SOUNDTRACK: KATE BUSH-“Under Ice/Waking the Witch” (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.
Esquire didn’t pick this song, but the inclusion of Kate Bush yesterday reminded me of this pairing of songs which I find incredibly creepy–especially late at night wit headphones.
This comes from side two of the Hounds of Love album. Side Two is a suite or a story called The Ninth Wave. Kate makes full use of sound effects and vocal panning so that you can hear the voices all around your head as they whisper, call or threaten.
The side begins with the gentle “And Dream of Sheep” which shows a young woman falling asleep (later we find it’s not as innocent as it seems). This segues into “Under Ice” which begins with slow string notes that sound like someone skating.
Kate’s voice is deep, slow and echoey as she sings about skating on the ice. You can hear a voices calling, but she doesn’t heed them:
I’m speeding past trees
Leaving little lines in the ice
Cutting out, little lines in the ice
Splitting, splitting sound
Silver heels spitting, spitting snow
and then in a more tremulous voice (with great watery sound effects) followed by a chorus of voices:
There’s something moving under
Under the ice moving
Under ice through water
Trying to
It’s me
Get out of the cold water
It’s me
Something
It’s me
Someone, help them
The two minute song segues into “Waking the Witch” which opens with a whispered “Wake up!” and an early morning wake up call while voices from all over the headphones try to get you to wake up–some more gently than others.
After a minute or so of this the song becomes an intensely scary four minutes. A voice of someone, pleading, but garbled and cut up–perhaps under water? It is a nightmarish attempt at communication when a deep scary male voice states (with Kate singing the parenthetical)
You won’t burn (red, red roses)
You won’t bleed (pinks and posies)
Confess to me, girl (red, red roses, go down)
With a pretty melody, a voice whispers Spiritus Sanctus in nomine. It cuts to another chopped up and manipulated voice praying “Bless me, father, bless me father, for I have sinned.”
The deep voice returns in accusation:
I question your innocence
She’s a witch
(Help this blackbird, there’s a stone around my leg)
Ha, damn you, woman
(Help this blackbird, there’s a stone around my leg)
What say you, good people
(Guilty, guilty, guilty)
Well, are you responsible for your actions?
(This blackbird)
Not guilty (help this blackbird)
Wake up the witch
As the four minutes fades off, we hear a helicopter flying through the air and a man shouting
Get out of the waves!
Get out of the water!
The story continues from there and gets a bit more positive, but man, the cinematic detail of this is staggering. Apparently she was finally able to stage this suite when in 2014, she performed her first concerts since 1979. I would have loved to have seen that.
[READ: October 23, 2019] “The Distributor”
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.
This has been quite possibly my favorite story in any of the Ghost Boxes.
Richard Matheson wrote I am Legend and many episodes of The Twilight Zone and this story was the epitome of dark suburban paranoia come to life. It is also scarily timeless and, aside from some of the words used in the story, could easily have been written today.
The story is written as a series of dates, but it is third person, not a diary.
Theodore Gordon has moved to a new neighborhood. He sets about meeting everyone on the block and being a good neighbor:
Joseph Alston an older man with a dog.
Inez Ferrel whose husband is “selling on the road.”
Dorothy Backus whose husband works nights.
Walter and Bianca Morton and their son Walter Jr. They are yelling at him for staying out late with Katharine McCann.
The McCann family lives across the street. James was complaining that Walter thinks he has his edger, since he borrowed his lawn mower once.
Arthur and Patty Jefferson were filling a pool in the back for their kids.
Henry and Irma Punam have two older boys and a dog. As Theodore approached, he heard Henry saying some racist things.
The last house had Eleanor Gorse and her father.
Three days later, Theodore sent a cab to 12057 Sylmar Street. The he called for a TV repairman to come to 12070 Sylmar Street. Then he ran an ad in the paper listing a car for sale.
None of those were his residence or property.
For the rest of the story Theodore sets out to systematically destroy the lives of everyone on the street.
He pulls up plants, take photos of indiscretions, hides evidence and even paints racist slogans.
It’s all hilariously terrible. And watching him sit back or help to foment these disturbances is really something.
The last date in the timeline is a kind of punchline that shows just how insidious this all is.
And, as I said, the fact that this story resonates fifty years after being published and doesn’t seem antiquated at all is probably the scariest part.
Read Patton Oswalt’s take here.
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