16: One Day at HorrorLand
“We held our backs against the iron fence. We stared helplessly at the grinning, green faces, the bulging yellow eyes…”
By now, carnivals, fairs, and amusement parks should be considered cliché settings when it comes to supernatural stories. But for some reason — their nostalgic appeal, maybe — they still engage us. Think about Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Dwarf.” Or Jordan Peele’s Us. Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Final Destination, Stranger Things—the list goes on and on.
It makes sense. We visit these attractions because we want to be sacred. We want the adrenaline rush (coupled with the greasy food). It’s probably why some amusement parks are so successful in transforming into haunted attractions around Halloween. As visitors, we’re already on edge.
“One Day at HorrorLand” is a great example of how to use an already exhilarating environment to your advantage as a writer. But instead of placing readers into the chaos associated with amusement parks — all the lights, sounds, and people — R.L. Stine strips it all back to leave us wandering through a desolate fairground, an eerie place where something’s not right.
After getting lost driving to the Zoo Gardens Theme Park, the Morris family sees a billboard for HorrorLand (Where Nightmares Come to Life!). They follow the directions and wind up on a back road in the middle of the forest.
When they arrive at the park, the parking lot is empty save for a few HorrorLand tour buses. But there’s another red flag: aside from the park’s employees, workers “costumed” in green masks with ram-like horns and yellow eyes, and a few crying families (yes, crying), the park is nearly deserted inside, too. But this doesn’t dissuade the children, Lizzie and Luke Morris and their friend Clay, from having fun. They split up with their parents and immediately head for the rides.
Speaking of rides, let’s take a moment to appreciate Stine’s attractions: Werewolf Village; the Doom Slide; the Bat Barn and Alligator Pond; the Monster Zoo; the Guillotine Museum; Coffin Cruise. And how about the park’s signage? “Front Exit: Don’t bother. You will never escape.” “Beware of tree snakes.” “No pinching.”
No, HorrorLand isn’t your average amusement park, but hot damn is it fun, and maybe a little too fun for Lizzie, who can’t help but feel like the rides are becoming increasingly dangerous. In the House of Mirrors, for example, the walls start closing in on her, nearly popping her like a balloon before the floor gives out.
To cut to the chase, the panicked kids find their parents but fail to escape the park, and, as the family fumbles with the chains on the front gates, hordes of employees—Horrors, they call themselves—start closing in, only to reveal that they’ve been filming a TV show, HorrorLand Hidden Camera, which airs on the Monster Channel. And, to escape the park, Lizzie and her family have to survive one last ride, the Monster Obstacle Course, in which they’re forced to dodge all sorts of mutated predatory animals.
Aside from a concerning gash on Dad’s arm, they make it out alive, but the Horrors still won’t let them leave. Fortunately, Lizzie remembers the “No Pinching” signs throughout the park and has a wild idea. Just as the Horrors are about to push the family into a bubbling pond of purple goo, some sort of deadly quicksand, Lizzie pinches their ringleader and deflates her like a balloon. The others follow suit and kill enough Horrors to escape the park. When they get home, though, they find a Horror clinging to the back of the bus they stole from the parking lot (the Horrors blew their car up), but the employee means no harm. He just forgot to give them free passes for next year.
If there’s anything I can say about “One Day at HorrorLand,” it’s that it’s everything a Goosebumps book should be: fun and frightening. And the imagery — all those purples, greens, and blacks (black ice-cream, balloons, and flowers)—feels like it’s borrowed straight from an old comic book.
As well, it’s one of the few Goosebumps books (that I’ve read so far) in which the parents are as equally aware of and vulnerable to the danger as their kids are. In one scene, Lizzie leans against her mother and feels her entire body trembling. It’s such a small but powerful detail reflective of something kids aren’t quick to grasp, that their parents are human, too, which makes the reality of a scary situation all the more horrifying.
The story is also set entirely during mid-day, with a blue sky and a beaming sun, which elevates the danger mounting throughout the pages. And the ending is just flat-out fun, and not in an over-the-top way that’s misaligned to the book’s overall tone. In fact, the pinching trick is clever; it grounds Lizzie’s heroic moment in something so perfectly relevant to Stine’s audience. It’s masterful.
To sum up, buy the ticket and take the ride. This one’s worth it.
5/5 drops of Monster Blood.
