Pete is Hired to Write Goosebumps

#89: The Haunted Home Depot

Summary: This kid gets trapped in Home Depot overnight.  It’s scary and these little creatures are running around, operating the power tools.  The kid sets up a bunch of traps, like in Home Alone, and kills several of the creatures.

Twist:  This Home Depot is not haunted but is actually Santa’s Workshop.  But they have to trap the kid there, and he has to work there forever as punishment for killing all those elves.

#90:  Saved by the Smell

Summary:  This dumb kid has to bring in cheese to make a cheese plate for catering class.  He goes to this granola-y market where the cheese guy is this weird, haunting mountain man.  The mountain man sends the kid home with a bunch of cheeses, but one is so stinky that it causes instant death.

Twist:  The other students are not actually dead, but the rotten cheese puts them into a coma-like state of suspended animation.  The mountain man comes and uses a dead mouse as a magic tool to wake them all up, and they all swear to stick to Kraft singles.

#91:  These Waves Are Killer

Summary:  Some idiot kid is really good at surfing, but right before the big surf contest all these kids start disappearing out there on the waves, their surfboards coming back in empty.  Before each disappearance, a witness claims to have seen a strange man in a tiki mask out on a surfboard as well.  The tiki guy turns out to be a lifeguard who is arrested.

Twist:    During the surf contest, the main character realizes that what has been attacking kids is a gigantic octopus, and the man with the tiki head was trying to save all the kids and hoping the tiki mask would scare off the octopus. In the epilogue the tiki lifeguard is still executed because he is the wrong color.

#92:  Sticks and Stones Will Be My Bones

Summary: This dopey kid is working with his dad at a lumber mill for the summer, cutting down trees, when he comes upon a magical tree that tells him the trees will have their revenge.  The boy passes out and wakes up, finding that he himself has been transformed into a tree.

Twist:  The dad shows up and chops down his tree/son, who is still conscious even after being chopped up into boards.  The dad then uses the wood to make a bed frame upon which he sets a mattress upon which he bangs his wife to try and make a new son.  The son is forever trapped as the surface for his parents’ sex.