Tagline: You’re invited… to die.
Back tagline: Danger: Keep Out
Summary: There’s an old story about the tunnels under Shadyside High. Some kids used to party down there, back in the sixties. Until something horrible happened. Something that left a bunch of people dead.
It’s just a story, right? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Besides, exploring the tunnels is a lot more fun than being stuck in Saturday detention. And it’s not as if anything could be down there.
But something is. Something dark and evil and no longer human.
Too bad there’s no turning back. And no one is around to hear your screams.
First impressions: I really like this cover, simple yet effective [Sorry for the slight damage lollll better than nothing though!]. All I really know going into it is that there’s a killer red mist or something in the tunnels, so with that and this cover, I’m getting 1988’s ‘The Blob’ vibes [A great movie btw]. The blurb sounds really interesting and I’ve wanted to read this book for sooooo long but because it’s the last book in the original Fear Street series, I’m pretty sure there were limited prints or something, so I’m super excited to have a copy of it. Let’s read!
Recap
Roll call:
Elaine – Our good girl heroine who’s eager to impress the bad boy.
Jerry – The nerdy guy who’s surprisingly not the love interest.
Bo – The bad boy with a redeeming story arc.
Max – Bo’s lackey who has no other character traits.
Darlene – A bad girl who’s into Bo and jealous of Elaine.
Mr. Savage – Shadyside’s new principal who enforced Saturday detention.
We begin with our heroine, Elaine Butler, arriving at Shadyside High for Saturday detention after leaving her trig homework at home. It’s not the first time she’s forgotten to bring her homework to class, and although she’s definitely completed it, her trig teacher didn’t believe her and it’s strike three for Elaine. The school has a new principal, Mr. Savage [Great name], who’s recently instated Saturday detention over the usual two hours after school, believing it will be more of a deterrent for naughty students.
It’s a dreary, rainy day as Elaine arrives, greeted by Mr. Savage at the school’s front doors. Elaine’s a good student, so Mr. Savage hopes she won’t be making a habit of detention, and Elaine definitely isn’t interested in wasting a Saturday ever again:
“Good. It would be a shame to ruin such a fine school record with a bunch of detentions.” He sighed again. “Even I learned some hard lessons in my day. Truly hard.”
[This makes me sort of suspicious of Mr. Savage. Did he used to party down in the tunnels in the ’60s, and now he’s finding more victims for whatever’s down there? He’s gotta at least be aware of the tunnels, right?]. Elaine heads to Room 111 where the other captives are and we meet the Fear Street Breakfast Club. There’s Jerry, who Elaine recognises from some of her classes. He’s got sandy-coloured hair, a tan sweater and khakis [A beige nightmare!]. He’s there because he refused to dissect a frog [Really? Shadyside High’s dishing out detention for having strong morals?]. Next is Bo, Shadyside High’s resident bad boy who likes to get in fights, smoke in class and supposedly, he’s even stolen a car! And if all that doesn’t prove to you he’s a bad boy, maybe his torn jeans, torn shirt and torn jacket will. There’s also Max, Bo’s lackey who graffitied the school bus, and lastly there’s Darlene, a pretty girl wearing too much makeup who’s there for cutting class. She’s clearly into Bo, but I have no idea if they’re a couple or not [So many potential victims! I wonder if Elaine will be the only survivor of the tunnels?!?].
Mr. Savage announces the rules for today – there’s to be no talking, they must stay in their seats, and if one of them messes up, they all mess up, so Mr. Savage is sure they’ll police themselves [What’s he gonna be doing if not supervising?]. He then leaves the room, completely oblivious to the switchblade that bad boy Bo throws at the wall after him [SoOOOoOooO000Oo0Ooo tough].
Pretty soon Bo, Max and Darlene want to visit the cafeteria for a snack. Elaine and Jerry are hesitant, but Bo encourages Elaine to come along since Mr. Savage’s rules mean they’ll all get in trouble regardless, so she may as well get something out of it. She quickly agrees, much to Darlene’s dismay, because Bo’s actually pretty cute for a bad boy and ‘deep down, she was glad Bo wanted to include her’ [Bless her heart, Elaine’s definitely a Fear Street girl!].
Good guy Jerry also ends up joining them and as the gang chows down on ice cream sandwiches and chips, Elaine realises Bo’s disappeared! As they call out for him, he stumbles into view and collapses at Elaine’s feet, blood covering his shirt and neck [I bet it’s ketchup!]. Elaine realises he’s still alive and sure enough, Bo jumps up, gloating about how real his little trick looked [I seriously doubt it looked that real lol. It was ketchup?!]. We also get a super meta line from Elaine:
“You really thought there was some psycho running around, cutting people up?” Bo asked.
“This is Shadyside,” Elaine commented.
[Hahahahaha she’s right, it’s entirely plausible in their town]. Darlene’s the only one that doesn’t laugh when Elaine jokes that the cafeteria food is just Shadyside’s dead people, and Elaine smiles as she realises Darlene must be worried she’ll steal Bo from her [Fuck Bo off and go for Jerry, Elaine! He seems much nicer].
They hear Mr. Savage’s footsteps as they leave the cafeteria and, realising he’ll cut them off if they try to head back to Room 111, Elaine leads them to the auditorium. Max ruins some of the sets for the upcoming play with a new paint job [What an ass! People worked hard on that] while Bo screeches on a violin [If you don’t want to get caught, why are you making so much noise?] and Elaine stumbles upon a curtain nailed to a wall at the back of the stage. Curious, she pulls it open, revealing a dark corridor leading away from the auditorium. She ventures in alone for a little bit before the creepy darkness gets to her, but as she makes her way back, the floor gives way beneath her [!!!].
She hits the ground below, alive but injured with a swollen ankle and bleeding elbow. In the darkness, she can feel a metal ladder to her back and rubbish on the ground around her. She decides she’s in some sort of secret tunnel beneath the school, but can’t think of it’s purpose. The air smells damp and mouldy though, so clearly no-one’s been down here for years. Unable to climb the ladder because of her injured ankle, Elaine screams for help which initially results in an encounter with a slimy rat [Hahaha gross]. Eventually, she hears the others above her, who realise Elaine’s fallen through a trapdoor that had been covered up.
Bo leads the others down the ladder and Elaine feels so00OO0ooooO0oo00o much safer in his presence [Just fuck him already, Elaine!]. Bo supports her as she stands, and ‘she noticed that her ankle didn’t hurt as much with Bo’s arm around her’ [Omfg Elaine, please]. Bo whips out his trusty lighter and flicks it on, revealing the words ‘LET’S PARTY’ scrawled on the wall in front of them, which makes them all gasp in shock [Terrifying, right?].
Looking around, the gang sees they’re in the corner of a large room with several dark passages leading off in different directions. Max and Bo have heard of this place, known as the Labyrinth, so I’ll let them explain:
“Anyway,” Bo continued, “back in the fifties, they built these tunnels as a bomb shelter. Supposedly they run for miles. The plan was to connect the whole town in case we were nuked. But no one ever needed the shelter. So this place became Party Central. Shadyside kids would come down here and throw major parties.”
“It was the cool place to come,” Max added, “because no one was allowed. Kids pretended they were stuck down here, and the bombs were on their way. It was their last night on Earth, and they partied like crazy.”
[So the tunnels were the hip place to be! Seriously though, that’s pretty cool. I would love to explore creepy old abandoned tunnels like this!]. Although Bo and Max have tried to find the Labyrinth before they’ve never been successful because all the entrances were blocked up because something bad happened. They’re not sure what exactly, ‘”But kids died. A lot of kids died.”‘ [Ooky spooky!].
Although Darlene and Jerry want to go back up, Max, Bo and Elaine want to explore, so Bo fashions three torches from the broken floorboards and some rotting fabric. His lighter is almost out, but luckily he’s got a small can of lighter fluid in his pocket to fuel the torches. Elaine thinks that’s a little too weird, because ‘who carried lighter fluid around all the time?’ [You mean that doesn’t turn you on, Elaine?], and they set off into the tunnel to their right.
They find some old newspapers from decades ago and venture further, every now and then hearing rats scuttle across the ground. Elaine grows more and more uneasy about being in the tunnels because she’s scared of the dark [Why is this only coming up now?], but doesn’t want to wimp out in front of the others, deciding Darlene would laugh at her [Darlene didn’t want to explore the tunnels in the first place, why would she make fun of you?].
Eventually they find the passage up ahead flooded with a pool of water, with a continuous stream of rainwater gushing from above. Darlene, Elaine and Jerry refuse to walk through it, not knowing how deep it is [But not because it’s gross?], so Bo leads them back the way they came, making several turns left and right which ends up getting them hopelessly lost [Why did no-one think to take note of their initial route?].
The bunch of idiots end up walking in a complete circle until they’re back at the pool of water. Bo and Max decide they should cross [Umm, no? Just go back again and don’t take the same turns and surely you’ll get back to the ladder?] because they’re bound to get to another exit [Again, no. Why would you go deeper into the Labyrinth when you’ve only covered a small section so far?], and Elaine notices a narrow ledge at the wall they can walk across to avoid the water. Bo scurries along first, but as Elaine follows, a rat dashes over her foot and she slips into the water.
The pool is crawling with rats [Grosssss], but Bo manages to pull Elaine out. She’s absolutely soaked, so he gives her his jacket to wear to warm her up [The bad boy has a heart!]. The others quickly move across the ledge and the gang continues on, with Elaine suggesting things couldn’t get any worse [Which is the last thing you should ever say when you’re having a bad day].
Eventually, the Breakfast Club comes across a six-foot-wide section of wall, ‘spanning from floor to ceiling, that was made of old, crumbling red brick’. It’s extremely out of place down there since so far all the walls have been cinder blocks and concrete, so Bo starts scraping at the mortar to get one of the bricks loose [OK, but why?]. As he slips his fingers into the cracks [;)] he’s made around the brick, it moves backwards, as if someone pulled it from the other side [This is terrifying]. Although everyone else is uneasy, Bo is undeterred and as he goes to touch the brick again, it pops back out several inches. Bo then pushes it back in until it stops dead:
“There,” Bo said, satisfied. “How about that?”
As if in reply, a low rumble came from the wall. It grew louder, and Elaine’s fear grew with it.
Run! she told herself.
Too late.
The rumble became a roar.
Then the entire wall exploded.
Everyone’s OK, save for a few cuts and bruises, and they’re all nervous about what just happened. Even stranger, there’s a red dust surrounding them that won’t seem to settle, just swirling around in the air. The air itself seems heavier, more humid and warmer, and Elaine notices the dust almost seems alive. The ‘sour smell of decaying flesh’ fills the air, and as Elaine lifts her torch higher, she notices the red particles, ‘a deeper red than brick’, begin to form one dense cloud [Uh oh]. Max waves his hand around, but the red cloud doesn’t disperse. Instead, it intensifies around him, thickening and growing:
Max’s body stiffened. His fingers curled up like claws. His eyes bulged.
Elaine gasped. What was happening to him?
“Max—!” Bo started. But his words were cut off by Max’s scream.
Max howled again—as the red mist lifted his body off the ground.
[What is this stuff?!]. The gang can only watch in horror as Max floats inside the red mist, his bones snapping and cracking one by one. Eventually, the red cloud hurtles down the tunnel, Max’s limp, twitching body still floating inside it. Bo takes off after it, wanting to save his friend [As if you’d think he could survive that] and a reluctant Elaine is forced to forget about him and head back in the other direction towards the pool with the others.
Eventually the trio stops, realising that none of these corridors look familiar and they should have reached the water by now. Elaine’s still worried about Bo, but Jerry and Darlene are sure he must be dead by now, so they keep moving forward, hoping to find an exit. And then they stumble across a dead body [!!!!!]. Darlene rushes towards it to check if it’s Bo, knocking the torch out of Elaine’s hands, which then flickers out. It’s pitch black now, and still thinking the body is Bo, Elaine finds her way towards it to search its pockets for the lighter fluid. Guess what? It’s not a decaying body after all, it’s just a pile of dirty old clothes [Really, guys? Can’t tell the difference between a body and some clothes?].
With no way to light the torch, the trio decides they still need to find Bo. That’s when they notice a faint red light in the distance. It seems to be growing brighter [Ah shit] as it flickers like a torch light. Suddenly, Bo sprints into view, covered in blood and carrying a torch [That wouldn’t be casting a red light, would it? I was hoping it was the mist!]. He reaches the group and explains what happened while he was gone:
“It slammed him into the walls as it floated down the passage,” he recalled. “Over and over. I got hold of Max’s legs, and it dragged me, too. Then I felt it taking hold of me. I mean, I felt this thing actually grabbing my arms. I had to let go of him. Then… then Max stop screaming. And I couldn’t keep up with it anymore.”
[OK what a fkn horrible way to go :/]. The foursome creates new torches with the pile of old clothes and the remainder of the lighter fluid, one for each of them, before Bo takes the lead back to a passage he suspects will take them to the water. On the way, Elaine tries to make sense of what they’ve witnessed. How could a cloud breathe? How could it crush the life from someone the way it did with Max? It’s clear to her that whatever the red mist is, it’d been trapped behind that wall for a long time until Bo loosened a brick enough for it to burst free [Thanks a lot, Bo! Fkn idiot].
They move through a small chamber carpeted with trash that absolutely stinks, with ‘LET’S PARTY’ spray-painted over and over and over on the walls. They continue on through another tunnel, all the while Elaine’s praying they find an exit soon. They arrive in another small chamber, this one filled with piles of splintered furniture. The stench of death hits them again, a smell Elaine recognises from just before Max was attacked, and sure enough, the red mist forms together in the far corner of the room, ‘as if sensing them’, and the stench intensifies as the cloud advances towards them [Ya’ll better start running!].
They dash through the tunnel on the right, Elaine pushing through the pain of her ankle, and eventually they arrive at the room with the ladder [Woo!]. Darlene pushes past Elaine to scramble up first [Bitch], and Elaine tells Bo to go up next because he’ll be able to pull her up if she can’t climb with her ankle. The ladder is super rusty and unstable [So we know this won’t end well], but they manage to get a decent way up before the red cloud arrives.
Jerry was last to start up the ladder, so unfortunately for him he’s the red mist’s new target and it quickly snakes around his body [Wow, Jerry?! I thought he’d survive for some reason]. Elaine grabs his outstretched hand and tries to pull him free, but the mist is too strong and eventually snakes over her wrist as well! With no other option to save herself, she apologises to Jerry and releases her grip on his hand, letting the red mist take him:
She winced as Jerry’s legs bent behind him and slammed into his back with horrifying force. She heard his spine shatter.
Jerry shoes struck the back of his head with a hollow clunk. His screams stopped.
His bones popped and snapped as the mist hauled him away.
[Stine’s really not shying away with these deaths! Poor Jerry, he didn’t even want to explore the school in the first place!]. The mist disappears into the tunnel with Jerry’s corpse and the other three continue up the ladder. But the old rust bucket can’t take the strain and the ladder starts to fall, with Elaine and Bo tumbling back to the ground with it [It would have had to have fallen forwards off the wall, meaning it would have landed on top of them, but there’s no mention of that happening, and it’s written as though it just fell straight down? Unless the sections beneath them slipped off the brackets already, and the piece they’re on just falls straight down or something? I don’t know if I can make sense of it hahaha].
They’re both as fine as they can be and share a hug which is quickly interrupted by Darlene’s cries for help. Looking up, they see her clinging for dear life to the last rung where the ladder had snapped. She’s quickly losing her grip though and has no strength to keep climbing, and with no way to climb up to her, Elaine realises the best thing to do is for her to drop and have Bo catch her. Since she’s gonna fall anyway, Darlene lets go and luckily Bo is there to half catch her, half break her fall [Hahahaha].
As the trio debates what to do next since they’ve already explored for hours and found no other exits, Elaine realises the only passage they seemingly haven’t explored yet is the one behind the brick wall, where the mist came from [I mean assuming the tunnels spread out under the whole town, there’s a lot more you haven’t explored, Elaine, but OK]. They head back towards the water [Oh, so now they can find their way?] and on the way, Darlene apologises for knocking Elaine down to get to the ladder [Aw, that’s nice]:
Darlene’s eyes glistened in the firelight. “It could’ve killed you. That mist, I mean.”
Elaine shrugged. “If you hadn’t pushed me, it would have killed you.”
Darlene’s gaze darkened, but Elaine didn’t care. She didn’t feel very forgiving at the moment.
[Oh, I read it as Elaine being nice, but I guess she was implying she wished Darlene died instead of Jerry? Brutal lol]. Elaine immediately feels bad, though, and suggests they just forget about the whole thing.
They make their way over the ledge by the water again and finally arrive at the brick wall, and one by one they step through the opening. They follow this new passage to the right where they discover a mound of dirt and rubble clogging the passage. A cave-in! Darlene spots an opening at the top of the pile, near the roof, just big enough for them to crawl through. It’s super claustrophobic in the dirt tunnel, which seems like it’ll collapse at any moment [My anxiety is through the roof just reading it], but they make it to the other side and are quickly greeted by ‘the secret of the Labyrinth’ – six decayed skeletons that are in the chamber with them.
They’re clothing had rotted away to tatters. Some sat with their backs against the wall—as if they were waiting for someone to come. Others were sprawled on the floor, jaws open wide. Their bones were the color of graveyard dirt.
But Elaine would remember the eye sockets the most.
Empty. Dark. And dead.
[Ooky spooky!]. With rubbish piled neatly to one side, the gang realise the skeletons weren’t killed by the red mist, but died of starvation/thirst after the cave-in. Elaine’s horrified that those are the only options for her, Darlene and Bo [Honestly I don’t know which is worse]. ‘LET’S PARTY’ is once again written all over the walls, but there’s some other words written on one section – a list of six names, ‘”The names of the dead.”‘ On another section of wall there’s another message, this time scratched into the wall with a rock. It reads ‘SCOTT SAVAGE KNOWS’, and Bo quickly realises it’s referring to the school principal [I knew it! It wouldn’t have even occurred to me earlier if Mr. Savage hadn’t said something about the hard lessons he’d learned. Did he trap them down her to save himself?!].
As they discuss what the message could possibly mean, they notice the red mist floating through the opening at the top of the dirt pile, and now it seems to be breathing! Bo decides he’ll sacrifice himself so the girls can escape through the opening, but the mist quickly swarms over the skeletons and flies across the room with them, spreading them out in front of the dirt pile and blocking the only way out of the chamber [This is fkn intense!].
The mist-controlled skeletons move towards the girls and Elaine realises the only way to get past is to barrel through them. She shouts to Darlene what to do and attempts to dash through the skeletons, but they circle around her, grabbing her hair and clothes. She attacks back, managing to destroy some of their bones, and scrambles up the dirt pile, looking back to see Darlene frozen in place as a skeleton closes in on her. Bo dashes toward her, swinging the last remaining torch at the bones, and everything goes black as Elaine scurries through the dirt opening and out the other side.
She spins around, but there’s no sign of the others until she hears ‘Darlene’s long, blood-curdling scream. And nothing more.’ [What, we don’t get to see it!? >:(]. Unable to leave them behind, Elaine clambers back up the dirt pile again [You’re free girl, just run!] and calls out for Bo, and that’s when a hand grips her shoulder from behind [!!!]. It’s Mr. Savage, and he’s smart enough to have brought a lantern [Let there be light!]. Bo’s upper body bursts through the mouth of the opening and Elaine and Mr. Savage manage to pull him free just before another cave-in seals the dirt tunnel shut.
With the mist on the other side, Darlene dead and the survivors safe [For now…], Elaine and Bo decide it’s time to get to the bottom of things. They explain to Mr. Savage what happened, and then ask him what he knows. He reveals that decades ago he was invited to party with the cool kids down in the tunnels, but he’d gotten separated from the six others just before the roof collapsed. He’d tried calling out to them but got no answer, so assumed they were dead. Being down in the tunnels was grounds for expulsion, and since no-one else knew any of them had been down there, Mr. Savage had left like it never happened and came back the next day and sealed the disaster behind the brick wall [So no-one though to investigate how six teens went missing at exactly the same time? No-one thought to investigate the tunnels, where teens were known to secretly party? Also, if no-one knew people died down there, why were all the entrances blocked up because people died down there, like Bo and Max said?].
Elaine and Bo realise the six trapped teens dug their way out of the chamber through the dirt pile only to be confronted with a brand-new brick wall [Ugh how horrible. Makes me feel sick just thinking about it]. Mr. Savage doesn’t know anything about a red mist, however, and doesn’t seem to believe them about it either [I guess the red mist was born from the anger and hatred the trapped kids had felt before they died?! That’s cool].
Just as they’re about to leave, the pile of dirt explodes forward and that pesky red mist is free once more [Honestly, what did they expect? Why wouldn’t you get to safety first before demanding an explanation from Mr. Savage? I guess the red cloud could have followed them regardless though, but still], only this time, there’s something different about it.
Several shapes hovered within the cloud. They shimmered and came into focus. Elaine could hardly believe her eyes—but she knew what they were.
Faces.
It was true.
“My friends,” Savage cracked.
Faces. Twisted and full of rage. Their mouth were dark pits—open in screams that no one would hear. Their eyes were black and empty. All around them, the mist spun like a lethal web.
[Ooky Spooky!]. Elaine figures out that once the teens had realised they were trapped, the hopelessness and terror gave way to rage, and somehow formed together to create the red mist, each day growing bigger and angrier, waiting for revenge. Elaine and Bo try to convince Mr. Savage to leave, but he’s got unfinished business here, instead explaining that six consecutive lefts will lead them to a shaft where they can take a ladder up to the school’s boiler room. Elaine and Bo watch on as he approaches the mist until he’s swallowed by it. Just like Max, Jerry and Darlene before him, the mist breaks Mr. Savage’s bones, but then something else happens to him:
The body seemed to grow smaller. Not shrinking, exactly. But turning in on itself.
The crackle of bones filled the air as the ghostly faces swirled around Savage. The principal’s body grew smaller and smaller. His face was unrecognizable. His form was no longer a body, but a ball.
Finally, it was gone.
[Wow, those trapped teens really hated him! I can understand their rage, but at the same time, it’s not like Savage purposefully left them to die. I feel kind of bad for him]. Then the angry faces within the cloud begin to fade and the redness dims until the mist evaporates without a trace. Satisfied the ordeal is over, Elaine and Bo follow Mr. Savage’s instructions out of the tunnels and the book ends as they ascend the ladder together.
Final thoughts
I love this book!!! Great concept, great deaths, a great sense of dread from start to finish. The mist’s origins were really interesting and I feel like this is maybe one of the darkest Fear Streets, at least compared to the ones I’ve recapped so far. I think it would have translated to the screen really well, so I’m sad Fear Street never became an anthology TV show like Goosebumps had been.
I’m not sure if the tunnels under Shadyside have ever been mentioned before, but I love the idea of the whole town being connected through abandoned corridors and chambers. The setting also gave the book a claustrophobic feel, and while being lost in a labyrinth of underground tunnels is scary enough, to have a killer mist that brutally breaks all your bones gave it a ticking clock element and an even bigger sense of urgency for the characters. The idea of being trapped somewhere knowing you’re probably about to die is one of the scariest things to me, and when a movie/TV show/book makes me feel that particular anxiety, it’s done a good job [‘47 Meters Down: Uncaged‘ and ‘Underwater‘ gave me similar feelings, especially because drowning is another huge fear of mine].
I liked this book so much I read it all in one day! That never happens, but this one was a real page turner for me. It’s a book I’ve been wanting to find for years, so I’d really hyped it up in my head and I’m glad it didn’t disappoint. It’s up there with my other favourite Fear Streets so far, What Holly Heard and Silent Night.
42 red mists that break all your bones out of 46!
