23. Skeleton Crew

By Stephen King

 

9. The Lottery and Other Short Stories

By Shirley Jackson

2. The King in Yellow

By Robert W. Chambers

Saw this hardcover edition while browsing Walden Pond Books in   Oakland.  We (the Purves-Brebner clan) were in the area to pick up a Christmas tree at Brent's near the Grand Lake Theatre and had also consumed some delicious Asian-inspired pastries at Bake Sum.

So yes, I saw The King in Yellow and got Olman to pick it up for me as a Xmas present.  I also found a used copy of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, which happened to be on Olman's list.  Too bad for him though, finders keepers!
I first heard about The King in Yellow as a literary influence on True Detective S1, and it's been on my list ever since.  

Recently, I acquired a HP Lovecraft box set under purely consumeristic circumstances. I was taking advantage of Black Friday sales to do some early Xmas shopping and Indigo had a sale on Kpop albums, which is what my daughter is into collecting now.  Albums qualify for shipping, but I needed another $12 to reach the minimum amount for free shipping.  I saw that certain paperback box sets were half price so I got a HP Lovecraft box set for only $12.50 and as a minor horror buff, I've always been curious about his work.  Anyway, I was aware that author Robert Chambers was an early influence on Lovecraft, so I thought it was a nice coincidence when I saw this nice Pushkin Press edition from 2017 at Walden Books.

The King in Yellow was my first completed book in 2026 (not counting The Antifa Comic Book) and I was able to finish it within a few days.  It's really a collection of four short stories.  The original 1895 publication contained more stories but apparently it's just the first four that are thematically connected by a cursed play called 'The King in Yellow' which somehow ends up in the hands of various characters. When someone reads the second act, terrible things befall them, ie. they start losing touch with reality and become haunted by a ruined, mythical city called Carcosa, unwittingly serving a cult-like deity known only as Hastur, the Yellow King.  Apparently, the world of Carcosa was inspired by Ambrose Pierce. 

The first and probably best story was "The Repairer of Reputations".  The setting is a dystopic 1920s America that has become quite militaristic and Randian (before Ayn Rand and the military-industrial complex came about).  People of Jewish descent and other undesirable foreigners have been deported and a state has been established for African-Americans. The narrator, Hildred Castaigne, observes the official opening of a "Lethal Chambers" at a public park in Manhattan, for anyone who wants to painlessly end their life so as not be a burden on society.  We soon learn that our dear Hildred is not quite right in the head.  Not only had he suffered a head injury from a fall, he had also been committed for a period of time inside an asylum.  At some point he had also read "The King in Yellow" and often visits the creepy Repairer himself, a Yellow King devotee who happens to live above the store that's run by the father of his brother's fiancée.  I like the part when Hildred thought he was alone inside his shabby apartment admiring himself in mirror as he wore his golden crown but when his brother came upon him, he was really just wearing a cheap, dime-store trinket. The reader is basically plunged inside the unraveling mind of a man who's becoming more and more paranoid and deranged until he commits a terrible act.

As a Goodreads reviewer wrote: it is a bracing and imaginative bit of darkness on the page and, to me at least, quite wonderful. the style is so breezy, the pacing so brisk, the imagination so fertile and so oddly modern, the experience was pure pleasure. it is hard to believe that this story was written over a 100 years ago.

The next story, "The Mask", was ok and probably my least favourite as it was more melo-dramatic than creepy or chilling.  It takes place in Paris and involves a love triangle between young painter named Alec, a sculptor and would-be alchemist named Boris, and their love interest, Genevieve.  Boris has discovered or created a magical solution that can transform any organic object or living thing into lightly veined white marble.  It's unclear how the golden liquid came about, but it's strongly implied that it came from the same world that brought about "The King in Yellow".  Tragedy soon befalls the hapless trio. 

Next was "In the Court of the Dragon", also set in Paris, about a man pursued by a sinister church organist who is after his soul.  That pretty much sums up what is probably the shortest of the four stories and the least developed.

Last was "The Yellow Sign" and we're back in Manhattan (Greenwich Village) in "contemporary" times, ie. the 1890s. This time, an artist and his model are troubled by a sinister churchyard watchman who resembles a "plump white grave-worm".  Tessie keeps having the same recurring dream where she sees Scott lying inside a funeral casket being taken away by a horse-drawn carriage.  As their relationship develops, Tessie gives Scott "a clasp of black onyx, on which was inlaid a curious symbol or a letter in gold", which she happened to find one day near Battery Park.  Then soon after, Scott finds The King in Yellow in his collection, "a book bound in serpent skin, standing in a corner of the top shelf of the last bookcase." It is, inexplicably, "The King in Yellow", a book he has studiously avoided: "If I ever had had any curiosity to read it, the awful tragedy of young Castaigne, whom I knew, prevented me from exploring its wicked pages."

So we have come full circle, and our two young lovers are doomed towards a sad demise. This wiki site has a good plot summary.

The King in Yellow collection was an enjoyable read.  I did not expect it to be so readable.  TBH, I expected it to be less accessible and weirder, because after all, The King in Yellow is supposedly a classic example of weird fiction.  The stories were macabre in tone, full of creeping dread and gothic romanticism, with characters who are often artists or decadents, inhabitants of the demi-monde.  But the supernatural or occult references were very subtle and minimal.  This was not a bad thing, just not what I expected.  Still, very glad I read this.
 

4. Julia

By Peter Straub

I had assumed the 1975 film, The Haunting of Julia, would be hard to find, but to my surprise it appeared on Tubi last autumn.  I really liked it.  The opening credits revealed that it was adapted from a novel by Peter Straub, which I promptly ordered (to arrive at my MILs as it’s much easier to find vintage books in the US).  Even Olman remarked on the cool cover.  Turned out this was Peter Straub’s first novel.  I had read Ghost Story a long time ago, so long ago that it didn’t even have its own entry.

I can see how Straub had perfected his craft after he had published Julia because I found Ghost Story to be a very effective supernatural horror novel.

 

Julia is modern gothic with a major slathering of maternal horror (right up my alley).  There’s even a séance as Julia’s sister-in-law Lily belongs to an informal spiritualist group.  Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

The titular character is an American heiress in London who has been struggling with the aftermath of her daughter’s death. The novel begins with Julia shortly after being released from hospital (we later learn her husband Magnus had committed her).  Julia has just purchased an expensive house near Holland Park in Kensington and is about to move in.. without Magnus. There's a lot of unresolved issues in their marriage, to say the least. For one, Julia blames Magnus for the death of their nine year old daughter, Kate.  She views her leaving him as a separation while Magnus has never given his blessing on the matter and tries to convince her to come back.

 

We learn later how Kate died – from choking on a piece of meat and from Julia’s desperate attempt at a botched tracheostomy.  It's interesting to note that the Heimlich maneuver may not have been common knowledge at that time (the novel was published in 1975). 

 

Right away, there's something off about the house on 25 Ilchester Place. Even though London was experiencing an unusually hot summer, the heat is always cranked way up, even though Julia was sure she had turned it off.  Later in the narrative, as the crazy shit ramps up, the wallpaper starts peeling and the furniture begin to warp under the stifling heat, which I thought was a nice touch.

 

But at the start, the strange occurrences are very minimal, ie. Julia keeps seeing a girl who looks so much like her dead daughter, hearing strange sounds in the night, etc. That is, until the fateful night of the séance, when the medium Mrs Fludd detects a malevolent entity in Julia’s house.  Mrs Fludd tells Julia she must leave the house, move back to the States even, though she won’t say why -- a convenient plot device as this prompts Julia to investigate the history of the house, and she discovers some terrible things.  Of course, no one else believes an evil entity is haunting Julia and whoever does simply ends up getting killed!

 

The book makes a connection between Julia and the previous homeowner, Heather Rudge, which was omitted in the film adaptation.  Both women are American, and both had daughters who died by their mother’s hand.  Julia and Kate had a loving relationship while Heather’s relationship with Olivia was somewhat fraught, shall we way, due to the kid being a sadistic psychopath!  This explains Julia’s inexplicable desire to purchase the house (the malevolent spirit of Olivia was exerting its influence on her).  In the film, Julia's impulsive purchase of the house was a way to liberate herself from her controlling husband.

 

There’s also another connection in the novel that's not covered in the film.  When Magnus was a young bachelor, he was Heather’s lover, and the book strongly implies that Magnus had fathered Olivia.  This makes sense in terms of a motive to explain why the vengeful spirit of Olivia has set her sights on Julia (and why Kate and Olivia look so much alike). In the movie, the spirit was simply evil because Olivia was a psychopathic bitch who enjoyed torturing little kids when she was alive and now it wants to drive Julia insane.

 

Some other creative differences between movie vs book:

 

The movie is called The Haunting of Julia (or Full Circle in the UK) – both of which are better titles than the one given to the novel.

 

In the movie, Mark is a working-class hipster who’s been friend-zoned by Julia (not the adopted black-sheep brother of Magnus and Lily).  In the movie, Mark is an ally of Julia and ends up being electrocuted by an antique lamp while he’s taking a bath.  In the book, Julia harbors an attraction to Mark, her brother-in-law, and turns to him for refuge when she finds out that the middle-aged members of Olivia’s old gang have been murdered.  Mark ends up leaving Julia in an even more fragile mental state after he rapes her and leaves her alone in his shabby apartment.  The Lofting siblings are a rather despicable lot.

 

The movie also sets the narrative during autumn/winter, which I found much more fitting in terms of a modern gothic atmosphere (and I loved how Mia Farrow wore lots of woolens).  I can see why Straub wanted an unusually hot summer with the heat, like the entity, exerting an oppressive force on Julia, but I prefer a more chilly autumnal setting. 

The movie had an ambiguous ending (spoiler alert!).  Was Julia really haunted, or was it all due to mental deterioration? I really thought that when Julia opened her arms, Olivia was going to possess her, as the film seemed to be setting it up for that. Seeing Julia dead with her throat slit and the credits rolling with her slumped in the armchair, I didn't know what to think. Who ended her life? Was it the ghost or Julia herself?

According to Kier-La Janisse, "the ghost's murderous hands are in actuality the protagonist's own". So was it Julia who had killed her husband then, because she blamed him for their daughter's death? Did Julia really kill herself out of guilt and grief? The lack of historical context between Julia and Olivia in the film made it seem that Julia’s demise was mainly due to her mental disintegration.

In the book, we see how Olivia’s power over Julia grows and as Julia comes to the dawning realization that she was the one who killed Kate, she climbs to the roof of the house on 25 Ilchester Place and plummets to her death.  The ending of the novel was rather sudden and disappointing (see next paragraph), so I much prefer the film’s ambigious ending over the book.

 

In the movie, Magnus dies when he sneaks into Julia’s house (something causes him to fall down the stairs to the basement and his throat gets cut by a broken bottle).  In the book, Magnus lives.  In fact, Mark takes off for California, while Magnus and Lily end up with Julia’s money after her death and they (and the ghost) get everything they want.  Evil triumphs!

 

Here’s an apt summary of Peter Straub’s Julia which also encapsulates my own feelings about the ending:

Julia is a weak, easily-led heiress (always a good combo) who falls under Magnus’s spell, marries him, and endures a semi-abusive marriage for about 10 years. They both love their daughter, who dies tragically, leaving Julia to run away from the shambles of her life. She buys a house that’s haunted by the spirit of a little girl, and bad things start happening. Magnus’s family is terrible – his brother and sister try to stay on Julia’s good side to stay close to her money. The brother tries to sleep with her, the sister tries to talk her into going back to Magnus. The build-up is great. Things start swirling around, getting more eerie and more dangerous, Julia finally convinced that she’s not losing her mind and there really are spirits in the house. I kept waiting for her to triumph, to stop Magnus, to put the ghosts to rest, to solve the puzzle. Instead, she gets drugged and raped by Magnus’s brother, killed by the ghost, and the in-laws get all her money. WHAT.

I liked the movie better.

 

3. The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

By Kiersten White

A few Goodread reviews mentioned how it was recommended to have some knowledge of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein (2018) has many nods to the original source material. Here's one review: 

“The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein is, essentially, a retelling of Frankenstein from the perspective of Elizabeth - an orphan taken in by the Frankenstein family and later the fiancée of Victor. I think this book will work much better for those familiar with the original as it gives a lot of nods to the story. It's hard to appreciate some of the clever twists the author takes without knowing what it's based on.

 

Through her eyes, the tortured genius of Victor becomes a sometimes frightening thing, and yet nothing is as terrifying as being a woman in 18th Century Europe. The stifling constraints placed on women and their ambitions are palpable as the story unfolds. It was so easy for a woman to be dismissed as whiny or silly, or worse-- mad.

When Victor goes missing in Ingolstadt and writes no letters, Elizabeth begins to track him down. Her investigation leads her down dark paths to charnel houses and secret laboratories. What has Victor been up to? Knowing the truth didn't take anything away from reading. In fact, it made those mysterious dark shadows all the creepier.

This story largely fills in gaps in the original tale, while shedding a completely new light on it. It's smart how Kiersten White has managed to keep a lot the same, while also creating a bigger and very different-looking picture.

The original Frankenstein calls into question what it really means to be a monster and, indeed, who the real monsters are. I think White might have answered that question.”

 

I had read Shelley’s Frankenstein when I was in my late teens/early twenties, and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to revisit the classic 1818 novel, so like the lazy, yet resourcefully efficient, reader that I am, I borrowed the graphic novel version to quicky refresh my memory instead! 

 

According to Wikipedia, Elizabeth Lavenza and Victor Frankenstein were first cousins in the original edition.  In the revised third edition (1831), Elizabeth was a non-relation adopted by the Frankenstein family.  According to the graphic novel, Elizabeth was portrayed as a saint, a self-sacrificing two-dimensional young woman who was loved by the Frankenstein family.  In The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, she is naturally given much more depth as the Frankenstein narrative is retold entirely from her perspective, and there is a LOT more going on behind her innocent façade.  In fact, she’s a calculating survivor who’s determined to marry Victor, not because of love, but because it was her best option as an orphaned young woman in the 19^th century.

 

I’m going to rely on another Goodreads review to summarize how I felt, as it really does save me a lot of time, and time is precious right now!

“I do not think I expected one of the best books I read this year to be a retelling of Frankenstein where it’s not just about the nature of monstrousness, but about the power of women working together and escaping an abusive relationship, with intoxicating writing and a morally grey lady as the protagonist.

 

I absolutely loved the way Kiersten White wrote the abusive relationship at the heart of this - we see the fucked-up nature of that relationship long before Elizabeth does, but it never feels as if Elizabeth “should’ve known better.” In every moment, she has full audience sympathy - in every moment, even if I hated her actions, I understood her. The narrative puts you so far into her mind that it is impossible to look away and it is glorious.

I think the focus on agency within a narrative should be clear, but I really do want to say - this is why retellings are my favorite. Taking a book that is about the essential nature of humanity from the perspective of a man and flipping its themes solidly is something I will always be in full support of - the meta-textuality of the narrative is absolutely brilliant. And it’s not just about one woman - it’s about the relationships between women and the strength found in them. Mary, Justine, and Elizabeth form such fantastic relationships, and each feels so fully-formed in a way they may not have in the original narrative.”

I will add that, although there were plenty of hints revealing what a narcissistic psychopath Victor was, the twist did take me a little by surprise, and I loved that.  I think part of it was due to re-reading the graphic novel that was based on the original novel.  I kept expecting Frankenstein the monster to kill Elizabeth, and I kept thinking that the monster was also responsible for the deaths of Victor’s little brother William and of the servant Justine, but that was not the case at all.   I think if I hadn't read the graphic novel, I might've clued in sooner, but that's fine, I think I preferred being taken by surprise.

 

Kiersten White did an excellent job setting up the plot twist, and not only that, the denouement was really quite exciting and satisfying.  Mary, the daughter of the book shop owner in Ingolstadt, also has a pivotal role in the denouement, and I’m sure her name is a nod to Shelly.  To be sure, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein was one of my favourite reads of the year so far.  Highly recommended!

 

p.s. This is yet another winner/recommendation from Monster, She Wrote ! 

1. When Darkness Loves Us

By Elizabeth Engstrom

I first heard of Elizabeth Engstrom in Monster, She Wrote where she was featured in a chapter titled “Monstrosity in the Mundane".

 

Her bio is interesting. Born Betsy Lynn Gutzmer, Engstrom didn’t start writing seriously until well into her thirties when she signed up for a writing workshop in Hawaii. She had lived a full life – she acquired a Masters degree in applied theology and had her own advertising agency, which she sold to embark on a career in fiction writing.  She was also a wife and mother.

 

I was happy to find a new copy of When Darkness Loves Us when I ordered via Abes Books and didn’t really clue into the fact that it was a special reissue when Olman saw me reading it and asked, is that a Paperbacks from Hell?  Turns out When Darkness Loves Us was featured in Grady Hendrix’s book, Paperbacks from Hell.  Looks like Hendrix has given some forgotten or out of print horror books a second life.

 

The reissue even features the cover art by Jill Bauman that graced the cover of the original 1986 Tor paperback.  After finishing the book, I realize how fitting the illustration was -- an old-fashioned doll with a cracked face and a gaping hole where the nose had been broken off.

 

I found it interesting that in Monster, She Wrote, Kröger and Anderson omitted the fact that before Engstrom became a wife, mother and writer, she was a recovered alcoholic.  In Hendrix’s intro, he simply stated that for ten years, Gutzmer was a drunk.  How Engstrom described her past life gave some interesting insight into the kind of stories she wrote:

“I hung with the underbelly of society”, she says. “And the worse they were, they better I felt about myself. I had friends in really low places, and they were the people I was comfortable with. No real identity, living in the shadows, only coming out at night.”

 

According to Hendrix, in Engstrom’s stories, monsters are created, not born.  Monsters also lurk among us and within us.

 

I really wanted to like When Darkness Loves Us.  It was one of the first stories she had developed when she attended Theodore Sturgeon’ workshop.  The premise was interesting, written like a dark fairy tale and barely the length of a novella, it's not more than sixty-odd pages long.  It begins with pregnant sixteen year old Sally Ann, lustfully admiring her young husband from afar while he’s driving a tractor out on their farm.  She decides to explore an abandoned tunnel and ends up being trapped underground for many years.

 

Sally Ann learns to survive in constant darkness, and gives birth to her son (his name is Clint!), who grows up in the cave without ever seeing daylight.  When he’s old enough to be on his own, Sally renews her desire to go to the top, even though her son tries to convince her to stay.  At this point, I stopped reading and tried to imagine where Engstrom was going to go with this.  I imagined Sally would somehow escape and be discovered by her family.  Her reunion with her husband would probably have unexpected consequences, but she would end up abandoning her son.  Even though Clint never wanted to leave the cave, he goes up top in search of his mother.  He becomes the monster in the cave who terrorizes Sally Ann and her family, but only during the night because the sunlight frightens him.

 

But the actual story is much darker and twisted.  The real horror is not being fully welcomed back by your own family because they thought you were dead and have moved on.  On top of that, you’ve become a shrunken twisted version of yourself with missing teeth and blackened lips.

 

I felt that the abrupt shift in POV to Sally’s son when he’s left alone in the darkness didn’t work for me.  Even though it was disturbing to read his innermost thoughts and actions, I felt that this shift was primarily done to shock the viewer with his dark fantasies.  I felt the story would have been stronger had it kept the focus on Sally Ann as it was her story.  Basically, Sally Ann soon learns that she had been gone for twenty years!  So her son wasn't a boy but a man!  Her less attractive sister ended up marrying her husband and they have children of her own.  Sally Ann ends up kidnapping her youngest niece and brings her back to the caves to introduce to her 20 year old son!  

 

The blurb at the back of the book was also terribly written and inaccurate:  Sally Ann and Martha. Two women, searching for love. Finding terror.

 

It made it seem that both Sally Ann and Martha are in the same story.  I thought that Beauty Is… was the name of a new chapter that would continue from When Darkness Loves Us because the last chapter did not have a proper ending.  When I realized it was an entirely different story, I had to re-adjust my expectations.

 

Compared to When Darkness Loves Us, Beauty Is… was 150 pages, more than double the length.

 

Beauty Is… wasn’t as creepy, but it was a good slow-burner and much more effective than When Darkness… I felt that the order should’ve been reversed.  Beauty Is… was the stronger and more developed story.  What they have in common is the rural setting.  Both protagonists grew up on the farm and are either innocent or naïve to the ways of the world before they become damaged by a traumatic event or circumstance.

 

In Beauty Is…, Martha is a middle-aged simpleton living alone in the farmhouse she grew up in.  She goes into town to get some supplies and in her interactions with the townsfolk, it seems that they all look out for her.  The chapters alternate between Martha and her mother Fern, who like Sally Ann, also married a farmer at a young age.  Shortly into her marriage, Fern discovered she has the gift of healing, when she saves the life of a neighbour who had a terrible accident.  Fern soon becomes revered and respected as the town healer, but Harry, her god-fearing husband is suspicious of her gifts, as he thinks that all this good fortune is going to come back and bite them.  Sure enough, their daughter Martha is born without a nose.  Fern loves her anyway but Harry is frightened and disgusted by the sight of his baby.  The real horror is not Martha’s deformity, but how she is treated by her small-minded, heartless father.  As the narrative unfolds, we learn that Martha was not always “simple”.  Something traumatic happened to Martha as a child when Fern had to help someone in an emergency and Martha was left alone with her father.

 

Once you figure out the theme of Beauty Is…, you can see some of the heavy-handedness of the storytelling.  It was still an interesting yet underwhelming read.  Personally, I found the author’s life more fascinating than her works of fiction.

22. Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel

By Mary Shelley (Published 2009 by Classical Comics)

I plan to read The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein in the very near future and heard that author Kiersten White makes many references to Mary Shelley’s classic novel.  I had read Frankenstein ages ago, either in my teens or twenties, and didn’t want to re-read it again, so I had the brilliant idea of borrowing the graphic novel version from the library. 

 

I didn’t realize until I had finished it that there were two versions of the graphic novel:  Original Text and Quick Text.  Thankfully, I had read the version with the original, though still abridged, text.  Published in 2009, the graphic novel may be a little hard to find now.

 

I couldn’t relate to how incredibly stupid and self-centred Victor Frankenstein was.  I understand the major theme is about the folly of man, but still…

 

I suppose this mirrors life because in the real world, since time immemorial, or at least during humanity’s patriarchal history, there have been plenty of brilliant men who have made incredible innovations, but through some terrible weakness, ie. short-sightedness, greed, narcissism, etc. the invention had wrought more damage than good.  This is the core lesson of Frankenstein. 

It’s an epic tragedy.

 

In the source text, the character of Elizabeth Lanza is rather thinly drawn.  She loves Victor dearly, has a generous heart, and is self-sacrificing.  And she dies by the monster’s hands.  Apparently, the Elizabeth in Kiersten White’s retelling is not only a survivor, but is highly intelligent and calculating.   In a way, I’m glad I re-read the Frankenstein graphic novel as it not only heightened my enjoyment of The Dark Descent..., it was a factor in not seeing how the plot in White’s retelling would play out. 

20. Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction

By Lisa Kröger and Melanie Anderson

During the 2020 pandemic, Olman ordered a bunch of books from Argo because he wanted to support a local indie bookshop.
 
I think he had spotted Monster, She Wrote and thought it'd be right up my wheelhouse.  It took me a while to realize this, but it turned out he was right!   At first, I only read the chapters of authors I was already familiar with, ie. Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Sarah Waters, etc.  It was only later when I started reading the book from start to finish that I discovered a treasure trove of new authors.  This also explains why I finally finished it in 2024, as I would read a chapter in between my "regular" reading routine.
 
Even though Monster, She Wrote gives a general overview of sorts, it also pays tribute to the trailblazing women writers of horror and science fiction of the past four centuries starting with the Gothic fiction of Mary Cavendish and Mary Shelley to contemporary award-winners Helen Oyeyemi and Emily St. John Mandel.  Yet what makes this book special is that Kröger and Anderson also shine a light on more obscure and/or overlooked writers, like Ruby Jean Jensen, Elizabeth Engstrom and Kathe Koja.
 
The authors may be academics, but Monster, She Wrote is written in an easy, informal yet informational style with lots of pop-cultural references.  Each featured author is organized by subgenre, gets a brief life history, their better known works (with brief descriptions), recommended reads and a quote. I sat updating my 'to read' list as I went through each author, picking up almost several new books to check out!   
 
Monster, She Wrote is a keeper for sure.  I have my first wave of authors I want to read asap but there will definitely be a second wave as I delve into works by other featured writers.
 
p.s. I've already started checking off my list by:

•     borrowing the graphic novelThrough The Woods from the library
•     purchasing a reprint of Elizabeth Engstrom's When Darkness Loves Us
•     purchasing a reprint of Kathe Koja's The Cipher

15. Night Shift

By Stephen King

I believe I had picked up this copy of Night Shift at Encore Books back in March.  We visited the Montreal Pinball Arcade for the first time and had a great time.  They had a special Family Friday Funday during spring break. We had a rental car as we’d visited a cabane á sucre and thought we’d make a day of it in NDG.  After the arcade, we found a nearby restaurant to have dinner (the well-liked neighbourhood Korean joint Hwang Kum).  There was a bit of a wait, so I think that’s how we ended up at Encore Books & Records while we were waiting to get a table.

Even though Night Shift was the only book I bought there, Encore was the kind of secondhand bookstore I wish we had in our own  neighbourhood.  It was just a mass market paperback for $3.95 (the Paragraphe sticker was still stuck on the back for $12.99 so it was a deal!), but it can be tricky finding early Stephen King books that are in good used condition.

Believe it or not, this is my first time reading the short stories of Stephen King.  I had brought it to Vancouver during our summer visit and soon confirmed how the short fiction format and King’s flair for the macabre proved to be perfect for intermittent reading breaks.  I even read Night Shift on the beach which I rarely do (though I try).

I was impressed with “Jerusalem’s Lot” because it was my first time reading a “period piece” of King’s and was surprised at how believable it was.  When he writes in a contemporary setting, he has a familiar style of writing that’s recognizably his, but in "Jerusalem’s Lot", he really affects a more classic style, weaving a story in epistolary form, no less.  It was an effectively creepy gothic tale with occult elements.

“Graveyard Shift” was delightfully nasty and fun.  A rag tag group of men are hired for a graveyard shift to clean up an abandoned textile mill.  As they make their way deep down into the sub-level basement, they encounter mutant ROUS’s!

“Night Surf” was a precursor to The Stand, as it portrays a group of former college students who survived a deadly flu-like virus known as A6 or “Captain Trips”.  It was kind of meh, as there’s some self-involved drama as these twenty-somethings hang out at the beach and ponder what to do if they’re truly the last survivors of a plague that may have wiped out most of humanity.  I barely remember it (as I write my review several months later).

I don’t remember much of “I Am the Doorway” either, but as I read through the plot summary, I realize it had a really cool premise about a disabled astronaut who had been exposed to an alien mutagen during his last voyage.  This alien presence gradually takes over his body in a cool way.

Of course, it’s hard to forget “The Mangler”, about a haunted industrial laundry press machine! After a series of gruesome deaths at the Blue Ribbon Laundry involving “the Mangler”, a police detective enlists a professor with knowledge of the occult, who hypothesizes that through a confluence of unrelated events, the mangler had incidentally consumed several ingredients (the blood of a virginal victim; the blood of a bat nesting in the building; and horse's hoof from a container of Jell-O in a bag lunch) that are commonly used in occult rituals, inadvertently summoning a demon that has now possessed the mangler. To remove it, Hunton and Jackson prepare to exorcise the machine and then crazy shit happens!

When I got to “The Boogeyman”, I realized that the 2023 movie I watched during a flight was a loose adaptation of this story, which was about “how toxic masculinity was as much of a factor that contributed to the demise of Lester Billings' kids as The Boogeyman himself. Lester's show of toughness and tough love was really a facade for his cowardice and incompetence as a protector of his children.”

“Gray Matter” involves a group of men who deliver beer to a local guy during a winter storm. Richie has become a bit of a recluse after a serious work injury and was given lifetime worker’s comp.  Unbeknownst to his fellow townsfolk, Richie drank a bad batch of beer some time ago and has mutated into a massive fungal creature-like abomination that hates sunlight.  Even though he was addicted to warm beer, he has since graduated to cats and now people!

“Battleground” is one that Olman really remembered and enjoyed.  It’s also short and sweet. A professional hit man named Renshaw just finished a job that involved ending a toy-maker and picks up a package that was delivered to his apartment building.  When he gets home to his penthouse, he opens it to find a toy-sized G.I. Joe Vietnam Footlocker containing 20 infantrymen, 2 helicopters, 2 BAR men, 2 bazooka men, 2 medics, 4 jeeps.  Renshaw soon learns that these toy soldiers are alive and their weapons, albeit in miniature form, actually work and !  They also have a mission: to kill Renshaw!  Thus, Renshaw’s penthouse becomes a battleground of life and death! 

And “Trucks”!  “Trucks” was thrillingly awesome.  It’s like Skynet but with all the car and trucks in the world inexplicably becoming self-aware and proceeding to destroy every human being in sight.  The story focuses on a handful of strangers who find themselves trapped inside a truck stop as semi-trailers menacingly prowl the parking area and freeway looking to smash and flatten anything in human form.

“Trucks” totally reminded me of Steven Spielberg’s 1971 film Duel.  Sure enough, I learned that “Trucks” (1973) was indeed inspired by Duel, which is Stephen King’s fave Spielberg film as he loves movies with trucks in it.  Duel in turn was based on a short story by Richard Matheson. What’s more, Maximum Overdrive was based on Trucks (I ended up watching it on Tubi) and the only movie directed by Stephen King.  It was a flop and critically panned, but I enjoyed it.

“Sometimes They Come Back” is about a high school teacher (Jim Norman) who becomes haunted by a triad of greasers who had bullied him as a kid and stabbed his brother to death.  Haunted isn’t the right word as the bullies seem to come back to life.  One of them even joins his class as a student.  After they kill a few people, including Jim’s wife, he acquires a book called Raising Demons, that helps him to summon a demon, as he obvs needs supernatural intervention in dispatching the undead greasers.  Pretty classic yet improbably premise but it made a nice tale.

“Strawberry Spring” is told from the POV of an unnamed narrator as he nostalgically recalls a period in his life when he was a college student in 1968. A “false” spring brought in a thick fog that enveloped the town at night, providing perfect cover for a serial killer called “Springheel Jack”.  Several female students had been murdered and the narrator recalled the feelings of fear and hysteria on campus.  There were false alarms, a suspect being arrested, but another student was murdered while the suspect was in jail.  Then the killings stopped as soon as the fog left.  Eight years later, the Strawberry Spring returned and a body of a woman was found.  The narrator’s wife was upset at him for not coming home the night before.  She suspects he’s cheating on her, but he really can’t remember where he was.  It becomes apparent that the narrator has been the killer all along with very selective memory lapses.  This story was ok as I kind of saw this coming.

“The Ledge” was a cool tale of suspense.  I immediately recognized it as I’d watched Cat’s Eye several months ago.  According to Wikipedia, King wrote "The Ledge" as a homage to the 1956 story "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket" by Jack Finney

“The Lawnmower Man” wasn’t what I expected, mostly because of the movie, which apparently did not have much in common with the short story.  Suburban man hires a lawnmowing service where the overweight worker happens to be a worshipper of Pan, the ancient Greek god, and has rather unorthodox methods of mowing grass.  Suburban is a little freaked out and tries to call the police.  A nasty death by lawn-mover shortly ensued.  Interestingly, I recalled a scene in Maximum Overdrive where a boy gets chased by a bloodied murderous lawnmower.

“Quitters, Inc.” was also featured in the anthology movie, Cat’s Eye.  It’s probably one of his best stories, as it has it all: socio-commentary on the pervasiveness of smoking in the 70s, satire, ethical dilemmas, the evils of behavioural psychology, and of course, the horror of seeing how your addiction can harm those you love.

“I Know What You Need” was an interesting portrayal of a relationship manipulated by an obsessive stalker.  A social misfit manages to insinuate himself into the life of a popular college student, Elizabeth, because he always seems to know exactly what she needs.  But Ed keeps his distance because Elizabeth already has a boyfriend who wants to marry her.  When her boyfriend dies of a car accident, Ed appears to comfort her.  Elizabeth becomes attached to Ed, but a close friend of hers knows something is off when she observes how Ed is able to manipulate situations to make him seem like the perfect catch.  Elizabeth’s father hires a detective to do a background check on Ed proving that Ed is not who he seems.  Turns out, Ed has been using black magic and voodoo to manipulate Elizabeth so that she would depend on him and to dispatch anyone that gets in his way.  Elizabeth manages to destroy the voodoo doll in her likeness and summons the courage to leave a defeated Ed.  The story was decent but I didn’t find the ending satisfying (what’s to stop this loser from doing his black magic again?).

“Children of the Corn” was quite effective and creepy.  I’m a little curious about the movie, but it has very mixed reviews.  Still, I enjoyed Maximum Overdrive despite the low ratings, so I’ll likely watch CofC at some point.

"The Last Rung on the Ladder" may probably be the most overlooked story because there’s nothing supernatural nor particularly scary in the content.  A man receives a distressing letter from his estranged sister, Katrina aka Kitty.  Larry’s about to call his Dad, but stops because he realizes the content of the letter might kill him, as his Dad has had two heart attacks already.  Larry proceeds to recount his childhood growing up with his little sister on a Nebraskan farm.  They loved to climb to the top of a ladder in their barn to leap off from a crossbeam down into a haystack.  One time, the last rung from the top breaks off and Kitty is left hanging 70 ft up in the air.  Larry piles up hay at bottom of the ladder and tells Kitty to let go and she does. The hay breaks Kitty's fall and saves her life, leaving her with only a broken ankle. Larry is astonished when Kitty tells him that she hadn't looked down before letting go, so she didn't know about the hay. She had simply trusted him to save her.  When they grow up, however, the siblings drift apart emotionally and geographically.  Larry becomes a successful lawyer while Kitty’s life did not work out due to bad life choices.  Her letters to him go unanswered and he even neglected to inform her that he had moved.  We learn that the last letter he received from Kitty arrived two weeks after he learned of her suicide in a newspaper article ("Call Girl Swan Dives to her Death") and the content of the letter nearly breaks him (which is finally revealed at the very end of the story). 

I thought this story was particularly effective in its delivery and how it was structured.  Even though the horror was subtle, it was there (the horror of knowing that you could have helped a loved one had you only paid attention).

“The Man Who Loves Flowers” is another story told from the POV of an unreliable narrator who turns out to be a serial killer.  This is proving to be my least favourite genre of Stephen Kings stories.

“One For the Road” supposedly takes place two years after ‘Salem’s Lot, which I haven’t read.  Some men are at a bar while a blizzard is raging in Maine.  A yuppie stumbles in seeking help after his car was stranded with his wife and young daughter inside the vehicle.  Of course, the car was stuck right by Jerusalem’s Lot, and apparently there are still vampires roaming around.  When the men go out to look for the car, it’s too late, the wife and daughter are missing… It was a pretty tame story.

And finally, “The Woman in the Room” was particularly painful to read because it reminded me too well of my own aging parents, particularly my dad, who has been having nurses coming in 4 times a day to care for him at home because my mom is too frail to look after him herself.   A man is visiting his terminally ill mom at the hospital.  It’s another reality-based story without any supernatural or sinister elements, just the everyday horror of dealing with an aging parent in a hospital.