I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TALKING HEADS-“Psycho Killer” (1977).

A lot of the music I listen to is weird and probably creepy to other people, but I don’t necessarily think of songs as appropriate for Halloween or not.  So for this year’s Ghost Box stories, I consulted an “expert”: The Esquire list of Halloween songs you’ll play all year long.  The list has 45 songs–most of which I do not like.  So I picked 11 of them to post about.

Of all the songs on this list, this is possibly the one that most people are familiar with.  I mean, it’s been played on the radio for over thirty years.

Musically the song is not scary at all.  The bass is pretty straightforward and instantly recognizable.  It’s really catchy too.  The guitars are cool jagged/new wave licks.

Really it comes down to the lyrics and vocal delivery.

David Byrne has a unique delivery style to be sure, although somehow I find his delivery doesn’t really sell the “psycho killer” nature of this song all that well.  Perhaps it’s deceptively psycho.

Indeed, everything in this song is implied rather than explicit.

Lyrically the song could be pretty creepy.  Except that really the lyrics are just good manners

You start a conversation you can’t even finish it
You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?

…

We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they’re not polite

Perhaps that’s what creates a psycho killer after all.

There’s an acoustic version (available as a B-side and now on the 2005 bonus tracks) which features slightly different lyrics and a cello that is rather menacing at times.  It’s slightly more creepy.

Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi

[READ: October 21, 2019] “It Only Comes Out At Night”

Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar and The Ghost Box. and Ghost Box II. comes Ghost Box III.

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:

Oh god, it’s right behind me, isn’t it? There’s no use trying to run from Ghost Box III, the terrifying conclusion to our series of limited-edition horror box sets edited and introduced by Patton Oswalt.

There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, I’m going to read in the order they were stacked.

Dennis Etchison also had a story in the first Ghost Box.

I rather enjoyed the timelessness of this story.  I didn’t read when it was written before reading it and aside from one or two small details at the end of the story it could have been written at any time in the last sixty years.

The story starts with an explanation of how to get from San Bernadino to points east.  You must cross the Mojave Desert.  But there is no relief–it is relentlessly hot:

The car runs hot, hotter than it ever has before, the plies of the tires expand and contract until the sidewalls begin to shimmy slightly as they spin on over the miserable Arizona roads.

The crux of all this is that if you are driving it, you move at night.

McClay had to learn that the hard way.  He drove during the night, trying to stay awake while his wife Evvie slept in the back seat.  And it took far longer than they thought.

He scanned the radio picked up various short wave radios.  She woke up briefly, said not to turn it off and then muttered “only come out at night.”

Up ahead he saw a rest stop–an oasis in the darkness.  It’s odd to me that he seems to feel guilty about stopping, but I guess he just really wants to get himself and his wife home (she was annoyed at how long the trip had taken).  The rest stop is weirdly deserted.  There are a lot of cars but he doesn’t see any people.  He assumes the drivers are asleep in the cars, but all the vehicles have a weird desert/rest stop light sheen to them.

When he shut off the car, the silence was deafening.  And there was a tingling a the tip of his tongue.

Evvie got out and went to the bathroom.  He heard her footsteps and his footsteps echoing around.

He thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.  He assumed it was Evvie shuffling back to the car.  He thought he heard another car door slam.  He got back in the car and started up again.

But the rest wasn’t enough.  He was exhausted.  He needed a motel.  Any motel.  Eventually he gave up and decided he’d turn back around and rest at the rest stop–it was much safer than pulling over to the side of the road where trucks whizzed past.

When they got back to the rest stop, he tried to sleep but couldn’t.  He decided to get out and walk around.  He looked at the other cars and saw that hey were covered in a thin dust.  This wasn’t unusual–his own car was covered in desert dust.  But something seemed off about it all.

He thought he saw bodies in the car, but they were just the headrests.  Then he cleared away some dust and saw a form in the backseat–long blonde hair “and delicate and silvery, a spider web spun between the hair and collar.”

I love the way this story is kind of slow and uneventful –just driving at night–until the last two page where everything gets very intense very fast.

Timelessly scary.

Read Patton Oswalt’s take here.