Dr Brewer is spending a lot of time down in the basement, and Margaret and Casey Brewer think their dad has been acting pretty strangely lately.
Maybe it's just a little harmless plant-testing. After all, he is a botanist, and he needs something to do now that he's lost his job.
But now he's developing distinctly plant-like tendencies and Margaret and Casey are getting worried. What's going on down there? It's getting harder and harder to stay out of the basement!
What was with all the italics in that?
Plot
We open with our protagonists, Margaret and Casey, musing about how their Dad, Dr Brewer, doesn't seem to hang out with them anymore. Actually, I'm pretty sure you start distancing yourself from your parents at their age anyway. After 15 minutes of tossing a frisbee between themselves in the garden (these guys have an NES and their way of killing time is a 2-player game of frisbee?), they start to head back inside when Casey suddenly asks Margaret why Dr Brewer lost his job. Apparently, some of his experiments with plants had gone wrong. That, or he was just stealing from the vending machine. They finally go to see Dr Brewer, and he just shouts at them to Goosebumps #3: Stay Out of the Basement. Also he's bleeding and shouting like a late 90s metal artist. His sudden shift in mood is never brought up again.
We jump cut to a few days later. Mum's going to Tucson, which is totally a place I've heard of, to take care of her sister, and asks Margaret and Casey to look after Dr Brewer, who's been working obsessively hard over the past few weeks, and barely says anything anymore. Maybe that Corey Taylor impression from earlier broke his voicebox. Dr Brewer takes Mum to the airport, and as soon as they've left Margaret's friend Diane whom I've neglected to mention until now (back when I was a kid, I had no idea who she was and just assumed she was an aunt or something) decides that they should check out what Dad's doing in the basement. Knowing that he is a botanist, Diane makes the logical deduction that he's building RoboCop in the basement. No, that's really the wording she uses.
So, they all go down into the basement, with some nice description of the environment, and appealing to the 5 senses - wait, this is sounding like a description of a year 9 creative writing task. Suddenly, Margaret and Casey notice that one plant is breathing. Casey only then notices a large glass booth, which, for some reason, he decides to touch it. What ensues is basically that bit from Jurassic Park where Grant grabs onto the electric fence. Suddenly, the plants in the room begin moaning and crying, so they decide to leave. And everything's lovely once again. Wonderful. And then Dr Brewer comes home.
But wait! Casey took off his shirt earlier because fanservice or something, and didn't think to, like, carry it or something, so now it's in the basement. Luckily, Dr Brewer is busy talking to the neighbour, so Casey slips back into the basement to retrieve his shirt. However, he gets entangled by a large plant, so Margaret has to come down and save him. They grab the shirt and are on their way up the stairs... when Dr Brewer is on his way to the basement. Oops. Dr Brewer tells them that he'll explain everything to the kids at some point, and puts a lock on the basement door.
Soon afterwards, Dr Brewer starts behaving in a... peculiar manner. He starts wearing a baseball cap of something called the Dodgers, he's eating plant food, he's saying that Jimmy Kimmel is funny - that sort of thing. At one point, Casey lobs a frisbee at Dr Brewer, but he rolls a 1 on his perception check and the frisbee knocks his cap off, revealing leaves in place of his hair. Dr Brewer, surprisingly, realises that he can't respond to this with an "I'll explain later," and instead caves in and explains what he's doing in the basement. He starts off by explaining selective breeding (which is good, because I've got my biology GCSE next week), and then explains that his plan is to blend plant and human DNA. I'll explain how that makes no sense later. The booths are to transfer DNA between 2 organisms. The leaves are quickly brushed off by Dr Brewer as simply a side effect of nothing in particular. It feels weird when that happens for actual reasons in the plot instead of just "somehow."
The next day, Dr Brewer makes lunch, despite the fact that he's never done that before. It's pretty obvious why, because he's made some sort of green mash. Without any green bangers to go with it. After I take a moment to fondly remember the Alexander jokes from my Deep Trouble review, Dr Brewer starts screaming at them to eat the food. Like when I went to that chippy and the bloke at the counter started screaming at me the second the bag went into my hands. Luckily, Dr Brewer's old boss, Mr Martinez, teleports to the front door, distracting Dr Brewer long enough for the kids to scrape their green mash into the bin. That's rude. How do they know they wouldn't have liked it?
The next day, Dr Brewer pops round to next door to help them mend a sink... as you do... so Margaret and Casey immediately decide to, you guessed it, sit around watching Lords of Chaos. In the basement, Casey gets jumpscared by a squirrel, and Margaret sees that Mr Martinez's jacket and tie is on a table. Uh oh, looks like botany isn't the only thing Dr Brewer's been doing in the basement! Speaking of which, Dr Brewer gets back, and he claims that Mr Martinez just got hot, took off his jacket and tie, and left them there. I hope he's not planning on using that excuse with Mum.
A few days later, Dr Brewer nips off to the airport, presumably planning to come up with a better excuse in the car, in order to pick up Mum. Margaret and Casey go back into the basement once more, this time to get their kites. I think Dr Brewer should go to a better lock shop (admit it, you forgot he put a lock on the door too). Within, they discover Mr Martinez's trousers on the floor, which they identify by checking the wallet inside them. I don't think it's a good idea for him to stay over the night before Mum gets back. A moaning from the cupboard catches their attention, though they should probably wait until they're done. They open, but are distracted by the genuinely creative and disturbing plants within, with arms and hands and such. And there's also Dr Brewer and Mr Martinez, bound and gagged. Nice try, guys, but you're not fooling anyone. Dr Brewer in the cupboard explains that the Dr Brewer who went to the airport is a plant-human hybrid that tied him and Mr Martinez up and shut them in a cupboard. He's really going the distance with covering this up, I'll give him that.
Dr Brewer from the cupboard (designated Crash Brewer) grabs an axe, which they conveniently have in the basement, when the Dr Brewer from the airport (designated Gex Brewer) gets back with Mum. Good thing Crash got out of the cupboard beforehand, or that could have been awkward. Crash and Gex get into an argument about which Brewer is the real deal, which is convenient because it distracts Mum from asking why Mr Martinez is half-naked in the basement. Margaret suddenly gets an idea, grabs a knife, and stabs Crash in the arm. As you do. He bleeds red, proving that he's human. Without stabbing Gex to compare the results. I pity your science teacher, Margaret. With that, Crash takes the axe, and slices Gex in half. We also see Gex's improbable anatomy, as he has only a stem in place of his internal organs. Everyone immediately hugs it out, and everything's lovely once again, in no small part to the fact that Mum's been distracted from Mr Martinez is in their basement, half nude.
Later, Dr Brewer - the real Dr Brewer - explains what the hell just happened. With the plant clones, not Mr Martinez (though that's probably for the best). Dr Brewer was initially trying to create a kind of superplant by combining DNA from various plants with desirable traits. However, he accidentally cut himself (you can tell it was an accident because Nine Inch Nails wasn't playing), and some of his DNA got into the mixture, creating a plant-human hybrid. Naturally, he was intrigued by this, so he started experimenting with this concept, until it reached the point where he created a near-perfect duplicate of himself, with some plant like tendencies. The rest, you've already seen. Except what he was doing with Mr Martinez, but that's probably because this is a kid's book.
Everything soon goes back to normal. Mr Martinez gives Dr Brewer his job back (I wonder why), Dr Brewer puts all the human-plant hybrids out of their misery, save for a few salvageable ones which he plants in the garden, and the basement is converted into the games room. As a nice, peaceful, heartwarming ending draws to a close, Margaret sits down in the garden... when a nearby flower speaks up and claims that he's
The Werewolf's Free Science Lessons
The equation for respiration in plants is the reverse of that for humans. With this in mind, I have to ask how a plant human hybrid could possibly respire. Also, they would need chlorophyll to do this, but the only visible chlorophyll plant Dr Brewer had was in the leaves on his head, which he covered up all the time, meaning that light couldn't get to them. Or maybe I'm reading to deep into this.
Conclusion
Stay Out of the Basement is actually really good. The premise is creative, the prose is good, and the mystery is genuinely perplexing. A worthy read if you feel comfortable reading a book for 9 year olds in public.
Next time: Mysterious mirrors that turn you invisible have only one obvious purpose - consequence-less childish contests!
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