Observations and Connections
Presented here, story by story, is a quick review (individually – cumulatively, this is longer than the Night Shift essay), any connections to the wider Stephen King mythos and more general observations. A basic understanding of the stories is assumed, and spoilers freely discussed.
On a side note concerning the introduction, this is the first time King breaks out the term of affection he uses for his readers, the Constant Reader! Newer editions of past books may feature introductions where he uses the term, but our first chronological use of the term is here.
The Mist
Such a mammoth opening story that it deserved, and got, it’s own post. For a more detailed look at The Mist, click here.
Here There be Tygers
One, if not the, earliest King’s published stories easily available to be read. It was originally published in a magazine called Ubris, a literary magazine for the University of Maine. It’s an interesting mix, because as student piece it belongs into the area of juvenilia, but it being published in a literary magazine, at least to me, suggests there is something a bit more working under the hood. It sticks in the mind (seriously, I remember this story more clearly than I remembered many of the other stories in this collection), but it is so tremendously simple which is also why it is so effective. It won’t win awards or be anyone’s favourite, but I do like it a lot. The sharp contrast of the set-up compared to the sudden appearance of the tiger is so jarring, just as it is in the story, that it works on the reader in the same way a Lovecraft protagonist reacts to seeing an Old One. It just doesn’t compute. It’s so weird.
But bearing in mind the time in which it was written, alongside Cain Rose Up, Suffer the Little Children (from Nightmares & Dreamscapes) and probably Rage, the fact that our main character is called Charles leads me to suspect that this may be a story under deep metaphorical layers about Charles Whitman. The Texas Tower Shooting was one of the first major mass shooting events in America, certainly one of the first in a school. King was in school or was teaching around this time, and it would be understandable for him to be working through these worries in his writing.
The Monkey
Some properly scary stuff that takes the already scary looking cymbal monkey (see image above) and gives it a story about childhood trauma to play in. It reminds me a bit of The Boogeyman from Night Shift, and though very effective here does play into the trope of King of taking normal objects but make them scary. Regardless, the threat of the monkey that so easily could be ridiculous turns into a dark, malignant force that makes for a thrilling read.
This includes a reference to Crystal Lake, which could be a reference to the Friday the 13th films. King has spoken about them in the past, including his idea to write a novel from Jason’s perspective. King reckons legal rights prevent him from ever actually doing it, but if I was Sean Cunningham I would be breaking down the door for this to happen.
More locally, Hartford is mentioned again from The Mist as the safe place, and King would revisit the idea of horrors in wells in 1922.
Cain Rose Up
A short piece and another one from Ubris. Though shocking and another return for King to the idea of a school shooter that he wrote about in Rage, with perhaps this story being the partial impetus to write that or part of that same thought process, there’s not much to say here. Out of the two Ubris stories, I prefer Here There be Tygers, but this is not to say this one is bad at all. Just more expected, less jarring, than the other effort.
Mrs Todd’s Shortcut
I love this story. There is something inherently funny about having a story set in a Lovecraftian world where strange things lurk on on the edge of the world, and using that to find a shortcut through. Yet the story told is quite heartfelt and tender, and the brief mention of Mrs Todd’s background with Worth gives it a far more melancholy air that you may suspect the story has. I’d love to hear a closer reading of her particular character, especially considering the character names chosen of Ophelia and Homer, which must be deliberate. King’s use of the Maine accent throughout also gives this story a rich character that helps bring the characters to life. In some ways, it’s about the rejuvenating effects of love on people who find it. Though it has some of the architecture of horror in place, this barely registers as horror in the best possible way. It’s like King using his reputation to slyly slip a different kind of story to the reader.
It is also a Castle Rock story! We also get a reference to Cujo for those who remember the name Joe Camber, though the reference flies by so quickly that if you get it you enjoy the wink, and for those who don’t it reads as part of the background colour of the story. The storm that gets briefly mentioned later in the story might well be the same one from The Dead Zone that burned the restaurant down with all the graduating kids. Derry also gets the briefest of mentions. The bleeding rock and orange UFO landing in the lake are strange occurrences I have no explanation or link for, except possibly a similarity to The Colour Out of Space.
The shortcuts that Mrs Todd travels thoroughfare implied to be a version of hyperspace, but considering we’ve had The Mist breaking into other dimensions, The Talisman taking us to the Territories and at some point in the future the idea of thinnies, there is plenty of ways and places for Mrs Todd to find her way around the multiverse. She may be one of the single most powerful characters who just happens to be a a bit of a Sunday driver.
The Jaunt
What appears to be The Kingcast‘s favourite short, a rare science-fiction story from King that has an absolute killer ending. It was originally published in The Twilight Zone Magazine, and you can absolutely tell. Whack a Rod Serling monologue over this and you could see this easily nestled between Where is Everybody? and And When the Sky Was Opened. It’s a brilliant little tale that feels, as much as King’s science fiction does, like a Ray Bradbury story. It has a neat environmental element to it too, and is very much of a piece of when it was written, concerning itself with fuel crises and such. The story ends right as it needs to, but there’s also an element of King beginning to realise the implications of a jaunt being a real thing, hinting at other stories to be told that make this one rich for adaptation.
The story of Victor Carune, a creative scientist where a journey through his creation leaves the awake mad, could be read metaphorically as a story of the creative process King goes through when writing his stories, and the government’s use and packaging of the jaunt is the interference of the publishers and studios who take over. The haunting idea of Carune trotted out as the grandfatherly inventor and face of the jaunt, is similar to how King himself gets trotted out for the publicity tour each time there’s a new film or TV show based on his work, though King himself avoids the fate Carune has by remaining much his own man rather than propaganda brand. It’s a stretch of a read, but a fun one to consider.
That this story is placed after Mrs Todd’s Shortcut is absolutely not a coincidence considering their similar subject matter, the difference being that Mrs Todd ends up in different worlds and jaunting takes you through somewhere (maybe Todash Space?). Also, the purported seventh volunteer to travel through the jaunt, and the first to do so is Rudy Foggia, RF. Unlikely to be the same RF as Randall Flagg, but would be a fun reason to give him his madness.
The Wedding Gig
Our first weak link of the collection. In retrospect, this story makes more sense as King experimenting in crime writing considering his books for the Hard Case Crime novels later in his career. King has also included plenty of gangsters in his stories previously in books such as The Shining, Roadwork, or Thinner. It’s still an odd one, that can partially be improved by adding the word ‘see?’ at the end of every other sentence like an old-timey gangster.
The main problem is that aside from it being a bit underdeveloped, it also spends an inordinate amount of time laying into the sole female character’s weight. I’ve already discussed a bit more in-depth in my Thinner essay about King’s approach to weight, and somewhat defended it there. In this case, it sits there as a joke that no one is laughing at. It’s just sort of mean without purpose.
Paranoid: A Chant
Poetry is a rare form to be found in a mainstream book. In most bookshops, it tends to be the smallest section with the least love given to it. So finding a poem in a King book is refreshing and probably deeply weird for most people who aren’t book nerds like me.
Horror poetry is a rare form within even poetry, so it’s even more refreshing to read some here. Lovecraft did a couple verses, and I bet Clive Barker and Thomas Ligotti have done some too. I really enjoyed this, and would love to see a performance from King reading this, which I think would really bring it to life. Reading it falls into a rhythm that builds in energy, and the cyclical nature of the writing gives it a great performance element where it can be looped around.
There’s a reference to a dark man with no face, which could be a reference to Randall Flagg. Our protagonist’s paranoia may very well not be far from the mark.
The Raft
Easiest environmental reading ever. A evil oil slick consumes horny teenagers? I’m not even sure I need to say anymore than that. Beyond that though, this is a really effective monster story that tells a creepy desperate tale of survival that does not spare a soul. The destruction of Deke, like someone squeezing a tube of toothpaste, is particularly nasty, and image of his death is one that lingered in my memory long after I had read it. The teens aren’t particularly likeable, but considering their fate it’s understandable why you don’t need to spend too long getting attached to them.
Deke has on a ring which on one side read 19 and the other 81, though I think this is a stretch, included for completeness sake. This story was later adapted for Creepshow 2 (which this blog won’t be covering), changing some key elements for it to work in that context compared to its literary origins. In Creepshow 2, it plays up a lot more of the EC Comics value judgements on characters. It’s also the best segment of the film, and can easily be found on YouTube if you were so inclined.
Word Processor of the Gods
This story receives a fair bit of explanation from King in the introduction, almost as a defence of the story it reads like. Though it is by no means his best story (something King admits in the introduction), it isn’t his weakest either. It’s another Twilight Zone episode, almost beat for beat. Though King may not have realised it when he wrote, it is a very writerly story about the power of language, and how we construct our reality with the language we use. It is about magic words, this time funnelled through a Wang word processor. Tons of writers have covered similar ground, so I don’t think it’s a case of plagiarism at all, especially as King was not necessarily a fan of Twilight Zone if Danse Macabre is anything to go by.
Weirdly, though I do like this story, it pays to think about it in the terms outlined above than thinking about the consequences of the plot. Because if you think about in terms of the plot, as likeable as Hagstrom is written, he does essentially make two people stop existing completely and take his dead brother’s dead wife and son as his own. Which is all kinds of messed up really, as he gets no consequences for his actions which a proper morality tale would deliver.
I know I sound a bit like I will be going on about it a lot, but part of the reason Hagstrom’s wife is quite so awful is her being overweight, another notch to King’s fatphobia. Hagstrom is also our first writer since The Body six books ago in Different Seasons.
The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
Speaking of Different Seasons, we see the return of the story society that appeared in The Breathing Method, this time in a story that feels a bit like a Tales of the Unexpected. These two stories are the only time we ever see the club, and one wonders if King ever intended to return to such a weird, intriguing location considering what hints he gave about it in these stories. It reminds me of The Shop as shown in Firestarter, not in idea but of execution. Introduced as a grand concept that I think King rapidly lost interest in and left to moulder.
Beyond those general vibes and feelings, the story is interesting enough and told well, but perhaps also says why King never revisited the concept as it is generally quite thin, in the same way The Breathing Method was. It’s fun while you read, but doesn’t really leave much of a mark on the mind.
Beachworld
Another rare excursion into science-fiction for King (I think only the third, after The Jaunt earlier and I Am the Doorway in Night Shift), and another great example. With this kind of track record, it’s almost a surprise he doesn’t do more science fiction like this. Its setting of eight thousand years in the future precludes any references to any wider King work.
Having said this, I do really enjoy this one and was one I had a clear memory of before rereading. It was that last image, a broken zombie of a man shoving fistfuls of sand into his mouth that haunted me for a long time after the story’s close.
The Reaper’s Image
This was an interesting one to revisit, as I had no recollection of it at all. Having read it, it’s left almost no imprint either. What promises to be a creepy tale with accompanying cursed history of the DeIver mirror fizzles out without much else. It’s notable one of the shorter stories in the collection, as well as one of the oldest stories too. It feels like there was room to develop left untouched, perhaps by an author constrained by a limit of original publication. I doubt it will linger in the memory this time around either.
Nona
Another one of King’s angry young men stories that crop up occasionally, like Rage, Roadwork, or some of the stories in Night Shift, but this time with a hint of the madness that also plagued the protagonist in the story Jerusalem’s Lot. The story is good, with the central monster of the mind in Nona. Nona is mysterious, with the question of her existence key to understanding or interpreting what is going on inside the unnamed protagonist. Similar to Rage, there is the undercurrent of a man’s anger and impotence linked indelibly with his sexuality, partially driven by a sort of misogyny. Maybe Nona is his female id he is desperate to impress and love, whilst at the same time hating. It’s a full on madonna/whore complex, similar to every female relationship he’s had in his life until this point. The rats are an interesting recurring image, and the one giving birth and eating a spider I think helps understand the protagonists overall view on femininity, its strength and danger that he taps into to commit the atrocities he does in the story. He was not a well man before the story, and his madness only worsens as Nona encourages him. Though the protagonist is unnamed and undescribed, I wonder if he looks similar to Nona at all, a dark mirror to a fractured personality. Would make sense, being placed after The Reaper’s Image. But then again, it’s completely an unreliable narrator kind of story.
The characters are making their way to Castle Rock, popular King destination that it is. They never quite reach there, landing in a graveyard on the way – maybe Jerusalem’s Lot or Chapelwhaite considering what happens? Oddly has similarities with Bram Stoker’s short story Dracula’s Guest. Harlow is also mentioned, a town previously appearing in The Body. There’s also Ace Merril and Vern Tessio making a reappearance in flashbacks from that same story. Because of the way it’s written with a storyteller telling the tale, it’s references to The Body, and it’s explicit setting within a winter, there’s a part of me that wonders if this was intended originally as the Winter story for Different Seasons instead of The Breathing Method. Coupled with the seemingly abandoned storytellers club that features there and earlier in this collection, maybe things just got shuffled around a bit.
For Owen
You wait ages for King to write a poem then two turn up in the same collection! Where Naomi got a whole book written for her (The Eyes of the Dragon), Owen King gets a poem recounting a sweet childhood moment where Stephen walks with his son to school and imagines his classmates as fruits. Its inclusion is perhaps an indulgence, but it’s sweet and adds to the overall texture of the collection. Its absence wouldn’t be missed, but its presence is appreciated.
I’m sure I’ll spend more time talking about Owen when we eventually get to Sleeping Beauties, but I do feel sorry for Joe, who it appears didn’t get a story or poem written just for him.
Survivor Type
King discussed this story in Danse Macabre, describing how he was finding it impossible to sell. It evidently found a home in 1982, having written it five years prior, for which we should be grateful for publishing one of King’s single most outrageously horrible, gruesome and audacious tales, not to mention one of his funniest in a pitch black way. The memory of this one eclipses many other tales around it. Those last few words will either haunt you or fill you with sick glee, and ideally it should do both.
Aside from the comedy, this serves as another one of King’s tales about the consuming nature of addiction. Richard Pine is stranded with the bare essentials and pounds of pure heroin. Yes, there is the practical use of the heroin in the story as painkillers, but his addiction to the drugs, and later his own flesh, may be what causes him to lose out on rescue. It truly is a hell.
The story was adapted, if you can believe, for a Hallowe’en special of Creepshow. Thankfully, it was an animated version.
Uncle Otto’s Truck
An odd story that reads as Grandma’s Footsteps with a derelict truck. The central death from Uncle Otto is creepy and disturbing. It’s hard to think about how a truck is going to be responsible for it, but maybe in much the same way that LeBay haunts Christine, George McCutcheon haunts the truck. But long-term Grandma’s Footsteps with a truck is a little bit silly that King wisely doesn’t really depict. It weirdly reminds me of The Mangler, as another story that only just about gets away with what it’s trying to do with a spooky machine that similarly struggles to get over the sheer bulk of the spooky machine to be that effective. I do think there’s a neat story in there about guilt, but it never quite emerges.
This is a story firmly planted in King County (or as it’s called in the story, Castle County), with references to Derry, Harlow, and Castle Rock, locations that have appeared in numerous other stories. Also, there is Billy Dodd present in the story which due to the Castle Rock connection could link to Frank Dodd, the serial killer from The Dead Zone.
Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)
There is something deeply hilarious about this story. It’s brief and silly, with the highlight being dropping a tarantula into a a quart of chocolate milk. It’s very insubstantial, but it sounds exactly like a sketch show kind of story. In which case, it shouldn’t be a massive surprise to UK readers that the milkman is named Spike (in the next story given the full name of Spike Milligan) who had Irish family. This has to be a reference to Spike Milligan, the famous Irish comedian and nonsense poet. King lived in England during the late 70s, and may well have watched Millligan’s sketch show Q…. Knowing Spike’s brand of alternative comedy, this story perfectly on brand with Spike’s sense of humour.
There’s nothing much further to discuss from this story, so moving swiftly onto…
Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman #2)
In this sequel to the story previous, we get a bit more of a sense of the chaos that Spike causes. It’s implied that he’s the one one responsible for a couple of murders at the beginning of the story, and for influencing another mentioned towards the end. His presence also helps announce the fatal car crash that closes the story out.
With the laundry featuring in this story (and the next too, briefly), there’s a part of me saddened King didn’t slip in a reference to the Blue Ribbon Laundry he’s used previously in his stories (Carrie, Roadwork, The Mangler). He may have forgotten it existed by this point in his career.
It feels with the these two stories couple together similar to the coupling of The Breathing Method and The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands: both starting to dig into a central concept that then doesn’t go anywhere further. I wonder if these were vignettes of something intended to be a larger project that King couldn’t get to work, but had enough to justify publishing separately. They are otherwise fun moments with dark laughs that don’t have much else to say.
Gramma
Honestly, I think this is King with one of his most terrifying stories ever, and definitely of the collection. It highlights his talent for capturing childhood fears and voices, putting us firmly in the mindset of George Bruckner throughout. It’s partly what makes his earlier story of Here There Be Tygers so effective as well as in other stories too numerous to mention here.
On a subtextual level, the fear of the dead is a fear of the greatest unknown. Gramma has literally passed beyond the veil and come back, carrying with her forbidden knowledge, much like the dead in Pet Sematary. Gramma’s legacy is instilling the old ways in the young, ensuring the cycle of abuse continues beyond her death, another disturbing theme bubbling under the surface of this particular story. King when writing about death seems to find his most potent horror when tapping into that universal fear and exploiting the hell out of it.
It was adapted into a film, but perhaps a better filmic exploration of the ideas presented here (in equally terrifying ways) is in Hereditary.
This is another story set in Castle Rock, albeit in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of way. There’s also another overweight gossip present, for those playing their Stephen King bingo of cliche, who appears to be on the phone with Henrietta Dodd, mother to Frank Dodd, the serial killer from The Dead Zone. Hastur and Yog-Sothoth are specifically shouted out, and who’s willing to bet those dread books Gramma has include the Necronomicon and De Vermis Mysteriis (possibly even pilfered from Jerusalem’s Lot a town or two over)?
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet
This feels like King writing out his frustrations in response to the perennial author question of ‘where do you get your ideas?’ by blaming it on the little creatures living inside a typewriter. I can imagine a reading of this beginning light and funny, and as the story progresses the tone getting progressively darker and more melancholy. It also serves as a meditation on King’s own obsessions at this point, discussing addiction and the madness and paranoia that accompanies drug abuse. King must have been aware of his addictions to make this such a key focus of this story especially.
The frame tale of writers and editors (and their spouses) discussing the story feels very true to King’s probable own experiences, and perhaps, in his way, King is answering that perennial author question for his own benefit over any reader’s. I think the story outstays its welcome just a tad, but at least the ending doesn’t go for the cheap twist of revealing the Fornits were real all along, keeping it suitably ambiguous and debatable in both the reader’s and character’s minds.
The Reach
The story that ends the collection has to manage a difficult job. A novel ends a single story; the final story of a collection has to bring a satisfactory ending to its own story, as well as emotional closure to the book as a whole which is tremendously difficult in a collection of twenty-two stories. In his previous collection, he ended with the sublime The Woman in the Room, a deeply personal story. King, wisely I think, repeats the trick here, telling a story that feels personal in a different way. Where The Woman in the Room told a story mined from King’s personal history, this one is a love letter to the land he lives in.
This is Gothic in the traditional sense, where the landscape itself is a character – windswept, rugged, awesome in the truest sense of the word. King carefully crafts his landscape of words, delving into a quiet unassuming corner of his home world. I don’t think it has quite the same emotional heft as The Woman in the Room, but it doesn’t need to be. It would be impossible to adapt not because of the complexity of the story, which it isn’t, nor the complexity of the images, but the language is so incredibly rich that any visual representation could never do the story justice. King is really showing off the powers of his writing. The entire book opens with the phrase that repeats throughout this story ‘Do you love?’ that puts the entire collection into a different context. The assholes, as discussed in the other essay, die because it seems they do not love. Here (and, in a way justifying, Word Processor of the Gods), love is enough to redeem and save. Death is welcomed like an old friend after a life well loved.
Death is the main theme of this story, but treated in the same way it’s spoken of in Peter Pan or Lord of the Rings. It’s the next step in a big adventure, not something to be feared but just the next step. It’s a rare example of an optimistic ghost story, showing there may be hope after all. It’s a great ending to the collection, being emotionally satisfying and putting the whole collection into a new perspective.
And that’s it! For a more general overview of the whole collection, click here.
UP NEXT: It’s time to go into TOP GEAR as we go into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.
Deeper Thoughts for the Horror Inclined 