13 Tales of Horror - Various

What's better than one Point Horror story?



THIRTEEN Point Horror stories, that's what.

First off, for the most part, this anthology is fucking awesome and I am extremely grateful it was suggested. Sure there are a few stinkers in here, but I'm pretty sure I had this book and loved it at the time as well. Oh God, I can't even joke about this, it is so seriously good. Let's get into it.

Oh, and to keep in the spirit of short stories, I'll provide a one sentence synopsis at the bottom of each recap.

Collect Call – Christopher Pike

Janice Adams likes Bobby Walker. Caroline Spencer also likes Bobby Walker. Caroline Spencer is a cheerleader. Janice Adams is NOT a cheerleader. This one opens at party – most definitely a Christopher Pike party. I mean, the kids are drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and talking about penises. My invite must have gotten lost in the post.

Janice manages to corner Bobby, who is of the slicked back black hair, tight black jeans, leather jacket and deathly cold breath variety of bad boy.




Unfortunately, Bobby calls Caroline over to join their chat, which makes Janice feel , well, feel as if “I look like a bookmark next to her.” Which is sort of weird.

So, it’s Caroline’s birthday and Bobby gives her a tape cassette by a singer called The Black Walker. Aren’t band names in books just the cringiest thing ever? According to Bobby, “The Black Walker doesn’t prostitute himself. You can feel him but you can’t see him. He’s never been on TV.” Sounds like The Black Walker needs a better publicist.

The party ends, Bobby’s left, and circumstances dictate that Janice has to give Caroline a ride home.

Here’s a weird sentence for you to mull over. “Caroline shrugged, staring forward, her head bowed slightly as if she were wearing a fat hat.” What the fuck? A FAT hat?



(that picture is going to give me terrible nightmares)


Anyway, Caroline and Jan decide to listen to The Black Walker tape. According to Christopher Pike, the lyrics are “powerful stuff.” Here’s a sample so you can judge for yourself:

“This is my night, this is your night.
I’m a black walker, babe.
Touch me softly and you get a fright.”

Oh right, I didn’t realise The Black Walker was, like, a 12 year old girl. The concept of a fat hat has affected me far more deeply and cruelly than these lyrics ever will. Jan starts being nasty to Caroline and, predictably, the girls start arguing over Bobby. Caroline ends up punching Jan in the face, which is pretty stupid considering Jan is trying to drive the car.

They crash off a cliff or something and the tape turns itself on for a second. Spookz. Janice realises that Caroline is totally dunzo and Janice panics about drink driving and the murder and the prison. So Janice decides to move Caroline’s body into the driving seat. Yeah, that always works out well. And then the car explodes. Janice is thrown clear but she hears Caroline’s screams as she burns. Uh oh, should have checked that pulse first eh Janice. You know what they say, assume makes an ass of u and me.

Rather than trying to save Caroline, Janice just feels a bit guilty whilst waiting for her to die. Janice wakes up in hospital being questioned by a police officer. Her doctor is called Dr Please. I’m trying to figure out if this is supposed to be some sort of clever joke?

Rather than being kept in overnight or anything after this horrific accident, Janice gets taken back to her home, which naturally is 100% parent free. Creepily, there’s a message on her answering machine...from Caroline, presumably left earlier in the evening, to ask for a lift to the party. Janice goes to bed to try to forget about it...when the answer machine starts beeping again and there’s a NEW message from Caroline, begging for a ride to the party.

Caroline keeps leaving like a million messages asking for a ride, sounding angrier and angrier.



Janice decides that Caroline must have survived so she gets in her car to drive back to the hospital to check. At the hospital, she meets an old woman with a big droopy nose who tells her that the driver of the car definitely died.

Janice does exactly the same as you or I would in the same situation and heads down to the hospital morgue to double check Caroline’s dead. There’s a body bag in the morgue, but it has Jan’s name on it rather than Caroline’s. Jan isn’t panicking yet though, she’s all, “yeah man, they must have just mixed up our names, shit happens right.” But Jan doesn’t have the guts to look inside the bag and she freaks out and runs away.

In her car, The Black Walker tape has somehow made its way into the player again. Umm, but it’s something like it’s actually the tape from the answering machine? This bit is confusing and if I try and read that passage one more time I’m going to get frustrated and upset with my own limitations and start smashing shit up. I’m not very bright.

OK, so Caroline’s voice starts talking on the tape, giving Jan directions to where she has to drive, which Jan follows. Guess where Caroline directs Jan to? Yeah, that’s right, McDonalds and they eat a Big Mac and Ronald McDonald starts breakdancing and then they all make out. Oh wait, sorry, I was daydreaming about Mac and Me again. Jan actually ends up at the site of the crash.

And she sees her own car crash with her and Caroline inside it. Future Janice runs down to help the girls and pulls Caroline free. She tries to save the other girl as well, but she can’t. So Jan explodes into fire and dies or something.

This time, Caroline wakes up in hospital. And Bobby Walker is waiting outside to see her.




Whilst she waits for Bobby, Caroline decides to check the messages on her hospital phone. One is from Bobby, to check if he loved the tape and saying he’ll see her soon “if she’s still alive.” That old chestnut. Also, Caroline realises that his voice is exactly the same as The Black Walker. The second message is from Janice, blabbing on about how the fire burned off her hands and she's coming for Caroline, who I guess is dead too and this is some big eternal death circle or some other Christopher Pike style pseudo spiritual thing. Caroline starts screaming and Bobby Walker enters the room with a big ol’ shit eating grin on his face.



The end.

In conclusion, unless I'm missing something major, that story makes, like zero sense? But who cares right, sometimes it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. And baby, this was one good ride.

One sentence synopsis: These two chicks fight over this greaseball guy but then they die in a car accident and the guy turns out to be the devil or Danny Zuko or something.

Onto short story number two:

Lucinda – Lael Littke

Kate has an older brother called Brandon, whose girlfriend, Lucinda, went missing on her graduation night six years ago. Kate saw Lucinda and Brandon argue over Brandon’s relationship with a girl called Holly that night, then saw Lucinda wade out into a river, and then has blocked out whatever the fuck traumatic shit happened next because her puny human mind couldn’t deal with it.

Now Kate is 16 and Brandon is 23 and they’ve been orphaned and decided to move back to the town where it happened. Brandon is all wracked with guilt, STILL and takes Kate on some ghoulish Lucinda themed tour of the town. The lake where Lucinda presumably drowned is all dried up now, so they go for a little stroll through it. Brandon is hoping to find Lucinda’s skeleton or something. Already, I’m not so sure about Brandon.

Brandon takes Kate to the remains of a house that was under the river that Lucinda used to frequent and shows her Lucinda’s “secret place” in the basement part. It’s all snakey and ghost whispery.

Keith arrives to welcome the pair back to the town. Keith was Lucinda’s brother and supposedly he sorta maybe kinda blames Brandon for his sister’s death. Holly also rocks up, and she still has the hots for Brandon. Holly suggests that Lucinda pulled a Lord Lucan and isn’t really dead.

That night, Kate wakes up to find a puddle of water on the floor. Kate, Kate, there’s no need to be ashamed. We all have little accidents from time to time. The water drops somehow lead Kate out of her room towards the foundations of Linda’s old house. That’s some smart water drops right there.



Kate freaks out and runs away, bumping into Holly. Holly walks Kate home, but not before she points out that she can hear a ghostly voice whispering Brandon’s name. How reassuring.

At home, Kate finds Brandon huddled in the corner like a pathetic baby clutching onto a red graduation robe like the one Lucinda was wearing when she disappeared. He says that Lucinda was at the house all dripping wet and creepy and he managed to grab the robe. Brandon's mental health prognosis is not looking so good right about now.

The next day, Kate goes to search Lucinda’s “secret spot” in the river. And sees Lucinda staring there in her red graduation robe. Lucinda attacks Kate, and Kate cleverly realises that her attacker is too strong and...humany to be a ghost. And that the face is actually a porcelain mask made to look like Lucinda. Ummm OK.

The pair tussle and Kate lands on some icky brown skeleton. Kate realises that “Lucinda” is actually Holly, and Kate’s memory of what she saw 6 years ago returns – Holly attacked Lucinda with an axe in the river. Holly admits it, and says she did it because of her love for Brandon. And now she’s back dressed as Lucinda with her fancy porcelain mask so she can torture Brandon in a similar way to how he tortured her by withholding the good stuff. Jeez, these kids.

Kate manages to escape and luckily Keith also arrives in the nick of time to rescue her. So I guess that Keiths are good for something after all.

Conclusion: this one was boring.

I’ve decided to write my one sentence synopsis for this one in the form of an awesome haiku:

If I saw a ghost

I’d be smart enough to check

That it wasn’t actually a vengeful ex-girlfriend wearing a porcelain mask or something

(You might have noticed that I slightly fucked up the haiku at the end there. But if you say it fast enough it sorta works)


The Guiccioli Miniature – Jay Bennett

This one is set in Venice. You can tell because the first paragraph manages to mention the Piazza San Marco, St Mark’s canal, San Giorgio Island and gondolas. Lots and lots of gondolas.

Jerry is an American tourist in Venice who’s approached by another American man who isn’t looking so hot, eg he’s all stubbly and gross. Stubbly tramp man persuades Jerry to buy a miniature from him that he’s painted. Uh oh. We’re in the second paragraph now and already I fear that this miniature is going to come with some sort of curse that means Jerry will take the Stubbly Tramp’s place wandering the streets of Venice alone for all eternity until he can find another gullible American tourist to buy the miniature.

Anyway, this miniature is a copy of the Guiccioli miniature. It’s of a very beautiful woman, who was apparently Byron’s beezatch number one back in the day.

Jerry goes for a walk and thinks about the miniature and about Bryon and imagines people are following him and starts having a panic attack like a stupid great big girl. So, clearly following the same curse-y line of reasoning as me, he decides to be done with it and throw the painting in a canal (in case you may have forgotten, Jerry is in Venice.)

On the plane back to America the next day, Jerry reads a newspaper article. The old stubbly tramp man is on the front page. He’s dead, because he stole the ACTUAL Guiccioli miniature, which is, like, priceless, and then double crossed his partners and now they’ve tracked him down and killed him. Jerry realises that he is a fucking idiot. The end.

Conclusion – how the hell did this story find its way into a Point Horror anthology.Seriously.

One sentence synopsis:

Yeah, I went there. I used the lolcat.


Blood Kiss – D.E. Athkins

(yessssss, a D.E. Athkins one!)

Elizabeth is with her friends Delia and Valerie, who together are perving over the new boy Ken. He’s aptly named as well, since he apparently looks like a Ken doll.



Ummm, hot, I guess? He also wears dark glass and “long, long coats that looked somehow from another century” so he’s totally rocking Columbine chic.

Elizabeth is totes in love with him, despite the rumours that he’s a vampire. And the fact that she sees herself as kind of a clumsy dweeb. Hmmmm, I wonder if S Meyer is a secret D.E. Athkins fan.

Elizabeth even goes so far as to research vampires, I guess so they could have something to talk about? Like, "hey, you know what I really hate? Garlic. Garlic and crosses." "No way? Me too!" "We have so much in common!" "Let's make out now." *slurp slurp slurp*

Ken gets all these smokin’ girlfriends, but they never last and the break ups are all kind of mysterious. Elizabeth is secretly dying of jealousy but she keeps it quiet so her friends can’t tease her.

Things get worse when her friend Delia starts flirting with Ken until one day Delia arrives at school with a scarf round her neck, although she also denies that Ken got chompy with her. Once those two break up, Ken starts dating Val. Really Elizabeth, he’s totally used goods by now. And there are other vampires in the sea.



Whilst her friends are out getting laid, Elizabeth returns to the library and discovers that some folks believe a vampire needs to bite you more than once before you can be turned. She wonders how vampires kiss each other – “Like, what did they do with their teeth? Was it like wearing glasses or having braces? Could a vampire write to Ann Landers about it?”

Elizabeth decides that Ken is just nibbling all these girls, waiting for his one true love, that he will then bite and turn into a vampire properly.

Val and Ken eventually break up, and, like all the other girls before her, she refuses to talk about it. So Elizabeth approaches Ken and he asks her out on a date. Ugh, Ken is such a man whore, forget vampirism, I’d be more scared of catching the clap.

After watching a movie, they drive up to Point and Elizabeth asks Ken if he’s really a vampire. In response, he gives her a “schoolboy nibble” on her neck. Elizabeth is crushingly disappointed, so she starts getting mad at Ken, asking if he led all the girls on by pretending be a vampire and then refusing to bite them properly. Can I just interject to say two things here – firstly a rousing What The Fuck, and secondly, I love the world that D.E.Athkins lives in. It’s just so....fabulous.

So Ken gets mad back and tells Elizabeth that all the girls liked dating a vampire at first but then they got weird about it and treated him like a pervert once he got serious. Ken is angry because he feels used. The vampire is angry because teenage girls used him. The vampire is upset by being labelled a pervert.

And Ken realises that Elizabeth is different to the other girls and she won’t be such a haemoglobin tease, so she bites his neck and drinks his blood and then is all “gimme a kiss.” Very Angela Carter...if Angela Carter were fabulous.

Conclusion - D.E.Athinks is literally the best writer that ever lived, ever. I can’t even really snark her, she’s just so damn good.

One sentence synopsis – You know Twilight? Imagine if it was actually, like, funny. And didn’t have all those uncomfortable messages about abortion and sex before marriage. And it was only 17 pages long. Yeah, it's that good.

As you may have noticed, so far I have only covered four out of the thirteen promised tales of terror. Come back soon for the remaining nine. ( I actually had to count out on my fingers to figure that out.)

The Body - Carol Ellis

No, your eyes do not deceive you...it really is a new entry. And this time I've gone for an author I have never covered before, the gloriously named Carol Ellis with her magnum opus The Body.



First things first, the silver snake stick on the front cover is bitchin.’ It’s pretty much the perfect finishing touch to my pimp suit.

So, this basically a book about tapping. Tapping and Jane Eyre. I shit you not. A significant portion of this book is passages directly quoting Jane Eyre. Hey, guess what Carol Ellis? If I wanted to read Jane Eyre, I’d have read Jane Eyre. Or maybe watched the TV serialisation.

ANYWAY, Melanie is our heroine and she’s new to town and therefore has no friends (apart from Trina but she’s boorrrriiing). Melanie gets a job reading to Lisa – Lisa is an invalid who lives in a super creepy mansion. Lisa is the same age as Melanie but she’s paralysed, confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak after a cliff falling accident she had a few months ago or whenever.

Lisa’s dad is kind of an absentee father and the housekeeper Ms Hudson is a massive bitch and she only started working at the house after Lisa had her accident. I reckon that Lisa’s dad is secretly boofing the housekeeper, you read it here first.

Melanie decides to read Lisa Jane Eyre. Here begins the wholesale copy and pasting of Jane Eyre to reach a minimum word count. Nice one, Ellis. Melanie read out the bit where Jane Eyre suspects someone is plotting against Rochester after the fiery bed incident (SPOILER ALERT!) and Lisa manages to move her arm and narrow her eyes at this passage. I fear this is going to be a very slow paced book.

Melanie discovers that the house is riddled with CCTV, so at any point, pretty much anyone could be watching them. This is probably important. Melanie also meets Jeff, Lisa’s buff gardener. He’s also new to town. HOW CONVENIENT.

Jeff tells Melanie that Lisa had the accident by falling off a cliff. But he acts all weird and shifty about it and won't go into detail. Like, yawn.

On her way out, Melanie nearly collides with another car in the driveway. The driver is Garrett, and he’s Lisa’s boyfriend. Naturally, he is also super cute. Jeff and Garrett evidently hate each other, but I sense some sexual undercurrents between them.

Melanie goes to see her boring friend Trina in the diner where Trina works. (ps, I HATE this name, every time I type it out my spell check changes it to train. CURSES.) Trina is good for something and tells Melanie that Jeff was the one who discovered Lisa. Oooh, secrets and lies.


Garrett arrives at the diner with his crew. The only other important ones are Neil and Kim, who are a couple. Neil is a jerk and he makes a big deal out of flirting with Melanie and Kim is blates jealous and staring daggers at Melanie.

Melanie finds out one more important tidbit of information from Trina – last year this college guy backpacker called Peter passed through town and indulged in some light flirting with Kim – the goss is that Neil flipped out with jealousy and punched him. Oh, and this Peter kid also had a walking stick with a silver snake curled on the top – JUST LIKE ON THE COVER! (hehe, I almost typed “snail” instead of “snake” – now that would be pretty sweet.) Anyway, I cant believe these kids still even remember this one random dude. Also, Lisa’s accident happened whilst this mysterious Peter was in town.

Next day, Melanie is back at Lisa’s place reading Jane Eyre to her. Again, Lisa starts flipping out at one of the passages, Well, I say “flipping out”. For Lisa, flipping out pretty much consists of slightly moving her hand. Which, frankly, is less exciting than it could be.

Melanie and Lisa also work out a code: Lisa will blink once for yes and twice for no. When Melanie starts blabbing to everyone she knows about the code, Lisa’s friends fail to believe it. In fact, Garrett seems pretty pissed off about this whole communication thing and basically tells Melanie to back off.

Melanie agrees to go get something to eat with Jeff. Like, a DATE! And because of some stupid dream she had that I didn’t bother to bore you with she feels like she’s doing something incredibly dangerous and exciting.

Jeff tells her about when he found Lisa after her fall off the cliff. How romantic. It’s pretty standard, but Melanie is sure that he’s holding something back.

Later that night, Melanie gets her Jane Eyre on again and marks the passages in the book where Lisa was trying to communicate with her. Oh God, please don’t make me describe them.

Next time at Lisa’s, there’s a message inside Jane Eyre: “If you want to keep reading, be careful who you talk to.” Maybe it’s from Charlotte Bronte and she’s pissed that her novel is being used in this shitty little book for teenagers. But Melanie reckons it's Kim, the jealous girlfriend. Melanie also finally realises that whatever Lisa is trying to tell her, Lisa needs it to be kept secret.

Just before going on a bowling date with Jeff, Melanie goes through the Jane Eyre clues AGAIN, using her mad sleuthing skillz to figure out that Lisa was trying to tell her that a stranger with large black eyes had plotted against her and frightened her. Melanie decides that this may refer to Jeff. Melanie sure is keen to write Jeff off.

At home, Melanie gets a crank call from the note writer. The voice starts off high, thin and breathy like a little girl, before becoming deep and guttural. That’s so hot.

Jeff picks up Melanie up and Melanie is shitting herself that he’s going to kill her because of the random crappy little clues that she’s managed to use her one functioning brain cell to string together.

Back at home there’s a message for Melanie painted in red nail polish across the door: “Be careful Melanie, I know what you’re doing.” Naturally, despite worrying that the mystery author MAY ACTUALLY STILL BE IN HER HOUSE, Melanie doesn’t call the police. And she still thinks Kim is responsible.

Melanie sees Kim at the diner and confronts her. Kim does not appear to know what the hell Melanie is talking about.

Melanie tells Trina that Lisa is trying to tell her a secret, private message. Gee, for something that’s so private and secret, Melanie sure does tell an awful lot of people about it.

Later, at Lisa’s house, Melanie and Lisa sit outside and through the power of blinking, Lisa confirms that She DOES indeed want to tell Melanie something, and that it IS indeed top secret information. Melanie realises she’s left her book in the car and runs back to get it. And a tree branch nearly falls on Lisa that Jeff is sawing down. Melanie only just manages to move Lisa out the way. Umm, that was lucky I guess.

Jeff is all, ooooopsie, sorry, I was up the tree with the chainsaw and I didn’t see where the branch was going to land. This shit is like catnip to Melanie.

Garret shows up, as usual and Melanie is all, why do you always show up during reading time? Maybe YOU’RE the one leaving all these hideoso messages. Garrett denies it convincingly, and points the finger of blame towards Jeff. Because Melanie is incapable of thinking for herself she decides that Jeff is suspect number one.

At home, Melanie read though the Jane Eyre quotes again. AGAIN! FUCK!

On her way home from a babysitting job, someone tries to run Melanie over. Tragically, they fail. Trina shows up and once again Melanie confides in her. Trina comes up with a plan for Melanie to get more info AND foil the security cameras – tape some questions inside a magazine and show them to Lisa, then let the blinking do its magic. The first question she has is “Was there a crime?” That is such a dumb question that I think it’s actually just given me renal failure.

Next day, there’s a mudslide by the cliff (?) so Melanie has to go some weird long way around to get to Lisa’s house. Her car breaks down and she decides to walk through the forest to the house. As you can no doubt imagine, it is a jittery journey. Eventually Melanie comes to a clearing and finds the remains of a campfire, which is evidently where that guy Peter with the silver snake stick camped.

Melanie realises this as she finds the silver snake stick. Melanie reckons that Peter must have been killed and he’s buried somewhere round here. Well, I guess that’s as good a hypothesis as any. Melanie figures out that Lisa had been running from something in the forest when she fell off the cliff. I sure am glad that the police obviously did such a thorough examination of the area where Lisa was found. Oh wait a minute. This is a Point Horror book. Who calls the police?! Losers that’s who! Losers and fatties.

Melanie arrives at the house and Garrett is there. In the room with Lisa and Garrett, Lisa starts frantically doing her tapping thing and Melanie realises that Garrett is the one that Lisa is afraid of. Garrett basically admits that yes, he is the villain.

Garrett tells Melanie that after Neil punched snake stick Peter, Lisa offered to let him sleep on her property since its so big and all. Garrett and Neil went to visit him to try and get him to leave. Neil was still angry about Peter flirting with Kim and Garret was in a lousy mood since Lisa had told him that she wanted to break up with him. So Neil and Garrett ended up beating Peter to death. Oh Peter, we barely knew ye.

Lisa witnessed Garrett deliver the fatal blow with a rock, and Garrett needs to make sure she keeps her damn fool mouth shut.

Garret pulls out a knife , forcing Melanie to wheel Lisa outside so he can push them both off the cliff. Melanie outwits him outside by braking the wheelchair on the slope above Garrett and whispering to Lisa that she needs to release the brakes when Melanie tells her to. Melanie walks further away down the hill and tells him she’s not willing to cooperate in her own murder. Lisa is behind Garret on the hill and at Melanie’s command she releases the brakes and goes zooming towards Garret in her wheelchair. Wooo hoooo! This speeding wheelchair is probably the most exciting moment thus far. Mainly because it reminds me of that scene in The Witches with the speeding buggy. Let's just take a moment to picture it.

Anyway, Garrett gets knocked over and Melanie grabs the knife.

Conveniently, Ms Hudson and Lisa’s dadda show up with two policemen, which dad explains by saying he was worried because he tried calling and didn’t get an answer. Wait, you call the police for THAT? Oh well, its pretty handy anyway. Everything is happily resolved and Melanie completely forgets about all Jeff’s weird mood swings and suspicious behaviour that made her think he was a psycho and decides that he’s The One.

From this book I mainly learned that a stick with a silver snake on the top of it is a highly fashionable backpacking accessory. And that Jane Eyre is a much, much better book than The Body.

I must admit that one of the main reasons I chose The Body was the glowing reviews it received on Amazon. Glowing! You let me down Amazon, you let me down. But then one of the reviewers does spell the word "psychotic" as "cycotic" so perhaps I shouldn't have been too surprised when this wasn't a great piece of literature, like, say, hmmm....Jane Eyre?

I haven't decided what to do next time yet...any excellent suggestions? I really need a good one, preferably involving ghosts/zombies/icky monsters.

The Deadline

Sometimes deadlines can be...murder

OR

If deadlines could kill...

How about


Try not to miss your DEADline. Otherwise, someone might kill you. And then you'll be DEAD

Maybe not the last one.

Yeah, I've just realised how long I've been dilly-dallying in between posting and I'm shocked, shocked I tells ya. So I'll be getting my head down and churning out a new entry by early next week. Three cheers for crappy holding posts!

April Fools - Richie Tankersley Cusick

Oh, RTC, you know I can’t stay away for long. And here I am back again, unable to resist your loving arms with April Fools. And you know what? It’s pretty pretty good. If you replace the word ‘good’ with the word ‘shit’, that is. SLAM!




So, let’s set the scene – Belinda is best chums with Hildy and Frank, who are a couple. Belinda once had the hots for Frank herself but he chose Hildy. I don’t know why anyone would have the hots for Frank as he is an absolute imbecile. Exhibit A: the book opens with Belinda, Hildy and Frank driving home from an April Fool’s party (is this a thing?! How come I’ve never been invited to an April Fool’s party?!). Frank is drink driving because drink driving is totally 90s.


Upon reaching a hairpin bend, another car approaches them, honking away, and Frank decides to “give these hotshots a scare.” That’s probably the only time you’ll ever get to read the word ‘hotshot’ and the word ‘honking’ in the same sentence. W00t. And give them a scare Frank does, basically running them off the road and into a gorge. Why is there always a gorge? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a gorge.

Anyway, Belinda wants to help the people in the gorge but Hildy and Frank are all like, “Belinda! Noooo.” And the car in the gorge goes KABOOM, but not before Belinda catches a glimpse of someone burning to death in the car. And also spots a man watching the three of them from above, who suspiciously remains unresponsive to Belinda’s cries for help.

Two weeks later, Hildy and Frank are ragging on Belinda for being upset. Jesus, it’s only been 2 weeks since they basically killed a carful of people Hildy totally tries to justify it by being all, “you know Frank, he’s always joking, that was totally just a joke, and those people should have watched where they were driving, as if their fiery death was EVEN our fault” Umm, Hildy? It kinda was your fault. She even accuses Belinda of being “dramatic”, saying “you’re acting like this is some kind of huge tragedy or something,.” Speechless.

Hildy also thinks they totes did the right thing by not telling the police about the accident, because Frank would get chucked off the swim team for drink driving, and Hildy was meant to be grounded so her parents would be pissed. Yeah, and the prison thing. Don’t forget the prison thing Hildy. Hildy doesn’t believe Belinda when she says there was a man there watching them. Belinda’s worried this man’s going to come after them. I'd agree that that’s a pretty safe bet

Belinda’s super smart, so she gets hired to be a tutor by some chick called Mrs Thorne. She needs a tutor for her stepson, Adam Thorne as he’s ill. The reason he’s ill is…because of the car accident he was in 2 weeks ago. Dun dun dunn. Mrs Thorne was also in the accident and escaped with just a few bruises, together with her husband, Adam’s dad who wasn’t so lucky and is currently in a coma. She’s a really cold bitch and she makes no secret of the fact that she hates Adam and really doesn’t give a shit about him.

Belinda tells Hildy but Hildy’s a psychopath and still doesn’t understand why she should care. There’s something about that Hildy that I really like. Hildy actually finds the whole situation hilariously funny. Like, irony or whatever. Frank and Hildy both think Belinda is insane for even thinking that this could be the SAME car accident. Okay psychos, either way you’ve definitely killed someone though, right?

Hildy actually thinks it all sounds incredibly romantic and encourages Belinda to agree to tutor Adam Thorne. He might be cute, right? And Frank thinks everything’s okay because there’s no way anyone could have survived their car accident. Him and Hildy are really made for each other.

Belinda goes to meet Adam at his super swish mansion and is warned by Mrs Thorne that he’s pretty hostile. Sure enough, Adam slinks in on a walking cane and talks to her from the shadows. It's kind of a beauty and the beast type bonding moment. Pathetically, Belinda actually faints. And then as she comes round she sees his face hovering over her and he’s all covered in gashes and icky looking. Understandably, Adam’s a bit upset that she actually fainted and Belinda leaves. There’s a spark between these two through, a spark I tells ya.

On her way out of her house, Belinda meets the butler or whatever, Mr Cobbs. Its quite a dramatic meeting, given that he’s raising a bloody meat cleaver over head. But don’t worry, that has a perfectly innocent explanation I guess. She also discovers shitloads of boxes full of poisonous snakes. Sigh, rich people, eh?
Cobbs make Belinda a lovely cup of tea. She figures out that he’s English because of : “Your accent of course. And you’re very…stiff.” Well, excuuuuuse me for having manners, Miss USA.

Belinda discovers that Adam has a stepbrother called Noel, who is Mrs Thorne’s son. She also sees a picture of Adam from before the accident. He’s a hotty mctotty. “He looked beautiful and evil at the same time and Belinda’s eye filled with tears.” How romantic.

So Belinda decides to take the job, and a bunch of weird stuff starts happening to her – she finds a doll’s head covered in blood and entrails in her mailbox, she gets sent a calendar with April Fool’s day marked in blood etc etc. Belinda suspects that hilarious prankster Frank may be behind all this but he totally flips out when she confronts him and is all, “you’d better not go to the police, cos if you do….”

A couple of days later, Belinda walks through the park to get to the Thorne’s house and a “windblown leaf” makes her jump. This girl really needs to toughen up. Then she realises that she’s wearing the jacket from the night of the accident, and it has a rag she picked up that fateful night in her pocket, it’s a blood-soaked hankie with the initial A on it. Gasp! A for….Adam?

When Belinda reaches the house, Mrs Thorne’s leaving for a business trip for a few days. Adam freaks Belinda out and she runs out of his room – bumping into his step-brother Noel. Who is also a hotty mctotty, but in more of a laid back, less…DANGEROUS kind of way. Noel offers to drive Belinda home.

They talk about Adam – Noel says he really doesn’t know Adam very well – their parents only married 3 years ago and they’ve been at separate schools. Noel doesn’t even know where Adam’s mother lives. Noel says that Adam’s always been kind of weird and scary, that has nothing to do with the accident. He also tells Belinda that his own mother (Mrs Thorne) is a massive bitch who only married Adam’s dad for the money. A girl’s gotta hustle for a living, yo.

A few days later, Belinda goes back to the Thorne house and Cobbs acts all weird, and is like you should leave and never come back and Belinda kind of laughs and then he’s like, I need to shut the door now, so come in, and I’m like WTF is going on here. Cobbs is properly dry. I think he’s meant to be super witty. He’s not. Belinda decides she likes Cobbs after blabbing on to him about her problems whilst he listens politely. These Americans huh. Belinda doesn’t even bother visiting Adam. Hmmm, maybe RTC has upped the inappropriate relationship stakes and Belinda’s going to start macking with the ancient British butler.

On her walk home through the park, Belinda sees a car there “waiting for her”. This book really makes very little sense. The car doesn’t move or anything but Belinda just totally loses her shit and runs back to the Thorne house, to the safety of Cobbs. But Cobbs doesn’t open the door, Adam does.Oh yeah, he also has a snake hanging around his neck. As you do.

Belinda’s bleeding from when she spazzed out and fell over after the horror of seeing a stationary car, so Adam fixes up her cut. Adam reveals all this creepy knowledge he knows about Belinda and he’s all stroking his finger down her face and stuff, and kind of hinting that he’s seen her somewhere before and that she might have a secret and also keeps going on about how gross his accident was. What a downer.

Luckily, Noel appears and saves Belinda from the weirdness. He drives her home and she tells him that someone in a car was ‘chasing’ her (which, frankly, I think is stretching the truth.) Belinda’s suspicious that it could have been Adam in the car. Noel thinks this is a ridiculous idea as Adam can barely even walk.

Hildy arrives round at Belinda’s house, thankfully sans her douche bag boyfriend Frank this time. Belinda tells Hildy that now she’s sure that it was the same accident, and that Adam may have seen her and is now wreaking some terrible revenge. Noel arrives at Belinda’s house again like 5 minutes after dropping her off. Why? And then they spot Cobbs, standing outside the house and staring creepily inside. Never trust the British, am I right? Noel and Hildy convince Belinda that her eye(s) may have been playing tricks on her.

Noel decides to tell Belinda some stuff about Adam – Adam has a history of imaganing things and being a compulsive liar. Noel also tells her that Adam is having a delusion that someone else started the car accident. Ummm, that ain’t no delusion, bro. And Mrs Thorne doesn’t even remember what happened, she’s always on a shitlaod of pills. Buzzing her tits off, mate. Oh, there’s also some picnic thing that people keep going on about and Noel asks Belinda to be his date.

Next day, Belinda’s back at the Thorne house and she marches right up to Adam’s room, having decided not to put up with any more of his creepy shit. She’s all, turn on the lights, yo! I feel so empowered! Adam’s all creepy as usual, and the bloody handkerchief that Belinda found in her pocket about a million years ago falls out her pocket. And Adam, sees it, and we knows that he knows that this means Belinda was definitely at the accident. Or something.

Belinda freaks out and uses the phone to call a cab. She overhears Adam on the phone to his dad’s doctor, and he’s all, when’s the old guy gonna hurry up and die? And basically drops massive hints that he’s going to kill his dad somehow. This kid’s not even TRYING to act sane.

At the picnic, Belinda and Noel are all laughter and joy. They suck face. Noel drives Belinda home,. They get rammed from behind by another car. They end up skidding and just miss landing in a ditch. Belinda tells Noel she thinks it was Adam and he loses his shit, all Adam can't even walk, as if he’d do this, and how comes you’re always going on about Adam anyway?

They drive back to Noel's house together, as Belinda doesn’t feel safe staying at home. Steamy. Adam and Cobbs are both out, having gone to the movies together. Hmm. I wonder if they DROVE to the movies. Noel lends Belinda a silky nightgown of his moms, then comes back and gets all cosy with her in the nightgown, and he’s all, mmmHMMM, this is even better on you than it is on mom. So. Very. Wrong.

Belinda ends up telling Noel the whole horrible story, and the subsequent attempts that someone has been making to terrify her. Noel suggests that the man watching from the cliff could have been Adam, and that he just lied about being in the car when the accident happened. Belinda seems surprised by this possibility. I thought that’s what she was thinking all along but WHATEVER. They come to the conclusion that Adam could have caused the crash on purpose to kill his dad and step mom. As they discuss it, they hear a door slam in the house. Uh oh, is that Adam listening in?

Belinda has a nightmare and then wakes up to find one of those pesky poisonous snakes in her bed. Oh the horror, the horror etc. Cobbs comes to fetch it. Yeah, I bet he “fetches” it good if you know what I mean.



Next morning, Belinda quizzes her homeboy Cobbs about Adam some MORE, asking him if he thinks that Adam is crazy. Cobbs tells her a little story: Adam’s parents fought loads when he was a kid, but he adored his father. Adams parents sent him away for a while to live with a mean aunt and uncle, Adam tried to run away and claimed they were abusing him, which they denied. Adam’s parents were too busy divorcing to bother with Adam, so they just left him there, until one night Adam and his aunt and uncle were in a car accident that killed the aunt and uncle. With her dying breath, Adam’s aunt gasped out the words “Adam…steering wheel…” but nothing was ever proved.

On her way out, Belinda spies Adam ruffling through some papers in his dad’s study and laughing evilly. I’m a little bit worried that Adam might actually be retarded.

Belinda goes to meet Hildy at the mall and now she has a new hypotheses – what if the car accident really wasn’t their fault, but the man on the hill was Adam, and he caused the accident and now he’s hunting down the witnesses – eg Belinda, Frank and Hildy. Despite the fact that they didn’t even witness him DO anything. And they clearly believe it’s their fault. Oh well, character motivation never WAS RTC’s strong point.

Belinda lets slip to Hildy that she told Noel all about what they did and Hildy goes nuts and tells Belinda that Frank played all those silly pranks on her such as the doll’s head one and the calendar one and the other ones that I can’t be bothered to write about. Frank is such a dick. Belinda agrees with me on this one, and goes to find Frank at the school’s pool to give him a stern telling off. Frank isn’t there – but his jacket is, floating ominously in the water. Hildy and Belinda have a total bust up, Hildy goes totally below the belt but for some reason Belinda keeps trying to apologise. They are NOT friends anymore.

Noel arrives at Belinda’s house later and drives her round to Hildy’s and Frank’s – neither of them are at home. Some random man shows up at Belinda’s door with an envelope for Belinda that’s he’s been paid to deliver by some guy. Inside the envelope is a braid of Hildy’s hair.

Belinda is now convinced that something terrible has happened to both Hildy and Frank, so Noel drives her round to his creepy house to calm her down. Cobbs isn’t in, he’s left a note to say that Mr Thorne has taken a turn for the worse so he’s gone to the hospital to be with him. Noel gets a call from Adam to say he is also at the hospital. Noel decides that he should go too, so off he pops, leaving Belinda all alone in the house….or IS she?!

Belinda does a bit of snooping and finds Mr Thorne’s last will and testament. She comes to the terrible conclusion that Adam has lured Noel away from the house to kill him, so that he will be the sole beneficiary of the will.

The phone rings and Belinda answers. It’s Cobbs – Noel isn’t at the hospital. And neither is Adam. Aaargh! Belinda hears someone moving around in the house - and out pops Adam, looking all scarred and inhuman and gross. She jumps back and somehow lands into Noel’s arms (I guess Noel has also arrived back home)

Adam suddenly stops limping and Noel reveals that he’s in on it too – Noel was the man watching from the hill! Noel and Adam force Belinda into a car with them, and in true villain style, they spill all. Adam explains that the car accident was all Noel’s idea as a way of killing their parents and getting the cash. Noel had worked it all out, exactly where to crash so Adam would be safe but the others would die (sounds like kind of a shonky plan to me), and then Belinda and her friends rocked up in a car tootling away and threw everything of balance. Meaning that Adam had to crash the car in the wrong spot and he got all injured and his stepmom survived and he’s totally pissed about it.

They take Belinda to a road with a gorge and they shove her into another car, containing Hildy and an unconscious Frank. Adam is going to push the car over the edge of the gorge to make it look like an accident. They also reveal that they’ve already killed Mrs Thorne, and she’s waiting for them at the bottom of the gorge. As the car starts rolling towards the gorge, Adam suddenly turns the gun on Noel and for some reason Belinda cares enough about this scumbag to be like, noooooo! And Noel and Adam start tussling, and then suddenly the police arrive with Cobbs and pull Belinda and her friends to safety. Hurrah!


Cobbs had suspected Noel and Adam were up to something, and then he sneakily listened in on some call and figured it all out or something? He drove to the Thorne house, saw Adam and Noel shoving Belinda into a car and rang the police straightaway “on the car telephone.” Heehee, good old car telephones.

Three days later, Hildy, Frank and Belinda are all A-OK. Hildy finally apologises to Belinda for her shitty behavoiour. Noel and Adam are “going through tests to see if they’re competent to stand trial” Which I guess is a nod to Adam’s possible retardation.

Cobbs arrives to speak to Belinda’s mom. Ok, this bit is fucking RIDICULOUS,. Cobbs barges in acting all British and cute and making tea for everyone and basically asks to come work as a butler for Belinda and her mom for FREE. Because Mr Thorne has left him a shitload of money in his will so he doesn't need payment. What the FUCK. Who decides they want to be a butler FOR FREE. Belinda sobs all over Cobbs about how much she misses Noel even though the guy is scum and Cobbs is all stroking her hair and she’s like, I love you Cobbs, and he’s like, I love you too, miss. And they make out. Well, OK, maybe not the last bit. But STILL!



"would you like some penis with your tea, miss?"

Conclusion: What the hell does this book actually have to do with April Fools day? Apart from the PROLOGUE, which happens to take place on April Fools day. I guess the publishers were just trying to cash in on that lucrative April Fools day merchandising market.

The Bride - D. E. Athkins

What can I say? D.E.Athkins more than lived up to her name, The Bride is a jaw-droppingly fabulous piece of art. It was more like reading an episode of a trashy 90s soap opera than a Point Horror, and for that, D.E.Athkins, I salute you.




Jamie is our lead character, and there really isn’t much to say about her past the fact that she lives in a small town (Point Harbour. Which is kind of distracting to keep reading, give how similar it sounds to Point Horror) and her cousin is Blaine Harrod, hell raising ex-wild child supermodel extraordinaire. Already this book rocks so hard it hurts. The opening scene is Blaine stabbing a fellow supermodel (Alison) through the hand with a letter opener. On a photo shoot. And the photographer is all , “this is fabulous, darlings, we'll sell millions. Millions I tell you! Bwa ha hah ha.” Maybe I’ll send Tyra a copy of this book, I think ANTM could really benefit from a bit more bloodshed, a sprinkling of Battle Royale if you will.

Anyway, Blaine is getting married to Pres Alden, upper crust playboy socialite, in the wedding of the year and Jamie is gonna be a bridesmaid. The wedding’s being held in this big posh hotel just outside of Point Harbour and Jamie gets there a couple of days early so she can p.a.r.t.y. The other bridesmaids include Alison (the supermodel who Blaine stabbed in the opening scene, and who she supposedly has a feud with), Kelly (another supermodel), Pres’s bitchy (but in a fun way) little rich girl sister whose name I forget, and Patricia, Pres’s ice queen ex-fiancee and first cousin (ick) who hates hates hates Blaine with a passion for stealing her man. Ummm, what the fuck. By my counting, Blaine has at least two people she hates acting as bridesmaids for her. I guess that’s just how supermodels roll.

The other characters of note are Clara, who’s Blaine’s PA, and Drew, Kelly’s little brother who’s a totally buff hunk and is Jamie’s love interest. Although Jamie also has the hots for Pres, even though he’s this gross sleazy old man. She’s always like admonishing herself for being a pervert because whenever she sees Pres she starts imaging him naked and stuff. Hands off Jamie, he’s Blaine’s! Here’s a little example of the kind of prose that made me fall in love so deeply with this book. Blaine notices Jamie and Pres flirting and she gives them a supermodel death stare: “At that moment, Blaine had never looked more beautiful. Or more deadly.” Be still, my beating heart.

Later, in her hotel room, Jamie sees…a mirror ghost! Any book that includes a mirror ghost gets an instant thumbs up from me. This mirror ghost is a weeping BRIDE ghost, holding a bunch of roses, and she starts climbing out the mirror. Aaaaarrrghhh! Oh, and the roses kind of glow, and the ghost drops these glowing roses out of the mirror! I’ll repeat: this book includes glowing ghost roses. Now that's what I call classy.

Naturally, Jamie freaks out and runs out of her room, and ends up in Alison and Kelly’s room. Alison is totally a bitch, but in a fun kind of snidey way and you can just tell that she actually has a heart of gold beating beneath her beautiful supermodel exterior.

Kelly tells the story of the ghost bride – years ago, when the hotel was a house, the owner’s daughter fell in love with a gardener in charge of the rose gardens. When her mum found out she paid the gardener to leave and arranged for her daughter to marry some other dude. The daughter died of a broken heart, and was found still wearing her wedding dress. Oh, and the daughter’s name was ROSE (overkill much on the rose thing.) Alison is more sceptical, and she convinces Jamie that she was probably just dreaming.

Kelly and Alison take pity on Jamie and lend her a super swish outfit so she’ll fit in at the glamorous party that evening: “velvet pants and a cropped cashmere top woven with sparkling thread.” Oh, and “an elastic rhinestone bracelet.” What the fuck?

Before the party, they have to get through a boring old wedding rehearsal. Which is livened up considerably when a bunch of dead doves rain start raining down on everyone from a canopy above (they had planned to release live doves as part of the super glamorous supermodel ceremony, natch.)

Apparently, the poor little birdies were all smothered. Is it an accident?? Or is somebody after Blaine??!! Shhrriiiieeek. Hey, Blaine – maybe you shouldn’t have let any of your mortal enemies be your bridesmaids. Just an idea.

Later, at the party in the ballroom, Patricia acts like a total tool and makes all these digs about Blaine just marrying Pres for his money. Poor deluded Patricia is blates still in love with Pres and would take him back in a heartbeat. Let it go honey, he’s a total dog!

Drew ends up taking Jamie to a secret hidden alcove overlooking the ballroom. They kiss, obviously. And then a fire starts. They decide to wait the fire out in their alcove rather than bothering to escape. Nice move guys. And THEN suddenly the ghost bride appears, hovering over another balcony: “a shimmering figure high above the crowd, hovering there like a flaming angel.” Everyone’s like 'aaaaahhh a ghost bride!' And suddenly the fire goes away or something.

Jamie hangs out in Alison and Kelly’s room later. Jamie is surprised to see Allison wearing “plaid flannel pj’s and fuzzy scuffs.” Anyone know what fuzzy scuffs are? I’m pretty curious here. Kelly decides that the ghost bride has definitely come back to haunt Blaine’s wedding. I’ll be pretty happy if there’s some elaborate Scooby Doo style explanation for this ghost. I’m thinking there must be, since nobody seems that nervous about being haunted.

Jamie lists through all the suspects who may want to sabotage the wedding(basically all the bridesmaids) all you need to know is, they all sorta have reasons for maybe wanting to get revenge on Blaine. Jamie even considers the possibility of Blaine staging all this stuff herself in order to get more publicity.

Jamie sneaks into the ballroom in the middle of the night to do some ghostbustin’ . She goes to the top level of the ballroom and finds the box that the ghost appeared to be floating in, inside the box is… Drew. He also wanted to catch a ghost and had fallen asleep, without finding any clues.

At breakfast, Patricia arrives, bringing with her her usual bitchily cool demeanour and a newspaper bearing the headline "Hot, Haunted Wedding.” Weird headline huh. But the point is that the wedding’s getting loads of publicity.

Oh, and bbs, you just have to know what Patricia’s wearing: “a skin-tight silver unitard, over which she'd pulled a pair of navy compression shorts with silver stripes down the side. Over it all she was wearing a silver and navy supplex jacket. Compression shorts?? Supplex?? Fuzzy scuffs??? Oh baby, I love it when you talk nonsense to me.

Jamie visits the hotel gym and finds a hot tub on a terrace and is all relaxed when Pres creeps up and asks to join her. He’s really flirty and gross, I did a little sick on this page of the book and now it stinks of vomit. So Jamie removes herself to the sauna and Pres follows her. Jeez, give it a rest old man, she’s not interested ok. The sauna door gets stuck and they get trapped in there together. Arrrrrgghhhhh! They both start sweating even more and panicking loads, like aarrrrgghhh we’re going to die!!!! Jamie starts acting all loopy, and I think we're meant to think that’s she’s in mortal danger and Pres is all like noooooo, I wont die this way! Anything but death by sauna! So undignified.

Luckily, Blaine finds them in the nick of time. Blaine’s all angry and she says that when she got there, the door opened easily and wasn’t stuck at all.

Later, Jamie gets a call on the hotel phone. Its Blaine and she’s like "come meet me at the hotel entrance and don’t tell anyone." Blaine drives up, nearly running Jamie over in the process, and she’s all, get in the car. Which is a gleaming black Porsche, naturally. This is the 90s, baby! And we’re jiving with supermodels!

Jamie can tell that Blaine is in the mood for trouble, but she’s kinda excited by that. Me too! Blaine drives them back to Point Harbour and they go to a deserted pier. A Mercedes turns up at the pier. Inside it is Patricia, Pres and Alison, they followed Blaine because they were kind of worried about where she was going. Patricia wasn’t worried about Blaine, she just loves following Pres around. Good move, guys love it when you follow them everywhere like some kind of demented psychopath, trust me, I know what I’m talking about here.

Pres gets all angry with Blaine for running out of the party. Blaine starts yelling at Pres, all this nonsense about life and death and truth and lies and not going through with the wedding, blah blah, Jamie thinks it looks like Blaine is trying to pick a fight with him. They make up,and end up all driving back in the Mercedes together, with Alison alone in the Porsche.

Alison drives ahead of them, super fast and risky. Of course, she drives the Porsche off a cliff and it catches on fire. Ka-BOOM! Buh Bye, Alison!

Eventually, after calling the police and everything I guess, they arrive back at the hotel. Patricia speculates to Jamie that maybe it wasn’t an accident, that Alison wanted to die – because they didn’t see the brake lights and there were no skid marks. Patricia says that Alison may have been suicidal because she loved Pres once too. Gasp!

The wedding is going ahead anyway, and Blaine gets sent a package that makes her react thusly:

“’Noo!’ sobbed Blaine. She turned, flailing like a madwoman out of control. She grabbed a lamp and hurled it against the far wall of the bedroom, She pushed over the table it was standing on.”

That’s a little example of why I fucking love this book. The whole thing's written like this, it’s amazing, it’s like a rollercoaster ride….for my brain.

The picture Blaine freaked over is the one from the photo shoot at the beginning where Blaine stabbed Alison with the letter opener, except the figure of Blaine is all singed and scorched, and someone’s written IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU on it.

Clara tells them that there’s a police detective at the hotel, here to question people after the wedding because it would seem that Alison’s crash wasn’t an accident but the brakes had been tampered with. Presumably meaning that the accident was meant to happen to Blaine, since it was Blaine’s Porsche.

Kelly arrives at Jamie’s room, begging to get ready there as she can’t cope with all the memories in the room that she had been sharing with Alison. Kelly tells Jamie that Blaine and Alison were really tight knit friends, like sisters, despite the apparent feuding between them which was mainly just for publicity. Hmm, I wouldn’t be too happy if someone stabbed me through the hand just for the publicity. Although there was a real feud between them for a while when Pres started dating Blaine after breaking up with Alison, but they apparently worked it out.

There are all these insanely brilliant dramatic interludes of the main characters/suspects getting ready for the wedding and acting like psychos. I just have to give you a flavour of this. Patricia gets a bit of lipstick on her hand, and:

“She looked down at the crimson gash the lipstick had made across the back of her hand.
At the crimson gash it had made from the corner of her mouth.
‘here comes the bride” she hummed softly, and went back to work on her face.”

It totally reminds me of that bit in Cape Fear where the mum is just randomly putting make up on in the darkened room and it's super creepy.

Eventually, everyone’s ready, and Blaine’s all done up in her wedding dress , although sadly, there isn’t a description of the dress beyond the fact that “the train of her gown spread out like a lacy sea behind her.” So I assume that it’s fabulous.

The ceremony goes ahead, and then they get to the bit where the minister asks for any objections, and right at that moment a wind sweeps though the hall, the doors slam shut and candles go out. The minister’s all, chill out dudes, this has happened before. The smell of roses and fire fills the room, and Kelly’s all screaming out like, its her! It’s the ghost bride!

And the ghost bride does indeed appear at the back of the hall, all done up in her wedding gown, which also glows. As the ghost bride walks down the aisle the smell of smoke increases, and the ghost is all “I OBJECT.” Not since Rochester and Jane have I been so breathlessly excited by a wedding. The reason the ghost objects? “Pres was already married. To me.”

Pres is all freaking out and flailing around, like, nooooooo, you’re dead, it cant be! And the ghost bride goes all flamey and Pres is all, noooo, I couldn’t have survived the scandal it wasn’t my fault she died! And he’s also trying to run away from this flaming ghost that totally wants to make out with him.

Once Pres has fled, the lights suddenly come on. Blaine is all serene as she watches the burning bride. Clara does something to help the flames go out on the ghost bride, and then the ghost bride starts peeling make up off, and its actually ALISON! She’s not dead! Hurrah!

Later, Kelly, Jamie, Alison, Clara, Drew and Blaine are in Blaine’s suite together. And we get the whole story. Clara isn’t really Blaine's PA, she’s some kind of lady scientist. Clara had a younger sister who moved to New York to become a model. The sister was called Dove, and she actually lived with Blaine and Alison when they were all first starting out.

Dove met Pres and they decided to get married in secret (for some reason, Pres’s family is really weird about supermodels and I guess they wouldn’t have been happy about it. Not sure why, it’s not as if he was marrying the help.) So, they went to a remote island to do the deed, there was a car accident and Pres survived but Dove was killed. Umm, it kinda seems that it really WASN’T his fault. He didn’t report it though, he ran away and Dove’s body wasn’t discovered and identified for weeks, it must have looked pretty gnarly. Luckily, Dove kept a journal and Clara read it and found out all about Pres.

Clara needed to get revenge on Pres, she wanted him to admit what he had done, and Blaine and Alison also hated him because he’d just dumped Alison and then asked her best friend (Blaine ) out, so they were like yeah we're in, why the hell not! Umm, that doesn’t really seem like a strong enough reason for Blaine to have to actually make this guy fall in love with her. I mean, Pres and Blaine must have been together a reasonable length of time to be getting married. Presumably, she actually hates this guy but she must have done it with him and stuff. Also, why not just show the police the diary?

So basically, all of the weird stuff that happened was set up by Blaine, Clara and Alison to try to freak Pres out into admitting the truth (Kelly wasn’t in on it though, she’s all surprised because she actually thought Alison was dead. Niiice. ) The legend of the ghost of 'Rose' was a lie made up by Alison, and its apparent appearance in Jamie's mirror was just “a trick done with mirrors”. And that was a mistake anyway, the mirror ghost was meant for Pres. This explanation is soooo retarded, I actually love it, as if you’d go to the trouble of making all these elaborate plans and then not check you actually have the right room. The ghostly bride floating in the ballroom was made of “asbestos clothes and special effects”. Good old special effects. And nobody killed the doves, the were actually stuffed birds that had died ages ago. And Blaine and Alison were also the ones who locked Pres in the sauna to shake him up a bit, but they’re all like, oh sorry Jamie, we totally didn’t know you were in there too. For elaborate hoaxers, these guys sure do make a lot of mistakes. Poor Jamie.

Alison’s car crashing was, obviously, also a stunt. I’m not sure what the police would think about that. But you know what, I can’t even bothered to have to think this through anymore, I’m too blinded by my love for this book.

For some reason they all start laughing loads: “They laughed for a long time. Hard. Until their sides ached and they couldn’t breathe. Until they cried, some of them.” Come on, share the joke guys.

And then Drew and Jamie wander off together, presumably to have sex.

The end.

Wow. I feel like I’ve learned so much from this book. Number one, supermodels are not dumb okay, they’re fiendishly clever and sneaky so DO NOT MESS WITH THEM. Number two, you can achieve a hell of a lot with special effects and asbestos clothing. Number three, socialite playboys are total jerks. Numbr four, fashion can be FUN. I’m still left with a few questions though, namely what the hell are fuzzy scuffs, compression shorts and supplex?! Answers on a postcard please.

What do my fellow lovers of The Bride on Amazon think. Well, I’m in exalted company:

“at the start of the book you would realy get in to it at all time there is a bit of some thing to keep you on the edge of your set so if you get throug the first bit you are shure to fined another bit of exsitment waiting just for you and i think this book should be graded one of the best becouse i do read a lot and this one is one of the most fab books i have read as thay say do not juge a book by its cover so i did not i read it and i think it is one of the best one i have read .”

Us The Bride lovers are an eloquent bunch. And who needs full stops anyway, full stops are for the kind of losers who aren’t deeply in love with The Bride.


Oh, and this week I’m super excited because I found two old Point Horror books I didn’t realise I still had! It’s like a sign or something. Although I think the sign may be that I should really tidy my flat more often. Anyway, one of them is a Nightmare Hall book called The Wish, although it’s number 4 in the series or something so I don’t know if it would be weird to do it out of sequence? As far as I remember, it stands alone pretty nicely. I think it’s about an evil talking ventriloquist doll or something. The other one I found was Hide and Seek, which is a very very strange and unorthodox Point Horror indeed, but if I say too much I’ll totally give away the ending.

Blood Sinister - Celia Rees

Ok, so only by the loosest of definitions could this be called ‘Sunday.’ But what can I say, I’ve been busy travelling through time back to Victorian London and busting some serious vampire ass. Oh wait, maybe I’ve gotten my life mixed up with something else.



Blood Sinister is a Point Horror Unleashed, which I BELIEVE means that it was published for the UK only. So us Brits get to feel all warm and snuggly with superiority for having a Point Horror all to ourselves, and the rest of you get the excitement of reading an EXCLUSIVE recap that you can boast to all your friends about, now that’s what I like to call a win-win situation.

Sixteen year old Ellen is our lead character, and the main thing you need to know about Ellen is that she’s really really sick with a mystery illness. Nobody knows what’s wrong with her, she’s constantly having her blood tested etc. but to no avail. And she’s getting weaker and weaker, definitely more at the ‘Death’ stage of an illness rather than the ‘it’s Monday morning and I just cannot be bothered to get out of bed, lord love me’ stage. A sickly heroine, how fabulous.

Ellen is staying with her dear old granny for a couple of weeks in London whilst her mum does, I don’t know, something or other, I really can’t remember. Let’s spice things up and say she’s currently travelling with a circus as a bearded lady, yeah that’ll do.

Ellen’s grandma’s house is, naturally, super creepy and backs onto a cemetery. Oh yeah, and her grandma asks Ellen if she wants anything from the shop and Ellen’s all, just get me a copy of Mizz or Just Seventeen. Just Seventeen! I totally used to read that even though I was nowhere near seventeen at the time. It took me a pretty long time to work out that the title wasn’t indicative of some kind of new fangled magazine licensing law and I used to get really nervous buying it, like ‘Gawd, I hope I don’t get ID’d, I really need to read up on some new ways to practice kissing techniques.'

Anyway. Ellen goes for a little snoop around Granny’s attic and finds a mysterious trunk that she’s never noticed before. In the trunk is a whole bunch of old diaries from 1878, written by someone who was also called Ellen. Oh great, way to make life difficult for a recapper. Old Diary Ellen is modern sickly Ellen’s great great grandmother, a “pioneering woman doctor.” All female doctors should totally have to refer to themselves as ‘woman doctors’, like on their passports and stuff, occupation: woman doctor.

Ellen starts reading Old Ellen’s diary, and it’s written in that tiresome prose that authors of teenage books use to make something feel olde worldy. Old Ellen’s dad is a doctor and they live in some grim old hospital in a poor part of town, which Ellen pretty much thinks just sucks. Olde Timey Ellen also has a crush on Tom, her father’s assistant. I guess in those days you probably were pretty much limited to having a crush on whatever non-blood relatives find their way into your house. Unless you were like a whoring wench or something, but that was probably less glamorous than it sounds what with the syphilis and all.

Anyway Olde Timey Diary Ellen’s dad has some weirdo guests over. An exceptionally pale man and a busty voluptuous woman with dark eyes. A Countess and a Count. Foreign. Very likely candidates to be vampires. They may as well just go around introducing themselves to people as The Obvious Vampires.

Modern Ellen’s reading is interrupted by a visitor arriving - Andy, a guy who lives nearby and who she used to play with when they were kids. “His hair was cut in a recognizable style, instead of looking like his mother had been at it with the bacon scissors.” What the fuck are bacon scissors. I mean, I can guess pretty accurately what they are, but I sooooo did not know that that was a thing.

Back to old Ellen’s diary: the woman leaves but the Count stays. The Count requests that old Ellen keeps him company to help improve his English. The Count is very ill, he’s dying and her dad is going to try to help him. They’re old friends and the Count and Countess helped her dad when her mother Isobel got ill in foreign-land, even though she eventually died, so he feels like he owes them a debt of care. Even though if you ask me, the fact that she died doesn’t exactly make it sound like they helped a great deal.

The diary skips forward a month later and Future Woman Doctor Ellen is loving spending time with the Count, although his condition has worsened so she is super worried about him. They’ve totally bonded, but there’s just one little weensy thing she doesn’t like about him: his teeth. Which are too sharp looking. Modern Ellen has way more smarts than olde worldy Ellen and she quickly figures out that the Count was totes a vampire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back in modern times, Andy comes round, and him and Ellen go shopping at some second hand market. Ellen handily finds a book called Women in Medicine, and indeed there’s an entry on oldey timey Ellen, famed Woman Doctor. Woman Doctor Ellen specialised in the ‘study of blood.’ Ellen tells Andy about the vampire diaries, and he eagerly asks to read them as well. Supposedly, “Andy had his own reasons for believing in vampires.”

Andy walks Ellen home, taking a shortcut through a graveyard, Ellen reminds him of a time when they were kids, and Andy went into the graveyard at night time as a dare and came out all pale faced and trembly and weird. He tells her that he ended up in a mausoleum and heard a scratching sound, like a dead person scratching at their tomb. So, a pretty bullet proof reason for believing in vampires then. And he subsequently did some “research” and found loads of “articles” about vampires being spotted in the area. Hmm. If I were Ellen, I’d definitely ask to see his sources.

Back in the diary, olde worldy Ellen gets roped in to helping her dad and Tom operate on the Count . What daddy dearest doesn’t tell her is that her help will comprise of Tom and daddy transfusing Ellen’s blood into the Count. Tom isn’t happy about it but Ellen agrees to donate her blood. Man, Ellen’s dad really sucks Luckily, Ivan (The Count’s manservant) intervenes and tells them to use his blood instead. The transfusion is a success.

A corpse is found in the river. Why were corpses always found in the river in the olden days? You don’t get that quite as often anymore do you. Ellen has a little cut on her wrist and good old Cook applies a herbal remedy to get rid of it, the main ingredient of which is garlic. Come on, as if you’d write all this shit about garlic in your diary.

The Count gives old Ellen some crazy junk wine and tells her a story about someone who I think is meant to be Dracula. When he goes to kiss Ellen’s wrist as is his foreign custom, the smell of garlic totally grosses him out. I’ll be really happy if the twist is that he actually isn’t a vampire.

More and more kids are going missing/getting killed in Diary world, turning up all corpsey and drained of blood. Ellen and Tom drift apart.

Modern times: Andy and Ellen find a picture of dead Ellen from when she was a girl, and the two Ellens look identical. Andy and Ellen whoop it up, watching vampire films and umm, throwing ice cream at each other? Kids nowadays, huh.


It starts getting weird that night after Andy leaves: a bat crawls into Ellen’s window and bites her whilst she’s sleeping, Ellen is completely oblivious to this. Hmm, I wonder if this is perhaps related to the origin of her mysterious illness.

For some reason, we are suddenly plunged into part two of the book. If breaking Point Horror books up into parts isn’t a delusion of grandeur then I don’t know what is. It’s not even as if any time has passed, or anything really major has happened to warrant splitting it into parts. Its literally just half way though the book. Sorry, I’m going on about it now, I know. It just really really bothers me.

Anyway, MOVING ON, modern Ellen has a dream that she is old Ellen, and she meets someone new in her dream: The Countess’s companion, Grace, who is also thin and bloodless looking etc. Modern Ellen wakes up and checks the diaries, and Grace is actually a real person. Hmm, that’s weird. Ellen thinks “it was like something out of ‘Strange But True magazine.’ Is this a real magazine? I like the sound of it.

Oldey timey Ellen is being taken on loads of shopping trips, which makes her suspicious: why is her father buying her all these new clothes? Also, she finds out that Grace hates the Countess and she only stays with her because she has no other options for earning money, except becoming a prostitute. Grace warns Ellen to keep away from the Countess and the Count, telling her that they are dangerous and corrupt.

Oldey timey Ellen goes out with the Count and he ends up taking her to see a show, then to a restaurant for champagne and oysters. And they dance. And oldey timey Ellen feels all dirty and disgusted buy it, even though she’s kind of confused by her own disgust. Modern Ellen totally scoffs at Old Worlde Ellen for her prudishness.

More women are killed in olde timey London, etc. Tom comes to tell oldey timey Ellen that her father is firing him over a disagreement so he will be leaving. And he gives her a crucifix and just comes right out with it, telling her that the Count is a vampire. Ellen kind of thinks he’s crazy but still agrees to wear the crucifix. That’s a pretty sweet technique for getting love rivals out of your way, just spread a tasty little rumour that they’re The Walking Undead.

Oldey timey Ellen’s dad reveals that he fired Tom because of Tom's belief that the Count is a vampire. The man is an absolute penis breath. Insufferable. Anyway, Dr Dad says that The Count is just suffering from a rare blood disease. And he drops one more bombshell: he wants Ellen to go to the continent with the Count and Countess to travel and see the world. Ellen does NOT want to go, and she resumes her friendship with Tom, who vows to try to find some evidence about the Count's nefarious blood sucking ways so she'll be allowed to stay.

The countess is all grossed out by Ellen’s crucifix and insists on giving her some gnarly old ruby necklace that spells out a dragon or something instead. Grace shows Ellen two puncture marks on her neck, and tells her she needs to get away from the Count and Countess before it happens to her too. Ellen gives Grace some cash and the gross dragon necklace to sell so that Grace can escape.

Modern Ellen’s illness gets considerably worse and she passes out.

Ellen dreams of being olde timey Ellen, and together with Tom, she's following the Count and watching as he gets all bitey bitey with some impoverished broad before Ivan the manservant steps in and rescues the woman from being eaten.

In modern day, Ellen is really seriously ill – like, knock knock kocking on Heaven’s door. She gets taken to hospital in an ambulance, and is passing in and out of consciousness the whole time, sometimes as herself and sometimes as oldey timey Ellen.

In the old days, The Count kidnaps Ellen onto his ship, sneaking her aboard in a coffin so nobody could possibly know where she is and potentially rescue her. The Count and Countess are offering Ellen the chance to become one of them – and have immortal life etc, if she says no, they’ll kill her. They have CHOSEN HER because of her dead mother. Turns out her mum was all set to become one of them but then she got pregnant with Ellen and that somehow interfered with the process and she ended up dead. It’s not really made clear whether or not Ellen’s mum wanted to be a vampire, which would certainly be one of the first questions I’d be asking. Ellen whips out her crucifix and, as is pretty par for the course for a Point Horror heroine, winds up starting a fire. And then Ivan the man servant steps in and saves her from burning. Good old Ivan. And she jumps out the ship and escapes. And we find out later that olde timey Ellen ended up marrying Tom and becoming a Famed Woman Doctor etc., so happy endings all round.

Modern Ellen wakes up in hospital with all tubes and shit down her throat. And inexplicably, we now move into Book Three. Ellen is still in hospital , and her nurse is called Jenny Cheung,. Jenny Cheung “has creamy clear skin and slanting eyes. “ Ellen is unduly fascinated by her eyes and spends ages staring at them. Awkward. As a treat, Jenny Cheung offers to cook Ellen some Chinese food when she recovers. OK OK, WE GET IT, JENNY CHEUNG IS CHINESE.

Jenny Cheung tells Ellen that her doctor is a big shot specialist from the states called Dr Stacey, Everyone thinks he’s The Shit, but Jenny Cheung is kinda wary of him. And Ellen recognizes him as being ….. The Count! So clearly, she's also sorta wary. Ellen decides there’s no point even trying to tell anyone, which for once actually seems like a sensible move. Ellen’s mum tells hr that soon she’s going to be transferred to Dr Stacey’s private hospital, The Blooditorium. Well, it’s not actually called The Blooditorium but that would be pretty neat right?

Dr Stacey comes to see Ellen in the night and he knows she knows and she now knows that he knows that she knows. About the diaries. And the whole being a vampire gig. He kind of shows off about it a bit to be honest: “He reached down and took a unit of blood, popping the seal and drinking like it was a pouch of Ribena.” He tells Ellen that she’s special because she carries a gene of something or other (which is what’s making her so ill all the time) , and she basically has to become a vampire or she’ll just die.

Andy visits Ellen and she tells him about her doctor being a vampire etc. Andy’s pretty cool about it and believes her. I guess when you’re a sixteen year old guy you’ll believe a lot of stuff if it looks like you might get a quick grope out of it later. Ellen also tells Jenny Cheung about Dr Stacey. Jenny Cheung is also surprisingly quick to believe what Ellen says.

Jenny Cheung and Andy meet up to sort this mess out. The plan is that Jenny and Ellen are going to swap places in the hospital bed to prevent the good Doctor from getting his fangs into Ellen. Andy astutely points out that this plan may not work as Jenny Cheung, is in fact, in case you hadn’t noticed already, Chinese. Jenny Cheung soothes his fears by pointing out that their height and build are similar? Umm ok. And Jenny Cheung is going to use a Dictaphone to record whatever happens so they have evidence against him. Jeez, why don’t they just kill the guy or something. I mean, that’s what I’d do.

Andy and Jenny Cheung head off to Chinatown (because Jenny Cheung’s defining personality trait is Being Chinese), and Jenny Cheung tells Andy all about Chinese vampires, Kang-shi. They go to a Chinese Herbal Medicine shop, which is owned by Jenny Cheung’s uncle. He agrees to make them a potion to get rid of the vampire. Oh , please. Please don’t get rid of the vampire by using a fucking potion. This is too much. I was really looking forward to a good staking, perhaps with a beheading thrown in, But some POTION? That’s seriously lame, dude. So this ‘potion’ is basically just a poison that will either kill him outright or just weaken him up. In which case, they WILL have to stake him, Uncle Cheung gives all these tips on how to carry out a good staking. This is fucking ridiculous, this guy is basically sanctioning that these kids murder someone. Umm, Uncle Cheung? What if this guy ISN’T a vampire huh?

Jenny decides that the best way to trick Dr Stacey into taking the potion is to drink the potion herself, so if Dr Stacey bites her he’ll get poisoned too. Which is possibly the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard in my life, I’m not even going to bother picking holes in it as they’re so glaringly obvious anyway.

Jenny Cheung and Andy head back to the hospital to make the swap…only to find that Ellen has already been transferred to Dr Stacey’s private clinic. So Andy and Jenny head to The Blooditorium instead. Andy pretends he’s visiting his sister to distract the desk nurse with idle chitter chatter, and Jenny Cheung pretends to be an agency worker called Su Lin Chen, wearing a high collared coat and a scarf all muffling her face and a hat so you cant really see what she looks like. Jenny manages to get in, and then Ellen comes out wearing Jenny’s clothes, still all muffled. In other words, they pull off The Old Switcheroo.

Dr Stacey creeps into Ellen’s room that evening and takes a big old chomp out of Jenny-as-Ellen, clearly not noticing that she’s turned Chinese overnight.

Ellen and Andy go to pick Jenny out the next morning, who’s snuck herself back out in a nurse's uniform, She shows them the gash that Dr Stacey made on her neck. For some reason, Ellen goes BACK INTO Dr Stacey’s Blooitorium rather than just escaping. She wants to officially discharge herself for some murky reason. Andy follows Dr Stacey as he leaves the hospital. He doesn’t come back. As soon as Ellen is discharged (? That was easy. Why didn’t she just do that in the first place), her and Jenny go in search of Andy.

Also, Ellen is suddenly starting to become a lot healthier, supposedly this is because as Dr Stacey grows weaker from the poison it makes his victim, Ellen grow in strength.

The girls enter the cemetery and they find Andy, he had gotten lost I guess. The sun suddenly goes down, and they reach a dead end - The Count’s family vault. That sure is handy that he happens to have a family vault here, even though none of his family members that I’m aware of have died in London. Ellen waits outside whilst the others go in. Ummm, WHY is this girl our heroine?? She’s too weak to even do anything fer crying out loud.

They find The Count/Dr Stacey in a coffin, sleeping soundly. Jenny Cheung uses some Chinese vampire hoo doo to hold him in place, which together with the poison that has weakened him, will greatly improve the chances of a successful staking.

Unfortunately he wakes up and starts stretching out his teeth in preparation for a tasty human snack. Fortunately, the family vault also decides that this is the perfect time to start falling down. Jenny and Andy run out of the building to where Ellen is waiting for them outside, Dr Stacey is unable to move from his coffin thanks to the hoo doo and is killed by a falling iron sheet that slices off his head. I gotta say, I’m kinda disappointed. Ellen really didn’t DO anything, she wasn’t even there to witness his final destruction and dance a merry little jig of happiness.

Ellen’s health is completely restored, she’ s happy because now she knows she’s not going to die any time soon (well, unless she gets hit by a bus or something) so she can plan a future, and she decides that “in the end she would be a doctor. It was in her blood.” Fnarr, Fnarr.

In conclusion: Blood Sinister is actually pretty decent, at least until Part Three when things start falling apart a little. But the overall standard of writing is far superior to the usual Richie Tankersely Cusick/RL Stine style dross, I give it two fangs up. (see what I did there.)

This is my favourite Amazon review, perhaps my favourite ever:

“When I was reading a particulary creepy bit I thought my brain was imagening creepy violin music, it turned out to be my brother in the next room!!”

Awesome.

Next time: The Bride by D. E. Athinks. Which I admit that I chose pretty much soley on the basis of how awesome the name D. E. Athinks is. I mean, if you’re going to shoehorn the word Death into your name, why not have something equally scary on the end as well? Like, D. E. AthKILL or something. Or maybe that’s just TOO scary.

The Babysitter Returns Again

Just a quick post to say - now that those pesky holidays are over with, it's finally time to get back to work and regular posts are back on. YAY!

Keep your eyes peeled for a new post this Sunday - which will either be Blood Sinister or something else. Depending if the 'something else' arrives on time, and also on whether I can actually face anymore drippy teenage tales of vampires and whatever blah blah blah (I'm looking at you, Twilight...stupid sexy Twilight.)

PEACE OUT