“I was hoping the next time I’d see you would be at your funeral.”

20. The Twisted Room – Janet Patton Smith

Lisa’s parents are doing the oneupmanship version of divorce – they both have new partners, they both want to give her extravagant gifts (a collection of albums – with duplicates!) for the Christmas they’re both ruining for her, and they want her out of the way so they can go on wonderful vacations during the drudgey time between Christmas and New Year’s. Lisa, understandably, is not very happy about this. And she’s being shipped off to Ohio where her reclusive Aunt Nikki lives.

When she gets to Ohio she’s staying in an isolated house with her barely there Aunt Nikki who won’t let her eat more than half a can of soup, barely heats the giant house, and disappears regularly because of some giant past town scandal that happened in the 40s with her next door neighbor, the also reclusive Mr. Worthington’s family. See, Aunt Nikki is really Jennica Loring, and her best friend was Mr. Worthington’s daughter Marie, who killed herself and the rest of the family semi-accidentally after she planned on blaming Jenny/Jennica/Nikki for stealing money to leave and marry her military boyfriend before he shipped out to World War II.

Marie, however, is an evil ghost and she wants to invite Lisa to a party in the 1940s and has plans to substitute Lisa in her place in the party she died at so she will be free. Also, she’s avoiding appearing before her father. Marie has also traveled as a ghost before so she could ruin Jenny/Jennica/Nikki’s life and reduced her to living alone in her house and eating like a half can of tuna and not realizing she might be starving herself and her niece in 1983. It is a time of excess, Jenny, it is the 80s. Eat the whole can of tuna, mix in some celery while you’re at it, go wild.

Lisa at first likes Marie better because she’s a fun ghost until you realize she wants to kill you in her place and somehow thinks that will work out well for her. Evil ghosts, man, not smart, just evil.

 

Snuffy’s view from the isolated A-frame involves few impressionable young teens.

 

Snuffy just wanted cha cha heels, not to feed children meagre portions out of old guilt or suck a new soul into the past to pay for her crimes. Just cha cha heels.
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