Welcome back to Forever Fear Street, a revisit to the most wicked neighborhood in young-adult literature. This installment looks at the thirteenth and fourteenth books in the classic Fear Street series: The Secret Bedroom and The Knife.

A hidden evil is unleashed in The Secret Bedroom, and in The Knife, a volunteer uncovers the disturbing goings-on at a hospital.

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Fear Street #13, 1991

Cover Artwork: Bill Schmidt

Should she open the door?

These next two Fear Streets make for an odd pairing. One is supernatural before then suddenly playing the “But is it really?” card. The other is the most out-of-place story so far in the series—maybe ever? That said, each book here is more page-turning than usual.

The Secret Bedroom is a step in the right direction, if you prefer your Fear Street to be uncanny rather than ordinary. Of course, the idea of “ordinary” in these books entails a lot of stalking and murder. But in case that isn’t hitting the spot, then this literal tale of skeletons in the closet should hold.

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THE STORY

Lea Carson and her parents have moved into a fixer-upper on Fear Street, and like most houses in the neighborhood, it comes with a history. In the attic is a boarded-up room where, one hundred years ago, a murder happened. The details are vague until Lea gives in to both her curiosity and the disembodied, pleading voice coming from the room.

In the meantime, Lea’s enrollment at Shadyside High School hasn’t been easy, thanks to one bully named Marci Hendryx. Not only did Lea spill her lunch on Marci, she caught the wandering eye of her boyfriend Don Jacobs. Marci now humiliates Lea every chance she gets, and she even has the reluctant Don help her.

Upon opening up the mysterious room, Lea discovers a ghost inside. “She’s like a little Victorian doll,” Lea describes this Catherine. The girl explains she was born out of wedlock, hence why she had been kept in this attic for all her life. And when she escaped one day, her parents murdered Catherine, then sealed her body away without anyone finding out… Until now.

While initially afraid of Catherine, Lea warms up to her, then asks for her help in getting back at Marci. This is when Lea learns Catherine can possess people as well as move things, despite her spectral state.

The prank goes too far once Lea brings Catherine to Marci’s house; their target ends up falling down some stairs and dying. Not by accident, though, because Catherine is a lot more sinister than she first had Lea believe. And she’s not going to stop with just Marci, either.

Soon enough, Catherine reveals she can manipulate people’s minds along with their bodies. As Lea tries to show her parents the secret room, she finds the boards still in tact and the door locked. Catherine, as it turns out, was actually never sealed in the attic room; she’s been in Lea’s bedroom this whole time, having her think she went to the attic and removed the barricade and unlocked the door.

From there Catherine begins to possess Lea’s body more often and for longer periods. The ghost’s next plan is to kill Don, but that falls through. And once Catherine leaves her body for a short while, Lea opens up the attic room for real and discovers the skeletons of Catherine’s parents. The lying ghost killed her mother and father before disposing of the evidence in the attic.

Now freed and reanimated, Catherine’s zombie-like parents get their revenge and claim their wicked daughter. Finally, the three of them transform into one “glowing, malodorous ball of flame, which slowly vanished in a choking cloud of yellow, sulfurous smoke” and vanish.

Lea wakes up after being hospitalized for a high fever. She suspects everything was a dream, and the fact that the room in the attic was boarded up confirms that point. It’s only until Lea finds the black ribbon Catherine wore in her hair that she realizes this wasn’t a dream. Lea also decides not to tell anyone about what happened, including her involvement in Marci’s death.

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Up to this point, Haunted had been the only outright otherworldly entry in Fear Street. Yet unlike that book, The Secret Bedroom is, without a doubt, a sinister ghost story that engenders no sympathy for its phantasmal character. And why should it? Catherine is bad to the bone. She’s the kind of villain who feels plucked from a horror movie. There’s no point-blank explanation for her badness, unless you wonder if there was some half-truth to her story. The ending, however, doesn’t stop to ever clarify. So we’re instead left with a murderous child whose bloodthirst only grew in death.

The connections to previous Fear Streets are here, seeing as how both The Wrong Number’s Deena and Jade are supporting characters. As Lea’s one friend in town, Deena plays the bigger part of the two, that is until she finds herself a boyfriend. Then there are cameos from Cory Brooks and Gary Brandt; they’re friends of Don, who, by the way, is one of the worst love interests in the series. If you can even call him that. Spineless and weaselly, Marci’s boyfriend got off lighter than I expected.

If The Secret Bedroom had a few extra fatalities, it could be considered more of a supernatural slasher, one in the vein of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Catherine’s Freddy Krueger-esque abilities, though, brings on some mild but effective moments of surrealism. “It was a thick, dark liquid. It was blood. A curtain of blood. Pouring down the door. Forming a dark, widening circle on the floor at [Lea’s] feet.” There is also a touch of American Gothic in the early pages as you, like Lea, ruminate on that cryptic, foreboding room that may or may not conceal horrors of the past. So on top of the sharp turn into eeriness and evil are these narrative styles that, at the time, weren’t too common in Fear Street. Expect that to change, especially once the spin-offs start up.

The revelation of Catherine’s parents had me thinking of another R. L. Stine book, one part of a series not within the Fear Street franchise. The endings are similar. Even so, I’ll spare the spoilage and let you learn the identity of the book in question yourself.

The discovery of Catherine’s hair ribbon at the end suggests everything indeed happened, and Catherine wasn’t part of a dream scenario. My overthinking brain, on the other hand, would be remiss to not question if Lea was more directly responsible for Marci’s death than first believed. Was there ever a ghost to begin with? Or did Lea simply snap and create Catherine to “help” her kill? There is neither evidence to support my theory, nor good reason to undo the supernatural angle. But I’m left wondering after reading, and that to me sounds like a sign of a good story. ■

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BODY COUNT

1. Marci
She fell on the stairs during Lea and Catherine’s prank.

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QUOTAGE

The secret bedroom must remain a secret. Another secret of Fear Street, a street of secrets.

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Fear Street #14, 1992

Cover Artwork: Bill Schmidt

In this hospital people are dying—to get out!

The first new Fear Street of 1992 was unlike anything before it. If not for the teenage protagonist, and the style of writing, it would be an adult thriller. And although it’s easy to become desensitized after the great amount of horror I’ve consumed over the years, The Knife still managed to leave me a bit disturbed.

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THE STORY

Laurie Masters is spending her summer volunteering at Shadyside Hospital. She can hang out with her best friend Skye, another volunteer, and she can avoid her boyfriend Andy. Laurie, who wants to be a doctor one day, has been itching to break up with Andy lately, on account of his being too “aimless.” Skye reminds Laurie, however, that Andy’s stepfather, Dr. Raymond Price, is “the most prominent man in Shadyside,” not to mention the hospital’s administrator. Breaking up with his stepson could lead to trouble.

In the meantime, Laurie has become attached to a boy on the Children’s Floor: Toby Deane. And her growing concern soon fuels a closer look into Toby’s homelife. His parting words, as his abrasive mother checks him out of the hospital, are: “She’s not my mommy.”

Laurie sets out to learn the meaning behind Toby’s puzzling statement. First she goes to the Deanes’ house on Fear Street, under the guise of selling hospital raffle tickets, to check on the boy. Yet Toby, who’s looking paler and thinner than before, doesn’t even recognize Laurie. His mother also doesn’t take kindly to the teen’s prying.

At the hospital, Laurie suspects the new volunteer, a college student named Rick Spencer, could be involved in whatever is going on with the Deanes. He lied about Skye giving him Laurie’s home phone number, and he’s been disappearing into the new wing—the Franklin Fear Wing—that’s still under construction. There’s also the matter of him pocketing a set of scalpels from the nurses’ station.

Laurie’s sleuthing lands her in trouble when the severe Nurse Wilton files an official complaint about the volunteer’s recent behavior; some of the charges are trumped up, but Laurie was most certainly going through office files to find info on Toby. The resulting disciplinary action is Laurie’s removal from the Children’s Floor and her reassignment to X-rays.

Not long after the complaint, and while waiting for both Nurse Wilton and Rick to come out of the Fear Wing, Laurie finds Wilton dead and Rick nowhere in sight. The scalpel in the nurse’s neck points to Rick as the killer, but with her body suddenly gone missing, Laurie can’t prove there was ever a murder.

The mystery intensifies as Laurie is warned by Rick to “stay away from Fear Street,” and someone breaks into hers and her aunt Hillary’s house. In addition, Laurie sees Toby out in public, and this time he recognizes her.

Before going straight to Andy’s stepfather for help, Laurie confides in her aunt, also her guardian since her parents passed. Hillary, an accountant, has since been hired to audit the hospital for the Board of Trustees, and she feels as if she could get some straight answers from Dr. Price. A frustrated Laurie, though, talks to him herself. He seems to believe Laurie, even after reporting Nurse Wilton is on vacation.

When she revisits the Deanes’ house, Laurie learns Toby has a twin named Terry. And fearing for Toby’s life, Laurie takes him with her and escapes to the hospital, where she’s told Hillary is waiting for her. During the ride, Laurie hears a radio report about Nurse Wilton’s car, along with Wilton’s body, being found in the Fear Street Woods.

One car chase later, and Hillary nowhere to be found at the hospital, Laurie winds up in Fear Wing with Rick on her tail. To her surprise, however, Rick saves Laurie from an eight-floor drop—she almost fell through the opening where an elevator was to be installed. Shortly after, Dr. Price attacks Rick, although not to protect Laurie. Rick reveals Price has been kidnapping babies and running an illegal adoption business, one that included Toby, Terry and Rick’s little sister. As for Nurse Wilton, she found out about Price and tried to blackmail him.

In the end, Dr. Price falls through the floor opening and to his death. The police recover Rick’s sister, and Aunt Hillary, who Dr. Price was set on killing before her audit detected his shady dealings, is reunited with her niece. Laurie and Rick make amends in the wake of everything; she didn’t trust him, and he didn’t tell her the truth. Nevertheless, they part on good terms and even hint at going on a date in the near future.

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To match its adult storyline, The Knife serves up a capable heroine. There’s no notable character development to speak of, yet Laurie’s prior sense of maturity makes her better equipped for the dangers that lie ahead. Her orphanage, her ambition to be a doctor, her relatively juvenile peers—these are obvious shortcuts for defining Laurie as not your average Fear Street character.

Among the Fear Streets I’ve read for this column, The Knife sticks out like, well, the surgical knife in Nurse Wilton’s neck. A baby-napping ring plus black market adoptions? That sort of heinous criminality feels reserved for an episode of Law & Order, not a disposable YA thriller. Putting my shock aside, though, The Knife is an absorbing read—one whose silly cover art doesn’t do it justice. And after everything is said and done, I wouldn’t have preferred a standard whodunnit, or anything like a cursed scalpel story. Those are, by the way, what I expected to find here, based on Bill Schmidt’s illustration alone. The reality was more grim, although it’s been pared down to avoid the gritty details that even adults wouldn’t want to know, much less the targeted demo.

In Fear Street fashion, the M.O. is blurted with haste and precision. There’s hardly time to dwell on anything said, particularly because the big bad baby-stealer dies straight after his verbal unmasking. To keep things light, in view of those heavy revelations, we’re then sent off with an unequivocally happy ending that doesn’t quite reflect similar, real-life scenarios. In the interest of sleeping at night, however, maybe it’s best not to dwell on these matters. ■

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BODY COUNT

1. Nurse Wilton
Killed with a scalpel to the neck.

2. Dr. Price
Fell to his death after taking Laurie hostage.

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QUOTAGE

Her only thought was, Where is the knife?

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See you next time on Fear Street — it’s where your worst nightmares live.