Tag Line: The mark of death?From the Back of the Book: Wherever you go, it will find you. Kelly is so happy about her new job at the local zoo. Even after the nasty phone calls and the twisted threats that tell her to stay away, she decides that nothing can stop her because she really wants to work with animals. But wild animals can be very dangerous - especially when they're let out of their cages. Everyone wonders who left open the door to the black leopard's cage. Who would be that careless...or that evil. Now the leopard is terrorizing the whole town, especially Kelly, leaving behind bloody claw marks in its wake. Are the marks those of a ferocious animal, or is it something else? Something even more terrifying...
This book was published in 1995. I'd never read this author before and wasn't sure what to expect. I mean, I kind of know what I'm getting into when I open up a Stine or a Cooney, but this one was a mystery. I had high hopes. They died a quick death.
We begin with our protagonist Kelly Reade on the phone with her best friend Rachel. Kelly is white and Rachel is black and apparently where they live in Illinois, it's a big deal for a white girl and a black girl to be friends. The author makes such a big deal about this that I kind of hate her already. The two friends are just so different. Most importantly they are a different color. This is the author's sentiment, not mine. I don't care what color they are or aren't. Kelly is tall while Rachel is short. Kelly has long, crimped hair and Rachel has short hair. Man, I remember when crimped hair was a thing. But that was back in the late 80's I'm almost certain. This book was out in the mid-90's. I don't remember crimped hair being cool in the mid-90's. It's weird and it takes me out of the story. Kelly eats meat and Rachel is a vegetarian. It's a wonder these two even exist in the same town, they are such polar opposites. But they have something in common. They are both sensible, practical people. Well, okay.
Both girls applied for an internship at the Creighton Gardens Zoological Park. Rachel is really into animals and wants to be a vet someday. Kelly just applied to spend the summer with Rachel. She is a little fearful of animals and wants to overcome it because she thinks the fear is very impractical. There are four other interns but they don't go to school with Kelly and Rachel.
The zoo is not well kept up and people around town call it Creeping Gardens. There is a public push to close the place down and relocate the animals to a better zoo. Kelly starts to regret her decision to intern before she even starts the job.
The night before her first day, Kelly gets a creeper call. Sigh. Another book with creeper calls. Point Horror needs some new tropes fast. Kelly expects Rachel on the other end so she says "What's your problem?" in greeting. It's late and if the calls wakes her parents, she's going to be in big trouble. But it's not Rachel. A whispery voice says: "Problem? I have no problem. It is you who has the problem. That is, if you come to work at the zoo. My advice is to stay away. Girls can get hurt in zoos." Really? Is that it? That's barely worthy of being called a creeper call. It's pretty tame and lame as far as warnings go. But Kelly is worried.
On the way to work the next day, Kelly tells Rachel about the phone call. Rachel thinks it was probably someone who didn't get the internship and is jealous that Kelly did. Kelly isn't so sure. She mentions that she didn't tell her parents because they've been so overprotective since her sister Heather ran away a few months ago.
At the zoo, they attend an orientation. They meet Pam Perkins and Dr Hoffstadter. Dr H addresses the group and tells them that due to past problems, this might be the last year for interns at the zoo. The adults leave the room briefly and the teens are left to chat among themselves. One of the girls tells the group that Dr H was fired from his previous zoo for "peculiar practices". It's not what you're thinking. Get your mind out of the gutter. Sheesh. He supposedly let the animals roam free at night.
Pam comes back and we get a character dump. Sandy is shy and on the swim team. Jon likes science fiction and has bad skin. Melissa likes to brag and Kelly thinks she's a big liar. The tall, hunk guy is Griffin. He likes basketball, poetry and bears. You know, normal hunky guy things. Kelly is in love at first sight with Griffin. Who can blame her? Basketball, poetry and bears. Clearly, he's perfect.
Pam leaves the room again to take a phone call. What kind of orientation is this? No wonder the zoo is falling apart. There's no organization to anything. The teens talk again. Jon and Melissa got the internship because they each have a parent who is associated with the zoo. Melissa's father does the books and Jon's mother is on the board of directors or something I don't care about. Neither of them wants to be there.
Because the author hasn't been racist enough with all her comments about a white girl and black girl being friends, Melissa makes a comment about the zoo being culturally diverse by hiring Rachel and Sandy (last name Lopez). Rachel is pretty offended and I can't really blame her.
Finally Pam comes back and they take a tour of the zoo and meet the other employees.
Back at home that evening, Kelly cooks dinner for her parents. They both work, so it's often her job to feed the family. She likes to put weird ingredients in everything as a "surprise". It was something she did with her sister before Heather ran away. Kelly remembers how Heather dreamed of being an actress and living in California. She hasn't been in contact since she left, but Kelly isn't worried about her because Heather is so smart.
Rachel comes over to spend the night. They decide to read over their orientation materials and Rachel discovers a note in hers. "Be careful. Don't turn your back on large animals. Cages don't always hold." The back of the book called these threats twisted and nasty but I'm not seeing it. They seem really bland to me and I'm bored to death. The girls, however, are scared to death and wonder if they should have taken the internships.
The next day they get their assignments. Sandy is assigned to the primate house. Griffin is working the snack bar and the bear exhibit. Jon gets the bird house and Melissa gets giraffes and antelopes. Rachel and Kelly are assigned to work the big cat house together.
Rachel thinks they should mention the note and the phone call to Pam but Kelly insists that her parents will make her quit if they find out. Rachel agrees to keep it between them.
In the big cat area, they meet Lonnie Bucks. He's been working with the cats for a long time and really seems to care for them. Ranger is the mountain lion. There are lions and tigers which are never important to the story and a black leopard named Luther. Kelly notices that Luther doesn't seem as content in his enclosure as the rest of the cats and Lonnie tells her that Luther longs to be free.
They get to work and Rachel is quickly disappointed that they are mainly cleaning and preparing food. I'm not sure what she thought they'd be doing. Did she think they'd be playing fetch with tigers or something? She can't be that dumb, can she? Kelly whines about how hard the work is and she comes off as princess-y and immature. At break time they talk about how exhausting the morning was. Rachel confirms that she thought she was going to get to pet and play with the animals. I guess she IS that dumb. Wow.
After work they head to the snack bar. Griffin gives them free cokes and hot dogs. I'm pretty sure he should be fired for this. I mean, he's stealing from the zoo when you think about it. No one cares, though. They all talk about their day and Kelly does some flirting with Griffin which seems to annoy the hell out of Melissa. An hour passes and then they start to leave. Where are the adults here? Shouldn't they be making sure the interns leave the place so they can lock up and do whatever they do at the end of the day? This place is very poorly run.
Rachel asks Kelly to walk back with her to the cat exhibit because she left her bag in the feeding room. They get to the building and can't find the lights. They discover that one of the cages is open and something is loose.
A big cat pounces a few times and Kelly is glad that it's dark and the cat can't see them. I call bullshit on this. Cats can see pretty well in the dark. If they are aware that the cat is there, the cat is damn sure aware that they are there. The girls manage to out run the cat to get out the door and I call bullshit for a second time. We aren't sure which one it is, but I guarantee every species they have at that zoo can run faster than two teenage girls in the dark. The door to the exhibit doesn't close behind them and they watch as Luther leaves the building.
Luther sees them and comes after them but they manage to outrun him again to reach the primate house. Bullshit number three, y'all. They are NOT outrunning a fucking leopard. Whatever. Luther gives up on these inhumanly fast teen girls and heads out the front gates. The girls call the zoo security to tell them what happened.
Griffin and Melissa show up to rescue Rachel and Kelly. Griffin grabs Kelly and she cries in his arms. He says "if anything happened to you...." and she stops him with her fingers against his lips and says "but it didn't..." Um... these two have known each other for five fucking minutes and they're already acting like deeply in love people. I want to scream.
Pam and Dr H show up and they are understandably upset by Luther's escape. He made it out of the zoo and into the town and no one knows where he is. They talk to all the employees about who left the cage open and the front gates unlocked but no one admits to it. Kelly and Rachel are caught by the press as they leave the zoo and Kelly gives a brief statement about them being unharmed and confident that the zoo would retrieve the leopard soon. She really enjoys her 15 seconds of fame.
Kelly's parents see the soundbite on the news before Kelly even gets home and they are alarmed. They want her to quit her job but she reasons that the zoo is the safest place in town right now because it's the one place they know the leopard isn't. They eventually agree to let her keep her job. The phone rings and Kelly rushes to answer it in case it's Griffin. The only sound on the other end is a leopard roaring. You want to know the funny thing about this? Kelly thinks it's Luther calling. She's hella dumb, y'all. And the dangerous thing about this is that she thinks she's hella smart.
The next day there are press and protesters outside the zoo gates. The teens gather in the locker room area to talk. Jon says he got a phone call the night before making a reference to the Hitchcock movie The Birds. Rachel and Kelly admit they've gotten warnings as well. It seems like Melissa feels a little left out so she makes up a ridiculous story about being out jogging and being grabbed by a stranger who whispered a warning in her ear. It's impossible to believe because no self-respecting bad guy/girl/whatever would grab a person in full view of everyone and their dog to whisper a warning if they wanted to remain anonymous. She adds a lot of details to explain why she didn't see who it was but it only makes it more unbelievable to me. The teens, however, eat it up with a spoon.
Sandy isn't at work and Kelly tells everyone that she had seen Sandy riding her bike on the way to work out by some old, unused overpass. It seems convenient that she's just remembering this now. Why didn't Adams just write that scene in the book in the first place? It's like she got to this point and was all "Oh, crap, I forgot to write the part about Sandy riding her bike to work so I'll just have Kelly remember it for me". It doesn't seem to smart to me for Sandy to be out riding her bike when there's a leopard on the loose, but these kids are all dumber than a box of rocks so it's not surprising either. I don't think Adams meant to write them dumber than a box of rocks because she keeps trying to tell us how clever they are. It's too bad she didn't attempt to show us how clever they are instead, because she lacks a lot of skill at the telling part.
Griffin, Kelly and Rachel decide to leave the zoo to go look for Sandy. These guys are seriously model employees. They steal food, let animals loose and skip out of work to look for people who may or may not even be missing. I can't imagine why Dr H wants to get rid of the internship program. These kids are valuable cogs in the wheel of the zoo at large.
They find an injured Sandy not far from where Kelly had helpfully remembered spotting her. She's been scratched on the arm by the leopard but someone managed to hide behind a rock and escape further injury. Bullshit four. This leopard is as bad at leoparding as Adams is at writing clever teens.
They take Sandy to the ER. Pam shows up and there are a lot of very PSA moments about conserving animal habitats and preserving the species. It sounds like something out of a school filmstrip about the environment. I'm so bored, y'all. I'd rather read the manual for installing a garbage disposal than read this book at this point. Don't get me wrong - I'm all about the environment and preserving animal life but I'm not reading Point Horror for a lecture on conservationalism.
Pam is worried all this will shut down the zoo. There's a big audit coming up that will determine whether the zoo is allowed to remain open and she's concerned because it keeps being postponed due to all the leopard drama. The kids suggest that maybe this isn't a coincidence. Maybe someone is sabotaging the zoo on purpose to get it closed. Okay, I'll give them this one. That was an actual clever thought.
The next day, Kelly is getting ready for work. She's trying to decide what to wear. They don't have uniforms there? What kind of place is this? She doesn't want to dress too sloppy because she'll be seeing Griffin and she wants to dazzle him with her beauty. But she'll be shoveling poop all day so she can't exactly wear clubbing clothes either. I think she settles on some kind of vest-Tshirt combo which again smacks strongly of the 80's to me. She fusses a bit with her hair and tells us that it's her best feature and she knows all the girls at school talk about it every day. Wow, Kelly. Vain, much? I really dislike this girl.
When she goes downstairs, her mom seems more excited than usual. A PI they hired has a lead on Heather and her parents are going to fly out to California or wherever to check it out. Wow. It took Point Horror half a book to get the parents out of the picture. That must be a new record.
Sandy is at work despite the 56 stitches in her arm. She might just be the intern with the most work ethic. Jon says that Lonnie is the main suspect among the zoo board members because he's been very vocal about animals being allowed to live in their natural habitats rather than in cages. To Kelly, Lonnie seems genuinely sad about Luther being gone, though.
They head to the snack bar for break again and Kelly and Griffin make out in front of everyone. Jon invites Kelly and Rachel to come over to his house and hang out because his parents are gone. Of course. Kelly tells him that she's home alone too and says they'll come by much to Rachel's displeasure.
When Rachel and Kelly get to Jon's house, he puts on a violent movie of some sort. They're weirded out by how much he enjoys the gore. Kelly notices a poster on the wall of some muscle man. The guy has a tattoo on his arm of leopard claws and that's enough to convince Kelly that Jon's the bad guy. You know, because some other man on a poster on the wall has a tattoo of claws. It's logical and you know it! Stop judging Kelly! She's clever, damn it. CLEVER.
They head out and Kelly asks Rachel to spend the night because she realizes that she's told Jon that she'll be home alone and Jon's the bad guy because of the poster tattoo. Rachel can't because of some boring story about her aunt that I've already forgotten and never cared about.
Kelly is a little nervous about being home alone. She can't get used to the noises of the house which seems bizarre to me because she's not in a new house. These should be the same noises she's always heard. Maybe her dad snored heinously loud and blocked them out before. Her cat keeps spooking her by acting like and looking like a cat. You know, inconsiderate bitch cat, Kelly would really appreciate it if for just this one night you could look and act like a hamster instead so she can sleep without being scared there's a leopard in her room. Sheesh. Some species are such assholes.
The next morning Kelly watches on live TV coverage as police corner Luther. He ultimately gets away and we are treated to another PSA about the disappearing species. For cripe's sake, Adams. This is a Point Horror book. Make something remotely scary happen. PLEASE. Stop lecturing me about the environment. I know it sucks and we have to change it. Now move on.
At work, Melissa is sobbing in the locker room because someone put scratches on her locker door. It really seems like a pretty lame reason to be that damn upset. It's not like it was her car or her arm or something. It was a locker that she didn't even own. Pam believes that someone is letting the other cats out at night and one of them did this. What? Seriously? She cannot be this dumb. She can't. How did she live into adulthood? Her theory makes no sense. Obviously a human being with some kind of homemade claw is doing this. A lion didn't wander into the employee locker room, scratch a locker, and then return to its cage. It would have eaten a giraffe or something to break up its monotonous day. But they discuss who could possibly be letting the animals out at night like it's a legitimate theory and Kelly says that it must be someone connected with the zoo. YOU THINK? But Pam acts like it's the most brilliant observation ever made and calls Kelly a real detective. I really hoped it was sarcastic the first time I read it, but she was serious. Sigh.
I have to say, this book is filled with some of the most stupid dialogue I've ever read. It sounds like a really bad SyFy movie. You know the ones that are on at midnight and feature giant piranha-shark-gator hybrids attacking half-dressed sorority girls? Actually, those movies have MUCH better dialogue than this book.
Melissa decides to throw a "Chase the Blues" party the next night. I wish I was making that name up, but I'm not. It's actually called that. Kelly doesn't really want to go but decides she will because Griffin will be there.
After work, Rachel reveals that she's stolen a key to the zoo and she wants to go back after midnight to investigate things. Kelly agrees because her only alternative is staying safe and warm in her own home with all its familiar noises and her cat being and looking like a cat. Clearly, a dangerous and illegal expedition to the zoo is a much better option. They wear black tights, black turtlenecks and take Halloween masks (Terminator and Frankenstein) with them.
The zoo is dark and empty. They see a light on in the primate area and hear someone playing classical music on a flute. It's Dr H wearing an ill-fitting tuxedo and playing music for the apes. They find it suspicious and bizarre. I can't say the music part is too unusual. Zoos do all kinds of things for animal enrichment. The tux is a little odd, but to each his own. The apes sense the girls and start getting agitated. Dr H notices and alerts security. The girls take off running and manage to get away without being caught.
Melissa's party the next night is raging. It's out in the backyard and has a DJ and a mexican buffet. Sounds slammin. Kelly and Rachel sneak into the house to snoop through Melissa's room. I really hate these girls. They're just awful. They can't believe that Melissa's parents can be so rich with the jobs they have and are suspicious that something nefarious is going on. I'll tell you what's nefarious. Snooping around someone's house. After Melissa's room, they actually go into her parent's room and snoop around there. They have a safe and they even try to open that. Who the fuck are these girls? I keep hoping they'll get caught and arrested but no such luck. They trespass to their heart's content and then rejoin the party.
Griffin arrives and Kelly thinks he looks super hot in his pleated khakis, dark denim shirt and Hawaiian print tie. This can't be real. Pleated khakis? No man on earth has ever looked super hot in pleated khakis. Does Adams own eyes?
Melissa tries to monopolize Griffin but he eventually breaks free and he and Kelly make out in front of everyone at the party.
Kelly's parents call the next day. The girl the PI located turned out not to be Heather but they have another lead on a girl who is living with a cult up in the mountains. They're going to check on that before coming home. Kelly doesn't tell them about the house making familiar noises or the cat looking and acting like a cat, so they're comfortable leaving her home alone awhile longer. I'm sure if she told them about the cat being a cat, they'd rush right home to save her. She missed an opportunity there.
Kelly decides the best thing to do with a leopard on the loose is to go for a run. She puts a Bruce Springsteen tape in her Walkman and I bask in the nostalgia. As she runs, she thinks she sees Lonnie in a field playing with a large black animal. He waves to her and calls her over, but she ignores him and keeps going. She's sure that the black animal is Luther and she isn't getting close enough to confirm it.
She goes home to call Rachel but only gets the machine. She calls Griffin who is headed out, but he promises to come by when he gets the chance. She decides she'll just have to endure that. Jon calls her and asks her out but she tells him that she is seeing Griffin. After she hangs up, she frets that Jon is obsessed with her. Because he asked her out one time? So vain. So very, very vain.
Hours later, Griffin finally arrives. Kelly makes him scrambled eggs and toast and tells him about seeing Lonnie and Luther earlier. Griffin suggests they look up Lonnie's address in the phone book so they can go by and check out his house. When they get there, they see a large, dark animal in the livingroom. They are too far away to tell what it is, but Kelly is convinced it's Luther all the same. Griffin says they can't go to the police without proof it's the leopard. He thinks they should sleep on it and decide what to do the next day. Then they make out for awhile.
Griffin takes her home and walks her to her front door. They make out for awhile on her front porch. When he returns to his car, he finds that his seats have been slashed. Kelly ridiculously thinks it was Luther and Griffin is forced to point out that Luther would have attacked them and not his car seats. Griffin believes that it was a person and I'm so relieved that someone in this book has functioning brain cells.
Kelly notices Rachel still hasn't called her and she thinks it's odd but doesn't dwell on it. She goes around and checks all the doors and windows before going to bed. She's almost asleep when she remembers that she forgot to check the basement. There's a window open in the basement, so she decides the best thing to do is grab a flashlight and go out in the dark to check the ground around the window. Dumb. Just dumb. She finds claw marks and runs back inside.
Somehow, despite the house making familiar noises and her cat looking and acting like a cat, she gets to sleep. The phone rings. The connection is bad but the voice on the other end says it's Rachel. Kelly doesn't think it sounds like Rachel but she pushes that thought aside and takes the caller's word. Rachel says she went to a movie and out for pizza with Sandy that night. Kelly is butthurt that she wasn't invited. Rachel says she's at a pay phone outside the ice rink because she saw Heather going into the building. She's watching it now and hasn't seen Heather come back out, so she believes Heather is still inside. She encourages Kelly to come right away because she can't stay any longer.
Kelly heads right for the rink like a complete moron. The building looks abandoned and all the windows are boarded over. The door is ajar, though, so Kelly goes inside. Dumb. So incredibly, unbelievably dumb. She calls out Heather's name a couple of times and a voice answers back that she's on the other side of the rink. Kelly doesn't think it sounds like Heather but reasons that she might be mistaken and starts to walk across the ice. Which is still ice despite the building being abandoned? Really? Don't they have to run some kind of refrigeration or something to keep the ice ice? This makes no sense. Kelly slips and slides on the ice that shouldn't exist. At some point it dawns on her that Heather was never there and she was tricked. Duh. The sound of a leopard roaring fills the rink and Kelly is scared that Luther is the one that tricked her. Oh, God. I can't even, y'all. I can't. This book is going to kill me. No one can be this dumb and still know how to put a shirt on successfully. I can't even.
Something lunges at her and she feels claws before blacking out.
Kelly wakes up in a hospital bed. Rachel's with her. She tells Kelly that Luther was found and peacefully captured. He's back in the zoo now safe and sound. Kelly tells Rachel about Luther attacking her at the ice rink and Rachel says that Luther was back in the zoo way before Kelly was attacked. Like that's the only problem with the story. Rachel didn't call Kelly (duh) and didn't even know Kelly had been out at the rink until the hospital notified her. I guess Rachel is listed as Kelly's emergency contact or something? Or maybe it's just such a small town that people know they are friends. It doesn't explain why a hospital would call another teenage girl, rather than an adult but I'm trying to put too much realism into a crap book. Kelly's arm has been scratched and she has a concussion or something from falling on the ice but I don't suspect it will bother her much since she has no brain cells anyway.
The nurse shoos all the visitors out of the room but Rachel calls later to say that she has a plan and wants to use Kelly as bait to catch the bad guy. I'm all for this. I could kiss Rachel right now. This has to be the best idea I've ever heard of. Yes, use Kelly as bait. Use her as all the bait. Let the bad guy eat her. The world will be better off.
Kelly is released from the hospital. I have to call bullshit number infinity on this one because there's no way she'd be released without an adult. She's a minor and they can't do that. Kelly and Rachel go into Pam's office at the zoo and tell her that they want to set a trap for the bad guy. Pam agrees like any responsible adult would. (Sarcasm, Dimera)
Griffin isn't pleased with the plan or the fact that Kelly is going to be the bait. He tells her he won't allow her to do it and she gets all mad that he's acting alpha male. He tries to get her to change her mind and she refuses so he leaves in a huff.
Kelly brings a sleeping bag to work and makes sure that Melissa and Jon see it. There's no mention of Sandy and I have no idea why. Did Adams forget she existed now that her part in the story is done or what? When Jon asks what's up with the sleeping bag, Kelly tells him that Ranger the mountain lion has a tooth infection and someone has to stay overnight to give him antibiotics every two hours. Since Lonnie is out of town (lie) and Rachel has to babysit (lie), it has fallen to Kelly. No one questions the fact that a teenage intern is going to be giving a mountain lion medication while spending the night unsupervised in a zoo alone. Because they're fucking idiots. I'm so over this ridiculous book.
The trap is a bust and nothing happens. Kelly insists they try it again, though. She's sure it will work this time. Pam agrees because dumb.
The next night, Kelly has barely gotten into her sleeping bag when the door opens. The person gets halfway across the room before Kelly's reinforcements spring into action and it's all over in a very anti-climactic fashion.
Have you guessed who the bad guy is? Don't feel bad if you haven't. There haven't been any actual clues in this book. There hasn't been any actual character development that would allow us to form a suspect in our minds. This whole book was so poorly written that I actually expected the bad guy to be Luther wearing a human mask.
It's Melissa with a gardening claw of some sort. Okay. Whatever.
Melissa says she did it because her father has been embezzling from the zoo for awhile now and she knew it would be discovered when they did that big audit. She was hoping to scare the town into shutting the zoo down before the audit happened. Plus, she's jealous of Kelly and Griffin.
Lonnie arrives and Kelly finds out the big black animal she saw him with was his dog. Yeah, she's a regular Nancy Drew, this one.
Kelly goes home. Griffin comes by with flowers and apologizes. Isn't it the middle of the night? She was going to sleep when Melissa was caught. And how did Griffin even know she was back at home? This makes NO SENSE. Just a few pages left, girl. Suck it up and get through it.
Kelly accepts his apology and they kiss a bunch before he goes home.
Kelly goes to sleep but is woken up when her parents and sister arrive home. I guess that cult tip turned out to be a good one and Heather is now back home. She makes a cryptic comment about there being a lot of lost people out there in the world and a lot of people who will take advantage of that and then the book ends. Thank you, angels.
Final Thoughts: Do you really need them? lol This book was beyond dumb, extremely boring and full of very heavy-handed PSAs. No one should read this book. Ever. It should never have been published. It's just awful and full of awful people. Maybe a better author could have pulled this plot off but Adams did not. There was never any tension or fear. There was never a sense of danger or doom. The main character was unlikeable. The bad guy was unidentifiable. It was just a PSA disguised as a Point Horror book and not disguised well. I should also add that whoever wrote the back of the book did not read the story. It could not be more inaccurate. Well, it got the names right (Silent Stalker, I'm looking at you) but that's about it.
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