Tagline: The horror is not over yet….
Back tagline: When you can’t sleep, there’s always Nights./Things go bump in the Night…
Summary: The Night People are safe at last. After all the ugly pranks and vicious murders, things have finally returned to normal. The friends who are left are trying to forget and move on, taking comfort by meeting up late-night at their old hangout, Nights.
It was the ancient spirit of Angelica Fear that caused all the trouble. And now she’s been destroyed once and for all. Burned in a fire.
But if it’s true that the horror is head, what did Angelica mean when her voice cried out from the flames?…
“The Evil Lives!”
First impressions: This blurb gives us absolutely nothing to work with, so I have no idea what the plot is of this one. And the blurb is lying to us, because it was the severed heads of Candy, Ada and Whitney that chanted “The evil lives!”, not Angelica…
On the plus side, this is probably the most exciting cover of the trilogy because it looks like someone’s hearing some juicy gossip!
I’m curious to find out if Jamie will face any repercussions for Ada and Whitney’s murders, because I’m not sure how well “I was possessed by Angelica Fear” will be received. Only one way to find out! [And don’t forget to check out the Dustin Can Read podcast, where me and Dustin discussed this trilogy!]
Recap
Meet the gang:
Jamie – Our protagonist who’s getting back to a normal life after being possessed by Angelica Fear.
Lewis – Jamie’s boyfriend who exhibits some strange behaviour.
Dana – Jamie’s cousin and one of the only people who knows the truth about Jamie’s possession.
Nate, Shark, Nikki, Galen and Aaron, Clark – Our less prominent characters who still have some minor relevance to the story.
Prologue
The book begins with Jamie and Dana getting ready for the upcoming Valentine’s Day dance. Dana’s latest squeeze, Clark, knows the DJ, who also plays “at that teen dance club on Wayland Road that no one goes to.”‘ [Are they talking shit about Red Heat? How dare they 😡 ]. Unbeknownst to them, they’re being watched through the window by our current narrator, who’s pressed up against the glass [This has to be the one-eyed blackbird, right? Amazing] and growing bored. The girls are enjoying themselves way too much right now, you see, but soon, Dana spots something in Jamie’s hair – a maggot!
Both girls’ hair is crawling with the white worms [Grosssssss], and as they frantically pluck the maggots from their scalps, screaming and crying, our narrator is confident they won’t be making it to the dance after all:
I decided it was time for me to leave. I raised my wings and took off, floating high above Jamie’s house.
They still hadn’t seen me. If they had, they would have screamed some more. They would have recognized me, the blackbird with one eye missing.
And they would know that the EVIL lives, the evil still haunts them.
At least, they consider me evil. I have a different point of view. I think I’m on the side of justice. I only want what is fair.
After all, they invaded my house last year. They broke into the Fear Mansion and looted it. They gleefully stole our possessions.
Didn’t anyone ever teach these kids that crime doesn’t pay?
[Hahaha I really hope we get more bird POVs in this book. Obviously it’s possessed by a Fear, and my money is on Simon because it’s too predictable to bring Angelica back again. There were two skeletons in the hole Jamie and Lewis fell in, so it makes sense that Simon was revived, too. Although in saying that, it’s more likely that Simon is possessing Lewis, so maybe Angelica did survive the kiln and took over the bird? But then who was controlling the bird while Angelica was controlling Jamie? Is there a third Fear in play here, or has Simon just been the bird the whole time, and never took over Lewis for some reason?] Whoever this bird may be, they plan to make all the Night People pay – the amulet will make sure of that!:
Trying to burn us away gives me even more reason to seek my revenge.
Even more reason to kill them one by one.
[“Trying to burn us away” confirms, to me at least, that it’s Simon, because if it was Angelica, she would have said ‘me’, not ‘us’!]
Part 1
It’s a month later now [And four months since the events of the previous book, which is mentioned later], and Jamie is our new narrator. Her boyfriend, Lewis, is giving her, Dana, Dana’s boyfriend Clark, Shark and Nikki [No Nate??!? Hopefully he’s dead] a tour of his new house, complete with a plasma TV! Things are going really well for Lewis lately, what with the new house and his early acceptance to Brown and all, and even Jamie is starting to feel like herself again.
For the reader’s benefit, she quickly recaps falling into the hole with Lewis and the endless months it took for them to recover from the accident, although they’re still mentally traumatised. Jamie explains how she was possessed by Angelica Fear, who used her body to murder Candy, Ada and Whitney TAG. Jamie doesn’t remember any of this herself, of course, but learned all about it from Dana, who was able to destroy Angelica for good [But three severed heads told them THE EVIL LIVES!!!!!!! at the end of the last book, so surely they don’t actually think it’s all over?].
It took three months for Jamie to finally feel like herself again, but she’s thankful that things are going a lot better now. The only issue is that it feels like there’s a wall up between Jamie and Lewis lately, which she puts down to all the trauma they’ve been through but don’t want to discuss. She wonders if he’s grossed out by the fact she was ‘possessed by a hundred-year-old ghost,’ or if he thinks Jamie’s a murderer because besides Dana, Lewis is the only one that knows the truth [Ohhhhhh, so they didn’t tell anyone about what happened! Except Lewis, obviously. Which means Dana would still be the number one suspect for Ada’s and Whitney’s murders? Is that going to be a plot point, or have the police given up? Also, what did Jamie and Dana do with the three severed heads?].
The gang decides to head to the Fear Street Acres Cineplex for a midnight showing of an Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore comedy [I googled to see if this was a real movie, but it’s definitely made up because Adam Sandler only had cameo roles in 2005]. The movie is pretty dumb and there’s not many other people in the theatre, so our heroes feel entitled to be loud and annoying [Ugh, I hate people like that]. Someone rightfully complains about them and the gang is warned by a worker to shut the fuck up or get the fuck out.
Jamie’s had a long day and starts feeling drowsy, dozing off for a few minutes. When she opens her eyes again, she’s shocked to find herself on the screen instead of Drew Barrymore. And not only that, but Adam Sandler has also been replaced by Lewis! And then someone else appears on screen – Angelica Fear [!!!!!]. Jamie watches in horror as Angelica fades into a transparent ghost and floats over onscreen Jamie before slowly sliding down into her body, making them look like ‘some kind of terrifying conjoined twins.’
It’s so horrifying that offscreen Jamie stands up and screams, and her friends quickly pull her out to the lobby. Jamie tells them she saw herself, Lewis and Angelica onscreen, but doesn’t elaborate on the significance since Shark, Nikki and Clark don’t know about the possession. It’s quickly determined she was just having a nightmare, and although everyone tries to cheer her up, Jamie just wants to go home.
Jamie and Dana head home where Jamie feels bad about ruining everyone’s night. She genuinely thought she’d been awake, but Dana had apparently seen Jamie’s eyes closed and assures her that nightmares are perfectly understandable after what they’ve been through. She insists that Jamie should just try to relax now because everything’s been going amazingly lately; Dana got the Collingsworth scholarship [Well her only competitors were murdered, so of course she did] and Jamie’s been walking without a limp for the past month!
Jamie wishes she could move on like Dana has, but she can’t help but feel like Angelica’s coming back, which is the perfect time for someone to rattle the window! Jamie spots ‘a hand reach in from outside’ as a dark figure pushes against the glass [!!!!]. Jamie starts screaming, convinced it’s Angelica Fear, but it’s actually just Lewis, who apparently enters her room this way regularly.
Dana explains that Jamie’s seeing Angelica everywhere, and after spotting the spellbook on a shelf, Lewis comes up with a bright idea to put Jamie’s mind at ease. He wants Jamie to try the spell Angelica had been using to make Dana feel dizzy and black out, insisting it will fail because Jamie’s not possessed anymore and the amulet’s gone. Jamie doesn’t want to risk putting Dana through that again, even though Dana is willing if it will convince Jamie she’s wrong about Angelica being back, so Lewis volunteers.
Jamie relents and sets up the black candles she’d hidden in the back of her closet, placing them in a circle and lighting them one by one. She then sits in the middle of the circle and chants a spell from the book, raising her eyes to Lewis as she reaches the end:
His eyes … They were closed. His had had rolled back on his shoulders. His mouth hung open.
In a trance. Out cold.
Except he’s not out cold at all and is just pretending, because for whatever reason he thinks the situation calls for a little prank [You suck, Lewis]. Jamie reluctantly agrees with Lewis and Dana that since the spell didn’t work, Angelica really is gone for good [But all it really proves is that Angelica isn’t currently possessing Jamie… This plan was flawed from the beginning and all three of them are idiots]. Dana heads off to bed, leaving Jamie and Lewis hugging intimately for a while. The open spellbook soon catches Jamie’s eye, though, because the letters are moving around, rearranging themselves [!!!]:
I stared in disbelief. Stared over Lewis’s shoulder, watching the letters skip and slide, moving up and down and around the pages … until finally they stopped.
And I gaped in frozen horror at the words they had spelled out:
THE EVIL LIVES.
[How will Lewis and Dana gonna explain this away?]
Part 2
After school on Friday, Jamie’s at her locked when she spots Dana talking to Nate down the hall with a big scowl on her face [Wait, so did Jamie tell Lewis about the letters rearranging or?] . Dana felt really betrayed after Nate started to believe she murdered Ada and Whitney and hasn’t spoken to him in four months. Nate eventually walks off, and Dana storms over to Jamie to explain that he keeps pestering her about getting back together [Oh god, please, no!]. Dana’s found a bit more self respect in the past four months, though, and isn’t interested in ever going out with Nate again [Thank god for that!]. She’s super into Clark now anyway, a huge basketball star for the Shadyside Tigers and allegedly ‘”the best point guard the Tigers have ever had.”‘ [How come we never heard of him until this book? I don’t know if we should be suspicious or not].
Out of nowhere, Jamie asks if Dana ever thinks about the amulet, which as we all remember, was stolen by the one-eyed blackbird before Dana could throw it in the kiln. Jamie would feel a lot better if they knew where the amulet is, and isn’t so sure that Dana’s correct about the bird most likely using it to build a nest [That’s just wishful thinking, Dana].
Later that night, Jamie meets Lewis and Dana at Nights. Shark, Nikki, Nate, Galen and Aaron [Whitney’s boyfriend who I’m assuming will become just relevant enough to be murdered in this one] are all there too, but at separate tables. Soon, Clark arrives in his Shadyside letter jacket:
“Go, Tigers!”
“Tigers Rock!”
The bar erupted in applause and shouts. Clark waved both fists in the air and shouted along with them.
[Americans take sports way too seriously hahaha this is cringey] By 2am the gang is pretty trashed and decide to go roam the empty streets of Shadyside. Despite constantly banging on about having to be careful so they don’t wake up any adults, the group is pretty rowdy and make way too much noise. Eventually they walk past a house that has three kids’ bikes leaning against the wall, and Shark, Lewis and Clark decide to have a race to a dead end a few blocks away. To make it more interesting, though, there’s a no hands rule [Lol, this won’t end well].
The rest of the squad head to the finish line to wait for the racers to arrive, and they soon appear ‘weaving wildly from curb to curb.’ [Which idiot’s gonna crash? I’m thinking Clark] As the riders come rolling down a steep hill towards the dead end, the cheers from the audience stop suddenly ‘as we saw Clark’s bike shoot out of control.’ [Knew it!] Clark’s bike zigzags down the hill, away from the other racers, and because he apparently isn’t smart enough to grab the handlebars to gain some control back, he slams into the back of a parked SUV:
I heard a loud crunnnch that sounded like metal ripping apart. And then we all cried out as Clark went flying.
He sailed off the bike, did a wild flip in the air, and landed hard on his back on the SUV roof.
Everyone runs to the SUV, horrified to find that Clark’s not moving [!!!]. It’s all too much for Jamie, who starts wailing that he’s dead – ‘”Another kid in our class! It’s happened again!” [Calm down, I bet he’s perfectly fine].
Sure enough, Clark’s basically uninjured and only had the breath knocked out of him. Jamie’s super relieved, and they all head back to the house to return the bike, although the one Clark rode is totally mangled [Why was Clark targeted anyway, he wasn’t around when Fear Mansion was looted?]. As Aaron, Shark and Nate are putting the bikes back in place, the front lights turn on, and Clark screams at the boys to run [They definitely shouldn’t be being this loud now that someone’s actually awake and might discover the Night People… Idiots].
Everyone scrambles off in different directions, but Jamie stays side by side with Lewis as they head back towards Nights. They reach Lewis’ car, but Jamie declines a ride home because running feels so good [No it doesn’t 🤮], especially now that her leg and hip have healed and she’s not limping anymore! So she jogs down Fear Street [I can’t believe anyone would choose a lonesome jog down Fear Street over a ride home at this time of night/morning?], and eventually the street curves through what’s left of the Fear Street Woods.
The sounds of her steady footsteps and the wind rustling through the trees is super relaxing at first, but then Jamie hears a fluttering sound, ‘like the flap of a paper kite in the wind.’ [Or the flap of a one-eyed blackbird’s wings?] Glancing up, Jamie spots a blackbird hovering low above her head, and she quickly realises it’s the same bird that stole the amulet! She takes off running again, but the bird follows, swooping past her and darting back again with its talons raised and it’s one eye ‘glowing with excitement.’ When she can’t run any farther, she turns around to face it and shakes her fist at the bird, screaming at it to go away and leave her alone.
We then get a quick chapter from the blackbird’s perspective now, and they’re having a lot of fun keeping Jamie tense and worried. The blackbird likes to keep all of the Night People on edge, but it will all stop soon:
I can’t allow the fun to continue much longer. Not with the anger that burns in my heart. Not with the rage that drives me to revenge.
You have a lot more to fear than a swooping blackbird, Jamie, dear.
A lot more to FEAR.
[Nice pun, Blackbird!] Back to Jamie, and it’s now Saturday afternoon. She’s been in her room all day searching through the spellbook for some spell to ward of blackbirds, but the poor girl’s having no luck whatsoever. Dana comes in to check on her, and Jamie explains what she’s doing, insisting the blackbird is following her. She also reveals she’s memorised a spell that she’s sure will summon Angelia Fear. “Why the fuck would she want to do that?” I hear you ask. To confront her, of course, to find out the truth so Jamie can ‘”know for sure about the amulet”‘ and make sure Angelica isn’t coming back to possess her again [know what for sure about the amulet? Bringing her back is just opening yourself up for more evil and potentially more possession, you derp].
To take Jamie’s mind off of blackbirds, amulets and Angelica Fear, Dana takes her to the flea market being held at the school parking lot. While there, they check out a jewellery stall where something catches Jamie’s eye – a silver, blue-jewelled bracelet that has ‘”the same design as the amulet.”‘ [Is this just a coincidence, or is this a legit matching bracelet that also has powers that we’ve just never heard of before?]. Dana agrees, so they ask the seller, Melissa, if she knows anything about it.
Melissa passes it to them to inspect and explains it’s super old and she’d found it in her great-great-grandmother’s house after she’d died. Jamie asks if her grandmother was a Fear, which she wasn’t, but she was a housekeeper for the Fears back in the day! Although the Fears weren’t generous people, Melissa thinks they probably gave it to her grandmother as a gift [Grandma probably stole it as revenge for their presumable poor treatment of her!].
The bracelet will costs $100, but neither girl have that kind of money. It’s starting to rain so Melissa, who seems way too trusting of teenagers, starts packing up her displays into a nearby cart, leaving Jamie with the bracelet. Lewis appears but he has no money either, and to my surprise, Jamie sets the bracelet back down on the case even though Melissa is out of sight [I really thought she was going to steal it! Jamie’s probably the best one of all these teenagers], and heads off to go cruising around with Lewis, while Dana leaves to watch Clark practice basketball.
As they drive around, Lewis pulls something from his pocket – the bracelet, curtesy of his five-finger discount! Jamie is appalled that he stole it and for an instant she ‘glimpsed something different in his eyes, something flat and cold. Eyes I’d never seen before.’ [The eyes of Simon Fear?]. Jamie questions this new side to her boyfriend, but Lewis just declares that it’s the new him [Why is Lewis only seeming to change now, when he’s most likely been possessed by Simon since falling into the hole?] and slips the bracelet onto her wrist. By this point they’ve driven through town and are in farm country, and as Lewis puts on the new 50 Cent CD to jam to, Jamie brings her wrist close to her face so she inspect her new jewellery:
And as I did, I heard a voice, just a whisper—but loud enough to be heard over the booming music.
“I’m here, Jamie. I’m still here with you.”
[Ooky spooky!] Jamie’s totally freaked out by this and stuffs the bracelet into the bottom of a drawer when she gets home later, but she can’t stop thinking about it. She doesn’t know why she even wanted the bracelet so badly to begin with, and wonders if Angelica Fear is still inside her and made her desire it. She wishes she could forget about everything that happened and move on, like everyone else seems to have done, but how do you forget murdering your friends while possessed by an evil spirit?
On Tuesday night she sneaks out to Nights, where Dana is sitting on Nate’s lap and kissing him [So any self-respect she gained over the last four months has immediately vanished]. Jamie decides not to interrupt and takes a seat with Lewis, who’s sitting alone in a booth, but Dana eventually comes over and asks them not to tell Clark about her affair [If you want to keep it a secret, don’t do it so openly where literally everyone can see lol], declaring she can’t help herself because Nate is just so cute [🤮 ]! Then Dana heads off with Nate, probably to go have sex somewhere.
Jamie overhears Nikki and Shark, who are in the booth behind her and Lewis, discussing the recent murders. Nikki, a Waynesbridge girl [Why does she sneak out to Shadyside every night], reckons there’s ‘”some kind of bizarre curse on Shadyside High,”‘ since no one from Waynesbridge High has been killed, and Jamie wonders if Nikki is right.
The next day after school, Jamie heads to the gym to watch the final basketball practice before the big game. She takes a seat with with Nate, Shark and Nikki, whose school closed early because of issues with the furnace. Jamie spots Dana entering the gym before a sudden chill rolls over her body. After momentarily closing her eyes, the colours in the gym appear to be all wrong – ‘the players were all bright blue and red. The walls turned black.’
Suddenly overcome with a feeling of overwhelming dread, Jamie leaps up and heads for the doors, arms out front to steady herself as she’s hit by wave after wave of dizziness. The strange feeling leaves just as quickly as it had arrived, and although everything appears back to normal, Jamie still wants to leave. She continues toward the doors, but she’s interrupted by a loud, metallic crack, screaming and a rumbling noise from behind her. Whirling around, Jamie screams as she realises the bleachers are collapsing!
Everyone who’s able to frantically starts pulling kids out of the wreckage, and no-one seems to have any major injuries…except for Nikki, who’s ‘squeezed under the benches. Her arms pressed to her sides’:
Her face—crushed beneath the metal bench. Her face … crushed and broken.
Her skull smashed in. Blood running down her blond hair. One eyeball hanging loose.
Nikki. Crushed and broken. Dead.
[Noooooo, Nikki deserves better! #JusticeForNikki!!!! She wasn’t even part of the Night People when they looted the hidden room, why was she killed? It really should have been Nate 😡]
Part 3
We jump to three days later, just after Nikki’s funeral as Dana’s pulling into a Wendy’s so she and Jamie can grab some food [What, no Pete’s Pizza?!]. Jamie’s still too traumatised by the sight of Nikki’s body to eat and tells Dana that Nikki was wrong, and it’s much worse than just a Shadyside curse. Then Dana suddenly remembers something and starts babbling about how the brain is so weird and she must have locked it away because it’s so frightening but it’s suddenly just come back to her now [Just spit it out, ya nong!].
When Dana finally stops rambling, she reveals that the night she destroyed Angelica, the evil witch told her she was killing everybody who looted her house [Oh yeah, I forgot about that too, actually. Although I don’t know how Dana could forget, it’s pretty important information that her friends would definitely need to know]. Jamie is shocked and explains that everyone took something from the hidden room, including all four girls that have died [Why haven’t any of the guys died yet? Sexist, Stine?] and Angelica must still be around because she’s clearly killed Nikki – ‘”And she wants to kill the rest of us. We’re all in terrible danger!”‘ [Well, except Dana, right? She didn’t steal anything! But then neither did Nikki, so maybe that doesn’t matter]
We then cut to 1:13am that night, and Jamie’s unable to sleep. For some reason, she hasn’t told anyone about what Dana told her or warned her friends of their impending deaths [Seriously, why would you not tell anyone?] and decides she’s the one who has to stop Angelica for good. She retrieves the bracelet from the drawer and slips it over her wrist before asking Angelica if she’s here.
Of course there’s no answer, so Jamie decides to head to Nights, hoping Lewis can help cheer her up. As she approaches Fear Street Acres, however, the street is unusually dark because there’s no lights on anywhere. In fact, the traffic lights and street lights on Fear Street are also completely dark! Confused, Jamie continues forward and suddenly realises she’s staring up at a dark hill. She definitely didn’t make a wrong turn somewhere, but there’s no sign of Fear Street Acres or Nights anywhere [Ooky spooky!].
At the top of the hill is none other than Fear Mansion, before it was burned down, which is impossible because Jamie watched it get torn down almost two years ago. A strong force quickly begins pushing Jamie up the hill towards the house, and her attempts to resist are futile as she’s dragged up to the porch and shoved inside the open double doors before the doors slam shut behind her [!!!].
The mansion is super dark, but Jamie does notice a thick, swirling green fog which I assume is the same one that escaped from Jamie inside the kiln [Unless this is Simon’s equivalent?]. Jamie scurries through the house searching for an exit [Apparently the green fog is blocking her view of the double doors, and I guess she doesn’t want to push through the fog?] and eventually finds the library, where there’s a fire blazing in the fireplace… and a man who slowly stands up from the couch [!!!!]. And it’s none other than Simon Fear!
Jamie instantly recognises Simon from the bronze plaque at Nights, but he doesn’t see her, so she’s able to haul ass out of there and finds her way back to the the double doors. She bolts outside and sprints all the way to Lewis’ house, knowing he’s the only one that will believe her.
Lewis, of course, thinks she’s just stressed out, so she demands he drive her back to Fear Street so he can see for himself. They silently back Lewis’ parents car down the driveway and don’t hit the headlights until they’re in the next block [Sounds dangerous lol] because they’re such experts at sneaking out, according to Jamie – ‘So far, none of us had been caught. Our parents were all clueless.’ [Which is wrong, because in the first book we were told Galen got busted thanks to his lips and tongue ripping off when he kissed the plaque at Nights?]
During the car ride, Jamie bangs on and on about the Fear Mansion returning and Angelica Fear being behind it all, but would you believe it? When they arrive on Fear Street, there’s no steep hill and no Fear Mansion, and Fear Street Acres and the Nights bar have returned. And then poor Jamie just breaks down because it’s all so overwhelming, and Lewis tells her he’ll look after her [I bet you will, Simon Lewis].
We get a quick POV chapter now, not from the bird, but from Simon Fear, who, just as I expected, is inhabiting Lewis’ body [Nice to see Stine hasn’t stopped being predictable]. Jamie’s so obsessed with the idea that Angelica is back that she doesn’t even suspect the truth, and Simon ‘having my fun messing with Jamie’s mind, as they say today.’
Anyway, we learn that Simon as Lewis stole the bracelet for Jamie so he could use it ‘to control her mind, her actions—her whole world.’ He thinks it’s hilarious how scared and confused Jamie is, but he’s had enough teasing now, so it’s ‘time for the blood to flow.’ And Simon won’t rest until his revenge is complete [Well get on with it, Simon, we’ve been waiting long enough]
Part 4
It’s now the night of the pep rally/bonfire to celebrate the Shadyside Tigers heading to the tournament, which is the first time they’ve managed to make it that far in god knows how long. As Lewis drives himself and Jamie to Miller’s Farm where the bonfire’s being held, Jamie notices Lewis smiling to himself. ‘”It’s a secret smile,”‘ he explains, but doesn’t elaborate further [Someone’s gonna die tonight! 😈].
When they arrive at the farm, cousin Cindy pops into Jamie’s head because she used to stay with Cindy’s family every summer on their farm outside Shadyside [Is Cindy’s ghost is gonna pop up to save the day at the climax of this book? I can’t think of any reason why she keeps being brought again. Also, I really wanna know why Jamie thinks Cindy is her cousin, when they have no blood relation at all. As established in the second book, Cindy is Dana’s cousin on her dad’s side, the Fear family, while Jamie’s and Dana’s mothers were siblings]. They soon bump into Dana, who’s been here all afternoon helping to build the bonfire, which is absolutely a fire hazard waiting to happen – it’s a tower ‘about twenty or thirty feet tall, taller than the barn’ [How did they even get it that tall?!?] made from lumber and newspaper and straw and all other sorts of junk.
After a short speech from one of the coaches, the cheerleaders show off their school spirit with a cheer before lighting some kerosene-dipped torches. Lewis decides he wants some cider and heads off to the cider stand over by the barn [So he can do some evil in private!]. Form a circle around the tower, the cheerleaders simultaneously set it alight on all sides, sending flames shooting up the tall structure. Dana thinks it’s a beautiful sight, and Jamie agrees, having ‘never seen such an awesome column of bright fire rising up to the sky.’ [How many columns of bright fire rising up to the sky have you seen, Jamie? 🤔]
Just as Jamie has that thought, the tower starts to tilt, bend and topple over [!!!]. Flaming wood, straw and chairs rain down on everyone, and soon the whole burning structure is scattered all over the field. And then the bad situation gets even worse because the barn’s caught fire too:
I saw the owls flying up from the barn. The owls with their wings on fire. Flames darted over their backs as they flapped up against the night sky, screeching, screeching, screeching out their pain.
[Oh no, those poor owls :(] Jamie suddenly realises Lewis never returned with the cider and desperately runs around searching for him [He’ll be back once the spell is over, Jamie, don’t worry!]. Instead she runs into Shark, who’s searching for Galen, Aaron, and a redhead girl, Lissa, that Aaron’s been dating recently [Did Aaron even mourn Whitney? Also, Jamie has spotted with this redhead several times throughout the book, but I’m only mentioning her now because we’ve just learned her name. She’ll probably have no impact on the story, but I’m bringing her up just in case. NOTE FROM FUTURE: She’s literally never brought up again lol].
Lewis suddenly appears and explains he’d been helping the cheerleaders escape the flaming rubble [What a hero!]. Jamie, Lewis and Shark continue searching for their missing friends and wind up by the fence at the end of the field, far away from the commotion behind them. There seems to be two scarecrows up ahead, which Jamie thinks is strange because ‘why would the farm have scarecrows up in an empty field at the end of winter?’ [Good question, Jamie! Why don’t you take a closer look?]:
“Oh—!” A soft cry escaped my throat, and I grabbed Lewis’s arm.
I stared at the two figures dangling on the poles.
Not scarecrows.
Not scarecrows.
Aaron and Galen, tilting toward each other. Hanging limp and lifeless on the poles.
Their mouths and ears, their shirts and pants—stuffed with straw.
[OK, I like the visuals of this, but how did they die? Have they literally been stuffed with straw, or is it just poking out of the openings of their clothes, mouths and ears? They could have at least been on fire or something]
A week later, Jamie, Lewis, Dana, Clark, Shark and Nate, the last of the Night People, are drowning their sorrows in beer at Nights. As a result of of the murders, the Tigers were pulled from the tournament [Why though? Are they too sad to play or were they forced to pull out?] and the school was closed for three days, with counsellors available for all students to talk to. Everyone at the bonfire had been questioned by police, but of course no-one had any useful information.
Jamie and Dana are the only ones that know why the Night People are being picked off one by one, but Jamie reckons no-one would believe her if she told everyone who’s behind the murders and why [After everything that’s happened during this trilogy, I’m sure they are very open to hearing an explanation, especially since Dana can back it up? Jamie’s just being an idiot. She wouldn’t even have to say she was possessed by Angelica, she could literally just say the Fears’ spirits are getting revenge on everyone who stole from the hidden room. And then they could all figure out a way, together, to return all the loot?].
As Nate reminisces about how fun sneaking out at night used to be, Dana reminds everyone that she and Clark weren’t OG Night People when they used to meet at the Fear Mansion. As everyone chatters away, Jamie realises this is why Dana seems to be handling everything so well; she and Clark most likely aren’t targets, since they weren’t around when the hidden room was looted. All of a sudden, Jamie jumps up and heads for the door because she now knows what she has to do:
I couldn’t just sit around drinking beer and talking about how sad I was and let Simon or Angelica or whoever kill us one by one. I had to do something.
This all started at the Fear Mansion. And I knew it had to end at the Fear Manson…
For reasons I still don’t understand, Jamie strongly believes she’s the only one who can stop Angelica and Simon, so when she gets home, she slips on the bracelet, opens up the spellbook and finds the return spell she’d been practicing [Which is basically just ‘”Return … Return …”‘]. She begins to recite the spell once more, picturing Fear Mansion and gripping the bracelet tightly, feeling it grow warmer and warmer.
Then Jamie creeps out of the house and walks back to Fear Street, still repeating the spell. The one-eyed blackbird briefly hovers around but flies off without swooping for once. Eventually, the steep hill and Fear Mansion rise up where Fear Street Acres/Nights should be, and Jamie heads on inside. There’s a pale light coming from a doorway, so she enters that room and finds it inhabited by the one-eyed blackbird standing on a wooden perch. It quickly attacks her, gripping her shoulders with it’s talons as it beats at her face with its wings.
Jamie hears a shout and opens her eyes just in time to see someone else’s arm slap the bird away. As the bird angrily returns to its perch, Jamie turns to face her rescuer and lets out ‘a shocked scream’ – it’s Lewis [I feel like this is where we should have learned that Lewis was Simon. The twist was predictable anyway, but I don’t understand why Stine decided to reveal it to the reader instead of letting us find out alongside Jamie]! He’s got a strange smile on his face as he explains he was on the way to her house when he saw her leave and decided to followed her [And he doesn’t seem at all surprised that Fear Mansion is suddenly back! Jamie needs to use her brain and realise how suss he is. There were two skeletons in the hole you guys fell in, Jamie, use your noggin!]. He tells Jamie it’s time to end this and although she finds it strange that she never heard him follow her into the house and that he wasn’t surprised to see the mansion is back, still she trusts him ‘more than anyone else on earth’ [Oh, Jamie 😕] and follows him towards another well-lit room.
To Jamie’s surprise, Dana, Nate and Shark are all in this room and they’re just as confused as she is. The blackbird flies in and perches itself on the windowsill as Lewis reveals himself to be Simon Fear, and Jamie is completely floored that Simon has been behind the recent murders, not Angelica. Lewis’ face morphs into Simon’s as he welcomes the gang back to his mansion, explaining that he and Angelica possessed Jamie’s and Lewis’ bodies when they fell into their grave. He’s surprised that no-one wants to be here now, since they’d spent so much time in the mansion in the past, even helping themselves to the Fears’ treasures [Kill Nate and Shark and leave the others plz, Simon]. Dana protests that she wasn’t even here last year, but Simon reveals her fate was sealed when she murdered Angelica [But Dana’s a Fear!? Where’s your sense of family, Simon?!], which quickly shuts her up.
Nate offers to return all the stuff, but it’s much too late for that because everyone else has already been punished for their theft, so Simon can’t make an exception for these flogs. Simon then reveals that Jamie will actually be the one to kill them, pulling the amulet from beneath his jacket and explaining that it gives him power over Jamie [What if she takes the bracelet off, though? Couldn’t she just do that? Hahaha]. He also admits that he’s also been controlling the blackbird:
“Sometimes your friend Lewis’s dull body was too confining. Some nights, I transformed into this poor, one-eyed bird and rode the night sky.”
[So I guess Dana really did kill Angelica! I’m assuming Simon means that he possessed, not transformed into, the bird’s body, because it’s right there on the windowsill. The whole possession stuff still makes no sense to me… Was Lewis himself whenever Simon took the bird’s form? Wouldn’t real Lewis have noticed he doesn’t remember his life from all the times Simon had control of him, like how Jamie has no memories of Angelica controlling her body. So many unexplained questions!]
Simon explains that he and Angelica had planned to live forever when they returned to life last year, but Jamie destroyed that plan when she murdered Angelica, so now Jamie will have a very special fate [But Dana murdered Angelica, not Jamie? You literally said that like two seconds ago, Simon?]:
“…Death would be too simple. I’m going to keep you with me, Jamie. At my side. You will live forever—as Angelica. You and I will live together forever, and you will do my bidding.”
I gasped. “Your bidding?”
He nodded. He pulled the amulet from around his neck and stepped toward me. “You will put this on now. The amulet will guide you. The amulet will show you how to end your friends’ lives. So we may begin our eternal quest.”
[Oh, so I guess he doesn’t want to give Dana this fate since she’s related to him by blood hahaha. I’m confused how Jamie will live forever as Angelica, though. Does he mean Angelica’s going to be taking over Jamie’s body again? Or is Jamie just taking Angelica’s place as his wife?] He attempts to slip the amulet over Jamie’s head, but she shoves him back and shows him the bracelet on her wrist. ‘In a voice quivering with emotion’ she announces she’s been learning her own spells, and takes credit for returning Fear Mansion to the hill tonight. And now she’s ‘”going to use this bracelet for another spell I learned”‘ and return Simon to his grave! She begins to chant ‘”Return … Return …” at him while waving the bracelet around [This is literally the same spell she thinks she used to get here, not another one?], but to her surprise, Simon starts laughing at her [So naive, Jamie. It was obviously Simon who made Fear Mansion reappear tonight, just like he did the first time].
I’m right [As usual], and Simon informs Jamie the bracelet is powerless in her hands, and he’s actually been using it to strengthen his power over her [Just take the fucking thing off, Jamie!]. The bracelet suddenly becomes cold on her wrist [Should have taken it off minutes ago, idiot], and Jamie orders her friends to run since she can’t help them now. They don’t want to leave her but attempt to flee anyway, but before they can reach the door, Jamie’s bracelet arm lifts against her will and the three of them freeze in place.
Jamie is also frozen, allowing Simon to slip the amulet over her head, instructing her to ‘”follow the amulet’s will, Angelica’s will,”‘ and kill her friends. Jamie confirms she’ll do the amulet’s bidding before gripping the hot metal around her neck in her hands and chanting ‘the ancient words.’ The amulet begins to glow as its warmth flows through Jamie’s body, but surprisingly, it’s Simon who starts screaming in pain, not her friends:
I finished the spell. “I learned more than one spell,” I told him, watching him twist in agony on the floor. “I studied that book a lot, Simon. I taught myself a lot.”
“Stop it! Please—”
“And now I have the power of the amulet,” I said, holding it over him. “Thank you for that, Simon. Thank you for giving me the power to destroy you.”
Simon sinks weakly to the floor as Jamie begins to chant again and soon, green smoke, ‘thick as pea soup,’ starts pouring from his ears. It rises up and floats over to the blackbird, then vanishes inside the empty eye socket. Jamie has no time to react before the bird leaps of the windowsill and attacks her, but luckily she knows one last spell [So by “I taught myself a lot” she means “I taught myself three spells”?] and begins chanting at the bird:
The blackbird appeared to freeze in midair. Its screeches ended in a whelp of pain. It turned toward the window. Flapping hard, it flew a few feet—
—and then a deafening explosion rocked the room.
I ducked and covered my face as the blackbird exploded.
Feathers came floating down in a blizzard of black.
Wet gut birds smacked my forehead. I saw the bird’s one eye bounce over the floor. Its eyeless head plopped at my side.
[Oof, that poor blackbird. I wonder if it was an innocent bird plucked off the street or if Simon completely conjured it up with sorcery? And was it still under his control even when he wasn’t in its body?] Jamie jumps to her feet and holds the amulet up to her friends to unfreeze them, but it slips from the clumsy ox’s hands and bounces on the floor, causing the room to shake. There’s a thunder-like roar as the floorboard crack and walls split, and Jamie realises they’re all going to die when the house tumbles down on top of them [Just pick up the damn amulet?].
A deep darkness washes over everything and when her vision clears, Jamie’s standing on the sidewalk in front of Fear Street Acres. She feels totally refreshed now that Simon, Angelica and their evil are gone, and the whole world seems brighter, ‘even in the middle of the night.’ Lewis, Dana, Nate and Shark are all there too, but none of them have any memory of the night’s events. She decides not to fill them in because ‘they probably wouldn’t believe it, anyway.’ [What, so you’re just going to let them think the evil is still around? That’s cruel and Jamie’s an idiot]
Jamie wonders what happened to the amulet, since it was still on the floor as the mansion was coming down, but decides to just forget about it so it can ‘stay buried with all its evil.’ [You could at least search for it in the surrounding area where you ended up to prevent someone else finding it and using it for evil? Why is Jamie so daft?] The book ends with the gang heading into Nights, waving hello to Ryland as they make their way to their usual booth:
“Hey—stop. Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ryland asked. “Kiss the plaque for good luck.”
I turned and stared at Simon and Angelica on the brass plaque. Then I turned back to Ryland.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
[I wonder how Ryland feels about 75% of his evening patrons being murdered?]
Final thoughts
Despite having more deaths, this was probably the weakest in the trilogy. The whole story could have been a lot different if Jamie and Dana had explained everything to the other Night People from the start after the events of the last book, and at least three deaths may have been avoided! It may have even been more interesting to have the teens being hopelessly murdered while trying to stop the evil together.
I didn’t mind Jamie as a protagonist, but I’m struggling to understand why she thought it was up to her and her alone to banish the evil? She wasn’t that bright to begin with so I don’t see why she wouldn’t want everyone else’s help with it.
I’m also mad that Shark and Nate survived – out of every character in the trilogy, they were arguably the most deserving to die a brutal death, purely based on how they treated poor Candy. And then how Nate treated Ada. I also don’t like how Nikki had the most brutal death out of everyone when she wasn’t even a Night Person until after Fear Mansion was torn down, so she shouldn’t have even died in the first place!
There are still a lot of unanswered questions, too – assuming Angelica and Simon were possessing Jamie and Lewis since they fell in the hole, how were they able to integrate into the teens’ lives so successfully and avoid any suspicion? Why didn’t they seek their revenge as soon as they were in control, rather than waiting a whole year? Literally, what was the point of waiting?
And I really want to know if that blackbird was an ordinary bird before Simon possessed it, or if he created it with his sorcery and the power of the amulet. If it was a normal bird, was he controlling it when he wasn’t inside it, too? Could it have just fled Shadyside when not possessed? Simon can’t be in two places at once, so what was going on with Lewis when Simon was being the bird, and vice versa? I’m also just as confused about how the whole memory loss thing as I was at the end of the second book too, so I won’t bother going down that hole again here lol.
I’m surprised the the familial link between Dana and Simon didn’t really come into play in the end. I feel like it could have been explored a lot more, rather than it purely being a reason for her to be a murder suspect in the second book.
Like most Fear Streets, this one could have used some editing down. Clark and Lissa, the oft-mentioned redhead Aaron started dating immediately after Whitney died, could be completely removed from the story, and nothing would change. Besides Clark’s bike accident, which could and should have happened to someone else, he only really served as a distraction for Dana which I guess was so the book could focus more on Jamie. But since Dana was sneaking around with Nate behind Clark’s back anyway, why not just have them together in the first place? And we didn’t even find out Lissa’s name until her last appearance, so why is she even in this book? Aaron has basically been a background character for the whole trilogy so I don’t even know why he had to have a new girlfriend anyway? Just to show how gross the guys of the trilogy are?
So many questions and as usual, so little answers. Oh well.
53 exploding one-eyed blackbirds out of 84.
