Night Shift

Night Shift encompasses 20 short stories, some of which go on to become other books or that go along with other works by King. Jerusalem's Lot and Night Surf being the main two.  Jerusalem's Lot ties into Salem's Lot only in name and subject matter, the style and tone are completely different, as well as the time frame which is roughly a century earlier here. (One for the Road is also connected) Night Surf is the first mention of Captain Trips and all fans of the Stand are very familiar with that. This is the second collection of short stories that I read by King, I read Different Seasons first.  I do have to say that while I like several of the stories, it is not my favorite collection by far.  However, there always hidden gems in his collections.

So, to get started, let's go through them one by one.

Jerusalem's Lot - This is the story done in a very Brahm Stoker style with the storytelling done through letters of Charles and the pocket journal of Calvin McCann.  I know that there are several readers who love this story, but I will be honest that it is not my favorite.  I have a hard time being invested in these characters or caring much about them, so I honestly read this one as fast as I could to move on to the next.  The gist of this is that the town of Jerusalem's Lot  Basically this is the story of vampires who took out a whole town and how this impacts the descendent when he finds out about it. Sins of the father is what it makes me think of.  Like I said, not a favorite, so not going to elaborate more.

Graveyard Shift - Bosses are the worst.  That is the message of this story.  Management sucks and the things they ask us to do are ridiculous.  But, we go along with it because we need the extra money or pad to our record, whatever. This story is about a group of guys who work at a fabric plant and are asked to work the Graveyard Shift and help with cleaning out the basement of this factory.  This basement is filled with rats, the work is dirty and terrible, the conditions are worse yet, and the boss is an ass.  One of the workers decides that he just can't take it and the manager anymore, so when they are asked to go down and clear out the subbasement, he makes this manager come along. Unfortunately, this space is full of rats who are none to friendly to invaders in their space.  It does not end happily for anyone is pretty much all you need to know.

Night Surf - This is what I would call an addition to the Stand or maybe the inspiration, don't know exactly. What I do know is it is one I love because of the feeling of it. This story takes place on a beach and is about a group of teenage kids who discover a man in his car who is infected with Captain Trips (terrible flu like disease that wiped out most of the planet) and they decide to burn him on the beach...alive. What I love about this story is the idea that you are one of few left alone in the world. It is your opportunity to then decide what to do to make it better or worse.

I am the Doorway - On my book, this is the cover art, the hand with bandages and eyes all over the hand.  Which is a little freaky for sure. This story is about an astronaut who picked up something either in space or who knows where and this "parasite" comes through his hands in the form of several eyeballs that can not only see through his hands, but can make him do things that he does not want to do, like harm someone else. What fascinates me about this story is the idea that not only can they see (which he in turn can see through their eyes in a weird sort of way) but that he can sense their mind (his mind?) shifting and what they intend to do.  But he has no control over it or his body.  It is even more odd in that he is wheelchair bound, but when they make him do things, that does not matter.  His solution for solving the problem and the subsequent result is one of my favorite endings to a King short story.

The Mangler - Just when you thought it was safe to go to work, the machines eat you!  This story is another favorite and is based on the theory that machines are, or can be, alive. And when that happens, their intentions are not always the best. This takes place in a laundromat and the Mangler is a huge ironing/pressing machine that gets a taste for blood, becomes possessed and decides that one person is not enough. Eventually people try to stop it, good idea gone horribly wrong, and the Mangler breaks free.  Picture that thing running lose on the streets.

The Boogeyman - I hate this story.  I probably liked it fine before I had kids, but now that I have them, and have already lost one, this story is definitely not a favorite.  I am sure this will be multiplied when I get to Pet Semetary.  This story is about a boogeyman that hides in the closet of a family and over the course of several years kills all three of their children in various horrific ways.  Each one can be explained as an accident, but the father knows better.  He is visiting a therapist and working telling him what happened with his kids, and let's just say the therapist is not who he appears to be. Yeah, won't be reading this one again.

Gray Matter - This is what happens when you are a lazy son of a bitch who sits around and drinks too much beer.  You turn into a big, fat, worthless, disgusting slob. Who ruins the lives of everyone around you.

Battleground - I love this story for it is so Twilight Zone and so visual.  A hit man takes out his target and his family retaliates by sending in toy soldiers.

Trucks - I think I remember this being a movie, but called something else. Anyway, imagine what would happen if the trucks and tankers, along with other vehicles who knows, became alive and decided that they were in charge of us.  Not just in charge, but want to eliminate all of us, but those they need to do their bidding.

Sometimes They Come Back - Again, I think that this, or at least this idea, was made into a movie or TV show, but I never saw it. So what if when you were younger some older kids did something terrible to you, something that affected you your whole life? And then as an adult they come back to do it again.

Strawberry Spring - So who is murdering the kids on the college campus? Is it the narrator, is it some other unknown person? I love this as you just never know exactly what is happening and are left to come to your own conclusions. Beautifully crafted and descriptive story.

The Ledge - Very gangster feel to this one. A man whose wife has had an affair with the local tennis pro decides to make a wager with the tennis pro and it involves walking around the Penthouse ledge of a high rise...a ledge that is 5 inches wide and below window level. If he makes it he walks with money, his life, and the wife, if not, well problem solved. Of course, we all know that gangsters are not honorable men.

The Lawnmower Man - Imagine hiring a lawn mowing service to cut your grass, only to discover that the lawnmower runs on its own and the man follows along in the nude and like a goat eats whatever clippings the lawnmower leaves. Grass, twigs, dead animals, etc. And God help you if you try to tell anyone else is what happening or you just may end up being mowed over.

Quitters, Inc. - This is a long standing favorite that again reminds me of a Twilight or Hitchcock.  We all know how addicting cigarettes are, more so than most anything else. So the need to quit and be successful is tremendous. That is where Quitters, Inc. comes in. They have a 98% success rate for all of their clients, while also keeping your weight down. Their methods are very effective, but maybe not the most ethical.

I Know What You Need - Another favorite about a girl at college who meets a boy, a nerdy sort of boy, who claims to know what she needs and gives her the answers to a test. From there he pops up in her life after her boyfriend dies, he comforts her, and she starts falling in love. He seems perfect to her, like the guy who knows the right things to do all the time, what to say, what she likes. Alas, turns out that too good to be true, usually is.

Children of the Corn - I know that this one is a movie and one I watched part of.  Ever since I read this book corn fields have not been the same. This is the story about a town surrounded by corn and a supernatural being that lives in the corn, who the towns people make sacrifice to. Basically anyone older than 19 is sacrificed, all the crazy kids have taken on biblical names and are very extreme in their beliefs. It starts out with a couple that run over a boy, so they happen on the town to report it when they discover that he was murdered and not killed by the car.  The wife wants to leave as she has a bad feeling about the town, the man insists on staying and well, that as they say, is the end of that.  So, the moral of the story is listen to your intuition and your wife.

The Last Rung on the Ladder - This is a heartbreaking story, maybe it is more so for me because in some ways I relate since I had an older brother who I thought would always be there for me. And he was, until he died tragically at 20. This story for me is about how events in our lives shape us and we take different paths from our families, and how if we are not careful, we will lose the ones we love. To me it is also about faith in those we love and the ties that bind between siblings.

The Man Who Loved Flowers - Fun and twisted little story about a man who by all appearances is in love with a woman in spring, and there is nothing better than that. Being in love, the proper thing to do is bring her little gift, like sweets, jewelry, and flowers. So he buys a bouquet of flowers from a street vendor for her, for his love Norma. And as romantic as this is, the rest of Norma's life is not so rosy.

One for the Road - This story is one more piece to the Jerusalem's Lot/Salem's Lot stories. I found this one particularly scary because it takes place in winter and I could just imagine and feel the cold and desperation. The premise of this is a man and his family are traveling from New Jersey to Maine and they take a little side trip on accident into Jerusalem's Lot. Of course, this does not end well for them as we all know that this town is full of Vampires.  I will add this to my increasing list of reasons not to visit Maine.

The Woman in the Room - A sweet sad story about a woman dying of cancer and her son who visits her in the hospital. I think this is a story that most people could relate to if our parents were ill and in a lot of pain.  There is that part of you that wants them around forever, and that other part that wants to help them move on. I wondered while reading this story if King was working through his own feelings with his mother, but I am probably reading too much into it.

So, there ends Night Shift.  Now it is on to The Stand - my favorite!

The Shining

This story seems to most people to be intricately linked with the movie done by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson. For most people, when they think of the Shining, that is what they relate it to (or maybe the TV movie, I don't know).  Personally, I don't really like to watch movies that are based on King's work as rarely does it do it justice.  (Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile, Misery, Stand, and Dolores Claiborne are the exceptions and honestly most people don't even realize those are Stephen King books when I mention them). There is no "All work and no play" or "Here's Johnny!" in the book.

Anyway, for me the Shining is completely different from the movie.  There is no "All work and no play" or "Here's Johnny!" in the book for example. And sure there are similarities, but there is so much more to this book than just a man going crazy and wanting to kill his family.  This is the story of our demons and how we are never free from them, how easy it is to keep returning to the things we know that are bad for us. Jack Torrance is a man who cannot control his temper very well and who is an alcoholic, not surprising his father was an alcoholic as well. Jack is a writer who had a few successful stories published and had a teaching job, until he lost his temper and beat up a kid. He is now forced to take his wife Wendy and their son Danny (Doc) to Colorado where one of his fellow teachers got him a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel.

The problem is the Overlook Hotel is possessed and Danny has the "Shine" or the ability to see an feel things normal people cannot. Because of this ability the hotel wants Danny and it will use his father to get him.  I love this book because King does such a great job of making you feel cold, isolated, and terrified all at the same time. The idea of being alone in a massive hotel all winter, snowed in without any way out or real ability to communicate is terrifying.  Then on top of it you add the fact that the hotel is doing things to your loved ones and making them lose their sanity.

What this book has made me think about the past 4 days since I finished it, and yes it has stayed with me that long, is that each of us could be Jack Torrance.  We all have inner demons that we struggle with all the time. And while I believe that nothing would make me harm my children or husband, I also believe that there is a lot more that goes on in this world than I could ever hope to understand.

Rage

Rage is the first Richard Bachman book published by King under his pseudonym. This is a story he wrote years earlier and that went in his "trunk" to be brought out, or not, someday.  It is a very interesting story about a teenage boy who has been bullied by his father, ignored by his peers, and shit on by life. One day he fights back by bringing a gun to school, which he uses to murder two teachers and hold hostage a classroom full of his peers. The most interesting part of this book to me is the use of stories, the stories that everyone has that are embarrassing or in some way personally eventful, by Charlie and eventually those in the class.  The telling of these stories causes the students over the course of the morning to turn from being scared of Charlie to supporting and defending him.

All but Ted that is. For there is always the nemesis that we must face in some way, the monster we must destroy if we are to save ourselves. For Charlie there are several of those, his father, the principal, the psychiatrist he had been seeing, and Ted. What this story tells me is that some people never have the chance, their circumstances in life combine with that switch that just did not flip in their brains and they turn out to be a sociopath. That, unfortunately, is Charlie.  The brilliant thing that King did with this book in my opinion is make me feel a deep connection and sense of empathy for Charlie.  In the end, I was rooting for him too.

I read this in the Bachman Books collection, which contains Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man.  The cool thing with this book is it also has an introduction by King on why he wrote as Bachman, what prompted him to do it.  I found this very insightful as I am not that person who reads every interview on King, in fact I think I read one and that was on his favorite movie lines.  I prefer to read what he writes and leave his personal life or his motivation to him. In my mind, it is not really my business. My business is to read, enjoy, and what I get out of it, is what I get out of it.

But, the part about his introduction that amazes me is where he mentions that he thought he could write the books, publish them, and no one would know it was him. Which he realized is pretty ridiculous, of course the Constant Readers would know. I always think of Richard Bachman as Stephen King in a really bad mood. The books are not as scary or gory (I dislike that word, but nothing else comes to mind). They rarely end happily. They most definitely feel like King in style and cadence. And most of the time they are terrifying because the horror is much closer to reality. Personally, I am sad that Bachman died, I kind of like the grumpy bastard.

Salem's Lot

Salem's Lot (short for Jerusalem's Lot) is the story of a small town in Maine (of course) that is haunted by an event that happened many years earlier and how this event brings evil to the town again. Years before the story takes place a man in town who lived in the spooky house on the hill killed his wife and hung himself. The house stood empty for many years until two mysterious gentlemen buy the house and a local shop in town where they sell antiques. The one man Straker is tall, charming, and creepy.  The second man, Kurt Barlow, is rarely seen as he seems to be always away on "business", however as the story moves along you come to realize that he is a vampire and is the harbinger of evil.

The main characters are Ben Mears, an author and widower, and Susan Norton a local girl who becomes involved with Ben. As always, there is an amazing supporting cast of characters that you don't want to get too emotionally involved with as you know nothing good will come to them. Ben comes to town about the same time as Straker and Barlow, and actually hoped to rent the Marsten house, but ended up at the local boarding house instead. He is returning to the town from his childhood as he wants to write a book based on the Marsten house.  He had a scary experience with that house as a child and it has haunted him ever since.

The story unfolds with strange events happening in the town.  First a dog is hung on the cemetery gates, next a little boy goes missing and his brother becomes very sick with anemia.  Then the brother dies. Then the local gravedigger becomes very sick and he dies. Each time the person dies, the body disappears from the morgue or the cemetery. The local teacher Matt Burke becomes friends with Ben and the two of them are the first to put together the theory about the vampires. They involve Matt's doctor Jim Cody, along with Susan. Soon a boy, Mark Petrie is also involved as well as Father Callahan.

I won't go through the whole plot, but let's just say that people underestimate the situation, some make very bad decisions and very few people make it out alive. The last 100 pages were by far the most creepy for me and I could not wait to get through it at that point.  I really finished this about 4 days ago, but it has made me do some serious thinking about confession and the role of faith and hope in how we live out our daily lives. The first time I read this, is was pretty forgettable for me, but now I find myself thinking about it over and over. I doubt it will ever be a favorite however, there are just too many characters for that.

Now on to Rage and The Shining.