Taking a look at R.L. Stine's awful horror novel written for adults (Part 1)

In 2011 R.L. Stine dropped Red Rain his second foray into writing a horror novel for adults. I was curious how well he could write a book outside of the children and YA space. And to be fair, a lot of those Goosebumps and Fear Street books are absolute garbage. Chicken Chicken is one of the worst books I've ever read. So I read through this with curiosity and...

It's just an edgier and darker Goosebumps book with adult characters and slightly more complex prose.

Don't believe me? Let's take a look:

But Zeus sent from heaven a show'r of blood-stain'd rain. In sign of many a warrior's coming doom.

The book opens with a quote from The Iliad. Oh, Stine, how well read you are!

Then it moves into a flash-foward. We are introduced to our main character Lea. She is stumbling upon a beach after a devastating hurricane. Dead bodies and destroyed buildings surround her. As she makes her way up the beach suddenly it begins to rain blood. Or at least red.

We are treated with our first bit of great dialogue:

“Holy shit,” she murmured. “It's raining blood!”

As the blood rain settles, two young identical looking blonde boys emerge from the haze. Lea remarks how angelic they look and she makes her way towards them asking if they need help and that's the end of the prologue.

Alright, not a terrible start. Then the book opens proper.

The book takes us back two days and now it is first person as this chapter is a blog post written by Lea. As is later revealed, Lea started her own travel blog after being laid off from a travel magazine as a head writer. She wanted to prove her bosses wrong by making her own very popular blog. This book was released in 2011, but even then blogs were on there way out. I can't imagine she wa succesful in her venture.

Lea has just arrived on Cape Le Chat Noir (the Black Cat for those of you who didn't take French), a small island off the coast of South Carolina that is infamous for being allegedly cursed. Despite being a seemingly great vacation spot tourists don't visit the island which interested Lea as a reader of the blog has been emailing her about visiting and covering the island on her blog for months. Ohh, I get it. Black Cat because it is unlucky. Clever!

Lea arrives on the island and makes her way to her hotel, which is a small boarding house run by a fat woman and a skinny man. How a boarding house manages to stay in business on an island that supposedly receives no tourists, I don't know. An old woman at the hotel tells Lea how hurricane in the 30s wiped out everyone on the island except for few people. She was one of the survivors. However, the dead came back to life to help rebuild the island and this is the one place on Earth where the dead walk with the living. She should know she says, as she has been dead for ten years. Except haha, she's just teasing. Gee, I wonder why this island doesn't get any tourists.

A hurricane is approaching Le Chat Noir and Lea laments that it isn't deviating from its path when she checks on her phone. Why she didn't reschedule her trip when a hurricane was on its way to the island, I also don't know. However the reader who has been emailing her informs her that a ritual is going to be performed tonight:

I'd been in touch (by email) with a woman who lives on Le Chat Noir, named Martha Swann. Martha told me about an island ceremony called Revenir, which is French for “to come back.” She explained that the Revenir ritual is part of a practice called Mains Magiques—Magic Hands. She believed the French traders picked it up somewhere and brought it here with them. Martha wrote that it is a must-see.

I told my hosts I wanted to attend a Revenir ceremony, and they reacted not with horror but with definite disapproval. They both started shaking their heads, as if it would persuade me to drop the idea.

So of course despite the warning Lea decides to go.

At the ritual, a priest with a face tattoo and black nails passes out cups of a black drink to some of the men in the crowd. Luckily, Lea's emailing buddy who is also attending the ritual fills her in:

“It's the Black Drink,” Martha murmured in her ear. She leaned close and whispered surreptitiously, as if she was breaking a rule. “The Black Drink. Be grateful, dear. In the ceremony, the priest gives it only to the men.”

The Black Drink. Oh, okay.

Lea also spots a small group of tourists on the opposite end of the ritual. Wait, I thought this island doesn't get tourists? No, this is not explained later either.

The men with the Black Drink and the priest all start to chant in archaic French and then drink down the concoction. This wouldn't be an R.L. Stine book without a scene of someone vomiting, as then the men who all consumed the drink start violently throwing up. As Lea and the tourists start to freak out the men continue vomiting until they collapse into their own puke, dead. The priest checks to make sure all six are indeed deceased when he starts to chant "Revenir" over and over again with all the natives joining in.

Much to Lea's shock, the dead men suddenly spring back to life. They are helped to their feet and lead away when the rain starts to come down on the island from the imminent hurricane. We re given this wonderful bit of prose:

Huge raindrops rattled on the palm leaves, like assault rifles.

Lea's email friend Martha tells Lea that she should come with her and her husband back to her place to wait out the storm. When Lea objects because of all her belongings are still back at the boarding house Martha says this:

“Better come with me, Lea. This is going to be bad. It's going to be real bad.”

And that settles it for some reason.

Here is where the book shifts and we are introduced to a new character: Lea's husband Mark. Mark is a child psychologist and he has just written a book that has generated quite a bit of controversy. It's thesis is that parents should take a more laissez-faire style of parenting and to avoid dictating what their child can and can not do too much. He is about to give a talk at a bookstore packed with angry parents when he spots his assistant in the crowd. Here is where I'm jarred into being reminded this is not a Goosebumps book, as it wouldn't be a horror novel written by a male author without a mention of a young woman having nice tits.

She has nice tits. How come I've never noticed? Because she's twenty-three?

Mark's talk is as combative as he thought it might be, when halfway through he realizes Lea is calling him. Mark steps off stage to answer but can't make out what she is saying other than she sounds terrified. The call dies and he steps back on stage to finish getting heckled by the Karens in the audience.

After the talk Mark's assistant comes up to offer him praise for his performance.

She shifted the raincoat. The white tube top had slid down, revealing the tops of creamy-white breasts. “Mark? Would you maybe . . . um . . . like to get a coffee? Or a drink?”

She's flirting with me.

Mark turns her down and she slinks away dejected. Mark is concerned with getting back home after his wife's distressing call and seeing his kids, who are being watched by his sister, a failure who is a live-in nanny for them after her ex stole all her money and made her and her kid get evicted, Mark makes it back home and here is where I see the Goosebumps aspects really come into focus as the infamous cliffhanger chapter endings come in:

He reached for the knob but the door swung open. A sliding rectangle of light revealed Roz in jeans and a long, baggy brown sweater. Her eyes were red-rimmed. He smelled alcohol on her breath. “Oh, Mark.”

“Roz, hi. Have you heard from Lea? Has she called here?”

Roz gazed at him for a long moment. “I don't think she can,” she said finally, her voice a whisper.

Now we transition back to Lea and Martha hunkering down together at Martha's place with her husband as the hurricane roars overhead. Not much happens of note except this exchange:

“I wanted more kids,” Lea said. “I come from a big family. Four brothers and two sisters. I really wanted a houseful of kids. But after Ira was born, the doctor said we couldn't have any more. I was so disappointed. Heartbroken, really.”

Her words were greeted by silence. Martha and James stared at her, their faces appearing and disappearing in the flickering light.

Too much information.

I'm sure this bit of exposition and the couple's shared silence doesn't mean anything and won't come back into play later.

Eventually, the roof caves in from the storm and Lea gets knocked the frick out.

Lea comes to the next morning. Martha and her husband explain only part of the roof collapsed and she had been out for a few hours. The storm has passed, and even though being knocked out for hours indicates someone has severe brain damage, Martha and her husband say they're tired from staying up all night and go to sleep leaving Lea alone.

She makes her way outside and sees the entire island has been flattened by the storm. Bodies are everywhere and bloodied people sort through rubble looking for corpses and survivors. Here we get another Goosebumps butt chapter ending:

The man lumbering toward her caught her by surprise. He was tall and broad and drenched in sweat, thinning brown hair matted to his red forehead. His T-shirt was torn and stained with brown streaks. His shorts were rags.

His eyes were wild and his mouth was moving rapidly although Lea couldn't hear his words. His arms were outstretched, his mud-smeared hands open to grab her. He's crazy. He's out of his head.

Move!

But there wasn't time. With a menacing groan, he grabbed her by the shoulders. He pulled with surprising force, nearly dragging her off her feet. She inhaled the rank odor of his body and his mud-caked clothes.

He groaned again. She wasn't strong enough to resist. He was pulling her away from the others, dragging her out of view, grunting and groaning like an animal.

“Let go! Let go of me! Please! What are you going to do? Please—let go!”

Now inexplicably we turn to a new character named Andy. Andy is a cop who is new to Sag Harbor and is given the unfortunate task of driving over and delivering some bad news to a family, who turns out to be Mark. He engages with some hilarious banter over the radio with a fellow cop on the way there:

“There's a hurricane, Pavano. Down South. A big one. It pushed out into the ocean, but we're getting the sloppy seconds.”

Andy snickered. “Vince, you're a poet. Sloppy seconds? That doesn't even make sense.”

“Hey, what makes sense?”

Subtlety, thy name is Stine.

Andy arrives at the house and an actually funny moment occurs as he tells Mark his wife is dead:

“I'm sorry, sir,” Andy said, lowering his eyes. Rain pelted the back of his uniform shirt.

“How—” the man started. He made the choking sound again. The woman started to sob, burying her face behind the man's shoulder.

“It was a traffic accident.” Andy kept his eyes down, partly not to see their grief. He had to force his voice to stay steady. “On Stephen Hands. Near 114. The Easthampton police—they didn't want to tell you on the phone. They asked me—”

The man's expression changed. His eyes went wide. He raised a hand to say halt. The woman lifted her head and squinted at Andy. Tears glistened on her pale cheeks.

“That can't be,” the woman choked out. “You're wrong.”

“My wife . . . she is away,” the man said, staring hard into Andy's eyes. “She's on an island off South Carolina. She isn't in Easthampton.”

Andy's throat tightened again. He swallowed hard. “Mr. Hamlin, I was told—”

“He's not Mr. Hamlin, you idiot!” the woman screamed. Her hands balled into tight fists. “He's not Mr. Hamlin. Oh, I don't believe it. I don't fricking believe it.” She pounded the banister.

“I'm Mark Sutter,” the man said. He slid an arm around the woman's trembling shoulders. “Roz, please—”

Andy goes back to his car, embarrassed, and the next chapter picks up on that cliffhanger of Lea getting grabbed by the dirty man.

Except, oops, he's not dangerous and just is trying to get her help pulling someone from some rubble. A fake-out chapter ending scare? This really is Goosebumps!

After helping others pull people from rubble, Martha and her husband finally come out of their house and offer to come with Lea as they go to see what became of the boarding house and whether any of her belongings survived. They arrive at the hotel just to find ruins. Lea spots a dress under some debris and picks it up to discover:

She raised the wall board. Gazed down. Down at Macaw's lifeless face. At the puncture . . . the puncture . . . the blood-smeared puncture in her eye.

Lea gasped. She opened her mouth to scream, but couldn't make a sound.

The nail at the corner of the board—the rusted eight-inch nail, fatter than a pencil . . . Lea stared at the nail, then down to the bloodcaked puncture in the dead woman's eye socket. And she knew. She knew that when the wall fell in, the nail had been driven into Macaw's eye . . . eight inches . . . driven through her eye and into her brain.

So many ellipses, darn. Those are Stine's doing, not mine.

Finally the book catches up from where the prologue started off, with Lea finding the two blonde boys in the rain. Lea asks where their mom and house are and the boys just keep repeating that they're gone.

“What's your name?”

“Daniel, mum. This is my bruvver Samuel.”

Samuel nodded but didn't speak.

Lea wanted to hug them. Wrap them both in her arms. Tell them everything would be okay. My heart is breaking for them. I don't think I've ever felt this strange emotion.

Lea doesn't find it odd they speak like British chavs for some reason and is just overcome with emotion for the boys,

“And you have no one? You're all alone?” Lea realized she was repeating herself. She didn't want to believe it.

“Just our friend.” Samuel spoke up for the first time. He had a high, little boy's voice like Daniel.

“Friend?”

Daniel stepped in front of his twin. “He means me, mum. I'm his only friend.” He gave Samuel a scowl. “His brain right now is kind of like shepherd's pie. You know. Everything all mixed together like.”

No red flags here!

But she felt a powerful attraction to this boy and his nearly silent brother. Something warm and soft and real. Two creatures who really needed her. And this crazy feeling that she needed them.

“Yes. Yes, I think I can help you.”

Lea decides she is going to adopt these two strange boys on the spot and bring them back home with her to Long Island. Eventually cell reception comes back and she is able to call Mark and try and convince him of this idea:

“I'm not snatching them. They don't have a home. They lost everything here. Their family. Everything. They're adorable, Mark. They will fit in fine in Sag Harbor. They—”

“I know you want a big family. You always said it. And we talked about adopting. But this is different, Lea. This is too weird. I mean, to come home with two strange boys. I don't like it. I really don't.”

Mark is of course skeptical on this but Lea keeps pushing forward:

“I suppose we could talk to people here. Immigration people? What country are they from?”

“Country? They're from here. This island. They're American. We don't need immigration people.”

Really? Everything coming out of their mouths seem to say differently.

Eventually Lea gets Mark to agree with bringing the kids back to Long Island with her when it becomes clear she isn't backing down and after she suggests that this could be the topic for his next child psychology book. We then cut to Samuel and Daniel as the first part of the book comes to a close.

Samuel wants to bring their friend Ikey to Long Island with them, but Daniel is insistent that he not tell Lea about Ikey as she only wants two kids and Ikey isn't pretty like them.,

“We are starting a new family,” Daniel insisted. “You. Me. The new mum. The new dad. A new bruvver and sister. A new family, Sammy. We'll swim all day in our own pool. We'll go fishing in the bay. That's what Mum says. And we'll rule the school. Like heaven. You want to go to heaven, don't you, Sammy? We're moving to Heaven.”

Samuel made two fists. “I hate it when you talk stupid like that. You think it's cool, but it isn't. It's sick."

What did that mean—feel like home? He'd never had a home. He'd never had parents. At least, not parents he could remember. Daniel was kind of his parent. Even though they were the same age

Daniel relies Samuel isn't going to drop the argument about taking Ikey so Daniel says he'll handle it and walk over to where Ikey is sitting on the dock and presumbly murders him as Samuel hears Ikey yell followed by a splash.

Daniel shrugged. That strange smile played over his face again. “No more Ikey,” he said. His mouth did a strange quiver. Like a tic.

“Huh? No more Ikey? What do you mean?”

Daniel's smile grew wider. “No worries.”

“But, Daniel—” Samuel couldn't find the words.

“No more Ikey,” Daniel repeated in a singsong.

Samuel peered out the doorway to the dock. The dock was empty now. No boy sitting at the end. No fishing pole.

And that's where part two ends, with Lea leaving the island with the two boys to bring back home as her new sons. It seems like strange decision for your horror novel to LEAVE the creepy setting you built up (haunted island with blood rain that gets wrecked by a hurricane) for Long Island of all places, but that's only the beginning.

The second part gets a lot weirder---and worse.