Goosebumps Series 2000 #14: Jekyll and Heidi

Yep, I'm back. Let's do this.

Plot
We open with our protagonist, Heidi Davidson, reading a bus ticket over and over again. Off to a good start. Her parents were killed by Voldemort in a car accident, so she's moving to live with her Grandmamma uncle, Dr Palmer Jekyll, and his daughter, Marianna. However, when she gets off the bus, because nobody thought to at least accompany the 12 year old girl to her new home (Even Mr Poe, incompetent as he was, did that!), she tries to call up Dr Jekyll, but she can't get the number. She encounters a boy she starts crushing on (at least I think so, but she also described her cousin as pretty, so it could be a platonic compliment. Or they're in Alabama) called Aaron Freidus. He warns her about Dr Jekyll, saying that he's a monster. Because she's not a clueless idiot (peculiarly), Heidi calls bs, though Aaron mentions that there's a monster stalking the town. Fair enough, but there's no real evidence besides Jekyll's last - you know what, from experience, making assumptions based on surnames is something people regularly do all the time.

Aaron refuses to show Heidi where Dr Jekyll's house is because he's scared of the monster or whatever (that sounds like a 5 year old character's dialogue), so Heidi goes herself. Luckily, it's pretty easy to find, given that it looks like Castle Frankenstein, which doesn't really help Dr Jekyll's case. She knocks on the door, and Marianna answers, telling her to sod off. Then she slams the door shut. Isn't this bit supposed to happen before they get to the castle? Anyway, Sylvia, the maid, re-opens the door, and lets Heidi in. She completely ignores the fact that Marianne just tried to drive Heidi away from her only living option. Apparently, Dr Jekyll's busy in his lab ignoring the orphans that are coming to live with him. This is starting to sound like A Series of Unfortunate Events.

After crying because her gigantic wardrobe somehow reminds her of home (and presumably also because Narnia isn't on the other side), Heidi finally encounters Dr Jekyll, and gasps in a horrified manner. Not because he's spooky, scary, skeletons, or anything else of the sort; he just looks a tad old because his hair's turned white. Dr Jekyll is actually a pretty decent bloke aside from the fact that he forgot to pick up his orphaned niece, though he mentions that he is on the verge of a breakthrough. Then he ominously says that she needs to go hang out Marianna for whatever reason. Anyhoozle, Heidi inquires about the monster that Aaron mentioned earlier and Dr Jekyll immediately yells at her to leave the room.

Heidi decides to explore the house by looking in every single room... as you do. She comes across a room with wallpaper that has been slashed and torn, as if by an animal. Suddenly, Heidi is jumpscared by Marianna, who brushes the claw marks off as being due to their old cat, George, who later got put down. And I guess they just never bothered to replace it. It's a really terrible lie.

That night, Heidi is just falling asleep when she hears a loud screaming. She looks out the window seeing people running, dogs barking, and total chaos. This is actually a really nice scene. Anyway, Heidi runs to see Dr Jekyll... because she's 6... but he's nowhere to be found. So, she heads down to the lab. But he's not there either. A glass lies on the floor, with a small bit of green liquid in the bottom. Heidi assumes that Dr Jekyll downed some sort of concoction which turned him into a monster. Because... his name is Dr Jekyll, I guess. Suddenly, Dr Jekyll teleports into the room, with mud on his face (the big disgrace) and his hair is "shot out wildly from his head." I think I know what's happened. He was mugged by a Van der Graaf generator! He tells Heidi that he just went out for a walk, and that she should just ignore all the commotion. I'd call him out if my parents didn't say that sort of thing all the time.

The next day, Heidi overhears Marianna arguing with Dr Jekyll. However, this is not about her listening to Evanesence, shopping at Hot Topic, and writing self-insert Harry Potter fanfiction while Dr Jekyll calls it a phase; rather, Marianna discusses running away and how Dr Jekyll has made her a social outcast. Heidi then comes in for breakfast, acting like she heard nothing. However, afterwards Heidi goes up to see Marianna, and asks her about the argument and such as she's holding her pet hamster, whom she calls her best friend. Over the course of this interview, Marianna grows increasingly stressed to the point where she squeezes the hamster so hard that it snuffs it. Oh dear.

Heidi takes this as an excuse to run away to God knows where, and packs her stuff and leaves. However, arriving in town, she discovers the place looks like a bomb was dropped on it. She notices Aaron (oh yeah, he's in this story) being interviewed about the attack last night. Some crazy woman presumably in ownership of a bob and the name Karen runs up to the mic saying that if the news company want to know about the attack, they should just go up to Castle Jekyll because the monster is there. As evidenced by the owner's last name. (Jesus Christ) Heidi runs up to the mic as well, despite the fact she doesn't have a bob nor is she called Karen, and tries to defend Dr Jekyll. It does not go well.

Heidi returns to Dr Jekyll's place. After a scene where Heidi gets a new phone and Dr Jekyll is needlessly ominous about it, Heidi comes across a secret compartment on a bookshelf in her room that I'd neglected to mention because I didn't think it was important. Within is an ominous diary that details the worried, actually well written musings of someone who seems to be sharing a body with a beast of some kind. Heidi comes to the conclusion that it belongs to, of course, Bruce Banner. Of course not. It's Dr Henry Jekyll. She immediately comes to the conclusion that our Dr Jekyll found the formula for the original Dr Jekyll's potion in the diary and is now using it for God knows what. Because the original formula was such a success that one would wish to duplicate it.

The next day, after tea, Heidi sneaks into Dr Jekyll's lab and hides in a cupboard. Dr Jekyll comes in, and downs a potion of some sort. He immediately begins acting stressed and animalistic before leaving the room, which Heidi believes as definitive proof that Dr Jekyll is the beast that is terrorising the town. I'm desperately trying to find a problem with this if only because I don't want the townspeople to be right. It's like a town full of Matt Danielses. She leaves the cupboard and looks around the lab at nothing in particular... when Dr Jekyll comes back abruptly, apologising that Heidi saw what she saw. However, he neglects to explain exactly what she saw because Goosebumps.

Dr Jekyll locks Heidi in her room, instead of saying quickly what's going on, and dashes off to go terrorise the town or whatever. She climbs out the window and starts to slide down the incredibly rusty gutter. I say starts because she falls off the gutter and snaps her neck, instantly dying.

Conclusion
Jekyll and Heidi is -

Nah, I'm kidding. She's fine. She comes down into town as the townspeople warn her to get away from the town before the beast gets her. Also something explodes or whatever, it's not really clear. Suddenly, a large wolf creature that looks nothing like Mr Hyde bursts out from behind a house. It pins Heidi to the ground, but before it can do... whatever wolf creatures that look nothing like Mr Hyde do, when suddenly Aaron teleports onto the street, wielding a baseball bat. He swings it at the creature, but it just swats it aside, picks up Aaron by the scruff of his neck and lobs him into the fire left by that explosion thingy from earlier. And he's perfectly fine. Because that's how fire works.

Heidi runs back to the house into the lab and comes up with a standardly Baldrickian cunning plan - down some of Dr Jekyll's potion from earlier, turn into a beast, fight the wolf creature, and rip off the climax of Monster Blood II. However, Dr Jekyll hasn't been to Sainsbury's lately, so they've run out. As the wolf creature bursts into the lab and pins Heidi against the wall. Suddenly, a figure steps into the room - it's Dr Jekyll. Which means the villagers were wrong the whole time!

But wait, you don't ask, who is this wolf creature? Well, Dr Jekyll hugs the wolf creature from behind despite the fact that it never showed that it was OK (I myself only ever hug my Grandmother and my girlfriend), and it transforms back into... Marianna. Yep, she was a werewolf the whole time! Why didn't Dr Jekyll just tell Heidi this? Anyway, it turns out Dr Jekyll has spent years trying to find a cure for werewolfism, because that's a legitimate use of a PhD. Marianna apparently became a werewolf when the car broke down whilst they were on holiday and Dr Jekyll just let her wander off. You can probably guess the rest.

Suddenly, a rock crashes through the window as they realise that most of the moronic town is outside the house, chanting "kill the beast" like they're in a '30s horror film. I guess they've got nothing better to do tonight. Doesn't this town have a pub? As the villagers break down the door and start setting the house on fire, I get to finally play this card for the first time in 4 months:

Dr Jekyll, Marianna, and Heidi run to a nearby door, as Dr Jekyll reveals that he'd planned for an event like this (in any other case I'd be utterly baffled by this), and explains that there's a tunnel that leads away from town where they can get a lift of some kind. But no money. Or clothes. Or anything. But that plan seems perfectly solid compared to Heidi's, as she decides to double back and grab that diary from earlier that you probably don't remember.

As Heidi stealths through the villagers, who are busy smashing the house and asking where the beast is, she gets to the bedroom, and, discovering the diary, completely forgets about the element of stealth and the villagers come in and grab her. They threaten to murder the 12 year old child if she doesn't tell them where the beast that they've just assumed lives here (I mean, it does, but they've no evidence to support that), but luckily Aaron shows up, completely fine after being lobbed into that fire earlier, to call them out on it. I regret playing the 'this is illegal' card 2 paragraphs ago. Such are the limitations of a low-effort recurring gag.

As Heidi and Aaron cheese it to the secret underground tunnel, they discover that Dr Jekyll and Marianna have legged it because, you know, there's an angry mob burning the house down. They run down the tunnel, and, once on the other side, Heidi broodingly stares at the house burning down. Also Dr Jekyll and Marianna are never seen again, because they didn't think to wait for Heidi. Actually, yeah, maybe it's a good idea to leave the girl who runs into a burning building for a bloody diary. Lass was gonna get herself killed eventually anyway.

Back at Aaron's place, where I guess Heidi lives now (I feel like there should be someone working on the legal side of things. Ooh, circular narrative!), Heidi and Aaron are kinda just chilling in the kitchen. Heidi finally decides to keep reading the diary, and discovers new writing in it. From Marianna. Turns out that she'd been charting her transformations... which she was aware of, somehow...  in it, and had just stashed it in Heidi's bookcase, and just popped in whenever she needed to write in it. And one night while she was writing in it, she bit Heidi in her sleep. And I guess she just never noticed.

Any Questions?
Why did everyone in the town believe that Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde were real people? The story was clearly fictional. And when in the story did Jekyll turn into a rampaging wolf creature and destroy the town? Are the town just part of the Jekyll and Hyde Tumblr fandom who believe that the stories and fanfics are real?

Conclusion
Jekyll and Heidi is honestly not that bad. There is some decent mystery in the story, one or two decently atmospheric moments, and the reveal that Marianna is the creature is a decent twist. However, the logic is full of holes, characters drop in and out of the story at random, and the ending is extremely predictable. All in all, it's just kind of OK.

Next Time: The format changes once more as we finally go back to the very beginning! After nearly 2 years of this!