**This blog contains adult language.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Please do not continue to read if you don't want to know who the “bad guy” is.
From the Back of the Book: High on a hillside overlooking Salem University, hidden in shadows and shrouded in silence, sits Nightingale Hall. Nightmare Hall, the students call it. Because that’s where the terror began. Delle has always been a cheerleader. And so she wants more than anything to make the squad at Salem U. Until she hears the horrible truth about what happened to last year’s cheerleaders… Once Delle thought she would die to make the team. Now she realizes she may have to. Welcome to the scream team, Delle.
The Silent Scream (Nightmare Hall Book One): Jess and Ian arrive at Nightingale Hall only to find it haunted by the spirit of Giselle. They spend the book trying to figure out if Giselle was murdered or if she killed herself and eventually the bad guy is taken out by a wet, flying photograph.
The Roommate (Nightmare Hall Book Two): We meet four girls (Danni, Margot, Lacey and Maureen) who share a suite in a dorm that is not Nightingale Hall. Nothing really happens other than Danni claiming to receive threatening phone calls and messages. We spend the entire book listening to her tell us that someone is after her and it ends up she's the bad guy.
Deadly Attraction (Nightmare Hall Book Three): The entire campus thinks Darlene is injuring/murdering people because she’s so upset that Robert dumped her. Hailey falls in love with – and then suspects – Finn who is secretly Darlene’s brother. The bad guy turns out to be Pete from book two who briefly dated Maureen. Turns out he is madly in love with Darlene and applies a broad meaning to ‘touch her and die’.
The Wish (Nightmare Hall Book Four): Alex and her friends – Julie, Jenny, Gabe, Marty, Kiki, Kyle and Bennett - get obsessed with having their fortunes told by a machine called The Wizard at Vinnie’s pizza place. The fortunes come true in horrible ways that leave them injured, disabled or dead. In the end, we learn that Bennett was helping The Wizard do it’s terrible deeds in exchange for better knees to play football.
This book was published in the 1990’s and this is my first time reading it. The cover is my very favorite kind. Here’s a peek at the inside…..
I wish they still made books with covers like these. I miss them.
We begin, as always in this series, with a prologue. Someone is watching an old recording of the Salem JV cheer squad performing. The person holds a bloody pom pom and wonders if the cheerleaders smiled when they died.
As far as prologues go, that one wasn’t bad. It was less cheesy than normal.
Chapter one starts with Delle on the first day of tryouts for the Salem U JV cheer team. It’s a week-long process taking place before the start of classes. All the potentials are staying in the same dorm – one that is only used for conferences and stuff – and at the end of the week, six will be chosen for the squad. The coach is a bit of a hard ass and is definitely working them way too hard in the August heat. She reminds them that cheerleading at the college level is a sport and not a popularity contest. She seems to have it out for Delle in particular.
{{{Note from future me: We never learn why Delle was singled out so much, so don't expect any kind of resolution to this.}}}
The coach is new and all but two of the cheerleaders will be new as well because most of the squad died during the summer in a bus accident. There were only three survivors – Rory (who caught a ride home with someone else), Marla (who was sick and didn’t go to the competition) and Jennifer (who was miraculously thrown clear of the accident). Marla and Rory are going to act as co-captains for the squad but Jennifer, who is on crutches still, has given up cheerleading entirely.
The day starts at 6:00 am with a three mile run and ends at 5:00 pm. There’s a brief morning break and then an hour and a half for lunch but otherwise it’s just a full day of physical exertion. Delle is exhausted fairly early on and the coach nags at her without mercy.
We land in Susan’s head. She’s tired and sore after the long day of cheer torture. Everyone else seems so much better than her at everything – cheer, college, making friends – and she’s a little disheartened. She’s worried she’ll never fit in and that makes her even more determined to make the squad. She also has a huge fear of failure and of having everyone laugh at her.
I don’t have a good feeling about Susan.
We’re back with Delle. She’s also tired and sore. A lot of the potentials are hanging out in the lounge of the dorm they’re staying in. As they’re all chattering about the day, Delle’s mind wanders to the high school boyfriend she left behind. His name was Warren and he actually proposed to her at prom. She wasn’t ready to get married straight out of high school and said ‘no’. Warren was crushed and started to actively avoid her. He took off at the end of the summer and Delle hasn’t seen him or heard from him since.
{{{Note from future me: We never hear about Warren again so don't expect this to be a plot point.}}}
Marla comes in to join the group. Delle overhears her mention something about dead cheerleaders. People start demanding an explanation. Rory and Marla tell them about the accident. Marla adds that a lot of people believe that the bus was tampered with. Coach comes in and demands they stop gossiping. She reminds them that they need to be team players and then she basically sends them to bed.
Delle heads upstairs with a girl named Mojo. Mojo is very into crystals and tarot and ghosts, etc. She tells Delle about Nightmare Hall and Giselle and then adds new lore to our blog: The Lady in Red (LIR). Apparently LIR is a girl who burned to death in the gym decades ago. She appears when something bad is about to happen.
So she’s basically the Mothman. Got it.
Mojo says people saw LIR before the bus accident but Delle dismisses it. She doesn’t believe in ghosts.
Delle goes to sleep. They’re all in single rooms so she doesn’t have a roommate for the week. She wakes up sometime in the night to see a girl dressed entirely in red with some kind of red hood over her face standing next to a flaming trash can. Delle assumes she’s still asleep but the fire is very real. The girl ‘disappears’ but the fire stays. Delle starts screaming and tries to open her door. It’s jammed. She grabs her blanket and tries to beat the flames out.
Suddenly her door bursts open and Marla and Coach are there with a fire extinguisher. After the fire is put out, Coach examines the trash can and finds a cigarette inside. She assumes Delle started the fire by putting a lit cigarette in the trash. Delle denies smoking but Coach doesn’t believe her. Delle tells her about seeing the LIR. Jennifer, who has joined the crowd out in the hall, gets hysterical and screams that they’re all going to die. She gets so upset that she faints and Rory has to carry her back to her room. Coach orders some boy named Greg to help Delle clean up the mess and then she shoos everyone back to their rooms.
Mojo lingers. She asks a bunch of questions about LIR and then mentions how weird it was that Susan, who has the room directly next to Delle’s, didn’t come outside to see what the commotion was.
So is Susan a Justin or a red herring?
Also, why is Jennifer still on crutches? There’s no mention of a cast or anything.
Greg helps Delle clean up the mess from the fire extinguisher. He’s super hot and she’s all flustered at being in her bedroom with him. He teases her a bit about being high maintenance and then goes back to his room.
We skip to the next day. Rory is walking around with a video camera, saying he’s recording for training purposes and maybe for something to use for his film class. Delle thinks he’s cute and funny and she’d probably have a crush on him if it wasn’t for Greg feeling more accessible. As practice goes on, Delle develops a deep animosity for Marla who she thinks is sadistic and cruel but an admiration for Jennifer who she sees as helpful and tragic.
They move part of their training inside because of rain. Delle and Mojo are headed out into the hall to get a drink of water when Delle hears someone scream. She grabs Mojo and yanks her out of the way as the backboard from the basketball hoop falls to the ground. Delle and Mojo are okay but when Delle mentions the scream, Mojo looks at her like she’s crazy and says it never happened. No one else heard it either.
During one of the breaks, Susan marches up and lectures Delle about smoking. Mojo basically tells her to fuck off and then asks why she didn’t come out of her room when the fire was going on. Susan gets very flustered and says that she’s a deep sleeper. Delle again denies smoking. Some of them seem to believe her but the majority don’t. A random boy says that he thinks someone is trying to scare the potentials away so they have a better shot at making the team.
A bunch of the potentials along with Marla, Rory and Jennifer decide to go out that night. I bet you won’t guess were they ended up.
I swear there’s only one place to eat in that entire fucking town.
Rory sits by Delle for a minute and asks her to tell him what really happened the night before. She repeats her story about seeing LIR and then realizing her trash can was on fire. Rory asks her not to mention LIR to Jennifer because she’s very traumatized by everything that happened that summer. He also mentions that Jennifer doesn’t really remember the accident and he thinks that’s probably for the best. Delle immediately finds this suspicious. She thinks Rory doesn’t want Jennifer to remember because maybe he had something to do with the accident.
Maybe he just doesn't want her to remember how scared she was or what it sounded like when her friends died.
The only other thing worth mentioning from the Vinnie’s excursion is that a potential named Charles flirts pretty heavily with Marla in hopes of upping his chances of making the squad. Charles is a gymnast who didn’t make it onto the gymnastics team so the cheer squad is his last option.
Hmmm....I've heard that before.....
Rory makes it pretty clear that Marla has no say in who does or doesn’t make the team. I don’t know if any of that will actually be important but I learned my lesson with Pete, so I’m mentioning it.
Delle decides to go home. She looks around and doesn’t see Greg or Mojo, so she just takes off. As she walks back to the dorm, she reviews everything for us and then does her own suspect ranking. Marla and Susan seem to be at the top of her list but Mojo gets an honorable mention because of how weewoo she is. Delle dismisses Jennifer entirely because of the crutches.
Don't be so ableist, Delle. People on crutches can start fires in trash cans too.
As she passes the gym, Delle sees LIR walking past the upper windows. The only way she could be there – if we dismiss floating – is to walk along the top edge of the bleaches which should be collapsed against the wall. Delle decides to check it out. The outer door is unlocked to her surprise so she walks right in. The lights in the hall/vestibule area aren’t working so she stumbles forward in the dark to reach the inner doors. As she’s entering the gymnasium itself, the outer door closes, cutting off all available light. She staggers onto the gym floor and sees a woman in “flowing robes that glowed red and horrible”. Again, there seems to be some kind of hood covering the face. As she stares in horror, someone grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her into their chest so her vision is cut off.
Delle panics but the chest belongs to Greg and she instantly calms down when she realizes this. I’m not sure I would. Greg manages to turn on the lights in the gym and LIR vanishes. Delle asks what he’s doing there and he says he followed her from Vinnie’s. Without saying a word to let her know he was back there.
Delle asks if he saw LIR and he says he did. I was fully expecting him to say ‘no’ so we could set it up that Delle was crazy but thankfully that didn’t happen. Greg admires Delle’s bravery in coming into the gym alone and then he kisses her.
Time and place, Greg.
She doesn't seem to mind though.
Coach, Marla and Rory appear. Coach asks them what they’re doing in the gym and Greg says they were walking by and noticed the door was open and the light was on. Coach orders them all back to the dorms and tells them not to come into the gym without her permission.
We skip to the next day so we’re on day three of tryouts I think. Coach begins the day by yelling at everyone for gossiping about LIR appearing before the bus accident because it’s disrespectful to the dead. She says the next person she hears talking about LIR or the accident will be eliminated from tryouts.
Practice is rough. Delle is assigned to do some kind of flip off a mini trampoline and she’s wearing a safety harness to prevent injury. She just can’t seem to do it so a rando named Peter offers to take her place so she can rest and regroup. Mojo protests pretty strongly that Delle is the one supposed to be practicing but they switch places anyway. Peter goes to do his flip and the harness comes loose from the ceiling causing him to fall to the ground. Mojo screams that he’s dead.
{{{GASP}}}
Or a Hoh in this case......
LOLZ
He’s not dead. They don’t really tell us the extent of his injuries but he’s not dead.
I’m not sure any of this made sense the way it was written but we’re just going to move on.
Delle reviews everything for us and goes over her suspects again. Nothing has changed. She wonders if someone is out to get the cheerleaders in general or her specifically.
We skip to that night. Delle has a nightmare and then gets woken up by Greg. He tells her to dress all in black, grab a flashlight and meet him downstairs. He’s jammed the fire escape alarm so she can use that to sneak out. He takes off without really waiting for a response. She debates it for a minute but then decides to do what he instructed.
Greg meets her outside the dorm and says they’re going to go investigate the gym. I guess he didn't tell her that upstairs in case someone overheard? Maybe I'm giving Hoh too much credit here. Delle is all for it so they head off. Greg ends up having to pick the lock to the gym but they get in without anyone seeing them. When they examine the harness they discover that all the ropes or cords or whatever have already been replaced so there’s no way to know if it had been tampered with. Delle decides to investigate how LIR was appearing at the windows (she's assuming LIR is human). With Greg’s help, she scales the bleachers and then discovers that there’s a catwalk up there that seems to lead to a trapdoor in the roof. She theorizes that a person could have used that to vanish but I’m wondering exactly how they’d do that without being seen. She climbs back down and they start to have a makeout sesh when they hear the door open. Quickly they hide in the boys’ locker room. Coach comes in, walks around and then leaves again.
They go back to the dorm and we learn nothing else.
We skip to the next day. Delle is in the dorm hallway (I don’t know if training is over for the day or if this is one of the breaks) when Susan comes running from her room, pale and shaking. Delle goes into Susan’s room and finds a beheaded doll in a cheerleader’s costume on Susan’s bed. There’s fake blood splashed about and a note that says “Go. Fight. Win. DIE.”
Delle wants to get Coach but Susan is afraid this will count as gossiping or disrespecting the dead and get her disqualified. Neither of them wants to clean up the doll so Delle suggests getting Mojo since she seems to have an affinity for spooky things. I don’t think they warn her about what she’s about to see because she has a rather violent and dramatic reaction to it. They usher her into Delle’s room where she accuses them of playing a cruel joke on her. It takes them several minutes to get her calmed down. Eventually they all go back into Susan’s room but the note and the doll are gone.
They sit down to talk things through. Susan says her door was locked which makes Delle suspect Greg since he knows how to pick locks. Susan wonders why she was targeted and Mojo says the bad guy probably hoped that she would scream the dorm down like Delle did with the fire. That way everyone would have seen the doll and the note. When that didn’t work, the bad guy collected the evidence so they’d have nothing to show anyone.
Those two things seem mutually exclusive but whatever. We move.
We skip to the next morning. Delle is now suspicious of everyone including Jennifer. She runs through them all for pages and pages and there’s nothing new said. She has zero theories regarding the motives of these people. Honestly, the only motive I can come up with is what one of the characters said earlier about someone trying to scare potentials off so they can have a better chance at making the team. The accident doesn’t seem to factor in. It would if we had any indication that someone was at fault for it but it truly seems to be an accident. So all we have to work with is someone who desperately wants to be a cheerleader (like Charles and Susan) or someone who is just crazy and has no motive at all. Hoh’s done that before in this series so that’s not off the table.
After everyone finishes up the last day of training, Coach gathers them around and congratulates them on making it through the week. She says she’d be happy to have any of them on her team and then reminds them that tryouts are the next day at 1:00. She leaves and the potentials decide to celebrate in Mojo’s room with pizza.
They’re not going to Vinnie’s but Vinnie’s is coming to them.
There's no escaping it.
Delle sees Rory and Jennifer having a tense conversation out in the hall that seems to be about Marla but nothing else interesting happens at this ‘party’. Delle eventually takes off. Susan follows because she doesn't want to walk down the hall alone. She also doesn't want to open her door because she's afraid there might be another spooky thing in her room. Delle opens it and gives her the all clear before heading to her own room. There’s resistance when she tries to open her door so she pushes harder against it. The resistance disappears and she falls into her room. She’s expecting someone to be there but the room is empty.
Delle falls asleep and wakes up sometime around midnight to the sound of footsteps on the floor above. She’s immediately alarmed because no one is staying on that floor and no one should be walking around up there. Instead of ignoring it or going to get Coach, she goes up alone to investigate. It’s dark up there but she thinks she sees something moving at the end of the hall. A voice whispers “Hello. Who’s there?”.
Delle is creeping nearer when a light shines in her eyes and blinds her. She’s slammed into the wall hard enough that she starts to lose consciousness. It seems like a slow process because she hears someone say “Before I’m through, you’ll be glad to die.” before she passes out completely.
{{{Note from me: Why haven't we had more chapters from Susan's perspective? I kept expecting to switch back to her but we're almost at the end of the book and we've stayed in Delle's head the entire time. Did Hoh just include that head hop to make us suspicious of Susan? There are a million better ways to do that.}}}
When Delle comes to, Susan is there. She says she heard a noise and came up to look which seems odd considering she couldn’t even open her own door earlier. Where did the sudden bravery come from, Susan? Hoh never was good at character consistency. Susan has a flashlight with her so Delle takes it and shines the light down the hall. Someone is laying down there. Susan wants to go get Coach but Delle wants to investigate. It turns out to be Jennifer. One of her crutches is snapped and there’s blood on the side of her head.
Delle tells Susan to get help but Jennifer frantically says she’s fine. The blood is just coming from her ear where her earring was somehow torn out. They take Jennifer back to her room and ask her what happened. Jennifer says she got a note from Rory asking her to meet him upstairs at midnight. He wasn’t there when she arrived. Instead LIR appeared and Jennifer tried to get away. Her crutches went out from under her and she fell, breaking one of them.
So how did your earring get torn out?
Also, I guess we’re supposed to assume the footsteps that Delle originally heard were Jennifer but she didn’t hear the thump of the crutches or the sound of Jennifer falling?
Make it make sense, Hoh.
Susan and Delle go back to their rooms. Delle tries to get some sleep but she just keeps thinking about everything that has happened. Essentially she reviews the book for us and then goes over the entire cast and tells us that they all could have done it but she doesn’t know how or why. It’s so pointless.
The next morning, Mojo comes to wake Delle up so she isn’t late for tryouts. They eat and then head for the gym. There’s a pretty big crowd already gathered. Apparently a lot of people have showed up to watch the tryouts. A panel of judges sits behind a table with Rory and Marla who don’t get a vote but can offer their opinions.
Delle makes it past the first two eliminations and into the finals. She does well and feels like the judges are responding positively to her. When the team is announced, Delle, Mojo and Greg all make the squad. Susan and Charles are named alternates.
I could totally see Charles going all Gillooly on someone to get a spot.
There’s a memorial ceremony that evening in the gym to remember the dead cheerleaders and to announce the new squad. It feels a little insensitive to me to do both at the same event. Delle feels uneasy the entire time and has a bit of a panic attack but she makes it through. They’re nearing the end when people start to smell smoke. Flames start burning through the far wall of the gym. People rush for the doors but they’re locked. Panic takes over. The cheerleaders do some stupid cheer…you know, I’m just going to post a picture of it.
That was.....so, so stupid.
People start to calm down because of the magic cheer but panic breaks out again when the lights go out.
Coach appears on the catwalk overhead cackling that they’re all going to die. For some reason, Greg and Delle both climb up the bleachers to confront her despite all fire education telling you to stay low out of the smoke. Greg starts to look for a way onto the catwalk….for some reason….while Delle distracts Coach by asking her why she’s doing this. Coach goes into her bad guy monologue. One of the dead JV cheerleaders was her brother. When he died, she developed a deep hatred for cheerleaders and decided to get revenge.
Revenge on who? On an entire gym full of people who had nothing to do with the accident? How does that make sense? This motive is SUPER weak, Hoh. She just hates cheerleaders so she’s killing an entire gymnasium of people who aren’t cheerleaders? People who came to pay respect to her brother and his teammates? Yeah, maybe it was insensitive to also introduce the new squad but she doesn’t even mention that as part of her motive. She just keeps saying she hates cheerleaders.
Sigh.
Whatever.
Delle sees a flash of red as LIR appears on the catwalk. I guess she really was a ghost the entire time.
Coach sees her too and is so startled that she falls off the catwalk to her convenient death. Just as conveniently, the firefighters arrive at that exact moment and save everyone. Coach is the only casualty. Delle thinks back to all the LIR appearances and realizes that LIR was trying to save people, not terrorize them. She think that LIR can be at peace now. I don’t know why. Killing coach doesn’t exactly negate the fact that LIR died young in a fire.
Whatever.
The book ends there. I feel kind of let down by the ending. It didn’t really make sense. If it had been Charles all along trying to scare people away so he’d make the team and then deciding to set the entire thing on fire because he was only named an alternate, THAT would have made some sense. Same with Susan. Coach just hating cheerleaders was the dumbest motive ever. Maybe if it was proven that Rory or Jennifer caused the accident, she would have some reason to hate them and want revenge on them but that wasn’t the case. It was a stupid ending to a meh book.
At least it didn’t feature The Wizard. That was dumber.
I missed Jess and Ian though. I hope they’re back for the next one.
No comments:
Post a Comment