by Nelson
Reader Beware; You’re in for a Scare!
DoubtFire ventures into the terrifying world of zombies, werewolves, egg monsters, and annoying siblings that is GOOSEBUMPS.
We made it to the 30s! Initially, it seemed like it would take sixty-five years to get this far, but time has a weird way of speeding up once you get old. So here we are. As always, I’m fascinated by Goosebumps’ evolution. It kicked off with horror stories for kids, but most of the earlier horrific elements have disappeared at this point. The adult characters are increasingly oblivious and still big fans of leaving their kids with distant relatives for months on end, but the 20s consisted of only two “scary” stories – The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight and Ghost Beach. The others involved adventures through time, mysterious hair growth, and derelicts living in auditoriums.
In a lot of ways, It Came from Beneath the Sink ushers in a story style we’ll be seeing quite a bit going forward. It brings back scary, unearthly creatures with ill intentions for twelve-year-olds, but they’re all kind of silly. For instance, this one features a malevolent sponge that thrives on misfortune.
Kat “Don’t Call me Katrina” Morgan and her younger brother Daniel have just moved into a brand new, super spacious house, and they’re real excited about it. They’ve got extra room and a big backyard, but the celebration gets cut short when the kids are assigned kitchen cleaning duty and discover a dirty, old sponge under the sink. Instead of hurriedly tossing the thing in the trash, rushing to the sink, and spending the next five minutes washing their hands with visions of all the nasty stuff that thing must have wiped up like I would have, Kat decides to keep a grimy cleaning utensil when she sees that it has a tiny face and realizes that it’s breathing. There’s no telling how much mold and fungus it takes to cause something like that, but she doesn’t care. It has a face. It’s neat, and she’s keeping it.
Unfortunately, this isn’t your garden-variety sponge. It dishes out bad luck to anyone it comes in contact with. When Kat tries to show it to her dad, he falls off a ladder. Then, he tries to put the blame on his own daughter by accusing her of pushing him. The guy has obviously been reading the parenting advice of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s Ken Walsh.
Daniel heads to the library and comes home with The Encyclopedia of the Weird – a book that catalogs and describes all the strange, nasty, and funny-looking creatures the world has to offer. It turns out that the sponge isn’t a sponge it all; it’s a Grool, and it’s up to no good. The Grool is the distant cousin of The Lanx – a potato with fangs – and feeds on bad luck and extreme misfortune. To make matters worse, it can’t be destroyed by violent means, and, if you try to give it away, you’ll die in a day!
Kat’s bad fortune gets worse. The big birthday party she was going to have at WonderPark gets rained out, and Killer, the family dog, goes missing. She finally hits her breaking point, stuffs the sinful sponge down the drain, and cuts it to pieces with a kitchen knife. WonderPark parties are serious business. Of course, The Grool emerges from the drain and reconstructs itself T1000-style because Kat’s reading comprehension skills aren’t too great. Furiously stabbing something is pretty much the definition of “violent means.” The Morgan family is stuck with The Grool forever, and they’ll just have to live with it.
With around three pages left in the book, it’s time for the abrupt ending. Kat realizes that The Grool lives on negativity and decides to love the grimy fiend to death. After some kind words and a big kiss, it shrivels up and disappears. Killer immediately returns, and the kids go out for ice cream. All is right with the world….until Kat and Daniel get home and find that Killer is walking around the house with a fanged potato. There’s a Lanx in the house!
I don’t think it’s the best Goosebumps story ever, but, looking ahead, It Came from Beneath the Sink is definitely a series benchmark. Stine brings back the scares that readers are urged to beware by slapping some teeth on sponges and potatoes and ditching the giant worms and cookie-eating mermaids, and that’s a good thing.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “No problem. It’s only a potato.”
I started to hand it to Daniel.
But something sharp pricked my finger.
“Ow!” I cried, startled.
I rolled the potato over in my hand.
It felt warm. I could feel it breathing.
“Daniel, I don’t like the looks of this,” I murmured.
The potato had a mouth full of teeth.
Doubtfire 