I Live in Your Basement by R. L. Stine

The story of I Live in Your Basement by R. L. Stine starts when after an accident at the softball game Marco, a twelve year old, is admitted to hospital with a massive head injury. Under observation of Dr. Bailey, Marco recovers quickly and was taken back home, where he receives a call from an unknown person called Keith. Keith tells him, he lives in Marco’s basement and wants Marco to take care of him for the rest of his life. This strange call turns Marco’s life upside down. Back at the school, when he was asked about his hospital days, Marco to his utter surprise discovers that he has no memory whatsoever of the hospital.

Keith, the boy from the basement keeps showing up in their house. Sometimes Marco hears him whisper threateningly. His mother believes he was imagining things. It worries her. She takes him to Dr. Bailey. Marco confides everything to the doctor. Far from solving the problem, their visit to the hospital only aggravates Marco’s anxiety. Later it appeared that Gwynnie whom Marco believed was the one who hit him with the baseball bat was not even present in the playground on that fateful day. He learns that it was Jeremy, his best friend who swung the bat.

Every time Marco dozes off to sleep, he wakes up into a different version of the story. In his sleep he dreams about the incident, about Gwynnie and Jeremy, and about Keith. His dreams are nightmares and everytime he wakes up he finds himself in another nightmare. Each time the dream only gets scarier. Soon Marco loses track of everything. He doesn’t know what is real anymore. All this time, the boy Keith who lives in Marco’s basement follows him like a shadow. In the story Marco wakes up in his bed several times as his nightmare runs in an endless loop. The plot twist in the final chapter catches you by surprise and rips the reality into shreds.

I Live in Your Basement by R. L. Stine is the 61^st book in Goosebumps series. It stands out from other Goosebumps books because of its capacity to play with your mind. The reason behind our obsessions with reality is that it is a stable and secure place where things are under control – our control. What happens when your dreams invade the reality? What happens when you realise you can’t control your reality anymore? It frightens us to even imagine such a thing. On more than one ocassion, R. L. Stine’s story I Live in Your Basement makes you shift uneasily in your chair.

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