Rereading My Childhood: Goosebumps

Stay Out of the Basement!

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.

SPOILERS AFTER THE COVER!!!

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.