R. L.
Stine: Goosebumps- The Haunted Mask
Carly Beth Caldwell is a naïve and timid 11-year-old girl. She is easily scared of almost
everything, and repeatedly humiliated by her friends, Chuck Greene and Steve Boswell,
at school who call her a "scaredy cat". They play several pranks on her. She is tricked by
Steve into eating a sandwich that contained a live worm. At a science fair, she is once
again made a fool of after Steve pretends his tarantula has escaped, knowing well that
Carly Beth is terrified of spiders. He sneaks up behind her and pinches her leg, making it
seem as though the tarantula is biting her. She flies into a frenzied and destructive panic
and is once again humiliated in front of her teachers and classmates. She vows to take
revenge.
At home, she discovers that her mother has made a perfect likeness of Carly Beth's face
from plaster of Paris as a symbol of her love for her and a duck costume for Halloween
party. She is aware that she cannot scare Steve and Chuck with these silly items and
instead, she will be made fun of. She wants to frighten Steve and Chuck. She becomes
desparate to go to a new shop that has opened, which sells frightening costumes, and
plans to scare Steve and Chuck.
On Halloween day, she collects her money and sets off for the costume shop. She
unwillingly stumbles upon a back room filled with the many of the most hideous
masks she has ever seen. The owner refuses to sell her the one she wants. But she is
insistent and soon he sells it to her, warning her that she'll be sorry. Thrilled, she goes
home, puts on the mask, and scares her brother Noah. However the mask doesn’t come
off at first. When it finally does, Carly Beth and Noah are unsure as to how she
unintentionally changed her voice to a hoarse growl.
While putting on the mask for a second time, the mask sticks itself onto Carly Beth's face.
Dismissing the transformation as normal, Carly Beth takes the Plaster of Paris mold of her
head that her mother made, and goes in search of Chuck and Steve. Strange things start
happen to her. She acts like a totally different person: She attacks her friend Sabrina,
frightens young children, and vandalizes the neighborhood. Eventually she finally finds
Chuck and Steve and scares them. They run off in fear and she gleefully abandons the
plaster face. Later she tries but cannot remove the mask. To her horror, she discovers
that there is no space between the mask and her skin. The mask has somehow fused
itself to Carly Beth's own face. She runs away and returns to the shop where she bought
the mask and finds the owner waiting for her, knowing she would come back. The
shopkeeper tells her that the "masks" in the back room are actually living monster faces
that can only be removed by a "symbol of love", but if it attaches itself to her or another
person again, the fusion will be permanent. Unfortunately, Carly Beth's hysterical
screams begin to slowly awaken the other masks. They begin floating off of their model
heads and start to fly at Carly Beth. She runs down the street and finally realizes that the
mold her mother gave her is a symbol of love. She finds it and uses it to deter other
masks and remove the mask from her face. She returns home to her mother and
embraces her.
Noah later bursts in and asks her, "How do I look in your mask?"……………Really scary
Twisted Ending:
Carly Beth seals the box with the mask, places it inside the costume prepared by her
mother and then returns it to the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper is reluctant to take the
mask back as now the mask has tasted Carly Beth’s blood and will somehow catch hold of
her. But his humane nature prompts him to help her get out of this situation. He scrolls
through various books and then comes across one such page which mentions that if the
monster mask is burned enclosed in a symbol of love, it will change its emotions and will
never hurt anyone. The shopkeeper gathers all the masks and ties them in the costume
prepared by Carly Beth’s mother as a symbol of love, throws that packet inside the
hearth which then burns with different faces resembling many people including the
shopkeeper, Carly Beth, Noah and ultimately her mother. Then its emotions change and it
says, “My dear child Carly, I promise that no one will ever hurt you. Your love has won
over evil! Goodbye my lovely child”. Now the haunted mask never bothers anyone.
