Scritch Scratch (Lindsay Currie)

Scritch Scratch
Lindsay Currie
Sourcebooks
Fiction, MG Chiller/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Seventh-grader Claire's life has been a nightmare ever since her father's book, about the ghosts of Chicago, became a big hit. Now he runs bus tours of "haunted" sights around the Windy City, while Claire gets teased about her dad's obsession all day at school. She's a girl of science, not of spooks (even if she does still have to count out loud to get through the dark and scary alley behind her home). It might not be quite so bad if she had a shoulder to cry on, but her older brother Sam can be a jerk sometimes, and her best friend Casley seems to have outgrown her, spending most of her time with the new girl Emily talking about fashion and make-up and other stuff Claire just can't make herself be interested in. The night Dad's assistant calls out sick, forcing Claire to fill in on the night's ghost tour, is an embarrassment to end all embarrassments... until she sees the little boy, all alone, at the back of the empty tour bus.
A little boy nobody else sees.
Soon after, strange things start happening around Claire. Something's scratching behind the walls and rattling the bedroom doorknobs. Cold water soaks her dresser drawers. Windstorms strike out of nowhere... indoors. Even a scientist like Claire can't ignore this kind of evidence, for all that she's always believed ghosts are impossible. The little boy is a real spirit, and Claire is being haunted. But why has he latched onto her, of all people? Who was he? And how is she supposed to figure out what he wants before he destroys her home, and her mind?

REVIEW: With a chill-inducing title, Scritch Scratch is a decent little chiller of a story, with some rather spooky moments that evoke childhood fears of death and darkness and things that go bump (or scritch-scratch) in the night.
Claire is a bright young girl, but still hobbled by fears... as is everyone in the story, to some degree or another. One major thread in the story is fear: how one doesn't always outgrow fear, whether or not it's objectively rational, but one can choose how one reacts to it and copes with it. Her embrace of science is part of how she tries to overcome her fears, but she still has to count out loud to face scary things... and even that doesn't help much when it's not just an overactive imagination haunting her (no spoiler for saying that the ghost is quite, quite real). She tries to face everything alone, too, convinced that turning to others will only make things worse or open her up to ridicule or disbelief (or, in her father's case, risk him latching eagerly onto a haunting in his own house to boost his ghost tours, regardless of how terrified she is of the vengeful little boy in white), but eventually has to call in help. In doing so, she learns that everyone has their own fears to face (if not necessarily their own personal turn-of-the-century spirits stalking them), and reaching out to others can actually make things a little better. Along the way, Claire and her friends delve into the history of Chicago and the many bones buried beneath its streets, quite literally in some instances.
It lost a half-star in the ratings because of some internal logic inconsistencies with the haunting (which I can't get into without spoilers), and something about the later parts felt like it was pulling its punches after the truly scary bits that came before, as if it didn't trust the reader to handle the climax without excessive hand-holding. I also had the odd feeling it wanted to set up a series (or at least a sequel), but shied away at the last minute. These late wobbles aside, though, I found it a fairly spooky tale.

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