Deadtime Stories:
Grave Secrets
by Annette and Gina Cascone
Tom Doherty Associates, 2012
Young Readers
192 Pages
The neighborhood children avoid 704 Shadow Lane. The owner, Mrs. Barns, is a witch. She bites the heads off rats and throws the bodies behind her shed. She knows voodoo, too. And she doesn’t take too kindly to poor Amanda losing a baseball in her backyard. As she runs for the gap in the fence, ball in hand, Amanda feels the witch’s iron grip around her wrist. She manages to struggle free, but her friendship bracelet -the one that matches Laura’s- is no longer there.
This story takes us right in to the world of four kids. The existence of witches and magic are unquestioned, and it seems so obvious that Barnsey is one of them. Of course the grown-ups say she’s just a lonely old woman, but then, they would, right?
They recount the legend of Frederick Luzard, who died by Mrs. Barns’ voodoo. And Todd French, too. She got hold of his baseball cap, and all kids of mishaps befell him.
What sort of message was Barnsey trying to send when she threw a dead squirrel over the fence? It gets lost when the four kids find a doll while digging the squirrel a grave, because they hear a tiny voice calling for “mama.” They dig up an old doll, but it has no voice box. Amanda hears its cry all night. In the morning, there is writing in the mist on the bathroom mirror: I want my doll back.
But now the doll is missing. It was stolen and re-buried by Mrs. Barns! But if Barnsey didn’t write the message, then who did?
Amanda has a dream where she goes back in time and sees the world through another girl’s eyes. She watches as the doll is taken from her. But she gives chase to the little girl who is stealing her baby! It’s too late! She is hit by a car! Amanda wakes up covered in a pile of her own dolls, purposely placed atop her covers.
Then: there is more writing in the dirt of the backyard, –I want my baby back!– Amanda’s bike almost crashes, and later her rollerblades run amok, landing her near Barnsey’s mailbox. When she stands up, she is finally confronted by Anna– a ghost! The ragged creature pleads with Amanda to help her retrieve her doll!
The little girl was not a real little girl. The little girl, who stood blocking Amanda’s escape from Barnsey, was a ghost. Her clothes were bloodied and torn, and she was covered with dirt—as if she’d just climbed out of a grave.
When Amanda gets home one day to find Anna playing with her little sister, Robin, she is determined to get the doll back for her from Mrs. Barns… no one will rest in peace until she does. But it won’t be easy… Barnsey has something from all of them. A shirt, two friendship bracelets. All she needs to spell their doom.
“You should’ve just stayed best friends,” Kevin kept needling. “Maybe then she would have kept you alive so that she could invite you to all her rat-eating parties and stuff!”
One thing I wondered about was school. There wasn’t any mention of it in the book, nor of being on summer vacation, but I had to assume it was summer.
I also noticed a similarity between the plot of this story and The Doll in The Garden by Mary Downing Hahn, where a crabby old lady next door is mean to a girl, who then has an experience with another girl’s ghost that ultimately reveals that the old lady’s grouchiness stems from the guilt of having stolen the dead girl’s doll as a child. Other than those basic elements, the stories are very distinct in that Doll in the Garden’s almost Henry James-style slow boil is written in a more timeless, traditional voice, while Deadtime Stories are geared toward modern audiences. The quick-paced tension of a lady who bites the heads off rats and a ghost who crashes roller-blades, in addition to a group of kids, (one of whom is a real wise-guy,) spice up Grave Secrets.
Grave Secrets is one of a series of Deadtime Stories books by Annette and Gina Cascone. The original series of 17 terrifying novels for kids was published back in 1996-97, (during the height of popularity for R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series,) and a handful have been updated and re-released in 2012 in anticipation of a television series from Nickelodeon.
Grave Secrets is the first television adaptation. It aired in November of 2012. I am waiting eagerly for more of the Nickelodeon series, and hope that these six re-releases are just the beginning. I would love to see more original stories from the Cascone sisters.
Nickelodeon: Deadtime Stories – Episode 1
  |
  |
  |
