Ghosts of Fear Street #15: Fright Christmas

Kenny is pretty much a little douche bag. Not only is he the resident bully, he's also super mean to his little sister. While shopping with her at the mall, he tells her that he can't take her to Santa's Village because Santa took off for the day. They run into one of his classmates named Timmy, and Kenny picks on him and calls him Tiny because he's so small. Timmy then reveals that Santa is still there, and Kristi begs him to take her.

While she's talking with Santa and their mom is watching, Kenny sneaks up behind him and rips off his beard, which makes all the kids cry. Santa is actually Joe, a janitor at his school, and comments that Kenny will always be bad. After his mom starts yelling at him, he runs away and winds up in some dark room. He gets trapped in there for a few hours until someone lets him out. That someone is Joe who makes a cryptic comment about him being naughty all year. Kenny snaps about him being tired of the Santa routine and tugging on his beard to learn it's now real.

Turns out that Joe is actually Santa and warns Kenny that three ghosts will visit him that night. He runs away, finds a comfy looking bed, and ends up falling asleep. When he wakes up, he finds a biker with blue skin waiting on a motorcycle for him. The biker takes him to see last Christmas, which was when he humiliated Timmy. The kid was so small that he had to stand on a stool to make a presentation in front of the school. Kenny stole the stool and led a chant calling him Tiny Timmy.

The biker drops him off, and a robot comes after him as the next ghost. It takes him to his house on Christmas morning, where he hears his parents and sister crying over someone missing. Though he thinks they're missing him, they actually miss their dog. Timmy brings the dog home, and they invite him to stay and eat. His mom makes a comment about how Kenny hates her cooking and how he hates everything they give him, so she gives Timmy something she bought for Kenny. He then passes out again before waking up to the last ghost.

Kenny actually wakes up to see the dummies in the store come to life and start calling him names and picking on him. He manages to get away but then passes out and comes to in the cemetery down the street from his house. He finds himself standing in front of an open grave as something grabs him and pulls him down, which is the last spirit.

The spirit disappears and leaves him in the grave. He sees kids coming towards him and begs them for help, but when they get closer, they turn into monsters. They all start attacking him, and when he fights back, everything goes crazy until he wakes up back in the store with a security guard standing over him. Kenny rushes off to buy a doll that his sister kept looking at earlier and runs home with it.

The next morning, they wake up and find the dog missing. Timmy shows up with the dog in tow, and Kenny apologizes for being so mean to him. He then asks him to come help him wrap a gift for his sister. When Timmy puts his hand down, Kenny sees it as a skeleton bone and then notices it glowing green. That makes him realize that Timmy was the third ghost and that he didn't just dream everything. Timmy just laughs it off and asks what else he would expect given that he lives on Fear Street.

*Not only does Kenny live on Fear Street, they go shopping at Dalby's, which was a nice throwback to the original Fear Street books.

*What kind of parent takes two younger kids to a shopping mall on Christmas Eve? That is apparently when they go shopping.

*I kind of blew through this one. There are only so many times that you can read another version of this story before you can't take it anymore.