#spookstober

[gallifreyan85]

And it blows away (with the changing wind)

pairing: Agatha x teen reader

summary: after persuading Agatha to teach you about magic, you can't help but imagine yourself as a part of a coven, maybe a family. it's a shame your mentor doesn't share your wishes.

Warnings: slightly toxic mentorship??, Agatha being her usual mean and mocking self <3

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆

Agatha's house in Westview was the epitome of suburban quality and comfort. It was a cozy space, not small but not too large, the place filled with just a little too much furniture and pattern that it gave it that witchy dazzle. Or at least that was what you thought.

You were sitting in one of the armchairs by the unlit fireplace, pretending to read. Well, pretending... You were still skimming through the pages, glancing over the words, but none really caught your eye. You supposed better that than to end up with Agatha scolding you for not paying attention. Yes, you weren't in the middle of training now, you weren't learning a new spell or some ridiculous hand movement that your mentor made look effortless and cool. You were just reading. Thinking, more like it. You flipped a page, absentmindedly, and nearly jumped out of your chair when a mockingly cooing voice spoke into your ear.

"That's a bit too advanced for your little head to turn over, don't you think?"

You turned, and saw Agatha smiling down at you, one hand against the back of the armchair, the other at her hip. She was giving you that condescending look she usually had but somehow made more charming. More… making you willing to overlook the meanness and the mocking and fall under some nonexistent guise of lackluster self esteem and a willingness to please her. It was annoying really, only when it wasn't absolutely endeavoring. You weren't sure if you hated it or wanted to keep on chasing it your whole life. You looked up and gave Agatha one of your tentative looks, not quite following as always.

"What?"

Your mentor rolled her eyes and moved away towards the couch, patting your head in the process, an endearing gesture, yet she somehow managed to make it feel contemptuous. You leaned into it nonetheless.

"The book, dearie." Agatha said, sitting down against the stupid decorative pillows and a pumpkin-patterned couch blanket. "That page you have open, why are you reading about it?"

You looked down at the book. Indeed it was open on a much farther chapter, one near the backend, and titled Blood Moons: everything you need and need not know about their intricate connections to the Craft. You swallowed. In honesty you weren't at all paying attention to what you were flipping through. In honesty, you were thinking about Agatha Harkness being nice to you, which was very uncommon and very unlikely.

"Hello toots." Agatha said again, a bit more taunt in her voice this time. "Anyone there?"

You nodded quickly, closing the book in your lap. "Y-yes, I'm here." You said, starting to fumble with your necklace. It was a gold-circled medallion with a stone maiden's head in the center. A mockup of your mentor's brooch. Another obvious example of your own desperation to match your power to someone far more cogent and powerful than yourself. Pitiful.

Agatha tilted her head, scrutinizing you with an odd and uncommon curiosity. You noticed it, of course, you noticed every single micro expression on your mentor's face directed towards you in hopes of finding some comfort there. Comfort that was so far nonexistent. You didn't know why you were still searching for something you clearly wouldn't get. And yet something made you stand up, set the book down on a nearby table and go sit next to Agatha, who regarded you with a confused and frowning look.

"What are you doing?"

You gave her a tentative smile. "Sitting?"

"You were already sitting over there."

"Yes, well… Anyway."

Agatha gave you a look. But she didn't tell you to go back.

"I wasn't reading about the blood moon." you blurted.

Your mentor's head tilted, a sly smirk on her face. "Oh, no?"

"Yeah, no, um.. I was just- I mean, I wouldn't try anything…so advanced, you know, um, before you said so."

Agatha smiled. Slightly mocking. Slightly humorous. She was amused.

"Oh, good. So you are a good little pet after all…"

"Student."

"What was that?"

"I'm a student, you- you said you're my mentor--"

Agatha rolled her eyes. "You keep saying that word dear, on and on again, mentor, like you think it holds some magic meaning in it. But you know what, pet? Even witchcraft is mostly just empty words. The person doing the incantation gives them power."

You stayed quiet for a moment. "Even humans?"

Agatha scoffed. "Yes, even boring little humans. Magic isn't just magic. It's an exchange of power depending on one's capability. That's why humans can only get so far with a few well chosen words out of a spellbook, and we," she smirked, a different look darkening her eyes, "can do so much more, even without it."

You stayed quiet, regarding her silently, and she sighed in annoyance.

"Oh, don't give me that look, darling, you're looking at me like I'm about to reveal the secrets of the universe."

You swallowed, and looked down. "Uh, sorry."

"Apology accepted." Said Agatha, fixing her hair. "You know I don't know why you keep doing this."

"Doing- what?"

Another scoff.

"This. This little cutesy act of yours, the big pleading eyes, like a puppy begging for scraps and attention. It's pathetic."

This must be what getting stabbed in the heart feels like, you thought to yourself silently. You were lucky your mentor was plenty good at stabbing people with her words. And you had a high pain tolerance. Perhaps you would stay and let yourself get stabbed to death one day.

"I'm not--" you started, knowing at once that it was of no use, "pleading."

"No?" Agatha grinned, her expression one of faux sympathy. "Then what's that little look in your eyes? You're acting like you didn't just scurry over to me like a lost cat."

"Thought you said I was a puppy."

That made her laugh. It was a genuine laugh, a real one, which wasn't all that common.

"Cat, dog, it's all the same to me, you're still a pet."

You stayed quiet. Agatha was right. You really were acting like a pet. Following her around and begging for some affection with your big doe eyes, hoping someone would take pity. And yet…

You looked back at your mentor, eyes now knowingly pleading. "Can you tell me more about magic?"

Agatha's blue eyes narrowed. "You'll learn more tomorrow, we're done for the day."

"Not like that. Just.. you know, in general."

"Oh in general?"

"Yeah."

"No."

"Wh--" Your face fell. "Why not?"

Agatha shrugged, getting up. "I have better things to do."

"But- wait- please--"

"Oh, please? We're begging now?"

That shut you up for a moment. You wondered why it made your heart hurt a little. You were used to mean words. You'd gotten plenty of them from your family before. So why were they still affecting you? Perhaps you were hoping this little mentorship would be your second chance at being part of a family. A proper one, with love and care and not--

Agatha laughed, mimicking a sympathetic pout. "Aww. Did I manage to kill your enthusiasm? Finally?"

"No." You shook your head, "Just…I thought…"

"Thought what? That I'd tell you nice stories and pretty spells and beautiful magic like in a fairy tale?"

"No…."

"Well spit it out then. What?"

"I thought- that- you'd talk to me more." You paused, quiet. "I hoped I could talk to you, about.. stuff."

Agatha paused before turning away. She gave you an odd look, one that you couldn't quite decipher, and just didn't answer. She turned abruptly again, then stepped forward, brushing a piece of nothing from your shoulder. You held your breath.

"Don't waste your time hoping, dear." She said, her voice now perfectly pleasant and dismissive. "That'll only make it hurt more when you don't get what you want."

And with that she strode away, brushing her hair back and not sparing you another glance.

You stayed put for a couple of seconds, thinking and unsure, your hand halfway up to your shoulder where Agatha's had been moments prior. You brushed your fingers over the spot, as if hoping to feel something there, a remnant of a gentle touch long gone. But it was too late. Whatever warmth was there, if there was any in Agatha Harkness's heart or touch, it had already faded away, along with the last of her footsteps on the cold, wooden floors. You took a breath, composed yourself, and sat back down to read. Perhaps tomorrow would be better. Yes, you convinced yourself, trying to ignore the stinging behind your eyes. Tomorrow... would be better.

A/N: this is here because i couldn't find any platonic found familyish fics for our favorite witchy witch so here we are. The reader is 16 here in my head (cause this was originally based on an OC of mine) but really you can imagine whatever else you want. The next episode drops on Friday where I live and if I get inspired by some feels I might write like a follow up fic or something similar with a bit more Agatha being nice(r) and maaaybe some hurt n comfort? idk, we'll see. fic title from Rabbit Heart by Florence + The Machine. Hope you enjoyed!!

[littlerequiem]

hello, i'm back from vacation & hope everyone is having a good start of spookstober!! 🎃 i took a nice break from writing and i'm pumped to be back. here's a little update on what i'm working on:

we mourned the sea chapter 2 (coming out end of this week)

working on the next chapter of we all bleed red

[evengayerpanic]

The 13 Days of Spookstober!

To celebrate the last two weeks of October, I’m going to be issuing myself a writing challenge to create 13 Spookstober one-shots for a bunch of my favourite fandoms and pairings! Each piece will be between 1000-2500+ words, and feature one of my favourite fandom couples and one of my favourite Halloween and October activities. Some will be AU, some might be canon-compliant, it all depends on the fandom.

So stay tuned into this Tumblr for the next thirteen days of fic, and if anyone wants a sneak peak into what is planned, run on over to my Patreon right here at https://www.patreon.com/evengayerpanic for a full line-up of what fandoms, pairings and ideas are coming up over the next 13 Days of Spookstober!

[ayearofpike]

Spooksville #21: The Living Dead

Pocket Books, 1998 99 pages, 10 chapters ISBN 0-671-00269-4 LOC: CPB Box no. 1260 vol. 10 OCLC: 38471705 Released March 1, 1998 (per B&N)

The cemetery is boiling with undead bodies coming back to life. They’re looking for someone who has cheated the Grim Reaper out of a soul by somehow being alive twice in one time: Watch. The friends go to Ann Templeton for help, and it turns out that she’s had an experience with attempting to renege on a deal with death. The only way to help Watch, she knows, is to try again.

Holy shit, continuity! Like, this book follows RIGHT on the heels of the previous story, continuing the same narrative. Oh, and wait until you see what they bring back later on. Is he just messing with me, or has Pike started to run out of original ideas?

The first skeleton shows up as Adam and Watch are walking past the cemetery at dusk. It tackles a random adult who happens to be walking by, but then recalibrates and goes straight for Watch, like it was demanded. Adam knows it’ll be pointless to try to fight a skeleton without a weapon, so he tracks down a stout stick and beats the crap out of it, eventually teeing off on its head, which stops the attack. They decide to wait for morning to investigate further, and bring the rest of the gang with them. The only disturbed grave is a man who died some three years before, which library research reveals was a police officer killed in the line of duty. Why was he after Watch? They still don’t know, but they realize the best way to find out is to stake out the cemetery.

As they’re watching and waiting, a hand reaches up out of the ground and starts to drag Sally down. Watch digs down into the loose earth and starts wailing on the skeleton through its coffin. Ultimately he manages to knock its head off too, but it’s scratched Sally’s leg, so she’s ready to  suck it up and admit she’s out of her element. So now they do what they should have done in the first place: they go ask Ann Templeton.

As it happens, Ann’s dearest friend was responsible for her previous deal with death. She’s not optimistic for Watch, though, because of her past experience. What happened was her friend’s fiance was hit by a car and suffered internal injuries bad enough to turn him into a vegetable. The friend wouldn’t let him go, though, to the point where Ann actually pulled the plug herself when she was out of the room. But that wasn’t enough to convince the friend: she staked out the grave and refused to let the Reaper get close. Instead, she offered a deal: her life for one more day with her beloved. Sounded like a steal to Mr. Grim, but when the dude woke up he was horrified. They went to Ann for help in hiding, who managed to beckon some aliens to take them far and away. Of course, the reaper was not to be dissuaded, and took the pair in their sleep, right on schedule. So if deep space can’t stop death, what can?

It’s time, too. The castle is surrounded by skeletons, and there will be no escaping. The witch does agree to come along with Watch and plead his case, even though it’s unlikely to do any good. He also asks to stop by his house before he goes, and they end up facing the Grim Reaper with Watch’s suitcase because I guess you can take it with you. Ann Templeton talks up Watch’s positives and good points, but none of it is enough to make up for the fact that Mr. Skullhead is owed a soul. So Ann Templeton offers her own life in place of her dear friend’s, swearing on the body that is buried next to her ancestor to keep the bargain.

Before the skeleton guards can move to take our dear witch to her doom, Watch yells to all the humans to gather by him as he whips something out of his suitcase. Some kinda toy robot with a clock in its chest. Yep — he hung onto the Time Toy, or the Time Terror, or whatever you want to call it, and has managed to transport himself and his friends ten billion years into the future, far enough that the Reaper won’t find them right away. Of course, this is a stopgap; Ann Templeton knows he’ll find them eventually. But they have time to make some plans, and Watch first sends the witch back to their own time before returning himself and his friends to his house.

They have to attract as many skeletons as possible, Watch says, for reasons he’s keeping to himself for the moment. As it so happens, there are already two in there, dancing to ‘60s records on Watch’s record player. Maybe they’ll be interested in music, the kids think, and so hook up some giant speakers to let the skeletons know about a spooky house party.

When the house is sufficiently full, the kids reveal themselves, and are immediately taken prisoner and marched back to the cemetery, where the Reaper is waiting for them. He demands that Watch give up the whereabouts of Ann Templeton or he’ll have to take her place again, and Watch rebuts that this was never part of the deal, and that Death will have to renegotiate it with the witch herself. And as it turns out, she’s there, next to a funeral pyre that nobody noticed somehow even though it’s a giant flame in the middle of a graveyard. Of course she dug up Old Watch’s body and burned it, thus making her swearing on his body in the cemetery null and void. I don’t know if that’s how it works? But the Grim Reaper admits defeat and goes back into his hole, never to be seen again or at least until someone else dies.

And that’s The Living Dead! Yep, another misleading cover. Also of note: Bryce has admitted having feelings for Cindy but not acting on them because she’s Adam’s girl. This would be news to Adam, I think, and Cindy quickly refutes it by saying she is not shackled to anybody right now and that she might be open to exploring feelings for Bryce. You snooze, you lose, short stuff!

[makeusfreefromthisfandom]

lemme just start by saying i love how you match your header for spookstober? or did i get it wrong? 😳 anyhows FUCHSIA = Your blog content is gold BURGUNDY = I get excited when I see posts from you SAFFRON = I love your ideas BLUSH = Seeing you on my dash makes my day a little better.  MAUVE = You are really talented SCARLET = You have influenced my decision/thoughts on something. TIMBERWOLF = I trust you 🥺💖

AHHHHH SKAJJSJSJSJAJSJSJJSJS

I ONLYJSJSJHS TALKSJSJJS INSNABJA KEYSMASHAJHAHAHA NOWJAJAJAJ

I LOVE YOU BBYYYY I DONT THINK I CAN PUT INTO WORDS HOW MUCH U MEAN TO ME ❤️❤️❤️

[aspectnotarized]

Wanted to do something for Spookstober. Rams are pretty heavily associated with sacrifices, ritual, and spirituality, so I threw this together for Hyoma. 

[vitorofthescaleless]

Inktober catch up 1-5

Inktober 1: Tired Pumpkin Man

Inktober 2: Santa’s consumption of the rest of the year by Spookstober

Inktober 3: Yoshi’s a bad influence

Inktober 4: Halloween Surprise

Inktober 5: Never Dress Up as Yourself

[vacueabissi]

Reblogging it again because I wrote it a long time ago and I believe that now that is Spookstober it is more coherent to read.

Is Dear David the Boy in the box?

Hey, people. I just watched the Buzzfeed Unsolved video about the boy in the box and since I am reading (at least when it updates) the Adam Ellis’s tweets about Dear David, I came up with something. Hoping to not be the only one.

So, hear me out.

As said by Loey Lane in her video the probability of the two stories to coincide are not so low.

DISCLAIMER: TRIGGER WARNING for those people who are sensible to pictures of corpses or creepy ghosts with dented heads. If you are willingly to continue, go on.

Continua a leggere

[theoldaeroplane]

Happy Spookstober! Your additions to the October List before were stellar before, has your increased wisdom and culture shown you any more?

hmMMmMmm let me go dig out that old thing and see if i can add anything to it!!

[evengayerpanic]

Happy Spookstober!

Hello again everyone!

So I’ve decided that with October being my favourite month, it’s time to try to jump back into my Patreon journey with all new posts and updates, and try to get back into the writing business as best as I can!

I try not to write about Patreon often; nor do I like to speak of my living situation, as I’m sure everyone has something going on in their life, so all I will say is that it’s things like Patreon that I’m hoping will give me the extra funds/security to leave a bad housing situation that I am in. I’m willing to work hard, and I hope whomever has the ability to help me, recognizes just how much I appreciate them.

It’s not just them I appreciate either, it’s every single person who likes, reblogs or even reads my work. You all make me want to continue with my writing, and give me the confidence to do things like Patreon!

For October, I’ve decided to do something fun! The first three people who join my Patreon (as well as I’m reaching out to the two that already have joined), I’m going to write them something that has to do with Fall or Halloween their choice. With their permission, I’ll post it, but it’s their choice to share!

Anyways, for anyone interested, or anyone who doesn’t mind helping me out, my Patreon link is: https://www.patreon.com/evengayerpanic

Thank you so much for your continued support, in whatever way you have the ability to support. - Allie (EvenGayerPanic)!

[ayearofpike]

Spooksville #23: Phone Fear

Pocket Books, 1998 113 pages, 9 chapters ISBN 0-671-00271-6 LOC: CPB Box no. 1872 vol. 29 OCLC: 40402284 Released November 1, 1998 (per B&N)

When Bryce’s phone rings, and the caller demands he do horrible things to a local man or face consequences, the gang figures it’s a prank caller out to get them. But then Bryce gets hurt, and Adam gets the next call, and they know it’s serious. How could someone know everything about everybody everywhere at every time? Maybe it’s not someone, but someTHING, come to life and possessing a malevolent desire to undermine humanity.

As complex as this cover is, it’s a drastic oversimplification of the story within. I feel like here, and also with The Creepy Creature, we’re starting to get more of the genre expectation that there should be a gross green monster out to get the kids in the book. Also, notice how the characters on the covers are not as consistent as with the first few stories. Like, we hadn’t seen Charisma Carpenter show up before, and now she’s being attacked by some kind of telephone lizard.

It might fit with the huge jump in time we’re being expected to swallow, or perhaps Pike is glossing over it while nodding to the fact that it’s been two years since the start of this series. Because in the opening pages, we find that Adam and Cindy are now two-year Spooksville residents, getting used to the town but still plagued by its evil and quirkiness. So that means the kids are now fourteen? Pike doesn’t say, but they have to be, even though I’m fairly certain he marked them as twelve as recently as The Living Dead. (EDIT: They are still twelve on page ONE of The Creepy Creature, and they’re twelve AGAIN on page 31 of The Witch���s Gift. Obviously Pike just fucked up.) Still, even though time has been sort of glossed over for the last couple of titles, I think this jump might be too big to swallow. Makes me think Pike just wasn’t paying attention.

Still, we learn that the school year is almost over (which is, again, another big jump, as Pee-Pants was just wearing Santa jammies six books ago) and the kids are looking forward to summer. They’re discussing plans and hopes when Bryce’s phone rings. Why does a twelve fourteen-year-old have a cell phone in 1998? Well, he had one hidden before, so this might not be so weird. But the voice on the other end tells him to go break the postman’s windows. Obviously Bryce is not going to do that, but they decide to go warn the guy that someone is maybe out to get him. On the way, though, a black van races out of nowhere and jumps the curb and clips Bryce, breaking his leg.

They get their friend to the hospital and stabilized, but then start talking about who might be after them. Is it just one person? How did he move so quickly to know that Bryce wasn’t going to enact the evil action and have him punished? Why does he sound like a computer?  They try to go to the postman’s to do some research, but the guy isn’t answering his door. In fact, he blows out his own windows with a shotgun to scare the kids away and stop them going after him, like he knows something and is protecting himself. 

Adam is still holding onto Bryce’s phone, and it rings again as they’re walking away. This is his first experience hearing the voice: it’s oddly mechanical, like it’s being diffused through a computer somehow. The speaker identifies himself as Nernit, and tells Adam to go burn down some old lady’s house with her inside. Again, he obviously refuses, and this is when the gang is set upon by a strange girl in a long coat with a knife. After aliens and witches and demons and giant robot crabs, a teenage girl is no match for Sally and Cindy, who quickly disarm her. It turns out that she is, in fact, working for Nernit, and that she was sent here from a neighboring town just in case Bryce and Adam failed to carry out their tasks.

So it’s more than just local? Watch starts to put some pieces together. What is it that uses the phone line to communicate, and has a worldwide presence and a near-bottomless found of knowledge to draw from? Might it sound like a computer because it IS a computer? Or perhaps a network of computers, some kind of, I don’t know, international network? That pronounces its name “Nernit” because that’s how the speech-to-text program parses “Neernitt,” an anagram for Internet?

But now Watch is pretty sure he can get in touch with the being that has emerged from connectivity consciousness. He goes online and Googles whatever-search-engine-it-was-in-1998s “Neernitt,” which quickly leads to a black screen with red text talking directly to him. The presence refuses to talk or negotiate, insisting that humans are tools and not valued as equals to it. But Watch is pretty sure we have something Neernitt wants: a body. Autonomy. Freedom to get out of the computer and do something with our physical selves. Watch can give this to Neernitt, and of course it agrees.

There’s one catch: they have to produce the body in a week. We don’t have the know-how or the technology — but the Lemurians did, and it just so happens that they buried a robot at the end of the last book. Adam’s all salty about digging her up to befoul her final form with this megalomaniacal computer monster, but Watch feels it’s the only bargaining chip they have. And so he works nonstop with Bryce’s help over the course of a week. They don’t have anything else to do, because Neernitt’s minions are guarding the house so they can’t leave, with orders to shoot to kill if they try. (I guess what’s weird about this, what doesn’t fit with the rest of the series, is that it is so LATE getting to Spooksville. Normally the bizarre shit STARTS in this town.)

Adam is concerned that his friend is going over to the dark side. He sees only one hope: get hold of a gun somehow and take the robot body hostage so that they can get free and then ... what? He hasn’t really thought that far ahead, and if Neernitt is, indeed, global, there’s nowhere they can run that they can’t be traced and taken down. Still, it’s all he’s got. He swipes a weapon from a sleeping guard and points it at the robot head, which really only serves to make us all realize how expendable humans are to Neernitt. It quickly and remorselessly gains the upper hand, but before anyone can act in killing Adam, Watch leaps in the way. He insists that he needs to protect his friend, and that the project is not completeable without him, and so if Neernitt commands the shooting it will never have a body. So Neernitt concedes and lets the kids live. For now. (Weirdly, the girl with the long coat slept through the whole standoff.)

A couple days later, the body is ready, and Watch plugs it into the computer so Neernitt can download itself. Now it is free to roam and act however it likes — but first it commands the humans under its control to go rest. They end up gathering in Watch’s room, talking about what life is going to be like under the unmerciful claw of an all-seeing robot network. Watch is actually kind of interested in the idea of becoming a robot himself, though, and the new girl concurs that it could be pretty good. So they get up and go back to Neernitt, where Watch encourages him to unplug and go outside. Neernitt agrees that it’s time, on one condition: Watch must demonstrate how little he cares for a human body by shooting one of his colleagues.

He doesn’t hesistate: He picks up the provided rifle and blasts the new girl right in the chest. This is enough for Neernitt, who allows himself to be unplugged. But you know what that means? That means his consciousness is now limited to the robot body he is in, and tricksy Watch has built in an electromechanical overload circuit that allows him to short out the computer and effectively kill off the robot. So we’re all safe! But didn’t Watch just shoot a dude?

Yes — with a blank. (Fuckin’ Pike and his blanks, I swear to god.) It turns out that New Girl is the mastermind behind the whole thing. Neernitt isn’t a naturally occurring emerging consciousness, it’s a program, written by this girl to effect change and evolution upon humanity. Watch figured it out because of speech patterns and commonalities between them, and also that even though she was supposed to have been asleep during the standoff the computer in her room was on. She admits that she’s controlled Neernitt since the beginning. She’s tired of feeling things, of being hurt, and figures that if she were a robot she wouldn’t have to feel anymore. (There is NO backstory or exposition on any of this; just a teenager being moody, I guess.) But she is surprised to have started having GOOD feelings for Bryce, which Cindy does not care for at all. But now, maybe she’s ready to suck it up and deal with the pain of existence if it can go along with happy and warm feelings.

Does this end the same way as the previous one? Kinda, right? With the exception that THIS girl is not actually a robot, and she doesn’t die in the end. I didn’t think I’d see this in Spooksville, actually, but it parallels the Archway books in that Pike seems to see the writing on the wall and is winding himself down to complete the contract with the bare minimum of effort. There’s only one more book left in the series, and I’ve been led to understand it goes too quickly to effectlvely wrap things up. Let’s find out if he actually gives us the goddamn Watch backstory I’ve been wanting for twenty-three books. 

[ayearofpike]

Spooksville #20: The Dangerous Quest

Pocket Books, 1998 117 pages, 13 chapters ISBN 0-671-00268-6 LOC: not listed OCLC: 38115173 Released January 1, 1998 (per B&N)

Watch loves fantasy novels, but in Spooksville anything can become reality. His interest in one in particular has drawn a wizard to him, who has then placed a curse that is making him rapidly sicken. The only clues are the book and the Secret Path, and so the Spook Squad splits up to find a cure to Watch’s illness before it’s too late. But when they find almost identical other-dimension selves at the other end, we have to wonder if it’s ... TWO late?

Me and my big mouth. As soon as I knock on Night of the Vampire for being simple and straight-forward, we get this monstrosity (literally; it’s the longest one in a while). Magic, alternate dimensions, shapeshifting, multiple selves, and (not to scare anyone off too quickly) time travel all in one book. Let’s dig in.

Nobody knows Watch is sick until he suddenly collapses in the donut shop. He tells the story of trying to resell a book in the local bookstore the previous day when someone comes in looking for it. He invited Watch to discuss it over coffee, but before they even started talking about the story this weirdo touched Watch’s forehead with a green stone. He got dizzy long enough to not notice the guy leaving, but managed to follow him to Madeline Templeton’s tombstone. And it’s been getting worse ever since.

How long do the kids have? Probably not much. They agree to split up: Adam and Sally will retrace the Secret Path and try to find this obviously evil wizard, and Bryce and Cindy will work on finding the book and seeing what kind of connection there might be. This means starting at the bookstore, because Watch is pretty sure the dude never actually bought the book. They have to deal with the creepy bookseller, Mr. Carver, who evidently Bryce has a deal with about being allowed to keep his knives as long as he doesn’t use them on anything living? Squick. But he did sell the book after all, and gives them the name and address of the dude who bought it.

When they get to his house, though, he’s not interested in sharing the book, even after they tell him about the creepy guy who cursed their friend. He does want to see the portal that the dude jumped through, so they agree that Cindy will take him to the cemetery while Bryce runs an errand with his aunt, wink wink. Obviously the guy knows what’s up, because he takes Cindy hostage as soon as they’re at the cemetery and marches her back to his house, where Bryce is just at the door with the book under his arm. There’s a standoff — Bryce has a lighter to the book, Creepo is holding Cindy by the neck — but they agree that if Bryce gives up the book, Creepo will tell them what’s in it. Of course he doesn’t; instead he grabs both kids and chucks them in the basement. What he DOESN’T know is that Bryce has already been there and gone and back — he was RETURNING the book, after having made a photocopy of it. So he and Cindy settle down to read it.

Before I get to that, let me go back to the portal kids. They emerge in a land that is completely green, or maybe it just looks that way because the sun is green. They’re not there long before another Adam and Sally appear. Apparently they’re from a parallel dimension to our heroes, but their Watch is so sick that he couldn’t drag himself through the Secret Path. (Our Watch, of course, insisted.) They see a castle in the distance and decide there’s no better option than to try to walk to it.

(This is not too far out of line. Pike even acknowledges the Emerald City/yellow brick road trope in the text.)

But before they get too far, an armored warrior princess leaps out from the trees and demands to know who these trespassers are. They tell her the story of identical green-stone illnesses, and she concedes that the castle is the only place where they might find a cure, but there’s no way they can walk it. Instead, they’re going to have to ride pterodactyls. Well, the warrior doesn’t call them that, but that’s what they are. But they aren’t tame, of course; the gang will have to jump from above and surprise them. After a sticky moment where the Sallys miss their mount and the warrior has to save them, they get on board and manage to fly to the castle in no time.

Inside is the dude who cursed Watch. He’s like, dude, there’s nothing I can do, and Watch is all duh, I know that, I already read the story. Um, what? It turns out that the book was about a warrior princess who liked to go out hunting, only she accidentally killed a powerful witch in the guise of a boar and so his daughter cursed her with a fatal illness. The prince, her love, insisted that the young witch release the curse, but the only method to do so was to transfer it. But because the princess was royalty, it would require two brave and wise and good souls to take on the burden. Watch knew as soon as she appeared, of course, that the story was true, but he didn’t tell because he didn’t want anyone else to suffer. It’s true that our warrior princess is suddenly healed from an illness, but she is pretty pissed that the two Watches didn’t know they were taking on her curse. So they go to find the witch to see what she can do — and if it means the warrior takes back ownership of the curse, then so be it.

So they go to the dungeon, where the witch is locked up, and they demand she do something. She’s like, idiots, I already told you what needed to be done, and there’s not a whole lot you can do to change it. But suddenly the prince gets a shiver, like part of him just died. And it did! The dude back in Spooksville who was guarding the book is a kind of shadow-double of the prince, and he’s realized that it should have been him taking on the curse the whole time instead of trying to find some children who could sympathize with it. So he burns the book and dies with it, which makes the real prince realize it too. But before the witch can transfer the spell over, Watch speaks up. He wants to know if he’s worth enough that the other Watch doesn’t have to die. And this act of valor confirms it, and so when he closes his eyes and stops breathing, it’s the end of the curse.

No, seriously. Watch is dead.

They take his body back to Spooksville and bury it in the cemetery next to Madeline Templeton’s grave. Like, what else could they do? Watch had no family, probably not much money, and his only friends were this group of twelve-year-olds. Ann Templeton and Bum are there too, lots of tears, lots of mourning.

Until Watch walks into the cemetery.

Remember the time robot that sent the kids back to Colonial Spooksville and made a huge mess out of everything in the timeline? No, of course you don’t, and neither does anybody else: Watch made it so that they never found the robot in the first place. But he never went all the way away, either. He’s been paying attention to the gang’s activities, and when it transpired that he died, it made sense that maybe he could be alive again.

I don’t know, though. Things will never be the same, because the new Watch doesn’t have the experiences of the last month or so, and the others aren’t likely to forget fucking BURYING HIM any time soon. Still, I imagine that this is going to go away faster than even I expect. Much like my hopes of finally figuring out what the kid’s deal is and why his parents abandoned him in this burg.

[ayearofpike]

Spooksville #16: Time Terror

Pocket Books, 1997 113 pages, 12 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-00264-3 LOC: CPB Box no. 257 vol. 26 OCLC: 36777822 Released May 1, 1997 (per B&N)

The robot toy in the alley behind the movie theater looks too awesome to leave alone. But when the Spook Squad starts messing with it, they find themselves back in the earliest days of the town. Luckily, they make it back home without any ill effects, but the curiosity of learning what this place is and why proves too much to not go back again. Of course, they can’t get lucky twice, and everything they see and everyone they talk to just ends up making their situation worse or weirder.

Quick metadiscourse: While doing research on Spooksville, I learned that only the first twelve books were republished to coincide with the TV series. This makes me wonder: do I need to also read the new versions of these if I’m trying to be a completist? I’m not going to worry too much about it right now, but maybe when I get to the end I’ll revisit them in a single post, as is my plan for the reprints of early Scholastic/Archway stuff.

On to Time Terror! It starts out a lot more straight-forward than we’ve come to expect from Spooksville, which has been hurling us into multiple twisted paths for the main characters pretty much right away. (Hey, when a book has to stay under 120 pages, he needs to start without preamble.) But here, the kids go to a movie and then find a robot clock in the alley behind the theater. They fiddle with it, and it unexpectedly sends them back in time, to the early foundational days of Spooksville. Watch figures out how to set it to send them back home before they can go mucking things up, and they agree that Sally should hide it in her garage so nobody else inadvertently finds it. That’s the first three chapters.

But if you know Sally (and by now you should) you ought to expect her to not leave well enough alone, despite her highly developed sense of impending doom. She gets the robot out, but before she can do anything with it Adam is there. It seems he didn’t trust her to leave it alone, and obviously he was right. But he’s a curious SOB too, and so Sally convinces him that they can finally learn why Spooksville is the way it is, if they can get back to exactly the same time they went to earlier. Of course, her house is in a different place, and they don’t quite set the clock the same way, so they materialize in the middle of a group of people who — guess what — take them for witches and imprison them alongside Madeline Templeton, who is slated to be burned at the stake that evening.

Cindy learns about this from Adam’s dad. Well, not THIS this, but he calls to ask if Adam is still hanging out with her, because he hasn’t come home yet. She calls Watch, who immediately knows that Adam must have been checking on Sally because he was tempted to do the same thing. They pick up Bryce and head over to Sally’s, where they find the robot in the middle of the garage rather than in its hiding place. As they argue about what it might mean, Bryce ... disappears. So do Watch’s glasses and watches and Cindy’s long blonde hair. But ... what’s the problem? Watch never wore glasses or four watches. (But then why is his name still fucking WATCH?) Cindy always had red hair. They came to Sally’s just the two of them; there wasn’t another guy in the group.

But their uneasiness about this situation is enough to make them realize that Adam and Sally must have gone back and changed something to make them unsure about what, to them, has always been the status quo. So they fiddle with the robot clock and end up ... in the far future, somehow. Watch must have fucked up. Lucky for them, a kid shows up and praises how they’re dressed as the Legendary Heroes, to get the full experience of attending the Spooksville City Museum. He’s been studying the Heroes and how they defeated so many deadly evils and terrors, so for today, his twelfth birthday, he wanted to experience the museum first-hand. Of course, all the adventures have been documented, so he knows all about the robot clock (or, as it’s been described in Cindy’s diary, the Time Terror) and how it works. So Cindy and Watch really have no choice but to commandeer the kid’s knowledge to get themselves back to wherever Adam and Sally are trapped.

(The kid’s name? Tweek.)

(I swear to fucking God.)

The future kids’ arrival in Old-Timey Spooksville (where, for some reason, everyone has British names in eighteenth-century California; thanks, white colonialism) distracts the lynch mob just as they’re lighting the fire to burn the three witches. Only the judge or governor or whoever he is sticks around, but obviously he’s powerless to prevent Madeline Templeton from freeing herself and the two kids, who she understands in her mystical wisdom to be friendly with her future descendant. He does try to go after the weakest one himself to save a little face (in this case, Sally, who’s struggling with smoke inhalation), but the witch trips him, which causes him to fall on his own sword. And that is the end of Jeff Poole. 

Poole. Oh. Oh shit.

After a quick detour to primordial Spooksville, Adam realizes his mistake and figures out the time robot through trial and error. They go home for his laser gun and then back to Old-Timey Spooksville, where the future kids have been tied to the same stakes to burn. Adam starts zapping dudes with the stun beam while Sally unties the others, and they all run for the witch’s castle to regroup and figure out what the hell to do. If Governor Poole were rendered unconscious before Madeline Templeton freed herself, they’re convinced, she wouldn’t have attacked him at all, so he’d live to sire the line up to Bryce. So Adam goes back to just before they escape but just AFTER the mob goes to hunt Watch and Cindy, zaps the governor with the stun beam, and then comes back.

Where Bryce is, having would-have come with Watch and Cindy on their original journey through time. (Hey, YOU figure out the verb tense there.) But he’s ... different. Stupid. Maybe mentally handicapped. We don’t, after all, really know what effect the stun beam has on human physiology. It’s probable that Adam inadvertently changed the ancestor’s genetic structure, which then refined its way down to Bryce mumbling about toy trucks and licking his palms. AND Watch can still see, AND they’re stuck in this castle which is under an attack not noted in the history books, which is SURELY gonna fuck something else up. Will Tweek ever get back home to finish celebrating his birthday?

There’s only one way to solve this problem once and for all. One of them has to go back (or rather, ahead) to just before they found the Time Terror and hide it. That way, they never touch it, they never go back to the past, they never change the way history is composed, and they all stay the same. But what does that mean for the person who does it? They’re a time-shifted variant of themselves existing in the same time, and if they ever cross paths with themselves it might be disastrous to the world. So Watch volunteers. He’s always been alone, he’s prepared to strike out on his own and not rely on his past, and besides he called it. 

So when the Spook Squad comes out of the movie theater this time, there’s nothing on the ground, even though they oddly expect something to be. Watch most of all — he’s having the weirdest case of deja vu. But they shake it off and continue on their merry way, oblivious to the strange kid hiding in the darkness bidding them farewell.

Just like in all time travel stories, there are a lot of unanswered questions about causality and paradoxes and whatnot. But honestly, I feel like Pike has done the best he could with the space available and the expectations of the audience and genre. It’s certainly a more complicated story than you’d expect to find in a junior-grade horror series book, and we can move forward without being too frustrated or confused by what it signifies. I’m assuming Future-Watch is gone forever? But then again, I thought Tira was gonna be in this one too. Let’s just keep plugging along without expectations. It’s safer.

[ayearofpike]

state of the project at the end of the archway

I finally passed the 50% mark this month, and September registers as the most books I’ve read and most posts I’ve written on the project all year. Progress! Still, we’ve got 44 books remaining and just over two days to read each. And beyond here be dragons — over half of what’s left I will be reading for the first time, and I’ll need to put a little more effort into unpacking and analyzing them. How am I going to manage to finish? Is there any way I could possibly pull it off?

It looks pretty bad. But maybe. I feel self-conscious promising anything, considering how slow I’ve been going and the gaps in my production, particularly when there are bigger books (which is pretty much everything after Thirst). Still, there might be a way that I push through what’s left and get it all done in 2018. 

Here’s how. 

Of those 44 books remaining, 24 of them are Spooksville. 

There are 29 days remaining in October.

It is my mission to get through ALL of the Spooksville books by Halloween, which gives me a little more than a day per book to read and post on them. Since they’re so much shorter, this is a realistic goal, as long as I stick to the project and don’t fall asleep at the wheel for too long. I’ve only ever read the first one (and no, I didn’t buy them and let them sit for years; I picked them up specifically to do this project), but I’m not too worried about analysis — the younger target audience should make it a little easier on me. It also means that I can’t spend too much time thinking about the photos I take. I’ll likely end up shooting several covers flat on my desk to save time.

If I can pull this off, it then kicks my time-per-book up to just over three days for what remains. Plus, I’m not writing a post on each — I’m going to do one for Thirst 1 and 2, and one that covers ALL the other compilations. My plan there is to breeze through the reading and just briefly touch on any weird changes made for audience or time period. Fifteen posts in two months? Sounds doable.

So: Welcome to Spookstober. Here we go.

[ayearofpike]

Spooksville #8: The Little People

alternate title: Pan’s Realm Pocket Books, 1996 117 pages,  13 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-55067-5 LOC: CPB Box no. 362 vol. 19 OCLC: 34608023 Released May 1, 1996 (per B&N)

Leprechauns, dwarfs, and fairies have moved into Spooksville, in far greater numbers than the Spook Squad would have ever expected. In investigating, they find Pan, the god of the wild, who has been ejected from his kingdom, along with all his subjects, in the wake of a bad gambling outcome with an evil wizard. Can the kids help Pan win back his kingdom? (Spoiler: yes.)

Here's a rollicking adventure story once again! Also: this is the first Pike book that's had a different title in another English-speaking territory, as far as I know. I don't pretend to be an expert on British culture, but I have to assume the fugly leprechaun on the cover with the title The Little People was offensive. (Correction: this one WAS released as The Little People in both territories. I don’t actually know when it became Pan’s Realm ... maybe when the books got republished alongside the TV series? There’s not an episode that coincides directly with this story, as far as I can tell, though.)

It is a leprechaun that they first encounter, though, on a picnic in the woods. Cindy is bringing out her signature chocolate cake when a little green man leaps out of nowhere and snatches it out of her hands. They go chasing after him, and another one grabs one of Watch's watches. They don't want to lose anything else, so they head back ... only to find that their blanket is gone, and their basket is gone, and their bikes are gone. So now the kids are pissed, right, and they're gonna find this little shit.

They forge farther through the woods, and just when they think they couldn't get any more lost they happen upon a cave. This cave is obviously constructed, with cut stone and smooth walls. A little ways in, there's a whole company of dwarfs (which is the spelling Pike chose, don't @ me) digging out more tunnels. The oldest dwarf directs the kids farther along, and again just when they think they're totally lost the tunnel opens to a different section of the woods.

There's a palace made of growing grasses and leaves, with a courtyard and a fountain, and so the kids stop to drink. But all of a sudden this hooded figure sweeps out of the palace and demands to know why they are stealing her water. It's a fairy, it turns out, and she's not happy at all that the kids think she's a human. In fact, she's so unhappy that she curses them invisible and insubstantial. They stumble around for a while, unable to find each other until all of a sudden Adam gets a flash of some eyes. Watch's eyes, actually, as the sunlight refracts through his glasses onto his face. They figure that maybe all they have to do to break the curse is get sunlight reflected onto them, so they find the right angle on the lip of the fountain and hey presto, they're visible physicals again.

This still doesn't explain where all these little people are coming from. So the kids keep walking until they stumble upon an onocentaur. It's Pan, in fact, and he's all depressed because he's lost his kingdom. This evil wizard came along with a bag of treasures and a coin, and in a challenge of guessing the flip Pan loses twenty tosses in a row to lose everything. Well, almost — the wizard, in his generosity, let Pan keep a crystal necklace. In fact, this was the last thing Pan won, and after he put it on he suddenly started losing. So on his way out of the kingdom, he tossed it aside, not wanting anything to remind him of his failure.

Obviously there's a tricky curse going on, right? The kids want to help Pan get his kingdom back, at least partly so they won't lose any more cakes to leprechauns. So they pass through the magical portal (this time it's walking backwards around an isolated pine tree seven times) and make their way up to the castle. Only before they can find it, they're set upon by the wizard's guards, who shoot Watch in the leg. Let me restate that: a CHILD takes an ARROW in the LEG in this story. Pan pulls it out and treats it, but Watch isn't walking any further any time soon. So Cindy stays with him while the others continue looking for the necklace, this time staying off the path.

It's pretty much where Pan remembered discarding it. So Adam wants to test it out. He puts on the necklace and then steps out onto the path, and all of a sudden there's a whole bunch of guards bearing down on him. But Pan and Sally don't see them. And it's just as Adam suspected: the necklace makes you think you saw the opposite of what you wanted. The way the coin toss was rigged, only Pan and the wizard could see it when it landed, so when Pan called out the result it was the opposite of what he hoped for; that is, the opposite of his call that would have won him a prize.

And now Pan is pissed, and nothing will stop him storming the castle. Only the wizard king isn't impressed. They try to reason with him, and he flat denies any wrongdoing, and rebanishes Pan with his stupid necklace. As for Sally and Adam, though: they should stick around for dinner. But when the wizard turns them into chickens, they realize they'll be the main course.

Watch and Cindy are starting to get worried. However, luck shines their way for a second here: they meet another fairy, but this one is only a kid. She wants to help Pan, and figures that she'll start by helping his human ... well, helpers. So she heals Watch's wound, she feeds them dinner, and then they set off toward the castle. Only Pan is already dejectedly trudging back from it, the necklace on again, sorry that he's doomed Adam and Sally to a horrible fate. Watch realizes that the necklace is the one they've discussed, and wants to mess around with it a little bit. He might have a plan to use it to trick the wizard into betting the kingdom back.

They finesse their way back to the throne room, and Watch puts up his gambling collateral: a calculator and a lighter. It's enough to intrigue the wizard, so he agrees to a wager: his hat for the calculator. Watch wants him to wear the necklace, though, while he makes the bets. It shouldn't be a problem, right, because there's nothing special about the necklace? So the wizard enlists a dwarf to call what the coin shows every time, knowing full well how the necklace works. But the coin toss goes to Watch anyway. Double or nothing? Watch now wants his friends set free, and wins again. This time, he bets for the castle and wins AGAIN. One more double or nothing, for the whole kingdom? The wizard just can't resist: he's a degenerate gambler and has to win at least one. But he doesn't. And Pan promises, now that he's king again, he'll be able to get the kids' possessions back, if not the cake.

How did Watch do this? It turns out that the order of the crystals on the necklace is what made it work — when he changed them around, it didn't have any effect. The wizard didn't notice that, though, and he wasn't meant to; it was meant to serve as a distraction so he wouldn't notice the invisible fairy flipping the coin to Watch's favored side at the last minute. Except: the fairy couldn't get her invisibility to work. Watch had lucked out the whole time.

Aside from the fairy curse toward the beginning, this story stays nice and tight. I don't fully understand why they didn't call it Pan's Realm from the very beginning, though: it makes way more sense as a title. Maybe it was required to put that ugly-ass green guy on the front, you know, for kids.

[ayearofpike]

Spooksville #22: The Creepy Creature

Pocket Books, 1998 112 pages, 12 chapters ISBN 0-671-00270-8 LOC: CPB Box no. 1474 vol. 13 OCLC: 39525120 Released August 1, 1998 (per B&N)

A slime monster has eaten and absorbed Bryce Poole. Cindy Makey is the only one to have seen it happen, and when they find Bryce in the woods it’s naturally hard to believe her. But Bryce is acting different. Strange. And when he slimes out of his bed and tries to attack his other friends, they realize Cindy was telling the truth, and they have to go back into the woods to stop these creatures from invading and multiplying. But the trail leads back to a land that they’ve heard of before, and the slime monsters are only a small part of it.

This fuckin’ book gave me whiplash. We’ll get there. But I’m not convinced that Pike was totally happy with the beginning. A lot of the searching and talking is somewhat haphazardly written (like this blog), like he just didn’t care about that part and wanted to get on to the good stuff (like this blog). With two more Spooksvilles coming down the lane, he must have seen the light at the end of the tunnel and been ready to be done. Hmm, where have we seen that before.

It’s fortuitous that I closed my last post talking about Bryce and Cindy and their feels, because this one opens with them walking in the woods alone together. Cindy is trying to drop hints that maybe she’s interested in Bryce, but Bryce is too busy being a twelve-year-old boy with a savior complex to really understand what’s being said. It doesn’t really matter, because this ... THING oozes up behind him and starts reaching tentacles. They try to run, and for a minute they think they’re safe, but then it lunges out from behind a bush and totally absorbs Bryce. Cindy has no choice but to run.

She finds her friends — where else — eating donuts, and tells them what happened to Bryce. After a quick pit stop at the army surplus for flamethrowers (like, this fuckin’ town, man), they hike up to the caves where the creature first appeared. And they run into Bryce, who says that he walked into a monster spider web and the spider in it must have scared Cindy away. Which ... bullshit, because these guys know Cindy and she’s seen a lot worse than a goddamn spider. But he insists that now he’s tired and wants to go home, so they just follow him.

They split up back in town. Adam and Watch have to return the flamethrowers, but then they part ways too, and Adam is almost home for dinner when Cindy leaps out of a bush and insists they go confront Bryce now, because Bryce is not Bryce. She knows what she saw, and even throws in a tidy little The Thing reference to try to make Adam understand. He still doesn’t totally believe her, but agrees to go along and stake out the house. Bryce isn’t there yet, but when he does get home he takes off all his clothes and oozes across the bed. So now Adam is convinced.

What to do? Maybe they can burn it. Bryce happens to have several gas cans in his garage, and the house goes up without an argument. Only — oh shit! — he got out, and is now going to grab and turn both Adam and Cindy. This doesn’t last too long, because Watch has been tailing them with his flamethrower that he checked back out I guess, like the army surplus in Spooksville is a lending library, and he torches The Blob Formerly Known as Bryce into so much melted Jell-o.

So just like Harry Potter, these kids gotta go fighting battles that nobody else is willing to back. They wake Sally and get more flamethrowers, then make their way up to the caves. Watch decides they need to follow the one with the most slime around the opening, because duh, and they take it down. And down. And down. And eventually it starts opening up and spreading out and being lit by a strange green light, almost like there’s a sky with a nebulous light source over the top of this massive cavern, which is so big that even Pike seems to forget they’re fucking underground.

They bump into another slime creature, which grabs Sally’s ankle but otherwise seems to have no interest in ingestion. Watch decides to get a better angle on burning it away, so he climbs a tree and shoots straight down. Of course, this pisses the creature off, and before Watch can do much damage it lashes out and grabs him and takes off. So the other kids gotta follow, right? 

They smell smoke and see hints of activity in the distance, but before they can get really close a rock comes chasing after them. Literally — it’s a big ass rock monster, running straight at Sally. Why does she keep getting targeted down here? Before she can even scream, this purple laser shoots out of nowhere and blows it up. The wielder is a beautiful young woman with purple hair, dressed for combat in that way male artists do female superheroes: breast plate, bare arms, bare legs, high boots. Come to think of it, the warrior princess in The Dangerous Quest was dressed much the same. Frickin’ Pike.

The woman says that they need to go with her to the control center of her city, because the rock monsters are taking over and they’re not safe out here. She doesn’t seem to know anything about the slime monsters, which is weird if this is where they came from. You see the hard turn this storyline just took? Whiplash.

Watch pops out of a bush, or at least he thinks he’s Watch. The others keep a careful eye on him, but they’re not ready to just kill, because he’s saying all the right things and in that analytical way Watch has. But he’s naked, because the slime creature stole his clothes, so Adam has to give up his shirt for Watch’s modesty (which he takes as another sign that it’s really Watch; would a slime monster care if you could see its ding-dong?). They make it to the control center, and the warrior takes them straight to the top, where there’s an old man — and Bryce.

And yes, it’s really Bryce, the old man confirms. He’s been brought here by the slime creature, which the man created, to fight for the sake of Lemuria. Yeah, did you figure it out? Somehow the cave took them to this underwater continent, which might explain the green light if it’s all sealed off overhead. But the slime creatures were meant to only duplicate fighters, not to hurt their targets or try to do stuff on their own, so it should be all OK. Still, sometimes our creations go awry and do things we don’t expect. The old man acknowledges as much, with a knowing glance at the warrior (who of course is his child).

The old guy says that the rock monsters are aliens coming up from the deep, where they’ve lived more or less peacefully, because Lemuria is shifting and crowding their domain. So now the rock monsters want to take over not just the undersea continent, but all of them. The only way to stop them is to overload the security shield on the control center when the rocks have gotten close enough, which will blow both the locals and the invaders sky-high. Nobody seems upset about this, but obviously our human friends don’t want to die in someone else’s war. It so happens that there’s a hidden high-speed train that can take them back to the mouth of the tunnel that brought them down here. But Adam insists that the girl come with them and escape, and live out the rest of her life even though she doesn’t seem to know what that means.

As they hit the tunnel, the whole cavern is rocked by an explosion, meaning the Lemurians are dead. Not so for the rock monsters, at least not the two who hung back here just in case. The warrior is rattled into dropping her weapon as she fights them, and Sally picks it up. And levels it at her friends.

That’s right, fuckers! Sally’s been a slime creature this whole time! Slime-Bryce turned her before he went home, and she tied the real Sally up in the garage. Only now they all know too much and she better just kill the Spook Squad before moving on to her master plan of taking over the world by making more slime creatures. She aims the gun at Adam and pulls the trigger — but the warrior leaps in front of the laser, taking the blast and still having enough strength (which is amazing; remember this is a laser that VAPORIZED A ROCK) to turn the pistol back on Slime-Sally, who immediately evaporates.

How did she do it? Well, when she finally does fall, Adam turns her over — and sees wires and circuitry inside her chest. Somehow from here he makes the leap that all of the people in Lemuria must have been robots, which is why they didn’t cry over sacrificing themselves. And it’s too late to repair this robot, but at least she dies having known friends, which is so sappy I don’t actually believe it. Like, has Adam actually fallen for some robot babe in a couple of hours, so hard that he’s going to mourn her robot chassis unto eternity? Feh, says I.

Two more to go! Can I make it? Not right now, because I have to sleep!