PIANO LESSONS CAN BE MURDER
RELEASE MONTH: November, 1993
FRONT TAGLINE: Play it again, hands!
COVER STORY
This is a pretty weak cover to be honest. Not that it doesn't have the creepiness of the disembodied hands, but other than that, there isn't much to be scared of. The lack of any background makes things dull and the warped shape of the piano doesn't help. It still looks fine, but ultimately has the stink of a rush job. I can kind of see why people overlook it.PRACTICE TILL YOU DROP... DEAD.
When Jerry finds a dusty old piano in the attic of his new house, his parents offer to pay for lessons. At first, taking piano seems like a cool idea.
But there's something creepy about Jerry's piano teacher, Dr. Shreek. Something really creepy. Something Jerry can't quite put his finger on.
Then Jerry hears the stories. Terrifying stories. About the students at Dr. Shreek's music school. Students that went in for a lesson... and never came out.
STORY
Jerry Hawkins and his parents have moved into their new home. Jerry is also our first of what I feel Stine overuses: The Joker Kid. The kid who really likes to play pranks on others, in this case his parents by joking that there are mice in the house. After talking about how much he really hates their cat Bonkers, he heads up to the attic with his dad and the pair notice something. A piano left up there. Jerry is impressed something as valuable as a piano was just left up there, but considering it's a piano in an attic, I can see how nobody would want to go through the hell of bringing it down. That night, Jerry begins to hear what sounds like the piano playing, but when he goes up to check, there's nothing but a warm piano bench. This does at least spark one thing in Jerry, an interest in learning how to play. Reader beware, you're in for an education.
The piano gets moved down to the family room with Bonkers the cat almost being killed, which annoys Jerry, he really wants that cat dead. Maybe Jerry was a mouse in another life. They find an ad for Shreek's Piano School, and hire it's head teacher, Dr. Shreek to be Jerry's piano teacher. Shreek's nice in a Santa Claus-ish sort of way, but Jerry also gets weird vibes from him as well, but he can't put his finger on it just yet. That night, Jerry once again hears piano music, but when he goes to check, he gets attacked by Bonkers. Mrs. Hawkins tries to get an answer, but when Jerry says he heard music, she doesn't believe him because... well, normally it's Goosebumps parents, but the book has established that Jerry's a prankster, so yeah, the latter reason.
Jerry meets one of his neighbors, a girl named Kim Li Chin, which I believe is our first POC character in Goosebumps. They get along fine, but when Jerry mentions he's learning piano at Shreek's, Kim runs off in a panic. Jerry has one of the better Goosebumps nightmares where Dr. Shreek is tutoring him when suddenly Shreek tells him to play faster and faster. Jerry's unable to stop and plays faster and faster as his fingers are in agony. He wakes up and once again hears the piano music. But this time he sees the form of a young woman playing the piano. The woman looks at him and her face then melts off. She screams at Jerry to not touch her piano. Jerry panics, tries to get his parents to believe him, lather, rinse, repeat. Only this time, Jerry's parents actually send him to a psychiatrist. Reader beware, you're in for kind of a bad representation of mental health.
After a few days of Shreek tutoring from the Hawkins home, Jerry now goes to the Shreek school. It seems weird, the school rooms seem to have music playing and the silhouettes of teachers by the doors, but no kids in the hallways. Then suddenly Jerry gets attacked by a strange robot, only for Dr. Shreek to intervene in time. He tells Jerry that it's just a floor sweeping robot created by the school's Janitor, a man named Mr. Toggle. Jerry has his piano lesson and all goes well, but Shreek seems to be more interested in Jerry's hands, mentioning that soon he'll give them to one of the teachers in the school. Jerry's confused, but brushes it off. When he heads out, Jerry is stopped by Mr. Toggle. The two hit it off well, and Toggle invites Jerry to see his inventions next time.
After another haunting with the piano, Jerry returns to Shreek's school to meet with Toggle. Toggle shows off his various inventions, ones that actually seem like they'd be helpful for disabled people to play music like an eye-controlled keyboard. Jerry begins to leave when he hears something. A faint voice coming from the cabinet, calling for help. Jerry's confused as to what that is, since it is definitely someone crying for help, but Toggle tells him that it's just some faulty equipment, nothing to get too worked up over. Jerry leaves, a bit confused, but heads to his lesson like normal. Jerry talks to Kim later and she finally tells him the stories about Shreek's school. About how people go in for lessons, but soon disappear without a trace. That night, the ghost returns at the piano and tells Jerry that the stories are true, then shows him the stumps where her hands should be.
Jerry's about had it. With the hauntings, the stories and the stuff with the cabinet, he tells his parents that he no longer wants to take piano lessons. Considering how much his parents likely paid for those piano lessons, I can see them wanting to murder Jerry. Hey, the title makes sense. But Jerry has to go and tell Shreek that he's no longer interested. He arrives at the school and meets with Dr. Shreek. Shreek doesn't take the news well and becomes fixated on Jerry's hands again, saying that he needs his hands. Jerry runs off with Shreek chasing after him. He hides in one of the classrooms and he sees that the teachers are just robots, and the pianos are being played by disembodied hands. Shreek confronts him again, but Mr. Toggle shows up and shuts him down, literally.
TWIST ENDING
Yes, Dr. Shreek is a robot, one of the many robots from the piano school. Jerry is relieved at first, believing that Toggle was here to save him. Nope, Toggle is now the one wanting Jerry's hands. Toggle invents great inventions, but the one thing he's never been able to do is create working hands, so he uses the hands of others to play music for him. And while the book doesn't out and out say it, it's clear that Toggle is hacking those hands off the bodies of his victims. Like the voice in the cabinet most likely. But before Toggle can hurt Jerry, the ghost arrives, along with the ghosts of Toggle's victims. They reclaim their hands and grab Toggle, dragging him out of the school and into the darkness of the night. A few weeks later, things are all normal now. The piano's sold off, the ghost is gone, and Jerry has now taken up an interest in baseball. Everyone keeps telling him he's got great hands.
CONCLUSION
Piano Lessons Can Be Murder is an underrated Goosebumps book. It's not hard to see why a lot of people tend to either skip this one, or just gloss over it. Treating it like one of the stranger books in the series and the one with the weird hand loving robot and the ghost. It feels unfairly glossed over as I feel it's probably one of the few Goosebumps books that feels consistently creepy. The ghost stuff gets ramped up well, from the music playing to the melting face woman to finally her straight up warning Jerry. The book does a good job connecting the ghost to the issues involving the Shreek school. The book is also paced well to which the hauntings don't feel redundant. And while the mystery is rushed, it all builds up to a strong enough conclusion. Jerry is an okay protagonist, and at least his prankster mentality is an excuse for his parents to not believe him.
And then there's Toggle and Shreek. I've stated before and I'll say it here, Goosebumps has a lot of memorable villains, but Mr. Toggle, in my opinion, is the scariest villain. Based on the implications of this character, he's a madman who lures people to the piano school, befriends them, luring them into a false sense of security, then brutally mangling them, cutting their hands off to play his piano music. And as the cabinet scene suggests, he possibly leaves the bodies to bleed to death. No clue what he does with the bodies though. Goosebumps, the series with the dummies, the magic cameras, the plant dads and the like has a book where the villain is a serial killer with Ed Gein tendencies. I've been reading a lot of Shivers and that feels a lot like an idea that M.D. Spenser would come up with.
In the end, Piano Lessons Can Be Murder is still one of my favorites. It's not perfect, and you could look at the stuff with robots and ghosts as R.L. Stine creating a "grab bag" style book, but I think it's definitely one of the more well thought out books and one that while you might not think much of initially, it's one that you might end up giving more thought to when you break the book down to its core. It's definitely worth a reread. It's a book that you should definitely get your hands on.
STORY: GGGG
SCARES: GGGG.5
TWIST: GGG
ENJOYMENT: GGGG
OVERALL: 4 Gs
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