You're a dab hand at the piano.
The Goosebumps book with the haunted piano.
Jerry Hawkins and his family have just moved to the town of New Goshen, where they discover a piano in their attic. Jerry's parents think it'd be a great idea for him to take piano lessons, which Jerry agrees to. Unfortunately, there are two major complications. First, the piano is haunted by the ghost of its former owner. Second, Jerry's new piano teacher Dr. Shreek is a little obsessive, and there are rumors about his school. Rumors about students who went in for a lesson, and never came out...
It was adapted into the eighth episode of the first season of the 1995 TV series.
This book provides examples of:
- Actually a Doombot: Dr. Shreek is actually a robot programmed by Toggle.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: Because of his nighttime piano ghost sightings, Jerry is sent by his family to a therapist to sort him out. Although this therapist doesn't say it, Jerry guesses that he doesn't believe him.
- All There in the Manual: The Goosebumps Official Collector's Caps Book names the ghost in Jerry's house as Mara Klane, who lived in the house with her miniature greyhound, Dino.
- An Arm and a Leg: Book villain Mr. Toggle's whole plot is murdering talented musical students and amputating their hands, which he then hooks up to machines so they can make music for him.
- Cats Are Mean: Bonkers, the Hawkins family cat, is vicious to all of her owners (though Jerry's parents are usually blind to this). Her favorite trick is to leap on them from behind from a great height, claws extended; Jerry's been clawed open by her more times than he can count, and his parents get scratched every time they try to pick her up.
- Classical Music Is Boring: When first considering taking piano lessons, Jerry thought to himself that it would be fun if his teacher let him play rock piano, not "that drippy, boring classical stuff."
- Dude, Not Funny!: This is Jerry's parents' response to every prank that he makes. Most notably at one point when his father hands him a broom to start sweeping, to which Jerry pretends to be terrified and says that he's not allergic to dust, but allergic to work. Instead of laughing, his parents just storm out of the room and mutter to themselves.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Having been able to escape Dr. Shreek and Professor Toggle, Jerry has his family get rid of the piano in his house that caused him so much trouble. He instead takes an interest in baseball, which his friends say he is good in. Possibly subverted, though, as his hands are complimented.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: Jerry exploits this trope at the beginning of the book as a prank. When cleaning a room in the new house, he notices a couple of balls of dust in a corner, to which he shapes them to look like mice. He then shouts in a panicked voice that there are mice in the room. His parents rush in, notice the dust bunnies, and his father proceeds to attack them with a broom. When they find out this was all a joke, they are not amused.
- Exact Eavesdropping: Implied to have happened. When Jerry invites Kim Li Chin, a new neighbor and classmate of his, into his house, he asks her why she ran off in their previous conversation when he mentioned Dr. Shreek to her. She replies that she has heard awful rumors about children going missing at his musical school. That very night Jerry hears the music from the ghost again, and the ghost reveals that these rumors ARE true, meaning that she apparently overheard the conversation earlier.
- Foreshadowing:
- As Jerry notices the piano playing by itself at night for the first time, he sits on the accompanying bench, but jumped up in shock because it was warm as if someone had just been sitting on it. That's because it was; by a ghost.
- When Jerry sees Dr. Shreek walking for the first time, he notices that he walked very stiffly, as if his knees weren't good, which Jerry guesses was arthritis or something. It is later revealed not to be anything of the sort, but probably a flaw in Dr. Shreek's robotic design.
- When Jerry tells Mr. Toggle that Shreek called him a genius, he jokes that he "programmed" Shreek to say that. It turns out it wasn't a joke.
- Upon arriving to the music school for the last time, Jerry thinks to himself that he has heard plenty of music at the place, but never seen a single student. That's because this was all a facade created by Dr. Toggle and his floating hands from previous victims of his.
- Doubles as a Brick Joke, but when Jerry sees a room in his new home, he is thinking of asking his parents to put in a large big-screen television in here. And at the end of the book, he gets his wish, to replace the piano that their parents threw out because they were sick of all his nightly terrors with it.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Lesser example; Jerry's mother calls him "Jerome" when she's upset with him.
- Gasshole: When moving to New Goshen, Jerry had to say goodbye to his best friend in Cedarville, Sean. His parents didn't like Sean because he would always make loud burps. Jerry's mother told him that Sean can come stay with them for a few weeks the next summer, which Jerry thought was nice of her considering that she couldn't stand his constant belching.
- Go to Your Room!: Jerry's parents want him to show them how he's doing in his piano lessons, so he sits down on the house piano and puts his fingers on the keys. But then his hands starts wildly pounding, which Jerry realizes is the ghost making him to this. But his parents, whom believe that he was just fooling around on the piano like an immature child, don't believe a word of his claim and furiously send him to his bedroom.
- Helping Hands: The robotic variant. Those hands on the cover? They actually belonged to Toggle's past victims, whose hands he harvested and converts to piano-playing automatons. Sweet dreams!
- Here We Go Again!: Even though it seems like Jerry has earned his happy ending and has taken up baseball, his hands are complimented, similarly to Toggle.
- Hot Drink Cure: When catching Jerry afraid at night because of the ghost, his mother believes that he's suffering from paranoia, and offers him a cup of hot chocolate.
- Hurt Foot Hop: Upon waking up early one morning, Jerry decided to pull a practical joke on his parents. He went down to the kitchen and hid in a moving carton, and then his father came in to use the kettle. Jerry then popped out and yelled, which caused his father to drop the kettle onto his foot, which in turn made his father start screaming and holding his injured foot while hopping up and down.
- Ironic Echo: When Jerry takes up baseball at the end, people tell him that he is such a good pitcher because he has "perfect hands".
- I Warned You: When the ghost from Jerry's house comes to save him from Mr. Toggle, she tells him that she warned him to stay away from the evil madman.
- Mad Artist: Mr Toggle kills students and enslaves their hands... so he can get them to play perfect music.
- Madness Mantra: Beautiful hands!
- The Man Behind the Man: Mr. Toggle, the "robotician", who's the real owner of Dr. Shreek's school and also his creator.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Dr. Shreek is as unpleasant as his name suggests.
- Nightmare Sequence: Jerry has one where he's having a piano lesson and, because of Dr. Shreek's orders, he can't stop playing, no matter how hard he tries.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The ghost in Jerry's house is scary, but she's really just trying to save him by warning him away from Dr. Shreek and his school.
- Piano Drop: Narrowly averted. When the movers are settling the new piano into the house, Jerry's mother is shocked to find Bonkers standing right on the spot where the piano was being lowered. It then thudded heavily onto the floor, but the cat ran out from it just in time.
- Puppy Love: Jerry has this with Kim. He thinks that she looks and acts cute, and she seems to act quite flirtatiously with him.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Mr. Toggle has created a robot that easily fooled a family into thinking it's human, and can program severed hands to move on their own. And he uses all this to play "perfect music".
- Ridiculously Human Robots: A late reveal — Dr. Shreek, Jerry's piano teacher, is a robot. Until he started going nuts, Jerry didn't suspect a thing. This is in contrast with the other "teachers" at the music school, which were all more primitive designs. They had constantly bobbing heads with smiles plastered on their faces and gray eyes that opened and closed with the music.
- Running Gag:
- Throughout the book, Jerry describes people being shocked as "looking as though they were going to drop their teeth."
- Also, him constantly sliding off of seats as a joke.
- The Scream: On his last encounter in which he sees the ghost playing the piano in his house, she tells Jerry that the rumors about the music school are true, and shows him the stumps on her arms where her hands would be. Jerry starts to gag, and the next thing the reader knows, his parents are comforting him and tell him that he was screaming loud enough to wake the entire town.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When Jerry meets Kim for the first time after school, they seem to have a pleasant conversation. Then he notices that she plays the violin, to which he adds that he's taking piano lessons with Dr. Shreek. Upon hearing this, Kim suddenly stares at Jerry with her mouth open in horror. She then quits the conversation, spun around, and ran out the front door. It's only when Jerry invites Kim over to his house does she explain why she ran away like that.
- Sinister Surveillance: When walking down the hallways around the music school, Jerry notices video cameras perched along the ceiling, like the security cameras in banks and stores. These were all so Mr. Toggle can keep an eye on his victims.
- Spoiler Cover: The UK cover of the book shows Dr. Shreek with part of the flesh on his face missing, revealing a robot interior, giving away the fact that he's actually a robot.
