Bantam, $2.25, ISBN 0-553-23622-9
Horror, 1984
Larry Weinberg’s The Curse is part of the Dark Forces line. Back in the 1980s, there were many similar lines catered to young teens, and this was long before the Goosebumps wave in the early 1990s.
Ah, those were the days, when kids could read things without adults imposing their own viewpoints into kiddie books and start censoring things so that these kids would turn out just the way these adults want them to.
In this one, Dana Nicholson is plagued by vivid nightmares of suffocating to death while hearing people sing happy birthday to her in the background. Guffaw… although I think that’s supposed to be scary.
That’s how she knows that she’s going to die in a few days on her 17th birthday, and this fear solidifies when she visits an Egyptian exhibit at the local museum during a school trip and her nightmares spill over into daytime and become visions. Perhaps she’s the reincarnation of Princess Hatbaton, who died under mysterious circumstances?
I’m not sure how an Egyptian princess ends up in America in the form of a blonde white girl, but hey, I can’t blame that gal from wanting to avoid her homeland since she died tragically there.
Dana’s parents completely ignore her even when she’s practically catatonic after an episode, because oh, kids, they are so dramatic, you know. Her only ally is the new transfer kid, the—of course—hot Stephan Kennedy. Perhaps he’s the reincarnation of Hatbatty’s boo in those days? Alas, it is possible that he killed Hatbatty back in those days, if that were to be the case…
This is an odd story, because there is no villain or spook for the most part. The only drama comes from Dana’s increasingly histrionic episodes, Stephan dreaming of starring in Shakespearean plays alongside Dana (don’t ask), and bizarre teen courting ritual of Stephan being always kind and patient even as Dana screams at him and acts hot and cold. The perfect teenage boyfriend, in other words, and the possibility that he may kill her in this timeline only adds to the allure because little girls love this kind of sexually non-threatening bad boys.
So yes, there is no villain, no sense of danger, nothing. It’s not like these brats make any big strides on their own either, as convenient plot devices show up to pave the way each time the two of them need to crack their heads and, shudder, think. For example, they decide to do some research in the library and lo, they immediately meet the mysterious wise old man cliché that happens to know everything they want to know and hence dumps a whole lot of exposition on everyone’s head like some bird flying overhead that is stricken with the poops.
It is only toward the end that the lazy-ass bad spooks finally act. The story culminates in a hilariously ridiculous manner that would be right at home in a low budget Full Moon Features movie.
It’s pretty clear by this point that the author is just making things up as the story progresses, but then again, considering the age of the target audience of this book, maybe it doesn’t matter. Just throw some nightmares, the literary equivalents of cheap and lazy jump scares, and those kids will be distracted!
Ultimately, I have no idea what the point of this story is. It makes more sense for the heroine to be some reincarnation of a witch from Salem, for example, than some princess from a country and culture that is as 180 as it can get from suburban America in the 1980s. Perhaps the author could have let the bad woo-woo folks do their thing a little earlier, so that their appearance doesn’t feel like an obligation to inject some “excitement” in the final act.
Then again, maybe this is just a cautionary tale for parents. They shouldn’t dismiss outright their kids’ psychosis and mentally unstable nature! Hence, the next time these kids insist that they are genderqueer two-spirit dolphin-kins, don’t be dismissive like Dana’s parents. Send them to shock therapy or Antarctica instead!
