Nightmare Hall #4: The Wish

Alex and her friends all go to Salem University together, but she’s really the main character. There’s also Kiki, the soccer player, twins Julie and Jenny and Bennett, Gabe, Kyle and Marty who are some of the only football players to make the team as freshmen. One night the whole gang goes to Vinnie’s for pizza and Alex notices a wizard fortune telling machine in the back corner.

Alex gets freaked out because apparently she saw one when her parents were divorcing, it scared her and she’s never forgotten it. Everyone wants to try it, but she starts shaking and almost wets her pants. Yes, the machine from Big scared the shit out of her. There’s one of these at a store close by and I get a kick out of it, but whatever.

The whole gang decides to try the machine anyway. Julie wishes her face wasn’t so ordinary and Jenny wishes she would get more attention than her sister. On the way home from the restaurant, Julie has an accident and slams her face into the steering wheel. She breaks every bone in her face, which is funny because a week later she’s laughing with her friends in the hospital room and no one mentions reconstructive surgery. Jenny starts wearing her sister’s clothes and snags Bennett as a new boyfriend.

Alex heads to the radio station to work her shift and finds herself all alone. The windows on the floor where she works burst open and the wind almost drags her outside and over the edge. All the lights go off and the phone stops working, but when her supervisor shows up, the windows are shut, the phone and lights are back on and everyone thinks she’s crazy.

They go back to Vinnie’s and Kiki wishes she could lose weight and Gabe wishes he could get wheels so he wouldn’t have to walk for awhile. Kiki ends up losing a lot of weight fast and Gabe is injured and put on crutches for a week. Then Kyle wishes for peace and quiet. Alex goes to a party on her floor and sees Kyle on top of a building from the window. He starts fighting with someone, the person pushes him over the edge and he ends up in a coma.

Alex goes to the building and does some investigating because apparently Salem police are morons. She finds a gold football charm that all the freshman players get and the cops warn her that she should be careful because the would-be killer may come after her. She discovers that Kyle was the only one who had his charm and all the other guys in her group, lost theirs.

Then Alex takes the bus home one night and the driver nearly drives the bus off a cliff before jumping off and running away. Kiki keeps getting sicker and losing more weight, but when she passes out at the hospital, a nurse just lectures her on eating right. Her eyes literally roll back in her head and she faints, but they don’t even call a doctor! What kind of hospital is this?

Kiki eventually loses enough weight that she’s admitted to the hospital, where they immediately determine that she’s anorexic…even though she doesn’t have any signs or symptoms of anorexia. Marty wishes he didn’t have to give a big speech for class and loses his voice just as he starts his speech. He gives Alex his gold football and a note, asking her to wear it. It’s all very odd because supposedly that means you’re going steady with someone, but they never even date. They don’t kiss, go out alone or anything like that, but then he wants to be her boyfriend and they still don’t kiss.

So Alex goes back to see the wizard and Gabe shows up on his crutches. She realizes that he was the one behind everything, just as he knocks her out. Only it turns out that it was actually Bennett. He claims that the spirit of the wizard inhabited his body and helped him destroy everyone else. It’s all very lame because there are three pages of talking and then she hits him with a crutch, he smacks his head on the machine and passes out. Then the wizard says like three lines and she drives the crutch through the glass and knocks its head off.

Everyone sits around talking and laughing about what happened, including Kyle who’s out of the coma, Julie and Kiki who’s now all better. Then it jumps to a random antique store where a guy buys the same machine to put in the new college burger shop he’s opening.