9: Welcome to Camp Nightmare
“In the darkness I saw Jay’s large, shadowy form crawl quickly to the tent door. He pushed it open, revealing a square of purple sky, then vanished into darkness.”
When it comes to horror stories, summer camps offer the perfect setting. They’re remote and surrounded by woods and water, a dense camouflage for preying horrors. Reading “Welcome to Camp Nightmare,” I thought of ’80s classics like Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, movies that, in retrospect, feel goofy and not scary at all. If anything, they’re fun, because camp is fun. But it’s also intimidating. For first-timers, being isolated from one’s parents brings a degree of vulnerability. And that’s where R.L. Stine hangs his hat in Goosebumps #9.
Camp Nightmoon sits at the edge of the desert where the evergreens rise like arms. Split by a river, it has two sections: one for boys and one for girls. As a first-time camper, Billy is nervous about being away from home, but he’s committed to having fun. Shortly after arriving, though, Mike, one of his bunkmates, gets bitten by a snake, the first in a series of unsettling events.
The next day, while playing scratch ball, one of the counselors pitches a ball at a kid’s head, knocking him unconscious. Billy knows the counselor did it deliberately, but he can’t fathom why. Meanwhile, Mike’s snake bite is getting worse, but the staff doesn’t seem to care.
Things escalate. Uncle Al, the camp director, claims a few kids got attacked by bears last year, but it was their fault for leaving their bunks after dark. So, not surprisingly, when two campers sneak out to explore a forbidden bunk, Billy hears their bloodcurdling screams, and one kid doesn’t return.
Billy decides he needs to leave Camp Nightmoon on Visitors Day, when his parents drop by, but he doesn’t get the chance. Visitors Day gets canceled. He settles for writing his parents instead, but his letter doesn’t get mailed. In fact, none of the kids’ letters do; he finds a heaping bag of them in the office. Soon, his bunkmates disappear, replaced by new ones, and no one can tell him why — not the other kids, not the counselors, not even Uncle Al. And Mike’s gone missing, too.
Then, at dawn’s first breath, Billy’s awoken and summoned for an impromptu hike. At the edge of the woods, Uncle Al gives him and the other kids tranquilizer guns, says he needs their help hunting two girls who escaped during the night — Dawn and Dori, the girls Billy met on the bus. The girls who snuck over the other day to tell Billy something was wrong at their camp, too: kids going missing, indifferent counselors. But Billy won’t do it. He’s had enough. So he turns the gun on Uncle Al, who laughs and congratulates him. He passed the test.
Yep, the entire camp was architected just for Billy. The missing kids, even Billy’s parents, emerge from the woods to congratulate him. Billy’s mom and dad, scientist-type explorers, explain that they’re going on a top-secret expedition to a dangerous place, and they want Billy to join them. The only catch? The government requires he be tested first. Tested to see if he can obey orders (not going to the forbidden bunk); if he can be brave (saving a counselor’s life after he falls out of a canoe, which Billy does); if he can ignore orders where appropriate (refusing to hunt the girls). And Billy gets an A+ across the board. Oh, yeah, and that dangerous place Billy’s parents are going to? It’s Earth.
Like Goosebumps #8, “Welcome to Camp Nightmare” does a complete one-eighty turn. And while the ending is fun, it doesn’t serve the horror at the book’s core. If anything, these twist endings set precedent for the series, making the books feel safer than they once were. They break the spell, and as readers we detach from the characters (if these kids aren’t earthlings to begin with, how can their dilemmas resonate?).
Speaking of dilemmas, throughout the book, it’s not clear what Billy’s primary conflict is. Should he be worried about the counselors hurting the other kids? Bears in the woods? Monsters? It’s ambiguous what he’s up against. We only know that the staff doesn’t care about him. And, when you get down to it, if they were strictly testing Billy’s ability to handle orders, then what’s with the missing kids? It’s not part of the criteria, which forces us to test something ourselves — the plot.
The ending aside, a few other things irked me, like how Stine recycles sentences word for word, and his questionable description of a young girl’s shoulder (yep, it’s weird). That said, “Welcome to Camp Nightmare” is still a fun read. I never went to camp, but I can appreciate its efficacy as a horror backdrop. And so can Stine. He seamlessly mixes the thrill of adventure with nature’s inherent eeriness. But unlike some of his other books, the threat in this one’s just too ambiguous.
All in all, I’d take a pass on “Camp Nightmare” and keep on driving, try Camp Crystal Lake instead. Better yet, spend a night at Sleepaway Camp. Now there’s a twist ending.
3/5 drops of Monster Blood.
