Monday, December 21, 2009

Superstition Part Deux, or "Most Badass Campus Cop is Given a Minor Role"


Alright, here is the second posting of Superstitious, ooh so excited to see how it ends! Scroll down to catch up on the first posting if you missed it, or click here.

Part 4

Liam proposes to Sara, and wants them to get married immediately. She gets him to wait a few weeks, until Thanksgiving, so her family can be there. Margaret comes by the next day to congratulate her. Margaret is looking younger, and gorgeous, and Sara wonders how she hadn’t noticed before. Marg tells her she’ll try to stay out of her way once the baby arrived, then leaves quickly. Sara’s all, whatever, but I’d be a little more concerned how involved my sister-in-law was in her brother’s sex life and potential children.

Sara is in heaven, so she doesn’t really notice anything. Until, she’s walking home one night, and hears footsteps behind her. She runs, but something grabs her. It’s … Chip, her ex and former stalker, also would-be drowner. If I was Sara, I’d keep on running. Chip insists that she come back to him, and grabs her.

Another murder has happened. The victim is Devra Brookes, a professor in the college who also knew Liam from his days at Chicago, where he lived before Freewood. She may or may not have been fucking him. Regardless, she didn’t survive the acquaintance. Her eyeball was ripped out and stuffed in her mouth. Ick. So, all three victims were women connected to Liam O’Connor, and all were to varying degrees sexually promiscuous. What could this mean? Devra’s body has fingerprints on her, but they are not human fingerprints.

The college is aroar about the murders, but Sara can’t think much beyond her upcoming nuptials. And then, about the four bloody rabbit feet that were sent her in the mail. For luck? Oh ya, and Liam owns a rabbit, or did own a rabbit. Interestingly enough, his rabbit had to be put down that very day. Because she no longer had feet, maybe?

Sara and Liam fly off to Indiana for him to meet her mother. Sara’s father passed away a few years ago, otherwise I’d assume that her dad might have something to say about the very-quick engagement. Her mother, brother and sister in law are all nice and warm, and Liam is his charming self. That is, until the black cat jumps on his lap, and he freezes in horror. Guess the cat broke a superstition. That night, something rips the head off the cat. Hmmm.

The day of the wedding, Liam is getting ready, making sure every superstition is followed. The event is happening at Milton’s estate in the woods, outside on a cold snowy day. Milton was very generous to offer his house, but is probably still angling to somehow screw Sara. As Liam dresses, his brown eyes turn blue, and he freaks. A purple forked tongue falls out of his mouth, and he barely gets it back in in time for Milton to miss it.

Part 5

The wedding goes off without a hitch. Everything is beautiful and perfect in the sunlit snow. The newlyweds try to leave the party for the honeymoon, a weekend out in the country, but there are so many well-wishers that Milton sneaks them out the back, after propositioning Sara again. Liam freaks because they didn’t leave the same way they came in, and makes them go back in and leave again.
At the inn they’re staying at, they make love in the light of 16 white candles as Liam chants. Nothing gets me in the mood like some sexy chanting. He tells Sara he wants to have a baby, and she tells him she wants what he wants. Ya, that’s healthy.

A witness comes forward to the police, tells them he heard a scream the night of the latest murder, and saw someone in a monster costume with glowing eyes and long teeth. I wonder if it had a purple forked tongue?

Sara and Liam’s marriage starts off rocky, largely because of all his superstitions that Sara has to follow now, which would be irritating, and the fact that his sister is living with them, always hovering over them. One night, Chip accosts the three of them, drunk, telling Sara Liam is too old for her, and he knows the REAL reason Liam had to leave Chicago.

Liam finally explains to Sara that he had to leave Chicago because a woman he had an affair became obsessed with him and had to be hospitalized. There are a lot of obsessive stalkers in this book. Sara suspects this woman of threatening her about Liam.

Milton has a dinner for them at the local pub. Liam breaks a superstition by taking soap from another person and starts to turn into a monster, but he gets a hand on it. Chip, meanwhile is lurking outside the pub, drunk once again, trying to get up the courage to go in there and tell Sara Liam’s secret. That is, until he is attacked and slashed apart.

Garrett is upset that his police force is being replaced by the Feds, but thinks it’s probably justified. He thinks something different killed Chip because he was slashed apart with a weapon, not ripped apart by something with inhuman fingerprints. He’s going house to house questioning people. He speaks to Liam, and discovers that Liam knew all four victims. Coincidence? Garrett doesn’t think so, but doesn’t know how the sensitive professor could rip people apart with super strength. Liam becomes the number one suspect.

Sara gets a call from a woman named Kristen, who claims that she used to be with Liam, and she had to warn Sara. Sara thinks she’s just jealous that she ended up with her hunk of a man.
Garrett questions Milton about Liam, who of course thinks the allegations are ridiculous of course, but just in case he checks with the dean of Liam’s former school in Chicago. Apparently, there were gruesome murders there too, and Liam knew all three victims. Milton freaks out, because knowing seven of the seven victims was just too much of a coincidence. He goes out to warn Sara.

Sara meanwhile has done some “accidental” snooping and discovers a pictures of a sexy woman in Liam’s desk. On the back is written “Love Kristen”. She confronts Liam with this, but he charms her as always, telling her it was Margaret’s picture. He then gives her a present of a human hand, and they make love in candlelight next to the hand. Okay, what the fuck? How delightful, I’ve always wanted my own disembodied human hand? Honey, you shouldn’t have, take me now. I can’t see this actually ever happening.

Garrett is still doing house to house work. He is attacked by a creature that bites his ear off. Garrett punches into the creatures mouth and rips out its throat. Okay, Garrett is bad ass.
Sara inspects her new human hand, which supposedly belonged to a mannequin. But she finds in fact it used to belong to Chip. Okay, honey, time to get out of this relationship.

Part 6

Sara goes to MB, freaking out, and tells her about Kristen. MB tells her that Kristen is the name of a woman who had just been found butchered. Sara irrationally wants to talk this one out with Liam. Surely her friend will convince her that going to discuss her husband’s murdering ways with said husband is a bad idea. Unfortunately, MB has a flight to catch, so she LEAVES Sara. Like, what kind of friend is that. Who does that? Sorry, you’ll have to deal with your impending murder on your own. And Sara is just plain stupid.

Sara goes home to find Liam in bed with Margaret, his sister. Things just keep getting bad to worse. An incestuous murderous husband is such an inconvenient thing to have around. She breaks the mirror in the bedroom (seven years bad luck …) and runs into the cold. She realizes soon enough that she’ll have to go back for her wallet, etc. So she goes back, to find the house empty. Well, almost empty. She does find Margaret’s corpse, still naked, impaled on the shower nozzle. Ugh, what a way to go.

Sara runs, goes to Milton’s house because she still has his inappropriate house key. Liam is already there, unfortunately, and Milton did not make it, is torn open. Liam attacks her, then holds her down to “explain” everything.

Margaret was always his wife, not a sister but the neighbour girl from Ireland. They ran away to America to escape Liam’s curse. They needed to have a child, but he didn’t want to do that to Margaret, because he loved her. Apparently, Liam is cursed by all the demons of superstition, that are released when superstitions are broken around him. The demons would be passed on to a child of his if the child was born in wedlock, so he had to get another wife preggers. Apparently bigamy is allowed. Liam had actually tried to warn Sara away, he was the one who made the threatening calls. Of course, he didn’t actually stop himself from marrying her and trying to impregnate her, so I'm still not seeing him as a stand-up guy in this one.

When others started to ruin the plan, Margaret stepped in. She was the one who killed Chip and Kristen, which is why they were slashed and not ripped apart. Liam believes that Margaret and Milton were killed by demons released when Sara broke the mirror, so this really was her fault. Sara breaks all the mirrors around them to prove him wrong.

Bad news. A demon that looks like runny eggs with two tongues crawls out of Liam’s mouth and attacks her. Liam pulls the demon off her and the demon breaks his back, killing him. All the demons pour out of his mouth and chase her. Sara runs outside, falls and hits her head, proving she is entirely useless as a heroine.

Sara wakes up in the hospital. She survived the demon attack for no apparent reason! A smiling nurse tells her not to worry, because not only was she alright, but so was the baby! Sara screams.

Good start, but poor finish, R. L. I mean why did Sara survive? The having people go unconscious is the oldest trick in the book, and it is just plain lazy. And this whole monster crawling out of mouth thing was a bit lame. I wanted to know more about Garrett, who was by far the coolest person in the whole book. What happened to him after he punched out the monster's throat. Superstition might have been marginally better than your average Fear Street, but loses points for being so effing long, meaning I couldn’t read the whole damn thing in an hour. 30 runny egg monsters out of 43.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish I knew how to do italics in this, because:

WHAT

I mean, that hand thing, just... R.L., what is wrong with you? This is just messed-up.

HelenB said...

Milton sneaks them out the back, after propositioning Sara again.

You stay classy, Milton!

The ending of this was pretty lame, actually. Like, why was he cursed? What kind of a fucked up curse is that anyway? I thought it was simply going to be that he was brought up by an overly-strict, superstitious father and that had driven him nuts, which would have been dumb enough.

Anonymous said...

That wouldn't have been stupid enough. It needs some made-up R.L. mythology to justify the brutal killings that are needed to justify it being an adult book.

marcelrochester said...

Um. This didn't make any sense. At all.

Good recap, though. I have a feeling reading it was more enjoyable than reading the book.

Anonymous said...

Oh my god, how did you get through this book? And how did Sara not know the difference between a mannequin hand and a human hand? That's not the only question I have, but I can't ask any more or this comment would be two pages long!

As usual, awesome post. There is an award for you on my blog.

Anonymous said...

This is way you don't sleep with guys who do all theese stupid superstsions. They're either rapists, deadbeats, or cursed. Maybe even all three. And all they want to do is knock you up for no real reson other that the fact that they're shitheads. End Rant.