Fear Street Sagas #5: The Hidden Evil (R.L. Stine)

It's 1858 and Timothy Fier, 18-years old, gathers his friends together to tell them a horrible ghost story. He swears it's all true but that he changed the names because the real individuals now live in their same city.

It's now the 1850s and Maggie and Henrietta are best friends and sisters. They buried their father that morning and are pretty sad about his passing since they lost their mother years ago. That's when the constable shows up with his men and some urgent news. It seems as though someone poisoned their father. When Henrietta makes a big deal out of how Maggie was home alone with her father the night he died after having a huge fight with him when he forbid her to see her beau, they decide to check her room. They find a vial of poison and immediately take her away to lady prison.

There, she gets a rough haircut and new clothing that is unlike anything she ever wore before because she was always super rich. Her cell mate is a woman named Elizabeth who instantly starts shouting at her for stealing her ring. The woman then swears she'll come at her with a knife and kill her before laughing about how she hid the knife in their cell in a place where no one will ever find it.

Though Maggie assumes she'll be out in a day, she's stuck there for four months. She gets news that her sister came to see her and assumes that she's there to tell her she finally found some help and that Maggie really won't hang the following day. I guess the court system moved a little faster back in the day. Henrietta actually just wants to brag about how she set her sister up for killing their father when she actually did it and only because he played favorites with his kids. Now that he's gone, Henrietta will inherit everything and have her choice of suitors.

When hanging day comes, Maggie can't stop shaking. The executioner shows up early to take her to the gallows and pulls off his mask to reveal that he's one of the constable's men. He always believed she was innocent and wants to help her. The man helps her sneak out in a new outfit and arranges for a carriage to pick her up. It takes her to a home where a woman meets her, gives her some new clothes, and hands over some money. The woman asks if she knows why they're helping her before changing the subject and making her leave. Wh-at?

A few months later and Maggie heads to the Melbourne house to become the new caretaker for Andrew and Garrett Melbourne. Cook and Mary are two others who work there, and yes, Cook is her actual name. Andrew seems super sweet and can't wait to meet Maggie, but Garrett wants her gone like now. He tosses a vase from over the banister that narrowly misses hitting her in the head.

Garrett also has some...problems. Maggie finds a sketchpad in his room full of sketches of dead women in coffins with animals eating them. He tells her, with a laugh no less, that they're all their former nannies. Maggie finds this slightly concerning and worries about why their father is never around. She doesn't see him for weeks but does see a painting of both him and his dead wife.

When she starts hearing a wailing sound coming from the tower room, Andrew tells her that it's his mom spirit. He says his mom got really sick and spent her last days in that room until she finally passed. He also introduces her to Charcoal, the cat of a former nanny. Maggie thinks it's a little strange that a woman would quit her job with no warning and leave behind her beloved pet. The longer she stays there, the more she bonds with Andrew. Garrett just keeps threatening her and telling her to leave.

After one altercation with Garrett, Andrew takes her to the topiary maze that they have and shows her how to get in the center. She notices a ring he wears with his monogram on it. While walking back to the house, Maggie sees an old well and starts over to it. Andrew instantly flips out and begs her to walk away because something really bad happened there once.

Maggie finds the dead body of Charcoal in her bed with a note written by a child to warn her away. Instead of telling anyone what happened, she decides to just bury the cat in the middle of the night. While outside, she hears someone calling her name. When she looks up, she sees the ghost of the former Mrs. Melbourne looking down at her from the window of the woman's former bedroom.

Hoping to get the hell out, she runs away and runs smack into someone who turns out to be the elusive Mr. Melbourne. He's home from...wherever he's been that was more important than taking care of his kids. He listens to her reason for being outside and agrees that the boys shouldn't have to see the cat's poor body. After giving her a few too many looks, he sends her to bed.

When they talk the following day, Maggie can't stop thinking about how handsome he is but does tell him that he needs to spend time with his kids. She finally admits that both boys talk about their mom like she's still alive and that both visit her former bedroom. When she mentions hearing a wailing noise coming from the room, Mr. Melbourne cuts her off and tells her that it's just air coming through the drafty windows.

Instead of spending time with his kids, Mr. Melbourne makes it pretty clear that he's interested in Maggie. He suggests that she go for a ride with him and his boys and ignores them when they don't want her to ride their mother's house. Maggie goes ahead of them to take the horse some sugar cubes. Something startles the animals, she suddenly picks up on the smell of smoke, and the horses nearly trample her before Mr. Melbourne rushes in and saves her.

Maggie decides to tell him that she thinks Garrett killed the cat. He gets really quiet and then tells her that he needs to leave yet again. When he comes back though, he'll explain everything to her. She begs him to stay, but he says he must go. Right before he leaves though, he keeps staring at her lips, which makes her think he might kiss her.

While walking around the property, Maggie sees the well and tries to get close. She sees something in the water and leans forward to get a better look. Two little hands hit her from behind, she falls in the well, her dress catches on the side, and she winds up upside down in the water. Since she's part Nancy Drew though, she manages to escape and finds a ring just like the one Andrew wears with GM on it, Garrett's initials.

This gives Andrew the confidence to admit what actually happened to their mother. He was always her favorite, and Garrett resented him for it. He pushed their mother in the well one day and wanted her to drown. Help arrived in time to save her, but she was near death and eventually passed away in the home.

Andrew has a bad dream one night that leads Maggie to helping him go back to sleep. When she comes back to her room, she finds Mary's dead body in her bed and Garrett standing over her with a knife. Since Mary and Maggie had the same color hair, she assumes that he tried to kill her and got the wrong girl. She takes off running through the house and actually comes face to face with the ghost of Mrs. Melbourne.

The ghostly woman attacks her while screaming about how she'll never get her hands on her husband. Maggie tries to fight back and eventually gets away, so she runs to the topiary maze. Andrew then confronts her and reveals that he brought a knife to kill her. He and his mom worked together to kill all the other women to keep them away from his dad. He manages to her in one lick, which hits the neck of her nightgown. Suddenly, there's a shot from behind that kills him. Maggie turns to see Garrett standing there.

Mrs. Melbourne then pops up, but instead of going after Maggie, she wails about her dead baby and grabs Andrew's body. The ghost lifts him off the ground and screams and cries until they both disappear. Garrett then reveals that he was mean to her because he didn't want to get close to her and have her disappear like all the other women did. He also tells her that he went to see her earlier, found Mary's body, and picked up the knife by instinct, which was when she found him. Garrett asks what they'll do now, and she tells him that they have to tell his dad the truth, even if he doesn't believe them.

Timothy finishes his story as all the other kids get freaked out. They make jokes about going home in groups so no one will be alone. Timothy's step-mother comes in, and he thinks about how she changed so much since the night that all happened and how he still can't believe it himself, revealing that they're Maggie and Garrett from the story. Cook is still alive too and working for the family.

After Maggie leaves, Timothy notices one last child in the room, the child he kept watching all night. The little boy gets closer and thanks him for telling the story. He then steps into the light and reveals himself as Andrew's ghost. Since Timothy finally told the story, it allowed him to come back, and he flies across the room with a furious look as he tells Timothy that he made him and their mother very angry...

*Seriously! Why did all the people in the very beginning help Maggie escape? Even if they thought she was innocent, it's still a little weird.

*In the end, Maggie finds an article about her sister in the paper. Henrietta was engaged and found out her fiance was cheating on her, so she poisoned him with arsenic. The cops arrested her and were on the look out for Maggie to tell her that she was innocent and could now come home. I'm assuming she gets all the money too because the article said the court sentenced Henrietta to hang.

*I feel like I've read way too many of these books because the twists seemed pretty obvious. As soon as Henrietta started playing up Maggie to the cops, I figured she was the real killer. It was also pretty obvious that Timothy was one of the boys in his story, and knowing Stine, probably the one we only thought was bad.

*Melbourne tells Maggie that he needs to leave for one night and that he'll explain everything and know what to do when he gets back. They never bothered telling us where he went or what he was planning though! He never even comes back after Garrett kills Andrew! Did he know Andrew was bad all along? More importantly, did he know that his wife's ghost was still hanging around?