The Nightmare Room 06 – They Call Me Creature

R. L. Stine's They Call Me Creature is a scary story for 11 year olds about an animal-mad girl whose woods have started to feel wrong.

What happens

It opens with a voice that isn't Laura's. Somebody (or something) insists they're still a person, even though they prowl the woods at night and feed. It's short, lonely and properly creepy.

Then there's Laura. She's bandaging a crow with a broken wing, she's got a stray cat called Lucky, and she never goes into the woods without Georgie, her German shepherd. Her science project is photographing the animals at Luker Pond.

Only the animals won't come. Instead, hundreds of birds spin over the trees like a black tornado. A cloud of bats swoops down on Laura and Joe (the shy boy she likes) in the middle of the afternoon. And Georgie digs a torn-off finger out of a pile of leaves. It's hairy, with a pointed nail.

At home it's just as strange. Laura's dad is a vet who has left his job at the animal hospital. Now he spends every hour locked in the garden shed, and something in there howls. When Laura opens the door, he screams at her to get out. Then he suggests she go and live with her mum in Chicago.

Honestly, that's the bit that stings. The monster clues are fun, but the scariest thing early on is a dad who's suddenly a stranger to her.

Laura is great company. She's brave in the woods and she compares everyone to an animal (her best friend Ellen is a doe, she's a fox). She's also working up the courage to invite Joe to a party, which keeps getting interrupted by something awful! Chapters tend to end on a scream, so "just one more" is very likely.

The prologue describes the feeding in a few blunt lines, and there's a snarling attack by a dog Laura has always trusted. It's creepy rather than gory in these chapters. A reader who hates animals getting hurt might find the shed hard going. One who likes a proper shiver, with a mystery to solve, should be hooked.

What to read next

Hooked? The first Nightmare Room book has a completely different family and a new house. Don't Forget Me starts with a teenage girl joking that she'd like her little brother gone, just before she really does start to lose him.