I definitely like it darker. Reading Stephen King post Corona has been a hit and miss for me, not liking Holly very much and hoping that his Covid references would die out a little. So I had this book on my watchlist since May, waiting patiently for it to come out and let me say it did not disapoint.

At a staggering 511 pages, it has kept me entertained, story by story for the last month and I must say, some of the stories are still with me, like the snakes one.

Notable stories within the collection include:

Rattlesnakes

This was probably my favourite tale – following a grieving old widower who, in search of solace, travels to Florida. However, his journey takes an unexpected turn when he receives a peculiar inheritance, accompanied by significant conditions. The shocker for this story came when I saw this:

It wasn’t rattlesnakes that killed our son. He died of dehydration in a hot car. I never blamed my wife for it; she almost died with him. I never even blamed the dog, a St. Bernard named Cujo, who circled and circled our dead Ford Pinto for three days under the hammering summer sun.

Yep, the man was the husband of the woman and the father of the child from Cujo. What I liked about this story was the normality of it. The ups and turns of life that got our guy to Florida. The fallout and reconciliation with his wife, the mourning of his son, the death of his wife. The considerations of whether there is life after death and the haunts.

Donna and I buried our son’s body in Harmony Hill Cemetery, but that was the least part of him. We found that out in the months that followed. He was still there, between us. We tried to find a way around him and back to each other and couldn’t do it. Donna was withdrawn, suffering from PTSD, taking pills and drinking too much. I couldn’t blame her for getting stranded at the Camber farm, so I blamed her for an affair she’d had with a loser named Steve Kemp

I think it was definitely my favourite story of the bunch.

Four decades had passed since Tad Trenton died in that hot car with the rabid St. Bernard patrolling the dooryard of a farmhouse as deserted as the north end of Rattlesnake Key. The dead could age. I had never considered the possibility, but knew it now.
But only if they wanted to. Allowed themselves to. It was apparently possible to both grow and not grow, a paradox that had produced the gruesome hybrids I’d seen in the guest room’s double bed: man-things with the bloated heads of poisoned children.

Two Talented Bastids

First story in the book follows an aging son looking after his writer dad as he slowly descends in the pits and falls of old age. It made me think whether Stephen King wrote this for his sons? An explanation of his story-telling prowness? Alien interference! The writing is spectacular and I could feel each selected word being polished before being left in the book:

His face was as white as fresh snow, as Moby-Dick’s underbelly, as amnesia. I didn’t often feel old, probably because the man I lived with was so much older, but I felt plenty old then.

On Slide Inn Road

A family goes on a roadtrip and takes a less used road where they are faced with two jack-asses who want to rob and kill them. Grandpa saves the day. What I loved most about this was the son’s rage as they went deeper and deeper off-the-map before their car got stuck. I could really connect with that!

Another washboard shivers through the Buick and Frank slows to fifteen. He wonders if he could change his name, ditch his family, and get a job at some little bank in an Australian town. Learn to call people mate and say g’day.

The Turbulence Expert

A guy gets hired by a mysterious company to be terrified on airplane rides and use his fear to save the lives of the people on board.

Dixon shut his eyes again and let the terror fully take him. It was horrible; it was the only way.
He saw them rolling back, this time not stopping but going all the way over. He saw the big jet losing its place in the thermodynamic mystery that had formerly held it up. He saw the nose rising fast, then slowing, then heeling downward like a rollercoaster car about to plunge. He saw the plane starting its ultimate dive, the passengers who had been unbelted now plastered to the ceiling, the yellow oxygen masks doing a final frantic tarantella in the air. He saw the baby flying forward and disappearing into business class, still wailing. He saw the plane hit, the nose and the first class compartment nothing but a crumpled steel bouquet blooming its way into coach, sprouting wires and plastic and severed limbs even as fire exploded and Dixon drew a final breath that ignited his lungs like paper bags.

This one was NOT nice to read on a flight. The ending is quite nice as he ends up recruiting one of the passengers to join the terrified fliers club – a job with no exit clause.

Laurie

I really loved this little gem of a story about an old guy (see the common theme in this book) who gets a female puppy as a present from his sister to help with loneliness.

His bouncing, opinionated, athletic, argumentative, take-no-prisoners sister was old. So was he. They were proof that life was basically a short dream on a summer afternoon

The story does have a dark turn when the old guy finds the decapitated body of his neighbour and a massive alligator and barely escapes with his life. The puppy warned him of danger and saved his life.

Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream

Focusing on the impact of a sudden and unprecedented psychic event, this tale explores the profound upheaval caused in numerous lives.

The Dreamers

A narrative centered around a reticent Vietnam veteran who, upon responding to a job advertisement, discovers that certain realms of the universe are better left undiscovered. Stephen King said that though it’s very rare that he scares himself with what he writes, a story in the upcoming collection titled The Dreamers was “so creepy” that he “couldn’t think about it at night”.

He took up another volume from the stack. It was called Gegenwart und Zukunft. “This is my treasure. Rare, a first edition. Present and Future […] the title of his first edition was actually Presence and Future. There is a world of difference between present and presence. A gulf.

I liked this story – a mad scientist and an even madder war veteran. Why do I say that the stenographist was madder? He remained. He was dead inside from the war and the only reason he stayed on with the demented experiment was so that he could feel something. Even if that something was guilt or fear or both.

Maybe I was thinking a certain way because I had seen certain things on the other side of the world, where bad things happened to people all the time, sometimes even to hairdressers.

The concept was not bad – induce a light hypnotic sleep and suggest to the subject that they enter a house and lift the floor. Not a board, but the whole floor.

According to Jung, dreams of flying indicated the core psyche’s desire to break free of the expectations of others, or even more difficult, usually impossible, the expectations of the self.

Nahn tu, I will cry, nahn tu, but when this final dream comes there will be no mercy. Not for me.

The Answer Man

This story probes the dual nature of prescience, contemplating whether it constitutes good fortune or a curse, and reflects on how lives marked by profound tragedy can still hold significance.

Answers aren’t always painful, young man, but correct answers should never come cheap

I have often wondered if smart people really understand what answers they seek in life. Perhaps they just cruise along on a magic carpet of ego, making assumptions that are often wrong. That’s the only reason I can think of as to why they ask such impotent questions.”

Smart people labor under a dual disadvantage: they don’t know the answers they need, and they don’t know what questions to ask. Education doesn’t inculcate mental discipline. You’d think it would, but it’s often just the opposite.”

So the question is: if any question you asked would be answered and it wouldn’t be a hypotethical, what would you ask?

• Will I live a long life?
• Will I marry my sweetheart?
• Will my business succeed?
• Will my son be a professional player?

I loved how both the questions asked and the answers changed through the book. Sometimes you won’t have enough money to ask, sometimes they are free, because you already know the answer.

“Is it heaven we go to? Is it hell? Is it reincarnation? Are we still ourselves? Do we remember? Will I see my wife and son? Will it be good? Will it be awful? Are there dreams? Is there sorrow or joy or any emotion?”
The Answer Man, almost lost in the gray, said: “Yes.”

I loved the book. Not as much as Full Dark, No Stars (Stephen King Anthology) but it’s a good second best. Can’t wait to see what he writes next.