Slappy's Nightmare

Slappy's Nightmare is the twenty-third book in the Goosebumps Series 2000  book series and the fifth book in the Living Dummy saga. It was published in 1999.

The cover artwork features Slappy lying in bed and screaming, his eyes bloodshot as he's pulling the covers closer in fear.

Plot
Jimmy O'James and Slappy perform their ventriloquist act in front of a crowd of children. And much like their other acts, Slappy hurls insults and threats at Jimmy as well as to the children in the audience. After calling up one of the children in the audience, Slappy bites the boy in the ear. As the kid and the audience panic, Slappy keeps his jaw clenched on the ear for a short while. Jimmy takes Slappy offstage as the dummy sings a screeching whistle.

Backstage, Jimmy hurls Slappy around the dressing room, telling the dummy that his days of working with him are over. As Slappy laughs off Jimmy's threat, Jimmy tells Slappy that he managed to get a hold of a new dummy for his act. Jimmy shows Slappy the wooden box containing his new dummy. Jimmy opens the box to reveal an identical dummy to Slappy by the name of Wally. Jimmy tells Slappy that Wally was also created by the evil toy maker that created Slappy. Jimmy also learned a spell that can wake Wally, while putting Slappy in a permanent sleep. Slappy, not wanting to be put back to sleep, attacks Jimmy. The two fight each other until a pair of girls named Georgia and Stella Boonshoft suddenly appear. Georgia tells Jimmy that she admires his ventriloquism, while Stella mocks Georgia, making rude comments about her weight.

Jimmy manages to shoo the two girls away, then he begins to read the spell. But before he can finish, Slappy begs him to stop. Jimmy gives Slappy one last chance. If he can do three good deeds within one week, he'll let him live. He warns Slappy that he'll be watching Slappy before giving him as a gift to Georgia, much to the chagrin of Stella. After taking Slappy home and playing with him, Georgia's mother gets angry at her over the state of her room. Slappy decides his first good deed should be to clean Georgia's room and does so as she sleeps. However, the next morning, he sees that the room is messy once again. Slappy begins to suspect that Stella is the one behind the sabotage. He warns her about the messy room, but silences himself when Mrs. Boonshoft shows up.

The next morning Mrs. Boonshoft tells Georgia to take Slappy over to visit Maggie Kramer, a young girl confined to a wheelchair after breaking her hip. Georgia's jokes seem to go over well, but when she sets Slappy down to get the phone, suddenly Maggie's wheelchair begins to roll down the hill, through traffic, almost hitting traffic until it crashes into a curb, sending Maggie flying. Maggie gets a broken arm in the process. Slappy now is certain that Stella is the one trying to sabotage all of his attempts at good deeds. So, he attempts to get rid of her once and for all.

That night, after taking a bad fall from atop Georgia's bookshelf, he sneaks into Stella's room, only for Stella to chop him up with an axe. Slappy wakes up, as that was just a dream, and resumes entering Stella's room. However, he ends up hit with a baseball bat wielded by Stella. As the family argue over this, Slappy decides to no longer attempt to kill anyone and resume his good deeds.

The next night, Georgia takes Slappy across the street as she babysits a two-year-old boy named Robby. However, the boy is frightened by Slappy and is put to bed shortly after. Later that night, Slappy overhears Robby being strangled by the blanket around his neck and decides to untangle it. However, when Robby's parents get home, they panic as Robby is now tangled in the drapes, in a panic. Not only does Slappy blame Stella, but so does Georgia and Mrs. Boonshoft. Slappy decides that enough is enough and decides to kill Stella. He enters her room to smother her, but Stella manages to take a picture of him moving. However, the picture ends up blurry, and when she tries to prove to her mother and Georgia that Slappy is alive, Slappy plays dead.

Mrs. Boonshoft tells Georgia to lock Slappy in her closet, but since Georgia is taking Slappy to school with her tomorrow, she is unable. At lunchtime the next day, Georgia performs with Slappy in the cafeteria to a mostly apathetic crowd. Slappy suddenly notices what looks to be Georgia's purple hat and confronts her. However, he discovers that it's not Stella, but Wally. Wally was the one sabotaging Slappy this entire time. The two dummies begin to fight all over the cafeteria to the frightened students and faculty. Georgia, realizing Stella was telling the truth, grabs both dummies and throws them into the trash compactor, destroying Slappy and Wally.

Slappy suddenly wakes up backstage once again. He's happy to be alive, but still insults Jimmy when given the opportunity. Suddenly a crate is brought into the room containing Wally. Slappy panics, but Jimmy tells him that some nightmares do come true. Jimmy then reads the magic words.

Trivia

 * This book marks the first time a Goosebumps villain has returned as an anti-hero.
 * Also, this is the first book to feature Slappy as a main character that doesn't have "of the Living Dummy" in the title.
 * Plus, Jimmy O'James — from Bride of the Living Dummy — is the first character to to appear in more than one book with Slappy.
 * One of Wally's victims, Maggie Kramer, shares a surname with the protagonist of Night of the Living Dummy II, Amy Kramer.
 * Currently, this remains the only book about Slappy from the 1990s to not be given a Classic Goosebumps reprint.

References in other Goosebumps media

 * In Goosebumps: The Game, you can earn an achievement called "Slappy's Nightmare" by discovering Slappy's big secret.