"Terrible things had happened on Fear Street--murders, mysterious disappearances. It seemed like the perfect spot for a Halloween Party."
I read a lot of Fear Street books as a kid. Almost all of them. That being said, I barely remember most of them and going into this, I had no idea if I'd read ever read Halloween Party before. I didn't read what it was about, I just saw "Halloween" in the title and decided to go for it. I've been feeling extra nostalgic lately (probably because I want to go back to a time when my job and relationships weren't ruining my life), so I bought a bunch of books I read when I was younger. If there are a ton of YA horror posts on here within the next few months, that's why. (Surprise! There are already a lot of them on here! I wrote this post months ago and then held off on publishing it until it was a little closer to Halloween.)
Niki and her boyfriend, Terry, are invited to a Halloween costume party at Justine Cameron's mansion behind the cemetery on Fear Street. No better place for a spooky party than an old mansion by a cemetery, right? Nothing bad could ever happen in a place like that, right? RIGHT??
Justine is a transfer student and even though she recently started school in Shadyside and all of her classmates are practically strangers, she still invites Niki, Terry and Trisha to her party. I would be slightly suspicious if I were them, but then again, I've read enough of these books to know you can't trust anyone.
There's a brief reference to Jade and Deena from The Wrong Number and I have no clue how I remembered those characters were from another book. I like that Fear Street books are connected in little ways like this.
"Maybe I'll get a hot dog from the vending machine." I don't know who said this, but I imagine I took note of it because it's weird. Has anyone ever actually heard of hotdogs being in a vending machine?
Back to the story. The previous owners of the Cameron mansion were killed in an accident and supposedly their spirits still haunt it. Justine claims to be a distant cousin of the original owners and that her uncle inherited the mansion and decided to fix it up. To celebrate, I guess, she invites nine people to her super exclusive Halloween party: Niki, Terry, Trisha, Ricky, Murphy, Angela, Les, David and Alex. (You won't ever hear most of those names again.) Niki used to date Alex, who was very good friends with her current boyfriend, Terry. Guess what? They're not friends anymore. Spoiler: There's drama between them for most of the book, but it doesn't move the plot along in any way, so I'm not talking about it anymore.
Even if those three didn't have their own issues, Justine's other guests are going to start more trouble. The guests divide themselves into two groups, with Terry, Ricky, Les and Trisha on the "wimp team" and Murphy, David and Alex on the "jock team." Each team decides to pull pranks on each other and at first it's pretty harmless, but then Terry finds an eyeless chicken head in his locker. Listen, if you want to prank each other, fine, but WHAT KIND OF PSYCHOPATH does that? Whatever. The two school bullies, Bobby and Marty, threaten Justine because they weren't invited to her party. They should be grateful. Do they really want to hang out with a chicken murderer?
I guess so, because they show up at the party and attack Philip (Justine's "uncle" and I'm putting that in quotes because I don't know if I believe it), Terry and Alex. David and Terry are able to get them to leave by threatening their precious motorcycles (that they drove into the mansion). Once those imbeciles leave, it's time for hot apple cider and cookies! Okay, I didn't drink or go to parties in high school (I have social anxiety, I didn't go anywhere if I could help it), but I went to high school and I had friends in high school and I know they weren't drinking hot apple cider at parties. Once snack time is over, they play the game I talked about a few posts back, from The Scary Book! You know, the book aimed at 5 year olds. They're asked to put their hands in a box and touch brains (aka spaghetti)! What did R.L. Stine do for fun in high school? I'll be honest, as much as I'm going to mock every Fear Street book I post about, I like that they're just innocent fun compared to some of the books being released these days.
Play time is over and the next activity is a treasure hunt. While searching Justine's bedroom, Niki finds a photo of Justine and an older man whom she seems to be romantically involved with. She also finds a secret closet filled with designer clothing. Justine is living her best life. In the bathroom, there's a prescription for sleeping pills for Enid Cameron. Who could that be?
While Terry is looking for treasure, he finds Alex's lifeless body hanging in the attic. David comes across them soon after. Terry gathers the others together and tells them what happened and Justine says not to call the police yet, she wants to see the body first. (That's not suspicious at all.) Upon going back to the attic, Alex has disappeared. While investigating the rest of the house, they find a dummy, dressed in Alex's costume, on Justine's bed. Alex jumps out of the bathroom, yelling "Gotcha!" and pissing everyone off. He tells David, "Nice work." What the hell, David?
I'm assuming something led to this, but it's not in my notes, so I don't know what it was. Justine falls from the second floor landing because the banister is loose. Who cares. Apparently someone used a saw on the banister and uncle Philip is furious. It makes no sense because who even knew anyone would lean against the banister? Unless Justine did it herself. (10 year old me wouldn't have put that together.)
Soon after, the lights go out and the party guests decide to play Truth - a game where you say the worst thing you've ever done and everyone votes on whether or not you told the truth. If they think you're lying, there will be a penalty. Terry can't be bothered with this game and goes to look for Niki (who went off on her own after they argued), but instead finds Les, dead inside a closet. David meets up with Terry and learns about Les, so he asks to see the body...But now that one has disappeared, too. And of course David thinks this is payback for his part in Alex's prank earlier, until they notice the puddle of blood on the floor. The trail leads from the closet to a window. They find Les' body on the roof below and decide to retrieve it. Instead of calling the cops. Instead of questioning each other about what they were doing in the attic and if they had anything to do with the murder. It's fine though because as it turns out, they couldn't have called the cops anyway, as someone has cut the phone line.
Outside, they find uncle Philip's clown costume in the mud, with blood on the arm. David says he'll go to a payphone and call for help, it will only be "a few minutes." When David reaches his car, however, he notices the tires have been slashed. The same goes for the cars belonging to all the other guests. To make matters worse, Bobby and Marty come back, acting like drunken fools, and chase David through the cemetery, where he falls and hits his head on one of the gravestones before blacking out.
Terry once again begins his search for Niki, with Justine offering to look upstairs while he takes the basement. He finds Niki in a closet with a bruise on her head. She believes someone knocked her out. Before that, she had found a newspaper clipping is Justine's secret closet about a deadly car crash that killed the parents of Enid Cameron. Two cars were drag racing and one hit the Camerons' car. Niki believes Justine is actually Enid. As proof, she pulls out a license with Justine's picture and Enid's name on it. She also points out the names of the people involved in the accident - the parents of everyone at the party. The article is from 28 years ago, so Justine is pulling some Never Been Kissed scam and hanging out with a bunch of high schoolers.
After confronting Justine about her murderous tendencies, she tells them how great their acting skills are on the trick they just pulled on the rest of the guests. 😉 Terry asks if this is just another trick and if she was really just talking to Les (I guess she said she was talking to him at some point?), where is he? In the dining room, of course! Setting up the final surprise! Justine walks into the dining room and begins talking to Les so everyone can hear her...It's all very Norman Bates.
Everyone enters the dining room and sees Les sitting at the end of the table with sunglasses on his face. Nothing weird there. They say how glad they are to see him and what a great trick he played...No answer. Terry notices he isn't moving and touches his shoulder, causing Les to fall from the chair and once again confirm to Terry and everyone else that he is, in fact, dead. Justine takes this as an opportunity to run from the room and lock all of her guests inside. From outside, she tells everyone to sit at the table and open the gift boxes she left for them. She says they'll play one more game of Truth, but this time it's her turn and they will pay the penalty. Inside the boxes are a picture of Enid's parents. She begins telling them the story Terry and Niki read about in the newspaper article. Les was killed first because his father was driving the car that killed her parents. The rest of them will receive a different penalty. She's going to set the mansion on fire and let them burn in it, the way her parents burned in their car.
Niki realizes she can get out of the dining room by using the dumbwaiter and tells Terry to help her. In the basement, she finds Philip, bloody and tied up. With Philip's help, they manage to escape outside, leaving everyone else for dead. Just kidding. Of course they help the other guests. Using a crowbar, Philip manages to pull the bars off the dining room window so everyone can get out of the burning mansion. Then David conveniently appears from the woods, safe after escaping from Marty and Bobby and calling the police.
Philip apologizes, saying all he wanted to do was scare them. Justine's father was his older brother (wow, he really is her uncle) and this party had been his own idea. He blames himself for how Justine turned out, even though she manipulated him into thinking this plan was totally okay. When Philip found Les' body, he confronted Justine and said he was going to call the police (rookie mistake) and then she knocked him unconscious and tied him up in the basement. Justine hears all of this, screams at Philip for betraying her and then runs into the burning house. Alex pulls her out and the police arrive to take her away.
I honestly still have no idea if I read this book when I was a kid or not. I knew everything that was going to happen, but I think it may just be because Halloween Party is really predictable. This wasn't a bad book, but there are much better Fear Street novels and I can't wait to get to them once the holiday season is over.
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