A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven

by Corey Taylor

  They change the channels on the TV in the living room, so when you wake up, it is always on Nickelodeon or Disney. You know how unsettling it is to turn on the telly, expecting to see ESPN, and you get Dora the Explorer, set at a deafening volume? That triggered my only really angry outburst at them. I just let out a loud “Oh, COME ON!” and scared the absolute fuck out of myself in the process. It was in that moment of pure humanity that I realized the absurdity of that exclamation: a grown man in the wee hours of the morning, yelling at things in his house he would never be able to explain to normal folks, because they had inconveniently changed the channel on him, therefore causing him to have to physically pick up the remote control and put it back on the channel he had been hoping for in the first place. I have to be honest: I really felt like a Craftsman’s tool bag in that space and time. But those innocent little fuckers are not as innocent as my wife would lead you to believe. They also constantly “terrorize” anyone who stays at the house by him or herself. Our friend Lady watched our house for a while and would report running in the kitchen while her back was turned and things being knocked over in the office at the end of the house when no one else was with her. As she detailed it, she would sit resigned on the couch, close her eyes, and say aloud, “Oh good . . .” That statement alone was enough to give me fits. Remember, this is the same Lady we do everything in our power to scare on a daily basis because when she panics, it is hysterical. So I cannot fault the Kids for trying to have a little fun at her expense.

  Of course, The Boss never lets this shit faze her. She just shrugs her shoulders and says, “They are kids—what the fuck do you expect them to do?”

  I swear I would expect nothing less from that woman. The Boss has a way of seeing these things move through our reality that is truly amazing. She can always feel when something is going to happen. She has an uncanny way about her of just knowing, but not just knowing. She can see several solutions to any scenario within seconds of that scenario playing itself out. In other words, she understands things easier and can then relate them back to you in a way that your mind can comprehend. It was through her that I really developed the idea that these things, no matter how strange or physical, are not to be feared. They are intriguing and mysterious, yes, but I will not fear them because they only really want our attention. They are not trying to organize a union and take over the world. You would think I would have every reason to, after being pushed down stairs and seeing my friends get carved on with tiny plastic weapons, but I do not fear these phenomena. They are like involuntary spasms with the rare case of clarity. We must learn from these experiences as much as we can if we are to understand them and add them to our pantheon of realms and reason. In this, I acquiesce to my wife. I realized long ago that she is exceedingly right on a regular basis; I do my best to just keep up.

  My wife was the one who first acknowledged that maybe these kids were from the old house on Foster. I had not even been sure that there were kids in the old manor house, but then again, the Shadow Man had routinely dominated all of that activity, taking my focus off of anything else that had really been there. The Boss seemed pretty confident that they had most likely arrived with the majority of the stuff I had kept from the old place. So that brings me to another fit of thought: do spirits tie themselves to one place forever or can they move about? Is it their will that allows them to stay or go, or is it the little electrons that get superattracted and cling to one place or person, unconsciously drawing on the magnetism inherent in its being? Think of the concept of soul mates. Certain people are just simply drawn to one another, for better or worse and whether that coupling leads to anything positive or negative. I have seen and felt this sensation myself; I know this to be true. Why does this happen? Maybe our souls are made of a wholly different type of energy that can cause a physical reaction and instant connection when they are near a similar soul they are enamored with or they find something wonderful in common with. If this were true, it could explain a few things in this world and the next.

  My wife also posited that maybe this was the case. Maybe there was something about my soul and my personality that made them feel safe. Being around something as fucked up as the Shadow Man, I could certainly see why the Kids might have wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge. Plus, I had challenged that dark entity to a drunken duel, so it made sense that the Kids would see me as a protector of sorts. It definitely tracked that they came with me than that they were already here when I moved in. So in a sense I had sort of “adopted” some wayward spirits. Those little devil sprites seemed happy enough in our house that they were constantly driving me ape shit with their shenanigans. Ah well, so be it then—what am I going to do, complain? Call a fucking exterminator to spray for often-unseen ghost kids with a habit of book stacking? First I would be arrested. Then I would be committed. Only after all that shit would the laughter die down so I could hear people properly insulting me again.

  I often wonder what would happen if I left the circle to find another house in Des Moines somewhere. Would those kids follow me again? Would they stay in the house on the circle because they are so used to it by now and there is no darkness to worry about? Or would they stay on the circle because now they were a part of a home that had good memories and there was nothing to fear in the form of malevolent spirits with terrible purposes? It is indeed a boggle. I have had other houses besides the one on the circle in different states, and there had been times when things had happened in those houses—miles from Des Moines—that were eerily the same as the goings-on I have transcribed herein. Now before you go off half-cocked (snicker) saying things like, “Are you suggesting that poltergeists migrate?,” let me just cut you off with a very familiar “Not at all!” I am not trying to put forth the idea that ghosts can travel hundreds of miles just to be near the person their energy is infatuated with. I am not saying that.

  But what if it were true?

  Think about all those stories of dogs and cats that, after being accidentally forgotten or left behind with a neighbor, overcome vastly huge distances to be reunited with their owners. Picture Pickles, the family’s pet hound, braving his way through rain, sleet, and highway pirates (those bastard highway pirates . . .) just to rejoin his family The Snoots in lovely Burbank. Granted, he was only in Reseda—but hell, I could not do it! Well, I could, but that is beside the point. My point really is that a dog or a cat runs completely on instinct, and yet they have an ability to find “home” in a way that I have never seen anything else like on earth. Is it because of doggie ESP? Or is it because these animals, after spending years with these families, have developed a spiritual bond that cannot be explained? And if dogs and cats can do it, why not ghosts? Ghosts are people too! Well, you know what I mean. Is it love? Maybe. I know a few ghosts that spend time around me that are not here because they hate me. Trust me, it is a big fucking responsibility to know that somewhere close by there are people you cherished in life surrounding you. Maybe love is a little more tangible than we, as advanced chimps, are willing to allow. It would explain how love turns to hate on a dime when push comes to brutal shove. As an emotion, it is the king of the mountain. I guess I am saying that maybe love is a conduit for the attraction every soul in the world is able to feel.

  From the spiritual travel side of this discussion, look at something as cool and hotly contested as astral projection, the ability to leave your body and surf the winds of the world using only your will to navigate and, consequently, bring you home when the journey is over. Thanks to the 1970s and miles upon miles of website source material, astral projection has become a phenomenon all its own, from free-wheeling hippies expounding about trips to places like Mars and Phoenix, Arizona (which, let’s be honest, could totally be the same place when you have eaten enough magic mushrooms), to theoretical physicists explaining at length how their studies have shown promising evidence that astral projection could be plausible. Indeed, I stood on the shoulders of these giants when I was putting together the examples for
my intelligent energy hypothesis. The idea I am attempting to stick on the proverbial wall is not so much its reality as it is a cause for pause and reasonable doubt. I am confining my thoughts to conjecture only in order to make sense of my original question: if I was in one of my other houses in a different state entirely, would it be possible for the Kids on the Circle to pay me a visit?

  Well, let’s look at the “facts,” shall we? We have established that a savvy canine can cross great distances to get back to its emotional “home”—that being the human owners who take care of it. Also, we have taken a few seconds to accept the idea that astral projection is an ideal alternative to air travel (at least you do not have to take your shoes off to go through security). So if the Kids are indeed attached to me emotionally and they know I am in a certain location for a prolonged period of time, could their energies make the journey to wherever I am? Has there ever been a case of long-distance haunting? Am I just full of shit and babbling like a shaven baboon high on crystal meth? I concur that the last statement may totally be true even out of the context of the original conundrum. But it is an interesting idea. What if the attraction of the soul is so powerful that a smitten spook crosses great distances to be with the soul or souls it craves? That is assuming that something like distance is relevant. There was a posit—by a scientist of such high caliber I never bothered to look up his name—that instead of billions upon billions upon billions of electrons running through our bodies and the google plex of worlds around us, there is actually only one real electron in the universe, and that superelectron was so charged that it raced back and forth in infinity, through space and the galaxies and indeed through the very fabric of time itself. If that were true—that there is only one electron connecting all of us—then a distance of miles is a matter of thought, and nearly simultaneously you could be in that other place because it is essentially the same spot from a scientific point of view. In other words, the Kids could blink and go from Iowa to our house in Vegas.

  I can actually hear you all tearing your heads off and kicking them into your yards. Sorry . . . actually no, I am not.

  Before you all get suicidal, put down your guns, ropes, pills, and exhaust pipes. Remember: I am just a lowly singer who cannot be trusted with money, the remote control, or sharp objects. I just put thoughts together, which almost always gets me into trouble. I am the same guy who in high school had the very nifty yet lethal idea that a combination of Nair and pudding would make me millions. So pay more attention to my stories than to my slightly educated guesses. At least if you do that, you and I will keep all of our fingers, toes, and lower lips. But I am still convinced the Nair/pudding thing would have made me a fortune. It sells itself: women use Nair and everyone loves pudding. How the fuck could that go wrong? THEY CALLED ME CRAZY AS WELL! WELL, WHO IS CRAZY NOW, YOU JUDGMENTAL FUCK WITS? HAHAHAHAHA . . .

  I went off again . . .

  I have now lived on the Circle for over seven years. It is quiet, it is quaint, it is fairly secluded, and my neighbors really never bother me. Okay, except for the guy who lives down the street and on the corner—he once held my broom hostage and sent me a picture of it with that day’s newspaper. There was also a note that said, “If you ever want to see your broom alive again, please sign these Slipknot T-shirts . . .” Come to think of it, maybe my neighbors are a little more bizarre than I give them credit. When I moved in I received—not in this order and not all from the same neighbor—cookies, brownies, rum, gin, and a six pack of PBR tall boys. So my cul-de-sac is a bit more bent than I am able to understand. However, this is less about my surroundings and more about the house itself. It is unassuming, has nothing in the way of secret rooms or a skywalk, and does not glow in the dark. The yard is not massive, and the garage is not anything special. It is white with white trim—I can only imagine its embarrassment after May Day.

  My house on the Circle is not a manor house. Hell, it is not even a prestigious purchase like a country home or a houseboat. It is not a mansion by any means, not even if you squint into rose-colored glasses after a tab of acid. It could blend in with any Sears catalog on earth. What it is can be summed up in a variety of seemingly inane but seriously important adjectives: comfortable, warm, nice, distinct, special, lived in, cozy, manageable, woody (yes, woody—fuck off), and thoroughly enjoyable to come home to when all is said and done. Surely, it is not a compound or a century-old colonial work of majestic architecture. It is not antiquated, and yet it is not very modern either. But you know what it is? It is a home. It welcomes those who have lived there before and those who are just visiting with the same amount of muted exuberance that you would get from the house you grew up in or your grandmother’s house over Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter weekend. If this house had arms, it would hug you upon your return and squeeze you with a warm goodbye when it is time to leave. Quite frankly, it is truly the only home I have ever really known. Even my Gram’s house, where I basically grew up, did not fill me with that sense of safety and contentment that this house has given me for so long now. Yes, it is plain and nondescript and from the outside looks as exciting as a bucket of brown sauce. But it is our family home. That is something a lot of people cannot brag about truthfully on any level. The fact that there is some sort of activity going on there is just frosting on the cake.

  So my Kids on the Circle run this mediocre haven whether I am there to bedevil or not. I assume they get excited when we get home, but who knows—maybe they come visit us while we are gone and we just never notice them. Perhaps there is enough of that warm wonderful energy left in our wake to keep them happy in our absence, like leaving a bowl of food for the dog when you go on vacation. I would like to think that with all the fantastic memories we have had in that house, there is a residual presence of love in those walls, those halls, and the air itself. When you take the time to make a place special, it definitely shows. The overall feel of a place like that will make you glow and allow you to relax just for a second before you plunge back into this Darwinian madness we call planet Earth. It is important to have these places, throughout the world. Forget about the fittest for a second and remember that life is not just about surviving—it is about Life with a capital L. When you play Tag or Hide and Seek, there has to be Base. You race toward it with joyous panic and fervor, reaching out with the nails on your fingertips just to make contact before you are picked off by the prick who’s It. When your skin grazes the surface, you scream out, “SAFE!” with buoyant excitement. The rules say you cannot stay on Base for the whole game, but you can until you catch your breath. Then you charge back into the game with a vengeance until the pursuit chases you toward Base again.

  Sounds a lot like home, right? At least, it sounds like a good home.

  I spent a lot of time making sure that house felt like anyone could come and hang out there, that everyone good was welcome, and anyone with shitty intentions should just keep on fucking walking by. It is one of those precious things in my life that I do my very best to take care of, to keep whole. My wife and I are constantly working, and yet we know we have that place, that sanctum sanctorum to fall back to when the war of life gets a little too hairy. If those “kids” want to call it home too, what kind of a prick cocksucker would I be to deny that? It is my belief that everyone should have a touchstone to cling to when life starts to kick your ass and push you toward the cliff. It should be one of those inalienable rights we go on and on about as Americans. If we cannot have at least that, what is the point of all this? If there is time to go shopping for frivolous belongings, there is time to set the foundation. If there is time to download apps and stolen music, there is time to build the walls. If there is time to devote to booze and drugs and bullshit, there is time to seal the roof and bless it with a little bit of the soul. I put the time in, and the proof is there for all (who are invited) to see. With the Kids on the Circle there to raise hell, run amok, and keep me on all ten of my toes—even the broken one, Hugo—it seems like there is just a little bit mor
e soul there than I had planned on in the beginning. But all plans are made to fail if you never allow room for the unexpected. I guess I must have, because those kids are welcome. At this point they are family.

  And family is what makes a home.

  You'll Have to Pay for Another Five Minutes

  FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN, lend me your ears, because it is time to do that groovy shake known as “sum it all up, Batman.”

  As you may recall, in my first book I talked about some time I spent in a gnarly little farmhouse just outside of Dewar, Iowa, when I was twelve years old. We lived there during the fall/winter. Everything around the place was essentially dead or dying. Set bleakly against a decaying gray sky with temperatures that dropped even lower when the ferocious wind was threatening to blow us away, the house was like living in my own personal horror movie. The nearest neighbor was miles down the crusty gravel road, so signs of life were scarce to none around this barren place. Just to be able to see my friends from school I had to beg rides from my mother or my mother’s none-too-thrilled best friends with whom we shared this creepy haunt. It was indeed a hard solstice; I was beginning to hate the world in the worst way. This was the same house you may remember where I lived in a fucking closet with no light, no electricity, and no heat. I hated the place. But I discovered something there that I will never forget.

  It was in this house of horseshit that I first saw the original and thoroughly incredible Night of the Living Dead. There was a local late-night creature-feature show on Channel 6 that used to run old, crappy cult classics, ostensibly for the entertainment of a handful of college students who might be up “studying” at that hour. It was hosted by a vapid, balding, middle-aged hack dressed as a low-rent Dracula called “Count . . .” something or other—I cannot even remember the character’s last name. I only know he was called Count something because he had a rap song he pressed onto vinyl that was twice as lame as he was. It made Dangerfield’s song “Rappin’ Rodney” sound like N.W.A. Half the time I did not even get the chance to see what was on—there was only one TV in the house, and that was usually dominated by our in-house alcoholics watching burned VHS tapes containing Dirty Dancing and Look Who’s Talking Too. So this was a rare occasion: I was home, alone, and I could do whatever I wanted.