R.L. Stine
Scholastic, 1992
Genre:
Horror
Description
Casey and Margaret's father is acting more distant lately.
They moved to California
so their dad could work at PolyTech, a biological science company, but he was fired
four weeks ago for some plant experiments that went wrong. For the past four
weeks their father has been sequestered in the basement working. He's been
doing all kinds of experiments with different equipment and plants that have
been delivered to the house. One day they decide to try and see what he's working
on and go down to the basement. Their father very uncharacteristically yells at
them and tells them to never come back down there again.
Two weeks after receiving the warning to stay out of the
basement, Casey and Margaret are told that Mrs. Brewer is leaving for Tucson as she's received
a phone call that her sister is in the hospital. Their dad leaves to take her
to the airport. Diane, Margaret's best friend, is over and says that now is the
perfect time for them to look in the basement. Margaret is a little hesitant
but Diane calls her chicken. They all follow her downstairs for just a quick
peek.
The basement is like a sauna. It is hot and moist and there
are tall, jungle like plants and trees in a swampy atmosphere. Diane touches
one and says that its leaves feel like a glass. Casey inspects one plant that
he swears is breathing. Margaret listens closely and thinks she hears it too,
but Diane thinks that they're going crazy. Suddenly one of the plants releases
tendrils with a moaning sound. They head back upstairs just as Mr. Brewer is
returning. Casey realizes that he left his shirt downstairs, which he took off
because it was so hot. He decides to run back down to retrieve it quickly
before their dad comes into the house. After a few moments the girls realize
that he is taking a long time to come back up. When Casey went downstairs and
was reaching for shirt he once again heard the breathing and moaning from the
plant. As he reached for his shirt the tendrils grew and grabbed him around the
waist like an animal. They weren’t hurting him, just not letting go. Margaret
finally appears to help him break free only to be confronted by a very angry
father at the foot of the stairs. He tells them that he will talk about the
plants someday soon and locks them out of the basement.
The next morning Casey and Margaret discover a brand-new
lock on the basement door. A few days later they discover that their father has
taken to wearing a Dodgers baseball cap and won't take it off. Home alone,
Margaret decides to get some lunch when she spies her father in the kitchen
devouring something from a plastic bag. Margaret is intrigued because he has
been refusing to eat with them for a long time. She waits until he goes back
downstairs and discovers that the bag she saw him eating from contains plant
food. She tells Casey about it but he just laughs and thinks that she's crazy
that she might be suggesting that their father is turning into plant. Diane
informs Margaret that her father says that Margaret's father was fired because
the University told him to stop his experiments and he actually refused.
A few days later on their way home Diane's, Casey and
Margaret are shocked to see their father outside. Casey throws a Frisbee at him
for fun but accidentally knocks his hat off. They discover that their father is
totally bald and in place of hair he's begun to grow green leafy sprouts out of
the top of his head. Their father sits them down and tells them that he has
talked to their mother who informed him that they are worried about him. He
says that the leaves are just a side effect from his experiments that will soon
go away. He finally admits to them what he's trying to do—build a brand-new
plant that is not only a plant but is also part animal.
That night Margaret can't sleep. She hears her father in the
basement early in the morning and decides to ask about the plant food. She ends
up seeing him unwrap his hand which she’d seen him cut the day that he had told
them long ago to stay out of the basement. Margaret is freaked out when she
sees that he's bleeding green blood. She can't sleep so she goes to the kitchen
for some water. Casey ends up scaring her. They hear sad moaning from the
basement and Casey admits that he thinks that their father is lying to them.
Margaret wakes up in the morning and goes into her father's
room but he's already down in his basement. She notices that his bed has huge
clumps of black dirt and is crawling with earthworms. As Margaret and Casey try
to decide what to do, they notice of their father has come upstairs and has
made lunch. He wants them to try his new dish. It does not look very appeasing
as it looks like mushed green mashed potatoes. They are scared to eat it and are
saved by the doorbell. It is Mr. Martinez, their father's old boss. He has come
to see their father's work and so they head down into the basement.
The next afternoon their father agrees to help the neighbor
install a brand-new sink. Casey and Margaret decide that this is their best
chance to get back into the basement. Once again, they hear moaning and
apparently breathing plants. They finally hear something that sounds like
someone banging on the door. Under a table Casey finds Mr. Martinez’s clothes and
they recall that they didn't actually see him leave the house yesterday. They
hear footsteps and escape out the basement window. Their father knows that they
were down there. He gathers them and tells them that Mr. Martinez got hot and
actually left his clothes but he plans to return them to him today. Once again,
he tells them to stay out of the basement as it could be dangerous.
The following Saturday their father leaves to pick up their
mom from the airport. Casey decides that he wants to go flying kites but all the
kites are in the basement. Despite numerous warnings, Casey breaks into the
basement again to get his kites. As he is searching on a shelf for them he
finds a pair of trousers with a wallet containing Mr. Martinez's ID. Soon he
hears the banging in the closet again. He and Margaret manage to remove a 2 x 4
nailed in place and then jimmy the rest of the door open. Inside are moving,
breathing, moaning plants with human parts growing out of them. There is even
one with a human face. At the far back of the closet Margaret sees a human. She
goes inside and finds her father tied up. He says that the man who left for the
airport was actually a plant copy of him. Mr. Martinez is also in the closet.
Suddenly their father and mother show up and Margaret is left to question which
man is really her dad.
The man from the closet calls her Princess. That suddenly
gives her an idea. Casey tosses her a knife and she proceeds to stab the father
that she found in the closet in the arm. Red blood trickled out. She is pretty
sure that closet dad is the real one. She goes ahead and hands him an ax and he
succeeds in chopping the other father in half. Green blood slips out of his
body as they realize the plant father was just one gigantic stem—he had no
bones or organs.
By the end of the week most of the suffering plants have
been destroyed. Margaret is happy to know that her father is going to stop his
weird experiments. However, she doesn't expect to discover a flower outside in
the yard that calls her by name and tells her that it is her real father.
Thoughts and Nuggets of Wisdom for Research
Not much evidence in the second installment of the
Goosebumps series. What is available is about parental relationships. In this
case, the mom is actually physically absent for most of the story while the
father is mentally absent.
Early on on page two, Margaret narrates that “she felt sorry
for Casey. He and their dad were really close, always playing ball or Frisbee
or Nintendo together. Then Dr. Brewer didn't seem to have time for that
anymore. . . . Dad hadn’t been the same to her, either. In fact, he spent so
much time down in the basement, he barely said a word to her. He doesn't even
call me Princess anymore, Margaret thought. It was a nickname she hated. But at
least it was a nickname, a sign of closeness.” She also notes how “having Dad
home has made Mom really tense, too. She pretends everything is fine. But I can
tell she's worried about him” (p. 4). Their mother eventually says, “Your father's
experiments are very important to him,” to which Meg cries, “More important
than we are?” (p. 42).
There is also a brief gender stereotype in passing as
Margaret calls Diane the science freak and says she loves math and science—the two
subjects Margaret hates the most (p. 13). Even though this took place in the
1990s there was still the idea that girls shouldn’t like or enjoy or be good at
math or science.
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