How About That Thing?

Goosebumps was a popular series of children’s horror novellas from back when I was in elementary school. R.L. Stine was pretty much viewed as Stephen King for kids, both in the sense he was the lord of his genre and demographic, and also because the dude was a human printing press. Seriously, I don’t know the release schedule of each individual novella, but it seemed like he was putting a new one out every other week at one point.

Looking back, the novellas are… Fine, I guess. They don’t really have the edge they used to have, and I don’t know how much of that is me being a grown-up who cut his teeth on slasher movies, and how much of that is the fact kids entertainment gets away with a lot more than they ever could when I was a kid.

But even when I was the appropriate age, and fit in the proper demographic, I’m amazed I was even remotely interested in this series. I still look back on the very first Goosebumps book I ever read, and wonder out loud how I ever became a fan of this franchise.

That first book, by the way, was none other than this.

I’m not sure if everybody else started with this book, but with a title like Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, the possibilities were endless! Eight-year-old me was genuinely interested in finding out.

The premise is simple. A kid and his parents move to a new town, and discover a piano that the previous occupant left behind. The parents get it in their head to make the kid take piano lessons, and hire a man with the super not suspicious name of Dr. Shriek to help him out.

Ah yes, Dr. Shriek. No doubt of the Topeka, Kansas Shrieks.

Seriously, a name like Dr. Shriek doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’d be teaching anybody piano. I’d say it sounds like a Batman villain, but I think there actually is a Dr. Shriek in Batman Beyond. At absolute best, Dr. Shriek sounds like he’d be teaching a kid how to do Norwegian black metal vocals.

But somehow, eight-year-old me was able to see past the name. Silly name of the instructor not withstanding, though, the first three quarters of the book is actually really good. Like, maybe retool an element or two, and it could just as easily fit in with this current generation where ouija boards and other miscellaneous ghosty ghouls that don’t actually do anything but pop up and go “BOO!”, it’d probably fit in perfectly. Hell, add in a journal the previous occupants of the house wrote that explains in graphic detail how the ghost’s insanely specific method of haunting works, and boom!

Then, we get to the last couple of chapters. It is here we find out that the spooky-ooky ghosty ghoul who’s been leaving chillingly vague messages about The Shriek Piano Academy was actually trying to warn our plucky protagonist. And it’s here we learn that Dr. Shriek… Is a robot. In fact, all the instructors in the academy are robots.

Yeah, I know. I couldn’t believe it either. I meanyeah, I understand it’s for kids, and therefore, expecting Dr. Shriek to commit outright murder and hiding the corpse inside the piano or whatever might be a bit much, but really? Robots?

Oh, but it doesn’t end there. See, Dr. Shriek actually had nothing to do with the murder. It turns out the real killer, and the only human in the entire school for that matter, was the owner of the academy. And his reason for killing all of his students? Well, it turns out he has a creepy obsession with hands. Seriously, This dude has a thing for children’ hands that really puts those guys who maintain WikiFeet into perspective. I mean yeah, it’s kind of embarrassing that a site like that exists, but at least they aren’t cutting people’s feet off. Unlike this lunatic and his hand fetish.

So yeah, the head of The Shriek Piano Academy uses a school full of robots to find students with the perfect hands so he can chop them off. And why? So he can roboticize them somehow, and… Make them play piano.

Once again, I get that it’s a kids book. I understand the idea of the guy cutting off children’s hands to use them as jackoff aids or morbid trophies or whatever is a bit much for a kid’s book, but really? Dude is a robotic genius, creating fully functional robots that can pass as humans in the early 1990s, and he uses this tech to obtain child hands that he can make into robotic hands, all so they can play the piano for him? How the hell did I ever become a fan of this series!?

Either way, the ghost shows up, the kid gets away, the head of The Shriek Piano Academy gets his come-uppins somehow, and in defiance of logic, I find myself looking at other Goosebumps books. And I guess it’s a good thing I did, because I’d find others that were way better. However, that ending was such a let down, even back then, that I’m amazed I ever kept up with this series.

When Goosebumps became a TV show, the overall plot of the novella was pretty much beat-for-beat. The only difference was that the ghost my imagination conjured up while I was reading the book played Bock (I can never remember the name of the specific song though), and the ghost in the show played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I suppose either one, in the right moment, would be creepy as hell, but upon retrospect, I give the show props. If for no other reason, than because Moonlight Sonata was one of my favorite piano songs. I never did learn how to play the whole thing, but when I was able to master the part everybody knows, I felt like a fucking god among mortals. Then I got knocked down a peg when the music teacher insisted that I’d get detention if I played anything but that stupid Boogy-Woogy Phantom shit she was trying to teach the rest of the class.

It may not be the best Goosebumps book ever, but it was definitely the launching point into my rocky relationship with the franchise as a whole. I might cover other Goosebumps books in the future if there’s enough interest, though it’ll be sticking to books I’ve actually read. Let me know in the comments.