made its way steadily closer to Evan’s aunt.

“Get out!” Kathryn repeated shrilly. “Save your lives! I made this thing! Now I must die for it!”

What a twist! Although, if she made it, why didn’t she stop Evan when she rolled the monster blood container in her hands? Evan believes that’s when she cast a spell on the monster blood, but Aunt Kathryn points at Andy and says that the young girl made her do it. End of chapter.

She wasn’t pointing at Andy, but Sarabeth, the cat. Then something batshit happens.

All eyes were on the cat as it rose up, stretched, and grew. And as it grew, it changed its shape.

Became human.

With shadowy arms and legs in the eerie darkness.

And then the shadow stepped away from the darkness.

And Sarabeth was now a young woman with fiery red hair and pale skin and yellow eyes, the same yellow cat eyes that had haunted Evan since he’d arrived. The young woman was dressed in a swirling black gown down to her ankles.

She stood in the doorway, staring accusingly at Kathryn.

“You see? She’s the one,” Kathryn said, quietly now. And the next words were intended only for Sarabeth: “Your spell over me is broken. I will do no more work for you.”

The fucking cat had control of Aunt Kathryn and was trying to kill Evan with her spell on the monster blood. Sarabeth orders the blob to kill the children, but the large and in charge Trigger pushes Sarabeth into the blob. It shrinks, throwing up the twins and the robin it swallowed.

The mother returns. I thought she was going to leave him there. Frankly, with how dismissive she is, Evan might be better off with his new and improved Aunt Kathryn. Then we are treated to this after Evan and Andy vow to keep in touch:

“Could I ask one small favor?” Andy asked.

“Yeah. Sure,” Evan replied, curious.

“Well, it’s going to sound strange,” Andy said reluctantly. “But can I . . . uh . . . can I have the little bit of Monster Blood that’s left? You know. Sort of as a memento or something?”

“Sure. Okay with me,” Evan said.
They both turned their eyes to where it had come to rest on the carpet.

“Hey-” Andy cried in surprise.

It was gone.

There are three more Monster Blood books in the Goosebumps series.

Most of the end of chapter cliffhangers are ridiculous. I understand making smaller chapters to accommodate a child’s attention span, but Stine does this in Fear Street also. I haven’t read his venture into adult novels, but I can’t imagine he’d stray from his unnecessary cliffhangers. Just make longer chapters, dude.
Despite the frustrating cliffhangers, I’m happy I finished the novel. Even though the ending comes out of nowhere, I enjoyed the fast pace and crazy twists. This isn’t as good as Welcome to Dead House, the first in the Goosebumps series. (Again, I promise I’ll get around to that one, which will be a glowing review.) I’m still looking forward to reading all the Goosebumps books, even if some of them aren’t the caliber of children’s literature that I remember.

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

Podcast Coming Soon

Monster Blood

by Amy A. Cowan, 2021 August 27

When I was eight, during the summer between third and fourth grade, my parents took my sister and me halfway around the world to the Philippines. The trip was my first venture outside the United States, my first plane ride, and my first time in a country that spoke a completely different language. It wasn't a random trip to a random country --- my mother is Filipina, and we had (and still have) extensive family out there. I spent most of my time running around, exploring the countryside where my family lived on the slope of the Mayon Volcano. My favorite haunt was a dilapidated church and the adjacent graveyard. I was obsessed with the cracked gravestones and the icon of Mary with the faded paint and a chipped hand. Unlike Gabe in Goosebumps: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, I never came face to face with a supernatural creature, but I like to think I had an adventure, albeit a safe one.

R. L. Stine's Goosebumps: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb was an absolute delight to read. This is what I came to Goosebumps for: kids my age (or slightly older) overcoming scary situations with a little dash of humor. While on a trip to his ancestral home of Egypt, our protagonist, Gabe, explores the Great Pyramid of Giza. Gabe is a sweet kid and his uncle, scientist Ben Hassan, is a likable adult who helps his nephew. Gabe's adversary is his cousin, and Ben's daughter, Sari, who is charming in her own way. I'm looking forward to exploring this book --- this reminder of why I loved these books so much as a kid.

Goosebumps: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

What will wake the dead? Anything! I have that mummy wrapped around my little finger! I’ll let myself out.

The book starts at the Great Pyramid and a thirsty child. Gabe asks his parents for water.

> "We can't give you a drink now," she answered, staring at the pyramid. "Stop acting like you're four. You're twelve, remember?"
>
> "Twelve-year-olds get thirsty, too," I muttered. "All this sand in the air, it's making me gag."
>
> "Look at the pyramid," she said, sounding a little irritated. "That's why we came here. We didn't come here to get a drink."

Hey, Mom, you can drink and look at pyramids at the same time. The end of the first chapter surprised me. Instead of a danger that is revealed to not be a danger at all, we have an ominous passage:

> "I'm afraid you'll just have to appreciate the pyramid from the outside," Dad said, peering over the yellow sand, trying to focus the binoculars.
>
> "I've already appreciated it," I told him glumly. "Can we get a drink now?"
>
> Little did I know that in a few days, Mom and Dad would be gone, and I would be deep inside the pyramid we were staring at. Not just inside it, but trapped inside it, sealed inside it --- probably forever.

I'm in. I'm interested. I want to know where the story is going, and I'm happy the first chapter's cliffhanger wasn't some fake-out.

Gabe's dismissive parents are quickly ushered away from the book and our protagonist is left with his Uncle Ben Hassan, an Egyptologist with a daughter, Sari. Gabe has an adversarial relationship with Sari. She treats him like a child despite their identical ages. She has a strained relationship with her cousin, but she has a great relationship with her father --- one that sometimes forces Gabe to look at them through an invisible barrier. The father and daughter have inside jokes and play pranks on Gabe. He gets frustrated with them, but, as a reader, I never felt the jokes were too malicious, and I have the notion that Uncle Ben has played these pranks on his daughter and that the source of their inside jokes. He's trying to pull his nephew into a relationship the only way he knows how --- jokes.

Uncle Ben has discovered a new burial chamber in the Great Pyramid and he invites his nephew on a tour. This is where we have our classic horror warning.

> Uncle Ben handed us both flashlights. "Clip them into your jeans as we go in," he instructed. He gazed at me. "You don't believe in curses, do you? You know --- the ancient Egyptian kind."
>
> I didn't know how to reply, so I shook my head.
>
> "Good," Uncle Ben replied, grinning. "Because one of my workers claims we've violated an ancient decree by entering this new tunnel, and that we've activated some curse."

This is classic horror. The characters were warned. The strange old man told the teenager to avoid Camp Blood. The fortune-teller told the young jock not to enter the abandoned funhouse. The cheerleader read the stories about the escaped convict who targets babysitters. They were warned, but they continued deeper into the pyramid.

Uncle Ben goes down a rope ladder first, followed by Gabe, who falls off. Sari catches him. She teases Gabe, but she would never let him get hurt.

They reach the bottom of the pyramid and Uncle Ben introduces us to his excavation team --- Ahmed, a taciturn man who is obsessed with the curse, Quasimodo, which is a nickname, and Christy. It's nice to see a woman among the archaeologists. Thank you for the representation, Stine.

Uncle Ben forbids the children from exploring on their own, but the kids do it anyway in typical kid fashion. Sari gets ahead of Gabe and he gets lost trying to find her. He stumbles on a "mummy case."

> Uttering another low cry, I took a step back.
>
> The lid raised up another inch.
>
> I took another step back.
>
> And dropped the flashlight.
>
> I picked it up with a trembling hand and shined it back into the mummy case.
>
> The lid was now open nearly a foot.
>
> I sucked in a deep breath of air and held it.
>
> I wanted to run, but my fear was freezing me in place.
>
> The lid creaked and opened another inch.
>
> Another inch.
>
> I lowered the flashlight to the opening, the light quivering with my hand.
>
> From the dark depths of the ancient coffin, I saw two eyes staring out at me.

This is a fun, scary passage, even though the single-sentence paragraphs make the passage look like a poem. The mummy is just Sari, but I wasn't mad. I just thought, "Oh, that Sari, always with the pranks."

Uncle Ben finds the children and admonishes them for running off. The next morning, Uncle Ben leaves the children behind at the hotel after two workers come down with a "mysterious illness." Sari and Gabe get bored and decide to go to the museum. Gabe goes over the mummification process, complete with brain pulling and intestine yanking, much to Sari's chagrin. We see that Sari is not impervious to everything around her. Her father is an Egyptologist and she has no problems spelunking in a stuffy pyramid, but she cannot listen to her cousin say things like, "The brain had to come out first. They had this special tool. It was like a long, skinny hook. They'd push it up the corpse's nose until it reached the brain and then wiggled it back and forth, back and forth, until the brain became mush." Sari is complicated. Just don't talk about guts and she's fine.

They see Ahmed in the museum and after a brief chase scene, Ahmed tells them that Uncle Ben sent him to get the children, so the children get into his car with him. They realize they aren't heading back to the hotel --- they're being kidnapped! That's terrifying! Fun fact! When I was a kid, someone tried to kidnap my sister and me, but that's a story for another review.

The kids jump out of the car and run back to the hotel. Uncle Ben returns and they tell him about their experience with Ahmed. Uncle Ben believes them. He doesn't imply that they didn't understand what was happening, he doesn't dismiss the children. He actually listens to them. Thank you, Stine, for having at least one adult actually listen to a child for once.

Uncle Ben wants to leave the children in the hotel, but Sari and Gabe convince him to take them as he returns to the pyramid. He gives them beepers in case they get separated, and, of course, they get separated. If they didn't get separated it would be the end of the story. The floor gives out from beneath Gabe and he falls on his beeper, breaking it, but he's in an undiscovered section of the pyramid.

> There were mummies leaning against the wall. Mummies lying on stone slabs, arms crossed over their chests. Mummies leaning at odd angles, crouched low or standing tall, their arms straight out in front of them like Frankenstein monsters.
>
> ...
>
> I realized that I had made an incredible discovery here. By falling through the floor, I had found a hidden chamber, a chamber where mummies had been made. I had found all of the tools and all of the materials used to make mummies four thousand years ago.

That's creepy --- a room full of dead bodies. Sari catches up with Gabe, but Ahmed is close behind. He reveals that the chamber is the "sacred Preparation Chamber of the Priestess Khala" and Ahmed is trying to prevent anyone from trespassing in it. Then he reveals the true identities of the surrounding mummies.

> "They were all violators of the Priestess's chamber," Ahmed revealed. The thin smile that formed on his face could only be described as a proud smile.
>
> "You mean --- they're not from ancient Egypt?" Sari cried, raising her hands in horror to her face.
>
> "A few of them," Ahmed replied, still smiling that frightening, cold smile. "A few of them were ancient intruders. Some are quite recent. But they all have one thing in common. They all became victims of the curse. And they all were mummified alive!"

Then he points out the one he did himself! This dude is insane and scary as shit. Uncle Ben finds them and tries to reason with him "scientist to scientist." Ben, boobala, the man threatened your assistants by showing them what it would be like to be boiled alive. He's not a scientist. He's a crazy man with a knife who is threatening your daughter.

Ahmed knocks Uncle Ben out and forces the scientist into a coffin with the children. There's a little crying and suspense before Uncle Ben wakes up and reveals that every coffin has a trap lever. That's a little deus ex machina --- I wanted the children to figure out a way out for themselves and save their Uncle, or maybe the kids could have observed the trap lever during their trip to the museum. I guess the book can't be perfect.

The kids and Uncle Ben escape and are forced into a final confrontation with Ahmed. Gabe pulls out a mummy hand that he keeps with him. (This isn't a deus ex machina --- it's been mentioned.)

> Maybe I thought the mummy hand would distract Ahmed.
>
> Or interest him.
>
> Or confuse him.
>
> Or frighten him.
>
> Maybe I was just stalling for time.
>
> Or maybe I was unconsciously remembering the legend behind the hand that the kid at the garage sale had told me.
>
> The legend of why it was called The Summoner.
>
> How it was used to call up ancient souls and spirits.
>
> Or maybe I wasn't thinking anything at all.
>
> But I spun around and, gripping it by its slender wrist, held the mummy hand up high.
>
> And waited.
>
> Ahmed stared at it.
>
> But nothing happened.
>
> I waited, standing there like the Statue of Liberty with the little hand raised high above my head.
>
> It seemed as if I were standing like that for hours.

The thought of this kid holding up a mummy hand while everyone around him is just staring at him and shrugging is hilarious. I laughed out loud. If there's an episode of the television show based on this book, I hope that's played with a comedic beat. (I just checked --- there is no television adaptation of this book.)

But the mummy hand does something eventually --- the mummies come to life and chase Ahmed out of the pyramid, allowing Uncle Ben, Sari, and Gabe to escape. Ahmed should have been run into the tar pit, but that might be too gruesome for a kid's book, even if the book is a horror book.

It ends with the three of them sharing a moment, including a silly pun that will probably be an inside joke among them.

> "We're okay," Uncle Ben said gratefully, throwing his arms around Sari and me. "We're okay. We're okay."
>
> "We can go now!" Sari cried happily, hugging her dad. Then she turned to me. "You saved our lives," she said. She had to choke out the words. But she said them.
>
> Then Uncle Ben turned his gaze on me and the object I still gripped tightly in front of me. "Thanks for the helping hand," Uncle Ben said.

I see what you did there.

Goosebumps: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb was a delight. It was scary, funny, and I loved the dynamic between Gabe, his cousin, and his uncle. This is what Goosebumps is all about: a kid overcoming a scary situation with gumption and humor. I had an adventure to an ancestral homeland when I was a kid and, while it didn't involve any mummies, I keep those treasured memories in a special part of my brain. Gabe's experience was scary, but he became closer to his uncle and cousin, and now he has a great story to tell. And I enjoyed reading it.

Stay Out of the Basement!