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.
