Stay Out of the Basement (goosebumps, #2)

Stay Out of the Basement is a children's horror novel.

Eleven-year-old Casey Brewer tries to play Frisbee with his father, Dr. Brewer, a botanist, but Dr. Brewer abruptly refuses and retreats into the house. Casey's twelve-year-old sister, Margaret Brewer, feels sorry for him. Since Dr. Brewer was fired from PolyTech, a university research facility, he has spent nearly all his time working in the basement and barely speaks to his children. Margaret overheard a phone call suggesting his department head, Mr. Martinez, let him go because his experiments got out of control. Their mother, Mrs. Brewer, is visibly stressed by the changes in her husband.

When Casey and Margaret notice the basement door ajar, they sneak downstairs. Halfway down, Dr. Brewer appears at the bottom, furious. His skin looks strangely green under the fluorescent lights, and his right hand drips red blood onto his white lab coat. He screams at them to stay out and warns them never to come down again.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Brewer leaves for Tucson to care for her hospitalized sister, Aunt Eleanor, leaving the children in their father's care. Margaret's friend and neighbor, Diane Manning, dares them to explore the basement while Dr. Brewer is away. The three descend into the hot, humid space and discover a jungle of strange plants growing under bright halogen lights. The plants seem to breathe with a steady rhythm. Casey finds two glass booths connected by wires to an electrical generator. After he plays a prank pretending to be electrocuted, the plants begin to moan and sigh, and their tendrils shift as if alive. All three children flee upstairs.

Casey realizes he left his T-shirt downstairs. While Dr. Brewer is delayed outside, Casey runs back down, but a tall plant wraps its tendrils around his waist and refuses to let go. Margaret races down and pulls him free. They run to the stairs only to find Dr. Brewer at the top, glaring. He tells them he is "very disappointed" in a flat, cold tone unlike his normal personality and promises to explain his work someday. The next morning, a lock has been installed on the basement door.

Over the following days, Dr. Brewer grows even more withdrawn. He begins wearing a Dodgers baseball cap at all times and refuses to remove it. Mrs. Brewer reports by phone that Aunt Eleanor's surgery did not go well and she cannot return yet. Margaret catches her father devouring handfuls of plant food at the kitchen sink. Casey laughs it off, but Margaret insists their father is changing and voices a frightening thought: He might be turning into a plant.

One afternoon, Casey accidentally knocks Dr. Brewer's cap off with a Frisbee, revealing that his hair has fallen out and bright green leaves are sprouting from his scalp. Dr. Brewer sits the children down and explains that he is attempting to create a plant that is part animal by transferring DNA building blocks between organisms using the glass booths and an electron generator. He dismisses the leaves as a temporary side effect. Margaret remains troubled: He has not explained the plant food, the moaning plants, or why a plant grabbed Casey.

Late that night, Margaret sees her father washing his hand in the bathroom. The blood dripping from the cut is bright green. She flees to bed, realizing she is genuinely afraid of her own father. Later, she and Casey meet in the kitchen, unable to sleep, and hear mournful, human-sounding moaning from the locked basement. The next morning, Margaret discovers her father's bed is covered in moist dirt teeming with insects and earthworms.

Dr. Brewer serves the children bowls of an unidentified green substance, pounding the table when they hesitate to eat. The doorbell interrupts, and they dump the food in the trash. The visitor is Mr. Martinez, who has come unannounced to check on Dr. Brewer's progress. After both men disappear into the basement, Casey proposes they sneak back down the next chance they get.

The following day, while Dr. Brewer is away helping a neighbor, Casey picks the lock with a paper clip. The plants have grown even larger. They hear loud banging from a supply closet, and Casey finds Mr. Martinez's suit jacket and striped tie bundled up under the worktable. The discovery is troubling: If Martinez simply forgot these items, why were they hidden? When they hear footsteps on the stairs, the children escape through a small basement window. Dr. Brewer confronts them and explains that Martinez got hot, removed his jacket, and forgot it, but the children remain uneasy.

Days later, Dr. Brewer announces Mrs. Brewer is coming home and leaves for the airport. Casey remembers their kites are stored in the basement, so the children go downstairs. Behind the storage shelves, Casey discovers Mr. Martinez's trousers, shoes, and wallet. Dr. Brewer clearly lied: Martinez would not have left without these belongings. They hear renewed banging from the supply closet and resolve to open it.

Using a hammer, they pry off a board nailed over the closet door. Inside, they find grotesque plants with partial human features: green arms, yellow hands, and round tomato-like faces with open, moaning mouths. Behind these hybrids, Margaret discovers Dr. Brewer lying on the floor, bound with plant tendrils and gagged with tape. Mr. Martinez lies beside him, similarly restrained. The bound Dr. Brewer explains that the father they have been living with is a plant copy of himself, one of his experiments that went wrong, which overpowered him and locked him in the closet. It did the same to Mr. Martinez.

Casey is suspicious, but Margaret unties their father. He rushes out, grabs an axe, and advances toward the children. Before they can react, the other Dr. Brewer, wearing the Dodgers cap, comes downstairs with Mrs. Brewer, who has just arrived from the airport. Each Dr. Brewer accuses the other of being the plant copy, and Margaret and Casey cannot tell which is real.

Margaret seizes the axe and holds both men at bay. The capless Dr. Brewer softly calls her "Princess," the old nickname only her real father ever used. This gives Margaret an idea: She asks Casey for a knife and cuts the capless Dr. Brewer's arm. Red blood trickles from the wound, confirming he is human since the plant copy would bleed green. She hands her real father the axe, and he cleaves the plant copy in two, revealing a body of thick green stem oozing green liquid.

The family reunites and frees Mr. Martinez, who offers to advocate for reinstating Dr. Brewer at PolyTech. Dr. Brewer explains that while working on a super plant using electronically recombined DNA, he accidentally cut his hand, and his blood mixed with plant molecules in the machine. This created the part-human hybrids and eventually produced a nearly perfect clone that overpowered him. The leaves on his head are a side effect that will fade as his hair grows back.

Over the following days, Dr. Brewer destroys most of the plants in a bonfire. The family plans to convert the basement into a game room and goes out for ice cream. The following Sunday, Margaret stands in the backyard enjoying the peace when a small yellow flower at her feet whispers her name and begs for help, claiming to be her real father.