So this time we have one I joked I wouldn't do. Back when I did the Halloween book special, I said the rewrite to this book was to throw it away, or something like that. But I've been thinking about it...See, Wanted The Haunted Mask is this weird 200+ page thing where you have stories that are connected by the protagonists of each being friends. There's a prologue with a new mask backstory that gets super gorey, Part 1 is just the original Haunted Mask story but way less interesting, Part 2 has 2 is a bit more interesting but gets repetitive and hits a brick wall with the forced way the first story connects to it. You can look at the wiki summary if you want all the details. It's a mess and I didn't want to try to rewrite it.
But again I like a good challenge. Honestly the concept of two seemingly only vaguely related stories coming together is an interesting one but it just gets wasted here. So the challenge is to make it so these stories connect more naturally, as well as giving an arc for Lu-Ann and possibly even Devin. I've been thinking about and I think I have something. It's more of a rough draft but it's arguably no more-so than the actual book. Okay, that's mean lol. Anyway, let's see what we have to work with here.
The prologue mostly stays the same. The new backstory is alright, with this nice mask maker William and his evil brother Randolph, who created the Unloved (called the Unwanted) here. However, we need to tweak things a bit due to the other changes we're making. The book shows they have a bad history but we aren't told what really went down or anything like that, so we're filling that in. William is a gifted mask maker who makes lovely creation and it's been like since he was a kid. His family is one of mask makers, the shop William owns in the "present" has been passed down, this part was mentioned in the actual book. William was the easy favorite as a result, as Randolph didn't display the same talent. Sort of, he could make masks but he was better at ugly ones, which they hated, thinking masks should only be pretty. William wasn't mean to him or anything but he ended buying into his own hype and didn't try too hard to reach out. When he later did a little bit, Randolph was far gone into being bitter and wouldn't take any of it.
Eventually they drifted apart. Fast forward to adulthood as Randolph visits William's shop with some new ugly masks he has created. He goes on about how people assume he's bad because he masks scary masks so now he's decided to give into it. He learned some dark magic or something that he made the masks evil as well as ugly, and wants to use them to get revenge on the world for rejecting him. He's already set up his own mask shop and has given away a few of them to some unlucky people. He slaps the Haunted Mask onto William and runs off, and it ends the way it does in the book, with that amazing bit of gore.
In the present, Lu-Ann and Devin are usually good friends but have recently broken that off. The exact reason doesn't matter, just that they're lately been fighting for petty reasons and aren't getting along as well. So it's a bitter leave when Devin has to go off for Halloween week. Lu-Ann has problems of her own to deal with, like how she's rather selfish. Maybe not all around horrible but she tends to do things that benefit just herself, and isn't one to do selfless acts for others that often. This could part of why Devin's mad, he got sick of it. Either way, like Haunted Mask 2 and Headless Halloween, it'll be hard to not make her too annoying but hopefully it can be pulled off.
The book had this girl Polly who's Halloween party she was invited to and she dislikes her for dumb reasons. Here it'll be more clearly out of jealously because Polly is more well liked, we're already making her more jerk-ish, may as well run with it. Polly invites her to the party and Polly wants really scare Polly there and goes digging through the masks they have and while they are good, she doesn't want just good. She wants perfectly scary. She digs further into her attic and discovers the "Unwanted" masks, including our bad boi the haunted mask. It's perfect so she uses it and you know the drill. However, we're adding another wrinkle. William died in the mask so thus his spirit is tied to it. When she puts it on, the spirit of William is with her as well. She assumes he's evil and doesn't let him get a word in as she goes on to try to get the mask off. So she's dealing with this ghost as well as the usual evils of the mask. In the book, she tried to do good deeds upon finding out an act of kindness can undo it, only for the mask to force her to back peddle and do bad things to the people she tries to help.
We'll keep that, here it'll land better with the over point we're getting to. Part 1 will end as it does, with Lu-Ann running into the night as her luck gets worse. This leads us to Part 2, which was much trickier to get down. I know where my end point generally was, I just needed to fill up the Devin stuff. Here's what I have. The book had him meeting this kid Haywood who lived around the farm and there was this housekeeper type lady Mrs. Barnes who turned out to be the evil villain and Haywood is her son. It's whatever, we need something more strongly tied to the rest of it. We'll replace Mrs. Barnes with an old man named Mr. Hearst, first name Randy. He's a nice guy acts a bit shifty at times, making Devin suspicious.
We'll keep Haywood. Devin tells him about his fight with Lu-Ann and Haywood thinks he should get back at her somehow. Devin thinks this may not be needed, but he's certainly too angry to wanna talk things out with her so over time he starts to agree. At the same time, his little sisters are a bit on the annoying side and Haywood convinces him to try to get back at them. Devin enjoys this at first but Haywood's suggestions for pranks get more cruel, and he starts wanting to get back at people for increasingly petty reasons. At the same time, vaguely supernatural stuff starts going on, you can fill in the blanks but basically it seems to be ghosts possibly doing ghosty things. Devin heard rumors about this place being haunted and he starts to buy it overtime.
Anyway, Haywood has out for Mr. Hearst, claiming he's really a mean man putting on an act, and he wants to get back at him. The way he comes up is especially cruel and again you can fill in the blanks. This is where Devin starts to really think Haywood is bad news but Haywood won't have it, he's gonna force Devin to do it on Halloween night. They get together at Mr. Heart's house to do the deed but then as they approach him, Haywood reveals his true plan, as he pulls out...a mask.
Big twist, Mr. Hearst is actually an aging Randolph, as Haywood goes into his spiel. (For this we'll have to deage William and Randolph in the prologue, in the book William is 70 there so yeah, gotta make sense for Randolph to be alive so this works better if he isn't a ghost). The people who got his masks ended up dying, some in the same way as William, some through being so distracted by evil they got killed some other way. Haywood is the ghost one of those people. Devin asks how this is the case when Haywood has no mask on, to which he says "Who says I don't?" and reveal his current face is itself a mask, having taken it from poor kid at some point. Randolph reveals that while he was doing a bad, he didn't intend to kill anyone and was horrified upon seeing the results of his actions. Thus, he went into hiding out here and tried to start a new life as nice Mr. Hearst.
But Haywood ending up over here put a damper on that, as well as other ghosts. Turns out those possible ghosts are real, and are other victims of his that have been haunting him, making it so he has no real peace. Has haywood been here for a while or not, is there something preventing Randolph from leaving? Uh...when Scholastic pays me, I'll tell you.
Randolph tells them he's changed and has seen that stewing in anger over his situation just brought nothing but trouble, and Haywood is having none of this. He's way too far in his revenge scheme to forgive Randy. Haywood's got one of Randy's masks and plans to put it on him to doom him like was done to him. Before he can do so, Lu-Ann shows up! She's doing evil monster and Devin is horrified. Lu-Ann is trying to fight it though, even as the mask tries to get her to attack Devin. But then Haywood reveals he has two masks and will use one of Devin, Mr. Hearst could get lonely after all. Lu-Ann sees Devin is in danger and jumps out to save him.
Suddenly, this is what makes the mask come on. See, the reason her attempts weren't working before is because she was doing these things just to help herself, she didn't care about helping these people but this action did out of genuinely wanting to save Devin, making it a true act of kindness. This is fine and good but Haywood is only dazed as he gets up to try to the mask on Randolph. With the mask off, William's ghost rises up and struggles Haywood, and eventually him into a grave, which defeats him. I wanted to possibly have the struggle make them both vanish like what happens in Ghost Camp but I need William around to talk things out with Randolph.
Randolph says he knows nothing can make up for his actions, and he'd be okay if William can't forgive him. William thinks about and realizes maybe they should put their past grudges to rest. They hug it out and William ascends to the afterlife. As for the other ghosts, maybe they go away upon seeing this idk. Either way, Lu-Ann realizes being selfish is bad and both her and Devin realize that getting caught up in petty fights is dumb, so they kiss and make up. Not literally.
They talk a bit with Randolph, who can at least rest easy now. Those masks Haywood had are still there though and he tells the kids to take them far away. The next morning, Lu-Ann's busy trying to explain everything to people, and at some point Polly shows up, actually happy because the party was far more lively with everything going on. She wants that cool scary mask for herself and sure enough, Lu-Ann forgot to take care of it and it happens to be right in the room. She protests but too late, Polly puts it on. Whoops, the end.
A forced twist but if this needs it, I put one there. So yeah, this is very much a rough draft but I think I'm on to somewhere here. Lu-Ann has a real arc so the meaning that comes with the mask is still here, and now the Devin stuff actually connects to that larger store in a more interesting way. I even crafted this nice story of two brothers putting an old grudge away. Again, it's a rough but a good starting point to hammer out something strong here. Really, just having Randolph being a major part in Devin's story would be enough to connect these, maybe Lu-Ann coming in wouldn't be quite as forced. And William isn't screwed over!
Seriously, the book shows he's sympathetic but when his ghost appears, he is assumed evil and in the end Polly makes him into an attraction at the end. Geez. So there ya go, not perfect but the potential shows more here. While the book was messy, I feel something can made of it and hopefully I did that.
I'm not sure what's next, I only have so many ideas, especially with Poparena closing in on the end. I don't have many other OG 62 ideas so there's that too. Most of these from now on may be in my upcoming Series 2000 reviews, I'm saving certain rewrites for certain reviews. We'll see though. Either way, Happy Halloween and see ya whenever next time is.