7: Night of the Living Dummy

“Even with her eyes closed and the covers pulled up to her head, she could picture the shadowy, distorted grin, the unblinking eyes. Staring at her.”

By 1993, when R.L. Stine’s seventh Goosebumps book, “Night of the Living Dummy,” was first published, dolls were no strangers to the horror genre. Movies like Child’s Play, Puppet Master, and the suitably titled Dolls had given the tiny terrors enough screen time to solidify their status as notable villains. Jump ahead thirty years or so and, like it or not, they’re still slashing their way through the genre. (Sometimes straight to DVD.)

Yes, R.L. Stine probably had plenty of inspiration guiding his hand in writing “Night of the Living Dummy,” but with a character as iconic as Slappy — Goosebumps’ most notorious mascot — he probably influenced many of the doll-driven thrillers that followed (see: Dead Silence, Annabelle, Chucky’s disappointing return).

Here’s how the book plays out.

When Kris Powell’s identical sister, Lindy, finds a battered ventriloquist’s dummy at a construction lot, Kris quickly turns jealous. The two are always competing, and Lindy’s act with the dummy — Slappy, she names him (as I’m sure you already know) — is getting pretty good. So good that Lindy gets recruited to perform at a birthday party.

Fortunately, Mr. Powell buys Kris her own puppet, Mr. Wood. Unlike Slappy, who sports a grey suit, Kris’ doll is decked out in a flannel shirt and blue jeans. A real country bumpkin.

Alas, Kris is in love, and desperate to outperform her annoying sister. But she doesn’t get far. Within a few days, Kris wakes up to find Mr. Wood wearing her clothes. Then, in the middle of the night, she finds him in the kitchen wearing her jewelry and sitting in a puddle of spilled milk, with a giant chicken roast in his lap. She even finds him with his hands wrapped around Slappy’s neck. Not only is she horrified, frightened that Mr. Wood is alive, but she’s in big shit with her parents. Meanwhile, Lindy is on her way to a promising career as a ventriloquist.

Eventually, Lindy confesses to manipulating Mr. Wood to scare Kris, hoping her sister would lose interest in the dummy and stop being such a copycat. As readers, we’re led to believe Mr. Wood is alive the whole time, so this is a clever reveal, a strategic ploy to catch us off guard when shit really hits the fan.

And it does.

One day, Kris finds a note in Mr. Wood’s breast pocket—a string of strange words. And, because heroes always do something dumb, Kris reads the note aloud, summoning Mr. Wood to life for real. I’ll pause here to say that my biggest qualm is that I wish this would’ve happened earlier, because this is where things really get fun.

Take the auditorium scene. As Kris and Mr. Wood mount the stage to kick-off the spring concert at school, Mr. Wood unleashes a barrage of insults on one of the teachers, leaving Kris horrified and unable to convince the crowd that she’s not responsible. But it gets better. Laughing on Kris’ lap, Mr. Wood showers the first few rows in a tidal wave of foul green puke. Pea-soup green, in fact, a lovely homage to the Exorcist.

That night, when Lindy wakes up to find Kris wrestling with Mr. Wood, who’s now demanding the girls be his slaves, the sisters finally join forces to kill the evil puppet. In a beautifully atmospheric and triumphant scene, they stuff Mr. Wood in a suitcase and bury him at three in the morning beneath a mound of dirt at the construction site. When they wake up, though, he’s back and wilder than ever.

After getting bitten and smacked around a few times, Kris and Lindy eventually wrangle Mr. Wood outside and toss him under a steam-roller, killing him for good. But — surprise, surprise — the threat isn’t gone. When they get home, Slappy comes to life, leaving us with yet another Goosebumps cliff-hanger.

What’s really surprising about “Night of the Living Dummy” is that Slappy isn’t the lead antagonist. Yes, he takes the stage more prominently in the second and third Dummy books, but given that he’s on this one’s cover, I expected to see more of him.

A few other things tripped me up, too. To start, the book mostly reads in third-person limited point of view, meaning we’re mostly privy to Kris’ thoughts and feelings; however, one chapter shifts to follow Lindy, a jarring disconnect that adds nothing but confusion.

Also, for about half of the story, I couldn’t tell whether just one or both of the dolls were alive. Were they conspiring to get the girls in trouble? Or, like the girls, were they competing with each other? Of course, everything is revealed in time, but for a minute there, I was scratching my head like a dummy.

Despite these minor hiccups, “Night of the Living Dummy” has a menacing villain, believable characters (with believable arcs), the odd dad joke, a Stephen King reference, and the greatest and grossest Goosebumps scene yet. It’s hard to imagine Stine topping it.

Then again, I’ve got 55 more books to go.

5/5 drops of putrid green dummy puke.