Goosebumps #14: The Werewolf of Fever Swamp (R.L. Stine)
Grady
and Emily move to Florida after their parents accept a new research
assignment for the university. Their dad brought in some weird deer
from South America and want to see how they fare in the US. They plan
to put tracking devices on them and follow their movements. Grady
doesn't really mind the move, but Emily hates that she has to leave
all her friends behind and miss out on her last year in high school.
In
the hopes of having some fun, they take a walk in the swamp behind
their house. They stumble across a random cabin in the woods and some
man who mumbles to himself and seems a little crazy. When he chases
them away from the cabin, they run home and tell their parents what
happened. In a fit of Wakefield-like parenting, their dad tells them
not to worry. He heard in town about a crazy hermit living in the
swamp but it's not a big deal.
Not
long after moving there, Grady meets this kid Will. They take some
walks and explore the swamps, and he eventually introduces him to
this girl Cassie. Cassie is obsessed with the idea of werewolves and
thinks there is at least one living in the swamp. Will also tells him
that Fever Swamp got its name after a weird virus swept through the
area and killed a bunch of people. Not surprisingly, Grady later
comes down with a fever of his own. It tends to come and go, but his
parents just ignore it.
Then,
he and Emily both wake in the middle of the night to the sounds of
something outside howling and making loud noises. Their parents wake
and claim it was just a side effect of his fever, even though Emily
heard it too. The next day, they find a random dog outside their
house. Everyone decides that the dog was responsible for the noises
they heard. Both kids beg their parents to keep the dog, and since it
looks like a wolf, they name him Wolf.
The
first night Wolf stays in the house, he goes crazy. He runs around
the house, breaks a lamp, and keeps howling, so they put him outside.
Several random animals then turn up dead. They find a heron, a
rabbit, and then one of the deer. Grady's dad decides that Wolf is
too much of a danger and that he should go to the pound. Grady
disagrees.
He,
Will, and Cassie go off to check out the woods. She keeps talking
about werewolves and they try to ignore her. They come across the
hermit, who goes cray-cray and starts screaming that he is the
werewolf. The kids take off, and Grady gets separated from the group.
After being bit by a snake in the woods, Wolf licked his hand until
he felt better while his parents just ignored him. When his dad comes
for his dog, he pushes him away, tells him to run, and Wolf takes
off.
When
Grady hears howling again in the middle of the night, he decides to
investigate on his own. He runs into Will in the swamp, and they
decide that it must be the hermit. Before they can get there though,
Will transforms into a werewolf and bites Grady. Wolf attacks, the
two fight, and Grady passes out.
He
wakes up at home and finds out that the hermit brought him home after
finding him in the woods. Grady tells them all about Will and where
he lives. His dad assumes it was just the fever talking again but
agrees to check things out. He comes back with the news that no one
lives in the house or has lived there in a long time. Since the
hermit claims he saw Wolf chasing off another animal, they decide to
let him keep his dog. And then, in a move that shouldn't surprise
anyone, Grady reveals that he's now a werewolf and prowls the woods
with his dog by his side.
*My
copy is one of the newer ones from the mid-2000s, and it has a bunch
of extra stuff in the back, like an interview with Stine himself.
It's kind of weird to read about him surfing the web and playing
games online.
*The
description on the back of the book talks about how Grady's dog howls
at the moon, disappears at midnight, and all this other crap that
doesn't really happen in the book.
*Is
this the first time Stine used a teenager in a Goosebumps book? I
can't remember anyone other than Emily having a bigger role.
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