SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS “Halloween Eyes” (?).
This song is somewhat legendary among Rheostatics stories. I’m not really sure when they wrote it (a long time ago). I’m not even sure if there’s more to it than this verse. Every time I’ve heard it played it has lasted about a minute.
It’s a simple guitar riff with some quite ridiculous lyrics
Don’t look at me with your Halloween eyes Awhoooo
Don’t hit me with your pumpkin pies Awhoooo
Devil’s got horns, devil’s got a tail–666, gonna fuck you up
Some people say that he got scales—666, you’re a sitting duck
Awhooo Awhoo etc etc.
They play it live from time to time (as recently as 2017) and each time they play it they seem to add to the mythology
“These guys really were stoned when they wrote that.”
Is it scary? Nope. Is it safe to add to a party playlist? Nope. Is it dumb? Yup. Do they know that? Yup. Is it fun anyway? Yup. Sounds like Halloween to me.
[READ: October 20, 2018] “Gray Matter”
Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar and The Ghost Box. comes Ghost Box II.
This is once again a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening and a ribbon) which contains 11 stories for Halloween. It is lovingly described thusly:
The Ghost Box returns, like a mummy or a batman, to once again make your pupils dilate and the hair on your arms stand straight up—it’s another collection of individually bound scary stories, edited and introduced by comedian and spooky specialist Patton Oswalt.
There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, Patton Oswalt will be reviewing a book a day on his Facebook page.
Much respect to Oswalt, but I will not be following his order. So there.
It’s very likely that I read this story back when I was a kid. It was anthologized in Night Shift, which I think I read. I have no memory of it if I did.
This story has everything that Stephen King is known for. Maine, drinking, isolation, and spooky-ass nastiness.
It’s winter and snow is hitting the town hard. Three locals are in their local. It’s quite, as usual.
Then a kid bursts in crying. He’s local, they men all know him. And they know his father as well. His father was Richie, a man who drank a case a night. He was a big man and had taken to sending his son in to get the beer for him as of late.
Henry, the bar owner brings the boy inside and listens to his story in private (who knows what he’s going to reveal). When he returns to his friends, he says he sent the boy upstairs, it was clear he hadn’t been eating well. He then tells two of the guys to come with him while the third one minds the place.
The two men agree while Henry gets his gun. And then he tells them what the boy told him.
He said that back in the Fall, one night his father was drinking his usual case when he shouted “Christ Jesus, that ain’t right.” He said the beer had the worst taste ever. The boy said he’d smelt he can and it smelt likes something had crawled into it and died There was some gray matter along the top of the can, too.
From then on things got worse–Richie drew all the shades. Richie nailed blankets over the windows. Richie never left the house. Richie never left the chair. And soon enough he didn’t want any lights on in the house, so the boy had to do his school work elsewhere.
The men got to the house and could smell something horrible. But it was clear that Richie wasn’t dead.
The rest is pure Stephen King.
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