- Chill Out! – Mandy Picture Story Library : #234 [1996]
- Art: Cover & Story 2 – Norman Lee, Story 1 – Douglas Perry, Story 4 – Carlos Freixas
Plot
Four short spooky tales for this picture story library.
Story 1: Lonely… (Art: Douglas Perry)
In 1933 Lyn Lawrence and her family move into a temporary rented home, Lyn finds the house’s old fashioned phone a novelty. Then during a storm she gets a strange call with a faint voice saying “I’m lonely…”, but her parents say the telephone lines have been brought down in the storm. She find out the lines have become tangled with the grave of a 13 year old girl Annie, who once lived in the house. Meanwhile she has been getting messages in her bedroom, written on her mirror “I’m still lonely” and pencils spelling out Annie. It escalates to Annie’s ghost appearing to Lyn and trying to get her to come and be her friend, Lyn snaps out of her trance just in time and her mother sends her to stay with her gran until their new house is ready. Lyn is happy in the new house, until her mother answers a strange call and she goes to her room to find the message “I’ve found you and I’m still lonely” on her mirror!
Story 2: Trapped! (Art: Norman Lee)
On a school trip to Holburn Hall, Fay Lang feels a strange connection to the house, knowing things about it despite never being there before. One thing she knows about is a fake door that leads to nowhere, but as the rest of the tour group moves on she suddenly hears someone calling for help from behind it. When she tries the door she actually finds herself in the past face to face with her double named Bridie. In the Victorian era the hall had been used as a orphanage, Bridie helps Fay escape from the cruel Matron, getting whipped across the arm in the process. She convinces Fay to put on some old clothes and hides her away in a laundry. Matron catches up with Fay and thinks she is Bridie, not listening to her protests. Meanwhile a girl steps out the door in the present, bruising on her arm indicates that it is Bridie.
Story 3: Home Sweet Home! (Text story)
Emma wakes up after a sickness and is confused to find some strange things in her house, the furniture in her room has changed, she can not find her parents and the strangers in the house ignore her, while their dog growls at her. One person does acknowledge her when she sees her, a girl who yells out to her parents to come look at Emma before she disappears again. It is then Emma realises she is a ghost and has been dead for over a 100 years!
Story 4: The Mark! (Art: Carlos Freixas)
Fliss and Gina move into an old cottage with their parents, as it had been empty for some time, there is a lot of repair work to do. In one room their father tries to paint over a damp patch but it keeps showing through the new paint, the sisters comment that it looks like a figure of a girl. Everyday the figure seems to get more clearer, the room is colder and at night Gina is woken up by scratching noises downstairs. Gina in particular is getting more creeped out by the house, and at a cafe a local girl overhears them talking about it and tells them the house is haunted by a girl who was walled up in the cottage when it was built and is now out for revenge. Fliss being more practical, thinks the girl is only making things up to scare them, when they go to talk to their parents there seems to be a logical explanation for everything. Mice have been scratching at night and previous owners had a cafe with a highwayman mural,that must now be showing through. Their father is going to cover up the mark with wood paneling, the girls are relieved. The next day they help their mom in another room but are surprised to uncover the highwayman mural there. At the same time, their father is upset the mark is still coming through the wood panel he just did, and notices it does look more like a figure of a girl, Gina and Fliss are scared, the girl is coming out for revenge…
Thoughts
Spooky stories for a spooky month! There have been a few picture story library books that had a collection of supernatural stories. Debbie had several spooky storyteller, Damian Darke, based books, Mandy had Chill Out! and later Scream! which had 5 short stories. In this book none of the protagonist get happy endings, or they are left ambiguous to their actual fate. They are all quite effective stories for such a short format.
Lonely… is a creepy tale and just when you think that Lyn has escaped, it ends with Annie tracking her down again, will she be haunted forever, will Annie succeed in trapping Lyn or will she find a way to banish Annie for good? The ending is left unresolved, leaving us to speculate what might happen next. Trapped! raises even more unanswered questions, such as why did Fay remember Holburn Hall, was it some connection with Bridie that she was feeling, which is why Bridie also know about Fay and set up her devious scheme? Is Fay forever trapped in the past and will anyone notice that Bridie is not who she says she is? Home Sweet Home! works well as a text story with an unreliable narrator, only in the last spot art panel we can see Emma is out of place in the contemporary setting. The Mark has one of the more frightening endings with the ghostly figure coming out from the wall. Again, the story ends before revealing their fate—an common approach for ghost stories, where conclusions are left open-ended, allowing readers to use their imagination to fill in the blanks.
