I have never recapped a Pike book, though I used to read his books almost as religiously as Fear Streets in the ‘90s. Pike is a philosopher king compared to R. L. Stine. Fear Street is all slasher-gore horror but doesn’t come with tons of depth (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Pike, however, seems to start off down on your typical horror road, then it spins out into something extravagantly weird, like “but we were actually ancient pagan gods and live in another dimension” kind of stuff. Pike’s books were pretty trippy.
But my attention was caught by the Netflix series based on his book The Midnight Club. It looks scary, and I thought it might be something fun to recap, seeing as I’ve been enjoying recapping R. L.’s shows. With that in mind, I’ve read The Midnight Club. It is … not at all what I expected. Although perhaps I should have, since it is classic Pike. And now I’m even more curious about The Midnight Club series. Does it follow the same path as the book? Does it take a creepy concept (dying kids make a pact to reach out to others after death) and take it in a whole different direction? Let me know if you’d like to see the recaps of the show here! Also if you're looking for more horror, check out my new blog post on The Scariest Monsters in Literature.
On to the recap: Ilonka is dying of cancer. She lives in Rotterdam Hospice, a very fancy mansion that has been repurposed for children receiving end-of-life care – no treatments, only pain management and whatever comfort they can find in a cool old place and each other. It used to be the home of an oil tycoon, set on the Pacific Coast in Washington State.
Ilonka has a remarkably upbeat attitude to keep on living life right to the end. Her roommate, Anya, feels otherwise. She lives in excruciating pain from her bone cancer and likes drugs and not much else. Her leg has been amputated and she can barely move for the pain. She reads the Bible by day and tells scary stories at night. She also tells hard truths, like the fact that Ilonka is obviously in love with Kevin, another guest at the hospice, which is super awkward since he has a devoted girlfriend.
Ilonka is aware of all this. She hates Kevin’s girlfriend, thinks she’s insipid. She loooooves Kevin and believes her connection to him has to do with the ancient past. Whoof, it didn’t take long to get to the esoteric stuff Pike loves so much!
She takes like 6 T3s to forget about the girlfriend and push the pain away. These kids take a lot of drugs.
Ilonka is awoken by Sandra to make the next meeting of the Midnight Club. It’s a group of five kids who meet in the library at midnight to tell each other stories. Ilonka is happy she didn’t sleep through it because she has a tale to tell.
Spence is the fifth member of the club, and is a bit of an energetic trickster. He tells a bloody, gory story, which is typical of him. Then Anya tells a disturbing story about doppelgangers and deals with the devil.
Ilonka starts her story, about a past life – 20,000 years ago in Egypt. Delius is the follower of a divine Master and had a good friend, Shradna. It’s a sad story, because Shradna’s daughter dies, then Delius and Shradna fight and fall out. Also, Ilonka believes that she is Delius, and Kevin is Shradna, though she leaves that last part out.
Kevin goes next. He tells a story of an angel who falls in love with a human and becomes mortal to be with her. Ooh, what could this mean?
The next day, Kevin’s girlfriend Kathy comes to see him. Ilonka takes her aside and tells her Kevin is going to die, that’s why he’s in a hospice and she’s only hurting him by talking about their after because they’re not going to get an after. Kathy leaves in tears and Ilonka feels terrible. It’s the worst thing she’s ever done because she only did it because she wants Kevin so bad.
Ilonka has been eating only fruits and vegetables and taking lots of vitamins, so she doesn’t listen to her own advice that she’s in a hospice and there’s only one way out of a place like that. She thinks she’s getting better and demands to be taken to get an MRI to prove it.
Before the next Midnight Club, Anya shares a story for only Ilonka. It’s a real story. She was in love with her boyfriend and thought it was too good to be true. She fucked it up because her love freaked her out so much, and gets caught cheating with another man. She had made a sculpture of two lovers together for her boyfriend, who threw it to the ground when he finds them. The woman’s leg breaks off, right where Anya’s is amputated. She wonders if it means anything, as she got sick not long after that.
At the club, Spence is all kinds of mischievous and has wine for all of them. Ilonka takes only two small sips, thinking the wine tastes funny. Anya is in a remarkably good mood, maybe because of the wine and morphine mix. They talk about trying to reach out to each other when they’re gone, to show them there is an afterlife. Only this is not scary at all, but peaceful and sweet, a way to comfort each other.
Spence has another bloody gory story that is short and entertaining. Ilonka goes next, and it’s another of her past lives, this time in India. She went against her caste to marry and has a child who will/did become a divine prophet called the Master, so that guy’s always mixed up with her lives. Pike always does spiritual stuff like that.
At this point, I am so curious what the show is actually like because we are ¾ of the way through the book and the only plot so far basically is: dying teens tell rambling stories.
Ilonka falls asleep hard that night and has more and more past-life dreams. In these, it appears she’s being led by Jesus, who speaks of God’s love, but she refers to him as Master. She begs him to bring back her dead husband, and she basically tells her she’s not very enlightened.
When she wakes Anya is dead. She wonders whether something happened to her (besides, you know, the bone cancer that was actively killing her). The doctors assure her of course her body had reached its end naturally and there would be no autopsy.
Then a powerful rumour spreads through Rotterdam: one of the guests there has been misdiagnosed. One of them is not condemned.
Ilonka is sure it’s her because she had her MRI the other day. She’s happy and goes for a walk with Kevin. He knows he was in her past lives, and he tells her the story about the angel was about them, too.
But then Ilonka sees Sandra packing her stuff. Nobody packs their stuff here, that’s done for them after they’re gone. So Ilonka realizes it’s not her that gets to leave through the front doors. Her new diagnosis is much worse – she has maybe a couple of weeks.
Kevin finishes his story of the angel for her and it’s about love and acceptance and death. She tells him she loves him, he feels the same way, and they sleep together (though neither has the energy for actual sex, they’re together emotionally). She dreams of other past lives – one where she is a king, tempted by a woman who knows the secret of powerful addictive sex act called The Rapture.
Then in the next life she’s a poor, sick, bald milkmaid in Scandinavia, unloved and unlucky. She learns a different addictive sex act, called The Seedling, which forces others to be with her and she becomes promiscuous. A wizard gives her the power and now he wants her to use it to seduce and kill a count. She prays to be released from this and she is found by the young man she loved her whole life. He loves her too. They run away together but the wizard finds her and stabs her in the guts. Before she dies, the boy says he’ll find her again. She says she has many sins to pay for, but he says he’ll take them on as well so he might be with her.
Ilonka wakes up, her stomach burning with the same pain as from the other life and realizes this is the price she paid for wicked deeds before. But she wakes up in Kevin’s arms, so that’s okay. They kiss and tell each other they love each other, and he dies in her arms.
After that, it’s just her and Spence left. He admits to drugging Ilonka the night with the wine and then smothering Anya at her request. She asked him to do it because he believes he already killed someone, so his karma could take it. Spence is dying of AIDS, and he never told his partner he had it, though he hadn’t known he was infected when they first got together.
Ilonka tells him he’s forgiven, but if he would like, she’ll stay with him for the next life and share in whatever payment that comes with his sins, as Kevin did for her.
She goes into the stars after that.
Wow. I mean, it’s a sweet story. There is nothing scary here. Even the kids who are dying are given the comfort of future lives to look forward to. It’s not Fear Street, that’s for sure. Essentially, it’s a story of divine love. I'm not sure how to rate this, but I'll go for 7 raptures out of 11.
