Goosebumps – Night of the Living Dummy

“Mrs. Powell uttered a short cry as her two daughters appeared out of the shadows. ‘Oh! You startled me. This is such a scary book, and I think I was just about to fall asleep.’”

Goosebumps – Night of the Living Dummy

1/10

Pathetic, not scary, predictable, devoid of characters, repetitive, nonsensical, unoriginal, and boring.

As with all texts that I know readers of my reports have not read and have no intention of reading, I will provide a summary.

This novella, first published in 1993, tells the story of twelve-year-old twin sisters, Kris and Lindy Powell. There is some tension between them toward the beginning as they want some space away from each other. When they explore a construction site next to their house, Lindy finds a ventriloquist’s dummy in a dumpster. She learns that she is quite skilled with the dummy and conducts shows for the neighbour’s children, even getting paid to perform at a birthday party. Kris does not like this and in her jealousy asks her parents whether she can get a dummy, too. The parents suggest that they share the existing dummy, Slappy, but some strange things start happening where he insults Kris and slaps her with his wooden hand. Lindy protests that she is not controlling the dummy and that he is acting autonomously. Spooky!

Mr Powell, their father gets sick of the childish bickering between the girls and purchases a second dummy, Mr Wood, in a pawnshop near to where he works. Mr Wood has red hair and is dressed in a plaid shirt. Slappy has brown hair and is wearing a grey suit. Strange things begin to happen between the two dummies where it appears that they are fighting and getting damaged. This escalates and Slappy insults Kris more frequently and, supposedly, wrinkles her clothes for the following morning. The girl’s parents don’t believe them that the dummies are behaving in this way and ask them to settle any problems between themselves independently. To address this issue, the girls store Mr Wood in a closet at night, but he is found outside of it with his arm around Slappy when morning comes.

Kris is then asked by a music teacher to be the master of ceremonies for the Spring Concert, providing her with an opportunity to perform her dummy show in front of the school. Lindy tops this by being offered an opportunity to appear on a talent search show on television. One night everything from the fridge is mysteriously removed and thrown all over the kitchen, along with Kris’ jewellery collection. Mr Wood is sitting in the middle of this mess covered in jewellery and food. At this point, there is a twist in the story. Lindy reveals that she was moving the dummies in the night, was insulting her sister by throwing her voice, was responsible for the mess in the kitchen, and for other, heretofore, unexplained happenings.

Shortly afterwards, Kris finds a slip of paper in Mr Wood’s pocket and reads aloud the words she does not understand (“Karru marri odonna loma molonu karrano”). The dummy appears to blink. Later, when she is asked to perform for some guests of her parents, Mr Wood insults them, and Lindy accuses her of being a copycat and repeating the exact same joke she had previously successfully orchestrated. On the night of the Spring Concert, Mr Wood blinks several times and Kris considers abandoning her performance. Nevertheless, she decides to persist, and the dummy begins to insult the music teacher for her clothing, appearance, and weight. When asked to apologise to both the music teacher and the audience, Mr Wood tilts his head back and vomits a foul smelling liquid, similar in consistency to pea soup, into the crowd. As a result, the school auditorium is evacuated, and Kris is told that she will be in serious trouble for her antics. Critically, her father says that Mr Wood will be returned to the pawn shop after the weekend.

Until then, Mr Wood is to be stored in a closet, but he emerges during the night and attacks the other dummy, Slappy. This time Lindy sees it and they summon their parents, who, upon observing the scene, see two lifeless dummies. They don’t believe the girls and state that they will administer punishments to both of them. Mr Wood then explains the plot for any idiots who didn’t get it by this point, saying that Kris brought him to life with the ancient words on the paper in his pocket. Strangely, he wants to make the two girls his slaves.

Mr Wood and Kris have a physical altercation and she retrieves the paper with the ‘ancient words’ from his pocket. After reading them, the dummy is still alive and laughs at Kris and Lindy’s efforts to stop him. Next, the girls try to remove his head, but this fails and, instead, they bury him in an old suitcase. While the remainder of that day passes without event, Mr Wood is back sitting at the kitchen table the following morning, smeared with dirt. Both parents leave to go shopping at the ‘garden store’ despite the pleas of the twins and the dummy says that he will now kill or injure their dog. Their brawl ends outside where Mr Wood gets crushed, conveniently, by a steamroller that is operating at the construction site next door.

The text concludes when they return to their house and the other dummy, Slappy, grabs Kris’ arm and says “’Hey, slave — is that other guy gone? I thought he’d never leave!’”

While this second twist might have been surprising if I hadn’t looked at the cover, the book’s cover gave it away and I was expecting Slappy to come to life right off the bat (See below).

Unfortunately, most of the ‘scary’ material in this text constituted fake-outs. For instance, Kris will be going to sleep feeling creeped out by Slappy and she’ll feel a wooden hand grab her wrist. The chapter will end, and the start of the next chapter will be, ‘anyway, so it was Lindy playing a practical joke.’ Attempts to trick readers of this type become very ineffective and irritating quite quickly.  

Though the story is told using the third person limited narrator approach, Kris and Lindy’s parents are simply called Mr and Mrs Powell throughout. We don’t learn much about them either. Mrs Powell (first name unknown) seems to be a housewife who enjoys reading horror novels and Mr Powell (first name unknown) works at an office and has to travel for work occasionally.

Toward the beginning of the text, I had hopes that there would be some characterisation. A new house is being constructed next to the twins’ and they say,

“’Who do you think will move in?’ Kris wondered. ‘Maybe some great-looking guy our age. Maybe great-looking twin guys!’ ‘Yuck!’ Lindy made a disgusted face. ‘Twin guys? How drippy can you get! I can’t believe you and I are in the same family’”.

However, nothing comes as this and the construction next door is simply a plot device for Mr. Wood to be crushed by the steamroller later.

Also, their dog is called Barky, probably the worst, least original dogs’ name I have yet read in literature.

With regard to comedy, this book was all over place. While there was some witty repartee between the sisters,

“’Are those wires on?’ Kris asked, pointing to a cluster of black electrical wires suspended from the ceiling beams. ‘Why don’t you touch one and find out?’ Lindy suggested. ‘You first,’ Kris shot back.”

“’Your dummy won’t be funny,’ Lindy said nastily, ‘because you don’t have a sense of humor.’ ‘Oh, yeah?’ Kris replied, tossing Mr. Wood over her shoulder. ‘I must have a sense of humor. I put up with you, don’t I?’”

“Kris strode angrily to the window and pressed her forehead against the glass. ‘I — I can’t believe I was so stupid,’ she muttered. ‘Neither can I,’ Lindy agreed, grinning again.”

…at times the raillery was very low brow and childish.

“’Dumb,’ Kris said, rolling her eyes. ‘I am not dumb. You’re dumb!’ Lindy made the dummy say in a high, squeaky voice. When she pulled the string in his back, the wooden lips moved up and down, clicking as they moved.”

“’Yuck. That old dummy probably has worms!’ ‘You have worms!’ Kris exclaimed.”

In fact, most of the comedy was pretty far wide of the mark.

“Is that a mustache, or are you eating a rat?”

“’Don’t laugh so hard. You might drop your false teeth!’ Mr. Wood shouted. ‘And how do you get your teeth that disgusting shade of yellow? Does your bad breath do that?’”

“Your face reminds me of a wart I had removed!”

“If we count your chins, will it tell us your age?”

Notably, the following tired old joke was modified and regurgitated several times throughout the text.

“’But — you’re a dummy!’ she squealed. He giggled again. ‘So are you,’ he replied.”

However, an almost comedic moment came when Kris encounters an older couple whom she believes look alike.

“They both had slender pink faces topped with spongy white hair. They both wore silver-framed bifocals, which slipped down on nearly identical pointy noses. They both had the same smile. Mr. Miller had a small gray mustache. Lindy always joked that he grew it so the Millers could tell each other apart.”

As always, it’s fun to think of which character reminds you of yourself. Despite the thin characterisation, I’d have to consider this the unfunny Lindy (according to Kris).

“’Girls’ — Mr. Powell started, raising a hand for quiet — ‘please, don’t fight over a dummy.’ ‘I really think I’d be better at it,’ Kris said. ‘I mean, Lindy isn’t very funny.’”

It was a reasonably burn heavy book. For example,

“’Careful,’ Lindy warned. ‘Nails.’ She pointed to the large nails scattered over the floor. ‘If you step on one, you’ll get lockjaw and die.’ ‘You wish,’ Kris said. ‘I don’t want you to die,’ Lindy replied. ‘Just get lockjaw.’ She snickered.”

Another notable burn came when the twins were associating with two of their underdeveloped friends.

“’Maybe you and Kris should do an act together,’ Alice suggested. ‘That could be really awesome.’ ‘Yeah. What an act! Then there’d be four dummies!’ Cody joked. Alice was the only one to laugh.”

“’Mom, when am I going to get my own room?’ ‘On the Twelfth of Never,’ Mrs. Powell replied, grinning.”

In fact, the fire tornado that is Mrs Powell had the best burn in the book,

“’Out of the kitchen!’ Mrs. Powell ordered with an impatient shriek. ‘Out! Get out! You two are impossible! The dummies have better personalities than either of you!’”

Anyway, happy Halloween and I think that will be my last Goosebumps book for a while.

“’I still don’t get the joke,’ Mr. Powell said, shaking his head.”

”Spooky’ The Gipper’ aka Peepo