**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: “Please help...Our parents are missing!” What would you do if your parents didn’t come home, didn’t call, left no note? At first, Mark and Cara Burroughs aren’t terribly alarmed. Their parents have stayed out late before. But then other things start to go wrong. Mark’s girlfriend Gena breaks up with him and suddenly disappears. The police don’t seem at all interested in finding Mark and Cara’s parents. And their mysterious cousin who boards with them seems to be spying on their every move! When murder strikes, Mark and Cara learn their terror is only beginning. Someone wants them to disappear too! But why? The answer lies deep in the Fear Street Woods. But will they live long enough to find it?
📢TRIGGER WARNING📢: Stine kills a dog in this book and it really wasn’t necessary. It rarely is. If that’s something you are sensitive to, please skip this blog.
This book was published in 1990 and this is my first time reading it. It’s part of the massive Fear Street universe but very few of these books are connected so you can read almost all of them in any order. The cover is….interesting. The guy looks like he came out of a very low-budget production of Grease and I have no idea what the girl is wearing. Is it a skirt over jeans? Overalls with the bib part hanging down? A backwards flannel? I have no clue.
We begin with Cara and Mark having a party because their parents aren’t home. They’ve only been in Shadyside for a couple of months and they don’t really know all that many people so they weren’t expecting to have an entire houseful of teenagers over, but parties have a way of growing and now things are pretty out of hand.
Mark is dating a girl named Gena. His parents don’t approve of her but they won’t tell him why.
She’s not his sister is she?
He and his parents had a huge fight over breakfast about Gena. They told him to stop seeing her. He refused. They yelled. He went outside to shoot some arrows which is apparently something he does when he’s upset. I’m sure that’s gong to end up being important later since Stine included it in his chapter one info dump.
Someone knocks on the door and Cara goes to answer it. It’s a man in regular clothes driving a regular car who identifies himself as Captain Farraday with the Shadyside police. Cara thinks he’s there about the noise but he says there was a robbery in the area and he wonders if she’s seen anything suspicious. She tells him she wouldn’t really recognize if a stranger was in the neighborhood because they just moved to Fear Street a couple of months ago and they don’t really know all their neighbors. He asks if her parents are home and she says they’re working late. He give her his card and leaves.
Odds Farraday is really a cop: 50%
Cara goes back into the living room to find the party is oddly subdued. Some random guy named Cory tells her he puked all over the living room floor. Cara can instantly tell the puke is one of those rubber gag items and she picks it up and throws it at him. Then she tells everyone they have to leave. It’s getting late and her parents will probably be home at any time. Besides, the police have already been here once and she doesn’t want them coming back. People start to file out. Gena is one of the last to leave. She spent most of the party sitting on Mark’s lap making out.
Cara and Mark start to clean up. She’s still sure their parents are going to be home. Mark points out that they’ve stayed out all night before. Not only are they weirdly dedicated to their jobs – they install computer mainframes – but they’re very social. Despite moving every few months, they always join a lot of clubs and things as soon as they arrive in town so they’re always away from home.
Despite pointing out that this isn’t exactly unusual behavior for their parents, Mark suddenly does a 180 and starts to worry that they might be lost in the Fear Street Woods for some reason. The woods are across from the house and everyone in town knows that weird things happen in there. He wonders if they took a walk and then couldn’t find their way back. Cara thinks this is stupid. She’s still sure they’re at work so she picks up the phone to call them. The line is dead.
The way these two flop back and forth is confusing. First Cara was worried that something weird happened and Mark was dismissive and then Mark was worried something weird happened and Cara says they're probably just at work. Pick a personality for your characters and stick with it, Stine.
They hear footsteps upstairs and both freak out. Somehow they forgot that there’s another person living with them. Their mom’s distant cousin Roger has been boarding with them since they moved to Shadyside. He’s in college and he mainly keeps to his room which is located in the attic. Cara tells us that he’s model-handsome but super shy and quiet. She also tells us that this isn’t the first time her parents have taken a boarder. In a lot of the towns they live in, her parents take in male college students.
Roger asks about Mr and Mrs Burroughs and is concerned when he hears that they haven’t come home. He asks the kids if they checked the parents’ bedroom and Cara notes that he seems unusually nervous. Roger goes back upstairs. Cara and Mark dither a bit and then decide to go check the room in case their parents left them some kind of note.
Why would they leave a note in their own bedroom?
These kids aren’t the ripest bananas in the bunch.
Cara screams as soon as she sees the bed.
{{{GASP}}}
We hop into Mark’s head. He’s irritated with Cara for screaming simply because the bed is unmade. She says she thought it was signs of a struggle but he says the parents clearly just left without making it that morning. This reminds him of the fight over breakfast and he gets upset all over again. He can’t believe that his parents wouldn’t even give him a reason for wanting him to break up with Gena. She’s super hot and he really likes kissing her.
Cara suddenly points to a pair of shoes underneath the curtains. He goes to investigate and finds Roger standing at the window, behind the curtain, staring outside.
Roger says he came in to look for a note since it didn’t seem like Cara and Mark were going to. He thought he saw something outside and he stepped behind the curtains to look. Mark asks why he didn’t say anything when they came in and he says he didn’t hear them. The curtains are so heavy they blocked the sound.
One, it’s completely weird behavior to step behind a curtain to look outside rather than just moving it. Two, Cara fucking screamed about the bed and Mark had to calm her down. Is he trying to say he didn’t hear that? Clearly he was hiding from them.
He has some kind of black box in his hand. When Cara asks about it, he says it’s his Walkman.
Odds that it’s a walkman: < 0%
Roger leaves to go back up to the attic. Mark looks outside and sees a gray van parked across the street. There are no houses over there – just the woods – so it’s weird that someone is parked there. While he’s staring at the van, Cara is searching the room. Just under the bed she finds a small white replica of a monkey’s skull with gemstones for eyes. It feels cold to the touch which makes them both think there’s something supernatural about it.
They both head to bed but Mark doesn’t sleep well. He’s worried about his parents and still thinking about making out with Gena. Typical teenage boy stuff. In the middle of the night he hears a weird howling from the woods. He goes to the window to see Roger run from the house to the gray van and get inside. When he turns back toward his bed he sees the monkey skull on his nightstand. He doesn’t remember bringing it back to his room.
He decides to go search Roger’s room. He’s standing in the hall at the base of the attic stairs when Roger comes up behind him. Mark pretends he was headed to the bathroom even though he’s nowhere near it. He asks where Roger was and Roger says he couldn’t sleep so he went for a walk. They both head to their rooms.
We skip to the next morning. Still no sign of the parents. Mark tells Cara about seeing Roger get into the gray van. Cara doesn’t believe him at first and then says they should just go ask Roger about it. They go to the attic and knock but there’s no response. They go in and search the room. All of the notebooks on the desk are completely empty and none of the textbooks have been touched. Cara finds a loaded gun in Roger’s underwear drawer.
We’re back in Cara’s head now. They put the gun back where they found it and go back downstairs. The phone is still dead so Cara heads off to a neighbor’s to use hers. Mrs Fisher looks shocked and nervous when she hears that Cara’s parents never returned home the night before. She asks where they work and when Cara responds ‘Cranford Industries’, Mrs Fisher asks if they work for the “federal government”. Cara says they just install computers. Mrs Fisher asks why they didn’t move to Cranford instead of Shadyside and Cara replies that her parents must have thought the schools were better in Shadyside or something.
This is a lot of personal questions. Cara just asked to use the phone for fuck’s sake.
Cara finally gets to use the phone and she calls her parents’ direct line. No one answers. She calls the phone company to report the outage and then thanks Mrs Fisher and heads back home. As she’s passing the garage, she notices that the car is still parked inside it. She wonders if her parents ever left for work the morning before.
Cara and Mark decide to skip school and drive to Cranford Industries to see if they can find their parents there. At the end of the block they see the gray van again. Mark pulls up alongside it and gets the attention of the driver (a blonde dude). Mark asks if he’s waiting for Roger but the guy denies knowing who Roger is.
They get to Crandford Industries and check in with security. They’re taken to a receptionist who offers to look up the Burroughs. Cara peeks at the screen and doesn’t see her parents’ names listed anywhere. The receptionist tells them that they must have made a mistake because no one named Burroughs works there. The kids continue to insist and the receptionist begins to call around to see if she can get some info.
Are the Burroughs thieves? Is that why they move around so much and why they always have young men boarding with them? Are they running a burglary ring?
The receptionist keeps running into dead ends. Eventually word gets to the CEO and he asks to meet with Mark and Cara. They go to his office and repeat their story. He says not only have they never employed anyone named Burroughs but they aren’t even having computers installed at their facility.
We’re back with Mark. He and Cara drive back to Shadyside and try to process what they’ve learned. Cara suggests calling the police again but they decide they want to talk to Roger first for some reason. They go to school and use the pay phone to call the house. Roger answers and says he still hasn’t seen any sign of their parents. He rushes off before they can ask him anything.
They just end up going to the rest of their classes like nothing’s happened. Mark can’t find Gena all day and he’s pretty bummed about it because he was hoping to sneak in some more kissing. He calls her as soon as he gets home and she’s crying when she comes to the phone. She says something to him and he asks her why she’s doing this but we don’t get clued in.
Back with Cara. She comes home later that evening. I have no idea where she’s been and Stine doesn’t bother to tell us. She finds Mark sitting in the dark and he’s clearly been crying. He doesn’t want to tell her what’s going on at first but eventually admits that Gena broke up with him. She didn’t give him a reason. He tried to go to her house to talk to her but she wouldn’t see him and her dad turned him away.
Cara is confused and feels there has to be more to the story. Gena was all over Mark the night before and they didn’t even see or talk to each other today so it’s weird that she’d suddenly end things. She tries to express this to Mark but he’s too volatile so she walks away to call Farraday. I don’t know why she chooses him instead of just dialing the station directly but we move. He answers and she tells him that her parents never came home. She mentions the issue with Crandford Industries and Farrady promises to look into it. He tells Cara that there haven’t been any reports of an accident or anything so there’s every reason to assume the Burroughs are okay. As she’s hanging up, she hears a click and realizes Roger was listening in on the upstairs extension.
Do y’all think Roger is an undercover cop or something? Maybe he’s investigating the Burroughs and reporting in to whoever is in the gray van? He feels more like a cop than Farraday does.
Odds Farraday is really a cop: 25%
Back with Mark. Cara tells him about Roger eavesdropping. A second later, Roger comes downstairs and Cara confronts him. He denies listening in and says that maybe there’s still something wrong with the line.
Maybe it’s bugged. Maybe the guy in the gray van is listening in.
Mark confronts him about the gray van and Roger denies that too. Mark asks about the gun. This time Roger gets pissed because they’ve clearly been searching his room. He says the gun belonged to his dad who died in the line of duty as a police officer. The gun is all he has left of his father. He leaves the house. Mark believes his explanation about the gun. Cara does not. She decides to follow him.
The phone rings. It’s Gena. She sounds terrified. She says she has to tell him something important. Then he hears the sounds of a struggle and she cries out before the line goes dead.
Mark wants to get to Gena’s fast so he decides to go through the Fear Street Woods. Apparently Gena’s house is on the other side. It’s cold and dark but he’s determined to get to her as fast as possible. Naturally his flashlight starts to die when he’s about halfway through the woods and suddenly he starts thinking of every story he’s ever heard about the creepy things that happen there. He hears footsteps behind him and he starts to run. The chapter ends as he falls into a trap.
Back with Cara. She follows Roger to a coffee shop in town. She watches as he sits in a booth with the blonde man from the gray van. They appear to be having an intense conversation with lots of frowning and table pounding. Roger draws something out for the other man that Cara assumes is a map.
Roger ends up catching her because she’s really bad at this. He introduces the blonde man as his faculty advisor which makes no sense at all since the man denied knowing Roger earlier that day. Cara plays along though. She leaves and heads for home. At some point on the walk, she realizes that she’s being followed.
Here’s where our trigger warning comes in, y’all. If you don’t to read about it, skip until you see the SAFE AHEAD graphic.
We’re back with Mark. The trap was a hole covered with leaves just like you see in all the cartoons. It’s only about six foot deep so he has no issues crawling back out. {{{What is the point of a trap that shallow? This makes no fucking sense, Stine.}}} He’s brushing himself off when a dog springs up out of nowhere and attacks him. They tussle for a bit and then Mark ends up getting his arms around the dog’s neck. Instead of throwing it down into the hole or something, he snaps its neck and kills it.
Seriously, Stine. That wasn’t necessary. I hate it when authors throw in an animal death just for shock value.
Mark finds one of the monkey heads attached to the dogs collar and the remnants of a chain. The rest of the chain is near the trap so it’s clear the dog was meant to keep people away from something.
Mark makes it to Gena’s yard and starts to climb the trellis outside her bedroom window. He slips halfway up and falls, cutting his hand pretty badly.
Back with Cara. The car that’s following her belongs to Farraday. He gets out and says he was on the way to her house to get a photograph of her parents to attach to the missing person’s report. He offers her a ride and she gets in. She notes that the police radio is the only sign that this is a police car.
I mean, it probably isn’t, Cara. Anyone can buy a police radio. I really don’t think this guy is a cop.
Cara tells him about Roger and the gray van and the monkey head. He asks if he can take the head to the lab so they can run tests on it.
On a fake monkey skull with gems for eyes?
What the hell would you be testing it for?
This is dumb and Cara’s too dumb to even recognize how dumb it is.
Odds Farraday is really a cop: 2%
Cara goes inside but she can’t find the monkey skull. She gets a picture of her mom and dad for Farraday. He doesn’t even ask about the monkey skull which just proves it was never important for him to run tests on it. He leaves. Cara searches the house for Mark. Suddenly a car pulls into the drive.
We’re back with Mark. He falls to the ground and gets the wind knocked out of him. When he recovers, he climbs back up again. He manages to get Gena’s bedroom window open and he crawls inside. The room is empty. There’s a sock on the floor by her bed and he grabs it to wrap around his hand. As he does, he finds another one of those bejeweled monkey skulls half under her bed. He picks it up, paranoid that it’s following him around somehow. For some reason he shoves it in his pocket. If I thought an object was cursed, there’s no way I’d put it on my person but we move. Suddenly the door opens and Gena’s father appears with a gun.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
He just thought Mark was a robber. When he sees who it is, he tosses the gun down on Gena’s bed. He’s really nice about Mark sneaking into his house and tells him that he understands that young love is difficult but Gena needs time to herself. She’s gone to stay with a cousin for a few days. He escorts Mark out the front door.
We’re back with Cara. The car in the driveway belongs to her friend Lisa who needs help studying for an exam. Cara fills her in on everything. Lisa offers to let Cara and Mark stay at her house until their parents come back. Cara is touched but declines. They study for a bit and then Lisa leaves. Cara decides she’d feel safer if Roger didn’t have access to his gun, so she goes upstairs to get it. It’s gone.
We’re back with Mark and it’s the next day after school. Cara tries to call Farraday but the line is dead again. Suddenly she remembers her parents have a friend named Wally who they go bowling with sometimes. He also works at Cranford Industries. They look through a phone book to get his address and then head out for his house. He lives in the next town over.
On the way, they concoct a story about hanging out with some friends in town and being late getting home. They’ll ask him to use his phone to call the parents at work and see what he says. It’s kind of a dumb plan but most of the adults in a Stine book are pretty stupid so it should work.
Wally seems happy to see them when he opens the door. He asks how the Burroughs are and says he hasn’t seen them in a couple of weeks because he’s been working in a different area. Either he’s in on the lie the parents told the kids or they really did work for CI. The kids tell their story and ask if Wally has the number for the direct line in their parents’ shared office. He says he doesn’t but he has a Crandford Industries phone directory. He gives it to them and, sure enough, the parents are listed as employees.
This phone directory must be brand spankin’ new because the Burroughs have only worked there two months.
Also, I guess the CEO was lying.
When they get home, the gray van is outside again. They notice the lights in their bedrooms and in their parents’ room are on so they go upstairs to check it out. Nothing seems weird. They go up to talk to Roger. He doesn’t answer when they knock so they just go right in. He’s sitting at his desk with an arrow protruding from his back.
Oh, and he's dead.
RIP Roger. 💀
Farraday jumps out from behind the door holding Mark’s bow. He accuses Mark of killing Roger.
Dude, he wouldn’t be touching that thing with his bare hands if he was really a cop. Also, why is he in the house?
We’re back in Mark’s head again. Farraday ushers them downstairs into the living room instead of taking Mark into custody. Mark asks why he’s in the house and Farraday says he came over to talk to Cara and, when no one answered the door, he came inside to see if everything was okay.
I get that a lot of teenagers don’t know when a police officer can enter the home without a warrant. They really should teach this in school. For Farraday to enter their home, he would need to prove exigent circumstances (hot pursuit, imminent danger, evidence being actively destroyed) or that he saw something in plain sight that indicated a crime had been committed. Otherwise he needs a warrant or permission. Simply not getting an answer when he knocked isn’t exigent circumstances. He is definitely not a cop.
While they’re sitting there, the blonde man from the gray van bursts into the house with a gun. He tells everyone to get against the wall. Farraday just hauls off and shoots him.
He's dead too.
RIP blonde man. 💀💀
The kids are in shock but Farraday just calmly says that he’s going to telephone for backup. He uses the phone on the desk.
The phone that doesn’t work?
Mark has possession of the brain cell and realizes Farraday couldn’t have made the call on a dead line. He stupidly decides to jump him despite the fact that the man has clearly killed two people. Farraday quickly pulls his gun on Mark and demands to know where the Burroughs are. He admits to killing Roger like we couldn’t figure that out on our own. Cara is stunned. She says she really believed he was a cop. He says he used to be until the Burroughs ruined his life. Cara asks why he killed Roger and Farraday says that Roger was snooping around too much.
I still think Roger is undercover law enforcement of some kind.
When the kids don’t tell him where to find the Burroughs, Farraday threatens to shoot one of them to refresh the other’s memory.
Gena appears with a rifle. She tells Mark and Cara to hurry up because the “meeting” is about to happen. Farraday aims his gun at her but she shoots the wall beside his head and he decides to drop it. They lock him in the garage but they don’t take his gun which was just stupid.
Gena leads them through the woods. They see flickering lights up ahead and Mark realizes it’s candles. Gena whispers that they need to get some robes from her house before the meeting gets started.
Did Stine just throw a cult at us? I was not expecting that.
To be fair, I didn't exactly expect piranhas either and that happened once.
We’re back with Cara. There are a lot of people in the clearing wearing brown robes and carrying black candles. I assume the CEO is probably one of them. They go to Gena’s basement and get matching robes. I have no idea why she has so many extras. She tells Mark that her dad made her break up with him because she discovered what The Brotherhood had planned for his parents.
Yup. Definitely a cult.
They put on the robes and Gena tells them to make sure the hoods cover their faces. She has to leave the rifle behind because there’s no way to hide it. This is why they should have grabbed Farraday’s gun. They go out to the clearing and join everyone else. Cara sees that two of the people are wearing white monkey skull masks. To her horror, the masks are removed to reveal her parents.
I guess I was wrong about them heading a burglary ring. Damn.
Cara assumes that they’re the leaders of the cult even though they’re clearly being held in front of the group by others.
This one is really dumb, y’all.
Back with Mark. A man comes to the front and Mark recognizes him as the CEO. He starts to make a speech about how The Brotherhood of the White Monkey are going to take America back from the criminals in government and their communities back from the criminals on the street.
Oh! Does that mean my burglary ring theory was right after all? They’re taking Shadyside back from the criminal Burroughs???
CEO pulls out a knife and says The Brotherhood of the White Monkey is “merciless to traitors”. He makes Mr Burroughs kneel and put his head on a stump. Mark and Cara finally clue into the fact that their parents aren’t cult members. They’re sacrifices. CEO demands that Mr B admits to betraying the Brotherhood. He refuses to say anything. Mark decides to create a diversion by throwing the monkey’s skull he has in his pocket at the CEO.
Wait.
He put that thing in his pocket like at least a day ago. It might be two. He’s just had it in his pocket the entire time? And he hasn’t changed his jeans? I mean, I wear mine more than once but I wouldn’t keep a big ass monkey skull in my pocket for multiple days. That would be uncomfortable.
Anyway, he misses.
We’re back with Cara. The missed throw serves as a distraction and the Burroughs spring into action. They manage to subdue the CEO and the other man who is holding them. The cult members either freeze or flee. Mr B manages to get a gun and he holds it to the CEO’s head and shouts: “You’re under arrest! FBI!”
Damn it! The burglary ring was definitely wrong. I thought I was onto something.
Cult members run off in all directions. I guess it doesn’t matter because the Burroughs can probably identify them. Gena’s dad approaches with his hands up. He says he tried to stop the CEO but he was afraid they might hurt Gena. He did convince the CEO not to harm Mark and Cara though. Mr B sarcastically thanks him and then puts him under arrest.
The Burroughs family reunites and there’s an info dump. Roger and the blonde man were both FBI agents helping the Burroughs investigate the Brotherhood. {{{I KNEW IT!!!}}} Farraday was a crooked cop they put away for racketeering who had apparently been paroled or something. He had nothing to do with the Brotherhood. He was just out for revenge.
Back with Mark. A few days after the events in the woods, they’re packing up to move to another town and another case. Gena stops by to say goodbye. She’s going to be leaving Shadyside as well to stay with her aunt until her father is released. Mark is sad that they won’t be able to make out anymore. The book just ends there.
This one wasn’t bad. I obviously didn’t have it figured out and that's always nice. I know it's weird but I hate it when I figure it out. It means it was predictable. Say what you want about Stine but he always takes you a little sideways.
I’m not forgiving him for the dog, though. That was unnecessary.
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