“What are you going to be for Halloween?”
Eleven-year-old Carly Beth Caldwell is a “scaredy cat.” She is afraid of everything from ghosts, to snakes, to bugs, as well as loud noises, dark rooms –and even witches. To top things off, the people closest to her are quite cruel, frequently tormenting her with various tricks and jump scares, especially her mischievous friends Steve Boswell and Chuck Greene. They put a worm in her sandwich at school and pretend to release a tarantula during her presentation at the Science Fair. Her brother Noah is no help either. At least she has her best friend Sabrina Mason, a tall, dark-haired, sophisticated girl who encourages Carly Beth find her own inner courage (even though Sabrina still picks on her from time to time).
To get back at her friends, particularly Steve and Chuck, Carly Beth decides to wear a terrifying new mask for Halloween, despite the fact that her mother has already bought her a duck costume. That evening, amidst a spooky atmosphere of howling wind and bare trees, she trepidatiously walks past the old “haunted” Carpenter mansion through the eerie darkness all the way to a new party store. Although it is after-hours, the strange owner wearing a cape and sporting a mustache welcomes her inside.
While poking around the store (and the owner is beckoned away with a phone call), Carly Beth wanders into the backroom where she finds two dozen horrifying misshapen masks, including one with a “bulging bald head,” skin of “putrid yellow-green,” glowing orange eyes, pointy ears, and two crooked rows of fangs. At first, the store owner refuses to sell the mask to Carly Beth, but he only relents when she begs and pleads with him, offering to buy it for her life savings o thirty dollars (in the television episode Carly Beth simply steals the mask and runs out of the store).
Once she gets home, Carly Beth puts on the mask (which smells like damp old newspapers) and she scares her brother. Curiously, the mask changes her eyes, her mouth moves with the mask, and her voice now sounds gruff and raspy. She then struggles to take off the mask. But later when she goes out trick-or-treating with her friend Sabrina, Carly Beth starts having violent thoughts, she emits a howl and considers attacking a passing mother: “I’m going to tear this woman apart!” and “I’ll chew her to bits! I’ll tear her skin off her bones!”
Carly Beth and Sabrina become separated and Carly Beth runs amok around town, stealing candy from other children and viciously confronting her friends Steve and Chuck. During all of this, Carly Beth brings along a plaster of paris replica of her own head (strangely enough, it was made by her mother from an art class at the museum). Anyway, she drops the dummy replica of her head when it starts coming to life, crying “help me, help me…” Later, after briefly regrouping with Sabrina, Carly Beth runs back to the party store after realizing her mask is not coming off!
“There was no longer a bottom to the mask. No place where the mask ended. No opening between the mask and Carly Beth’s skin… The mask had become her face” (91).
The mysterious store owner reveals this isn’t a mask, it’s a real face. It was the face of an “unloved” transformed into a real mask, the result of some sort of dark experiment. The only way it can be removed? By a vague “symbol of love.” And it can only be removed once. However, while they are talking all the rest of the masks in the back of the shop suddenly come to life and chase Carly Beth out into the street. She runs out until she finds her fallen plaster of paris head replica. She then places it over her head and this strange “symbol of love” sends the other masks away and allows her horrifying mask to finally come off her head.
In a brief epilogue, Carly Beth returns home to talk to her mother about what happened. But then her brother enters the room wearing the fateful mask…
A revenge story gone awry, The Haunted Mask is a superb suburban Halloween horror tale for children, and it comes with a nice moral for young adults, reminding them to be strong, have a backbone, and avoid vengeance because it might not always turn out as planned. Carly Beth is a sympathetic, almost pitiable character, but her mask serves as a metaphor for the new life she desires. Putting on the mask gives her new power and the chance to be feared rather than afraid. But she finds out wearing a mask isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There is also a theme here about the triumph of love (amor vincit omnia), particularly self-love as Carly Beth learns to appreciate her flaws and embrace being a “scaredy cat.” As far as the mood of the book, I appreciated the transformed Halloween aesthetic of sunny Maple Avenue at night (where Carly Beth lives) as it turns into a bleak street with bare tree limbs shivering, dead leaves swirling, and a pale half-moon disappearing behind a cloud. This is a stand-out Halloween read in the Goosebumps canon and a cautionary tale for young adults, many of whom yearn to wear a mask and become what they fear most.
Stine, R.L. The Haunted Mask. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1993.