SOUNDTRACK: KATE BUSH-“Get Out of My House” (1982).
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.
Most people who know Kate Bush know her songs that have broken the Top Ten. But if you dig deeper into her catalog, Kate has some really intense and really creepy songs.
I was pretty delighted to see this on Esquire’s list because it’s a pretty deep cut, it seems like a surprising choice and because it gives me chills.
It starts with thumping drums, a plucked string melody (dulcimer?) and a guy making a kind of hee-hawing sound in the distance.
And then the lyrics. Good old gothic horror:
When you left, the door was
(slamming)
You paused in the doorway
(slamming)
As though a thought stole you away
(slamming)
I watched the world pull you away
(Lock it)
So I run into the hall
(Lock it)
Into the corridor
(Lock it)
There’s a door in the house
(slamming)
I hear the lift descending
(slamming)
I hear it hit the landing
(slamming)
See the hackles on the cat
(standing)
With my key I
(lock it)
With my key I
(lock it up)
The next part has Kate speaking in a funny voice (and in French) in your left ear before the “chorus” (such as it is) features Kate singing the main lyrics quietly and slowly while the recurring refrain is her shrieking and gasping at he top of her lungs (but recorded so it sounds far away) “Get Out of My House!”
The middle of the song gets more frantic.
This house is full of m-m-my mess
(Slamming)
This house is full of m-m-mistakes
(Slamming)
This house is full of m-m-madness
(Slamming)
This house is full of, full of, full of fight
(Slam it)
Midway through the song, while repeating “Get Out of my House!” the dulcimer returns playing a bouncy melody while a man’s voice whispers creepily in your right ear:
“Woman let me in!
Let me bring in the memories!
Woman let me in!
Let me bring in the Devil Dreams!”
Kate replies:
I will not let you in!
Don’t you bring back the reveries
I turn into a bird
Carry further than the word is heard
The man counters:
“Woman let me in!
I turn into the wind.
I blow you a cold kiss,
Stronger than the song’s hit.”
Kate concludes:
I will not let you in
I face towards the wind
I change into the Mule
“I change into the Mule.”
She turns into the Mule and starts braying and hee-hawing, which then transforms into the man who did it at the beginning of the song.
That’s not quite the end, but I’m not even sure what’s going on as the song ends–voices keep muttering something over and over.
It’s five and a half minutes of confusion and creepiness. Perfect Kate Bush.
[READ: October 23, 2019] “It Feels Better Biting Down”
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.
I don’t know Livia Llewellyn, but if her other stories are anything like this, she must have a wonderfully bizarre body of writing.
This story starts off fairly conventionally. Twin sisters wake up to the sound of a lawnmower.
But things are askew right from the get go, as one of them rubs “the afternoon sleep from her eyes with ten long pale fingers and two long pale thumbs.” The twin who is narrating also has the extra fingers and says they are “shy-like but not vestigial or immobile.”
The twins call each other Sister and only answer to that, which drives their parents crazy.
They go outside to inspect the sound, but it has stopped.
Sister grabs a plastic lawn chair and climbs it to look over the fence that separates their yard. She gasps and whispers to Sister to come look. When Sister arrives, Sister shushes her and Sister thinks, “It’s times like this I want to grab her little fingers, snap them off her hands like beans from a vine.”
When they look over the fence again a woman stands in the center of the yard, barefoot and wearing a gown. “The woman’s face is like a statue, with only smooth, flesh-colored indentations where her eyes should be.” There’s more description until Sister sighs and says, “It’s a mannequin.”
Sister picks up a rock and chucks it at the mannequin. It knocks the mannequin’s wig off:
I turn to Sister and smile. “Nice.”
Sister smiles. “Nice.”
“Niiiiiiicccccceeeeeee.” The woman’s mouth is open, and the word is pouring out, elongated in the familiar lawnmower drone.
WHAT?
That’s not even the weirdest, creepiest thing about this story. Because something really bizarre and scary happens with the woman and Sister and Sister fall to the ground and tussle and this conversation ensues:
“That was not a mannequin,” I say.”
“Give me my finger back.”
…
I say, standing up, “Show me your hands again.”
Sister holds them out. I place the end of the pinky next to the red bump where it used to hang. “It’s like it just fell off, she says. “It doesn’t even hurt.”
The title is alluded to a little later when Sister says,
“If you don’t like what I’m saying, then why don’t you bite off my tongue.”
She does.
By the end of the story, the Sisters’ parents come home. No one can even imagine what’s going to happen next.
Read Patton Oswalt’s take here.
I Just Read About That... 
I have read this one. Yikes!! You kind of can imagine!! I didn’t quiet understand what the deal was with the mannequin or woman next door. But “Sister” is/are super creepy.