Fear Street Sagas #4: The Sign of Fear (R.L. Stine)

The Sign of Fear starts out with Matthew Fear bricking William Goode up in a room. He starts thinking about the family amulet and what he did to get it from a girl named Christina.

Christina, as it turns out, lived in the New World in the early 18^th century with her dad and Aunt Jane. When we first meet her, it's at her father's funeral. She keeps crying about how her aunt was so horrible to her when he was alive and how it will just get way worse now. Aunt Jane snaps at her as they put dirt in his grave for showing too much emotion and how it will make people think bad of them.

Some poor woman walks by with her two kids, one kid falls, and crows come out of nowhere to attack the poor kid. She fights the birds off and manages to get her hands on something silver in one of the bird's mouths. Christina loses her balance and falls right in her father's open grave.

She apparently passes out because she wakes up later back at home. Aunt Jane is right outside her door and whispering to another woman about what she'll do with Christina now. They make it seem like they might kill her, so she decides to escape. Jane catches her and chases her back to her own room, but Christina fights back, throws a chair through the window, and dives through the broken glass. Jane grabs her by the ankle to pull her back inside, which results in her kicking her aunt right in the throat. Nice.

While wandering through the woods, she realizes that she still has the silver piece from the bird. It's a funny looking amulet with a Latin phrase on it that means power through evil. A random – and handsome! - young man stumbles across her in the woods and introduces himself as Matthew. He wants to take her to the Peterson farm, but she worries because there are rumors in town of servants going there and never returning. Matthew convinces her that it's fine and that he knows the family well.

As soon as she gets there though, she realizes that Mrs. Peterson was the woman she overheard talking to her aunt. Aunt Jane actually sold the poor girl to the family as their new servant. She also meets Emily, the woman's daughter, who clearly has a thing for Matthew. Mrs. Peterson takes her to her new room and hisses at her to clean herself up.

While trying to wash her hands, Christina freaks out and accidentally breaks the pitcher and slices open her hands. When she rushes downstairs, Emily goes all “my precious, my precious” on her as she squeezes her hands to make the blood come out before running away. Mrs. Peterson tries to calm the situation by explaining that her daughter was just trying to squeeze her hands to stop the blood from flowing. Once they clean her up and Matthew leaves, Christina gets locked in the cellar.

Her new life sucks balls. They expect her to do all the cleaning and work outside, but if she doesn't do exactly what they want, they refuse to feed her. One night, she hears a moaning sound coming from Emily's room. When they leave for the day, she sneaks inside and sees creepy stuff like a wrinkled hand, jars of eyeballs, and other body parts. There are also mirrors everywhere. The amulet burns her as she hears something calling her voice, and she breaks every mirror. Christina then finds a vial of her own blood and smashes it on the floor.

In other parts of history, 50 BC to be exact – there are two warriors named Fieran and Conn. Fieran is in love with Brianna and thinks they will live happily ever after. When the old tribe leader dies, everyone waits to see who his spirit will pick as his successor. Though Fieran feels the spirit enter him, Conn claims it was him. To prove it, he carries Brianna into a massive fire and walks out unharmed. Conn tells the others that Fieran went crazy but that they should still exile him.

Fieran becomes convinced that he's the true successor and stalks Conn. Conn tells him that Brianna has magical powers and that she protected them in the fire. He also claims that they are in love. Fieran doesn't believe him until he sees the two embracing and hears her gush over her new love. This leads him to do a bunch of spells to gain more power and end Conn.

All these leads to a big fight between the two. Just when it looks like Fieran might win, Conn comes back swinging and actually knocks him on the ground. That's when the ancient stones come to life and kill Conn. Though Fieran thinks this is proof that they picked him, it was actually Brianna controlling things from behind the scenes. She professes her love to him, and he assumes that they'll get their happy ending.

What actually happens though is that he begins doubting her, especially when she starts telling him the same things she told Conn. Fieran creates the legendary Fier amulet, does a spell, and tries to kill her. Brianna takes him down like he's nothing, reveals that she has all the power, and then tells him that she's pregnant with his child. As he bleeds out, she uses his blood to power for the amulet for future generations.

Back in Christina's day, she waits for the Peterson family to leave and takes the amulet to see her good old aunt. Jane is just about to take a pie out of the oven and snaps at her about getting in the way and ruining everything. The amulet takes control and makes the juices from the pie bubble up and land on the woman's arms. Jane slowly burns to death as the juices spread all over her and eat through her clothing. By the time that Christina can walk away, her aunt is just a pile of bone and ash.

Outside, she runs into Matthew. He tells her that he keeps going into the woods to look for a family artifact and that he felt the power of it. She tells him all about how awful the Petersons are and begs him to go back to their house. He agrees that if he sees anything bad that he'll take her away with him.

What happens is that Emily flips out because Christina destroyed the blood vial. Though she tries to drag her away, she doesn't have the strength or energy and slowly starts aging in front of her. Emily is actually Mrs. Peterson's mother and used blood and rituals to remain young. They all start fighting, which causes the Fear amulet to flash. Matthew is shocked because that's his family artifact.

The amulet feeds off fire don't cha know, and it causes the candles in the room to go up in flames. Christina manages to get away from the two women and yells for Matthew to help her. Instead, he takes the amulet from her and runs off. She manages to crawl outside on her own, just in time to see him get on his horse and take off. All Christina can do is weep because she loved him so much and he chose evil over her...

*The whole Fieran and Conn thing was way longer in the book than my recap. I found it so boring though that I kept skipping sections of it to get back to the main story.

*Matthew bricking up William happens in one of the other books, but I cannot for the life of me remember which one!

*Christina is all in shock and upset over what happened to her aunt, but I have to ask, why? The woman literally sold her and then apparently stole her dad's property!

*Matthew kind of acts sad/down in the beginning because of what he did to get his family amulet back. When he actually does though, he doesn't seem to care. It's also random that he just took off and that the story ending with Christina being sad instead of going back to him again.