“I saw this woman. Late at night. She plays the same sad melody over and over…”
Jerome “Jerry” Hawkins is a practical jokester. He recently moved into a creaky old house in the town of New Goshen with his family (and his “vicious” cat “Bonkers”). He has left behind his boisterous friend Sean (who freuently burps) in the town of Cedarville. While moving in, Jerry wanders into the attic where he finds a large shiny black piano. Whose piano is this? And why did they leave it behind? Later that night, Jerry hears someone playing a song on the piano: a sad, somber, almost mournful, melody. Is the piano in the attic actually a player piano? Or is Jerry simply hearing the wind whistling through the trees? Jerry cannot sleep. The mood gets incredibly eerie as Jerry tip-toes quietly through the house at night, careful not to step on creaky boards, but before he can spot the pianist, his parents are awoken and they assume this is all because he is showing an interest in music so they decide to enroll him in piano lessons.
The piano is moved downstairs from the attic, and Jerry is quickly ushered into lesson from “The Shreek School” under tutelage of Dr. Shreek, a large man with ruddy cheeks and a mustache (who looks like Santa Claus). However, Dr. Shreek is an oddball who repeatedly compliments Jerry’s “excellent” hands, forcing Jerry to play faster and faster. While Jerry’s initial lessons are held at his house, he is eventually invited out to the school itself, located at the edge of the woods on the other side of town in an unmarked building with thick ivy running up the walls and barred windows. It is a spooky old place where it’s easy to get lost inside. Here, he meets a strange old janitor named Mr. Toggle, a tall wiry man with black hair and a beard whom Dr. Shreek calls a “mechanical genius.” Mr. Toggle is in possession of some floor sweeper machines that Jerry initially mistakes for monsters. Also, Jerry thinks he hears a child crying out for help, but Mr. Toggle just brushes it off. Meanwhile, outside piano lessons Jerry befriends a girl named Kim Li Chin who late tells him there are suspicious rumors about The Shreek School, where many local kids received musical lessons, but none of them were seen again.
At night, Jerry continues to hear the melancholic piano music at his house, and one night he finally steps out to find a cloudy-gray ghost sitting at the bench, her head bowed, eyes closed, and her lips forming a sad smile. This is some shiveringly scary stuff. When the ghost looks up, she notices Jerry and whispers, “this is my house…” As she speaks, she crumples into a skeleton. Her ghostly skin melts off, revealing bulging gray eyes, and raspy voice shrieking, “Stay away from my piano!… I’m warning you – STAY AWAY!”
Naturally, Jerry’s parents hear none of this and they don’t believe his night terrors about seeing ghosts. But they send Jerry to a psychiatrist (Dr. Frye) anyway, fearing he is stressed about the recent move. However, jerry continues to be haunted by the girl at the piano, including in one particularly terrifying night-time visit in which Jerry finds her playing alone at the piano, with her long hair covering her sullen face, until she suddenly whispers: “the stories are true” and reveals her hideous stumps for arms as Jerry starts screaming.
Later, Jerry heads back to The Shreek School for one final piano lesson before he plans to quit, but now Dr. Shreek will not allow Jerry to leave, grabbing his hands and attempting to keep him. Jerry breaks free and runs through the building until he accidentally stumbles upon the school’s large recital hall. Here, in a horrifying scene, Jerry is shocked to find dozens of severed hands playing pianos by themselves while rows of instructors stand nearby, bobbing their heads in tune. Jerry continues to run from Dr. Shreek until Mr. Toggle suddenly arrives and rescues Jerry by switching off a control panel, shutting down Dr. Shreek’s power –as it turns out, Dr. Shreek is actually a robot! Mr. Toggle reveals he has been building all these robots because they music so beautifully but they require human hands because “human hands are too hard to build.”
Like Dr. Shreek, Mr. Toggle refuses to let Jerry leave, insisting on keeping his hands. But suddenly, Jerry is saved by the ghost who has been haunting the piano at his house. She rouses all the ghosts of the missing children who reclaim their severed hands and grab Mr. Toggle, leading him out into the woods behind the school where he will never be seen again. She briefly explains that she was only trying to scare Jerry away from The Shreek School. When she disappears, Jerry is left in ghostly silence, alone in the school “The piano music had ended… forever” (123). There is a coda in which things finally return to normal for Jerry, but people never stop complimenting him on his hands.
Piano Lessons Can Be Murder is a surprisingly spine-tingling ghost story. I distinctly remember reading this one as a child and it terrified me then –the scenes of the gray ghost playing the piano alone at night, her hair hanging down to cover her face, her melting skin, bulging eyes, showing her stubs for arms, the warm piano bench after she disappears. This is truly the stuff of nightmares. But I would have liked to know a more about Mr. Toggle: Who is he? Where did he come from? Why is he so obsessed with creating beautiful music? Wouldn’t the local police be alerted to a mysterious unmarked school where dozens of children have disappeared? And why did the piano-playing ghost wait this long to confront Mr. Toggle? Wouldn’t she have wanted to confront him sooner along with her fellow ghosts? Regardless of these quibbles, Piano Lessons Can Be Murder is a scary ghost story that holds up really well today. Mr. Toggle is a fearsome villain who meets an uncharacteristically grisly end for a Goosebumps book. This strikes me as an under-appreciated book in the series (complete with a corny “Dad-Joke” title, a silly nod to the classic film Casablanca on the cover, and even Tim Jacobus’s artwork which serves as a friendly little spoiler for those who are paying attention!)
Stine, R.L. Piano Lessons Can Be Murder. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1993.