Bumping Geese 13: Piano Lessons Can Be Murder

 Last time on bumping Geese...

"Well you know what I wish?  

I wish I had a better Goosebumps to read.

And somewhere, a monkey's paw curled its finger..."

I'm going to be honest, I really wanted to have some kind of pay-off to that setup, some kind of monkey's paw answer to my wish. But I don't. Did it come true? Yeah. But it was bound to happen eventually. There's a lot of books to go...

There is an unfathomable amount of books to go...

You have no idea how many books there are to go...

My God, there are so many Goosebumps books...

But is the sheer number of Goosebumps books I have to read the wish's down side? Nah. I already knew I'd be doing this until I or R.L Stine die. Sooo... Yeah... Kind of a failed joke.

Which, when talking about Goosebumps, is entirely appropriate!

The next book.
Presented without segue.

Goosebumps 13: 'Piano Lessons Can Be Murder' is a return to creative creepy shit for this series.

This book follow Jerry Hawkins who moves into a new house and discovers a piano left in the attic. But that night, he is awoken by the sound of sad piano music. Jerry investigates and follows the sound to the attic, right to the old piano, but when he reaches the attic, there's nobody in sight. It would seem the piano was playing itself.

Jerry's parents take his fascination with the self-playing piano as a sign that he would like to learn to play piano and Jerry is like "sure, why not." And in typical Goosebumps parents fashion, when Jerry mentions his concerns that this piano plays itself in the middle of the night, they ignore his concerns and rationalise his experiences as some kind of anxiety to do with moving house.

Jerry's parents hire Dr Shreek to be his piano teacher, and he's a friendly but odd sort of chap who is just a little too obsessed with the quality of Jerry's hands. But he's a decent teacher and Jerry enjoys learning piano, even if he wishes he could learn more interesting music and skip boring stuff like learning scales. Eventually, Dr Shreek invites Jerry to come practise at his private music school at the edge of town, rather than having lessons in his home. Jerry's parents are very proud and Jerry is like "sure, why not."

Meanwhile, weird stuff is still afoot. Jerry mentions to his neighbour and new friend Kim that he is being taught by Dr Shreek and Kim immediately runs away from Jerry and the conversation. Later he coaxes out of her the reason: stories that Dr Shreek's school is home to monsters, and that children who enter are never seen again. Spooky stuff, but not enough to scare Jerry. He has been to the school by now and knows the "monsters" are just the large automatic cleaning machines the school's janitor, Mr Toggle, has built. And Jerry has been to the school and obviously hasn't disappeared, so that can't be true.

Although there was that one time he was in Mr Toggle's workshop and walked by a large metal cabinet and heard somebody inside cry out for help. But Mr Toggle says it's just malfunctioning machinery and Jerry is like "Sure, why not."

After all, he has much bigger concerns. Like the piano in his home which keeps playing itself every night. And the discovery that the piano isn't playing itself but is actually being played by a ghost. And the ghost is angry and doesn't want anybody to go near the piano, and every time Jerry tries to play it, the ghost sabotages his performance. Jerry tries to tell his parents but they don't believe him, and he tries to tell Kim, and she thinks he's lying. After all, ghosts don't exist. Not like the monsters in Dr Shreek's school. Which are real. Monsters are real. But I guess ghosts don't count as monsters. Because they're not real.

Kim's world view is inconsistent and she needs to sort her shit out.

Anyway, after one-too-many run ins with the angry ghost at the piano - who, in one encounter, is revealed to have no hands - Jerry decides to quit playing piano and his parents tell him that's fine, but they've paid for one more lesson at the school and he needs to tell Dr Shreek, so he should go to one more lesson and Jerry is like "sure, why not." So he does. And after the lesson he tells Dr Shreek he's quitting, but Dr Shreek won't have it. He explains he needs Jerry's hands, so Jerry cannot leave. They get into a scuffle and a chase, and Jerry runs into an auditorium full of pianos, all being played by floating hands. Jerry calls for help and Mr Toggle arrives to aid him. Mr Toggle turns off Dr Shreek and explains that Shreek is also a machine of his creating. So, it happens, are the hands. You see, Mr Toggle, for all his genius, cannot make good hands to play piano, so he takes them from children and then turns them into automatic piano playing hands.

But he could make Dr Shreek's and the other instructor robots' hands and presumably they play the piano at least a bit as part of their lessons with the children before Mr Toggle does his kidnapping and murdering. But sure. Why not.

Anyway. Mr Toggle still plans to take Jerry's hands, but before he can, the piano ghost appears and summons all the ghosts of the handless children Mr Toggle has murdered and they attack him. The ghost tell Jerry to leave and never return and Jerry is like "sure, why not" and legs it. Never to return.

His parents sell the piano. Jerry gets a new hobby. Life returns to normal. And the twist is the most unique of twists in Goosebumps for some time. The twist is...

There is no twist.

And that's fine. This one doesn't need a twist. It's good enough as it is.

I like this book. It isn't great, but it has a lot going for it. In particular, it has ghosts. I always like ghost stories. It also has some creepy shit R.L Stine has made up and those are always the best kinds of Goosebumps books. When a Goosebumps twist, or a whole book, is built around a well trodden trope or idea, R.L Stine rarely brings something new to the table. And that's understandable. His target audience probably hasn't read 'The Monkey's Paw' or 'Third From The Sun' or seen their adaptations, so why bother spicing them up? Big snobby literary nerds like me aren't who these books are for. But since I am reading them and since I am a big snobby literary nerd and since I do recognise these ideas, they read as a little lazy.

But when R.L Stine does put in the effort, or when the horror is very much his own creation, not only are they often fresh and unique ideas for horror, they're effective. They're exciting. They're scary. And Mr Toggle, with all his horrific tinkering and child-murdering, is unsettling. It's R.L Stine doing what he does best. That's not to say this is 'Stay Out of The Basement' quality, just that it's a decent entry in the series and I appreciated return to form after how dull the last book was.

I also appreciate that this book gives me a handy example of good foreshadowing and bad foreshadowing.

Allow me to do my own return to form and discuss something I used to talk a lot about on this blog: what makes for good writing. And I'll do that by presenting a couple of passages from 'Piano Lessons Can Be Murder'.

"'Okay, Jer,' he said, patting my shoulder. 'Remember - in a few weeks, you'll know I'm right. In a few weeks, this ghost business will all seem silly to you.' Boy, was he wrong!

This shit. This shit is lazy.

Foreshadowing is, partly, the art of enticing your audience to keep paying attention with hints of excitement to come. One way of doing that is to just tell the audience what is coming. When a story starts in medias res, then tells the previous events in flashback, that's this kind of foreshadowing. A recent example of this is the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

And it can work. It's not an innately bad way of enticing the audience to keep watching or reading, but R.L Stine frequently does it in possibly the worst way. He will have a character suggest things are going to happen, or not happen. Usually it is somebody saying everything will be fine. Then the narrator will say "But it actually wasn't going to be fine!"

And the problem is that this doesn't actually foreshadow anything. It foreshadows a negative. He tells the audience "actually, what we just said will happen, is not going to happen!"

Okay. But that means the possibility of what will happen is literally everything else. There's nothing to be excited about here. And I can just assume things wont be fine because the book has more than one page left after this point. If everything was going to be fine, the story would be over.

On the other hand, good foreshadowing is a little more specific. It poses interesting questions to the audience and promises to fulfil them (pro tip: asking your audience a question and promising an answer is literally all good story telling). R.L Stine can do good foreshadowing. I know he can. He does it in this book.

"Her mouth dropped open in horror as she sated at me. 'You're doing what?' she cried. 

'Taking piano lessons with Dr Shreek,' I repeated.

'Oh!' She uttered a soft cry, spun around, and began running toward her front door.

'Hey, Kim!' I called after her. 'Kim -- what's wrong?'

But she disappeared out the door."

This passage hints at some terror in the future. Just the mention of Dr Shreek's lessons is enough to frighten Kim and make her run away. Presumably she knows something we and Jerry do not. What does she know? Why is it frightening? Will we find out? What will happen at the piano lessons?

This is a different kind of foreshadowing. It doesn't tell you what will happen exactly, just hints at what is to come, and it gives you a reason to care. And the possibilities are not infinite (or infinite minus 1), the possibilities are constrained by the foreshadowing. What will happen is frightening, what will happen involves Dr Shreek. Kim might tell us what she knows. And since we also know Jerry is going to take those lessons with Dr Shreek, we know he is in some kind of peril. That is something that will definitely happen, but there is a frightening shadow hanging over the specifics, a shadow we have been promised will be lifted.

R.L Stine isn't a bad writer. Like I said last time, he's inconsistent, but he was working to an incredibly demanding schedule, and so I'm not surprised he doesn't give every book his all. Buuuuut I find it hard to overlook the sort of laziness in his foreshadowing when I know he can do better. When he does better in the same book. Even young readers deserve better than that.

Still, it's a fine book. And I always enjoy a ghost story.

You know what else I enjoy?

Werewolves. And speaking of werewolves...

See you next time.*

*This was foreshadowing. The next book is about werewolves.