Gooseblog: Goosebumps #33: The Horror At Camp Jellyjam

Grab your bat, your soccer ball, tie up those running shoes and I hope you have your throwing arm nice and primed, because we got sports of all sorts to talk about. Also maybe a monster as well. It's The Horror At Camp Jellyjam AKA Sporty Spice.

COVER STORY

This cover is definitely one of the more iconic covers in the Goosebumps series, but also one of the strangest. I mean, it's just Buddy from the book staring at the reader with his piercing blue eyes and freakish grin. He looks like he took some of the Joker's smilex. I actually can appreciate this cover as it doesn't spoil what the book is really about. Buddy aside, I again really like the background. Have I mentioned yet how much I love Jacobus' trees and sunsets, because they're here again and they look spectacular. Not the scariest cover, but one you'll definitely never forget either.

STORY

Wendy and her younger brother Elliot are on a vacation with their family. But being a pair of bratty kids, they're so bored with the road trip, that they ask if they can go in the trailer for the rest of the car ride. Because that sure sounds safe. And sure enough, it doesn't take long for one bump on the road to cause the trailer to detach and start rolling down a hill. After the crash, the two kids get their bearings, when they hear a knock at the trailer door. They're greeted by a blonde haired man with a big grin on his face wearing a shirt that says "Only The Best". This is Buddy, the guy from the cover. He leads the kids to a place called "King Jellyjam's Sports Camp", which features a strange looking purple blob mascot, the titular King Jellyjam.

Wendy is concerned with finding their parents, but Buddy convinces them to stay. You see, Camp Jellyjam has every kind of sport imaginable. Ping-pong, soccer, football, croquet, even lawn bowling. Buddy encourages them to play, but to always play their best. "Only The Best" he says as he points to his shirt. Buddy also seems a bit... off. He has no idea how long he's been at the camp or where he even came from. But Buddy isn't the only counselor obviously, as Wendy and Elliot see other counselors, all grinning similar to Buddy, all parroting the "Only The Best" mantra. This includes another counselor named Holly who wears bright purple lipstick, and also seems to have a spotty memory of her past.

Wendy then gets attacked by a bunch of girls. But not really of course, as they were all just having fun. Granted, none of them were strangling her for fun like in the last book, so that's a plus on this book's behalf. Dierdre, Ivy and Jan are the three girls, who again repeat the whole "Only The Best" mantra. They invite Wendy to join Dierdre in the swimming competition. She ultimately decides to compete, but fails to come in any considerable place. Dierdre wins, and gets an item called a King Coin, which features King Jellyjam's likeness. It's her fifth coin. When a kid gets six coins, they get to participate in something called the "winner's walk". Wendy also gets confronted by Holly who starts to pressure her about how she wasn't doing her best in the race. And then Wendy sees Elliot unconscious on the ground. Oh wait, it's the stock scare for the book. Of course.

The kids watch and compete in more sports, when suddenly they feel the ground shake violently. Buddy tells them these are common around here, and at this point nobody even pays much attention to the tremors. This proves true, as the other kids continue to play on despite the ground shaking beneath them. Eventually Dierdre gets her sixth king coin, and that night joins several kids in the winner's walk. The girls plan a party for Dierdre after the walk, but she never shows up. The girls go out past curfew to find her, but instead just run into bats for a quick scare. But they also end up seeing other counselors acting strangely. Suddenly, a young red haired girl named Alicia runs into them in a panic saying that she saw something and they need to get out of here. She's too panicked to describe what's happening, and she dashes off.

The girls return to their bunk, only to then find all of Dierdre's belongings have vanished. When Wendy asks Buddy the next day, he just says that she's gone, and doesn't elaborate on how. When Wendy tries to use the phones to contact her parents, a prerecorded message plays, and there's no way to use them to contact anyone. Buddy also seems to be pressuring Wendy into more sports, like tennis and baseball, and in the latter, Wendy accidentally hits Buddy's ribs with her bat, making a loud cracking noise. Despite the obvious broken ribs, he doesn't react to it and just keeps going about his business. More kids vanish the next day after taking their winner's walk. Meanwhile, Elliot has been racking up on coins, now on his fifth. That night on the next winner's walk, Wendy makes sure to follow. She sees the winner's walkers enter a strange igloo-like building. When she enters the building, she sees Buddy and the other counselors hypnotize themselves, clearing their mind to serve their master. This explains why no counselor seems to remember their past at least.

Wendy sneezes, which catches the attention of the counselors, who give chase. She winds up in a strange tunnel with a horrible rotten smell filling the air. She soon finds the cause of the smell. It's a giant purple blob monster being mopped and cleaned off by several kids, including Dierdre and Alicia. This beast is King Jellyjam, and it turns out that this whole sports camp was a ruse to find the best servants to clean him off. "Only The Best" meant only the best slaves. You see, King Jellyjam is a giant stench monster. It's so rotten that it even sweats snails. King Jellyjam is so putrid that he needs to be constantly cleaned off, or he will die from its own stench. How a creature like that can survive long enough to get this plan in motion is beyond me, but hey, Goosebumps logic.

Wendy manages to run away, and make it just in time to see Elliot compete in a race for his sixth coin. She manages to stop him from winning his race in time. She brings Elliot with her as she returns to King Jellyjam's lair. She tells all of the kids to hit the floor. King Jellyjam, enraged, grabs Wendy and tries to eat her, only for the monster to collapse and die, succumbing to its own putrid stench. Like I said, massive flaw to this creature's existence. The counselors begin to chase the kids, but everyone is stopped by the cops, who have arrived at the camp after the horrible stench of King Jellyjam made it into town. All of the campers are safe and are soon reunited with their parents, including Wendy and Elliot.

TWIST ENDING?

Not too long after the incident at Camp Jellyjam, Wendy and Elliot are at home relaxing, when they hear someone at their front door. It turns out it's Buddy, who is now free from the hypnotic control of King Jellyjam. He gives Elliot his sixth king coin, when suddenly they all smell something terrible. It's just mom making brussels sprouts. Har dee har har.

CONCLUSION

The Horror At Camp Jellyjam is a pretty good book. I wouldn't say it comes close to Camp Nightmare in terms of quality, but it comes pretty close. There's a decently paced mystery throughout the book, but by the end, like a lot of Goosebumps books, it rushes itself to get to a crazy conclusion with the big monster reveal. They do set King Jellyjam up early in the book, so it's not a completely out of nowhere concept. Although part of me kind of wishes there was no big monster, have that be a red herring until we reveal that perhaps the counselors were all a cult of cannibals of some sort. And they only want to eat the best kids, hence their strange behavior, and their focus on "Only the best". It would be too dark for this era of Goosebumps, but I think it would have served better than an ending with a purple gum monster that can't live without being washed.

And that's one of the problems with this book. We really get no backstory as to how King Jellyjam came to be. How did it get to this campground? How did it manage to get the counselors under his control? Why do the counselors keep themselves hypnotized? No, seriously, how can this thing survive for this long without dying if it can't last a minute without being constantly washed? I know I harp on other books over explaining the logic of how everything works, but in this case some explanation as to how this came to happen would have served this book much better. Other than that, Wendy was a good protagonist, Elliot really served little purpose in the book, and the scares were minimal, but still effective. In the end, this is a fine camp tale. The Horror At Camp Jellyjam gets a B+.