6 - The Boogeyman

A man visits a psychologist to tell him about how his three children died. He feels responsible for their deaths even though the says he didn't kill them himself. It was the boogeyman, you see. Each child, when it was old enough to sleep in a crib in a room alone, would begin to cry at bedtime and express terror about the boogeyman and the closet, a classic childhood fear. Except in this story it's real, because the first kid dies inexplicably. They put the second kid in the same room soon, and she gets terrified too, and then dies. The man refused to believe there was a real boogeyman, insisted that kids had to face their fears or they'd never get over them if they were coddled. A real rough, tough, verging-on-being-a-bastard-but-you-can't-really-blame-him-for-it kind of guy.

They move to a new house and have a new child and everything is better, but then it finds them. Closets start opening just a little, the guy starts to hear sounds, and he knows know that the boogeyman is real. He wonders if believing in something, being afraid of something, is what makes it real, which is an interesting idea. Either way, this time he lets their son sleep in bed with them, doesn't put him in a room alone. But then his wife has to leave for two months to tend to her mother, and the boogeyman gets bolder, coming out more often, making noises in the night, shuffling around the house, all the things that scare a kid in the dark. The man gets more and more scared, and eventually he turns into a complete coward and puts his son in another room alone not because he doesn't want to spoil him but because he knows the boogeyman will take the child and leave him alone. Real good fathering, asshole.

As expected, the boogeyman kills the child, and at this point I start to think that maybe the boogeyman is some sort of psychological projection from the guy, that maybe he really did do it all himself and has this idea of the boogeyman that's sort of a Jekyll and Hyde thing in himself. But then back in the present, the psychologist asks him to make an appointment to come back next week. The man goes out, can't find the receptionist, and steps back into the office only to catch the psychologist in the act of taking his mask off, revealing the boogeyman underneath. And they lived happily ever after!

I don't know if the guy was crazy or if the boogeyman was posing as a psychologist. Either explanation is sort of weird. The story was mildly interesting, nicely evoking some childhood fears and trying to make them real in an adult way, but the ending didn't work for me. Maybe there's something I missed, but I can't come up with a good reason or explanation for the boogeyman posing as a psychologist. It's not exactly in the M.O., y'know? Which leaves the possibility that the guy was stark crazy and was himself the boogeyman, but that still leaves the ending feeling out of place.

Grade: C+



7 - Gray Matter

Random note: this is the second story in this collection, after Graveyard Shift, where an Orange Crush thermometer is mentioned. Was that a common thing in the 70s, or did King just really like Orange Crush? I wouldn't blame him, shit be delicious.

Speaking of delicious. The story opens in a small convenience store where a kid comes in upset, needing beer for his dad. The store owner gets the story out of the kid, and then gets a gun and takes two of his friends and sets out to the kid's house, leaving the kid behind. As the men walk to the house, the store owner, Henry (who is inexplicably called Harry by one of his friends at one point) tells them the story. Basically, the dad drank a contaminated can of beer and is now turning into a giant sentient human bacterium, grey and jelly-like, sensitive to light, needing warmth, feeding on beer and dead animals and now dead people. As usual, King draws out this description and the process and how bad it must have been for the kid, making it more plausible and creepy, but some things even Stephen King can't make seem real, and giant human bacteria monsters? Are one of them.

They get to the house, the dad tries to get them to leave the beer and go, but when they won't it breaks down the door and slimes out at them. The two friends break and run away, while Henry stays and fires three times at it while the others run away. They don't know if Henry survived, but I've seen those big jelly cubes in Dungeons and Dragons style games, I know that bullets can't kill those fuckers. The two friends had seen that the creature was dividing, as bacteria do, so I guess soon the world is going to be conquered by a race of gray slimey bacteria Hutts (this was written before Star Wars; can you believe there was a time before Star Wars? I sure can't). And yeah, they lived happily ever after.

Grade: C



8 - Battleground

A very short short-story, only ten pages, it's the heartwarming tale of a killer-for-hire who has just returned home from murdering the owner of a toy company. A package beat him home, somehow, from the owner's mother. Rather than doing the sensible thing and throwing it out the window of his 40th-floor penthouse suite, the man lets curiosity get the better of him and carefully opens it up. Inside is a box of plastic army men and plastic army machines, all of which are inexplicably alive.

The man wages war with the little men, a unique and fun situation that would almost be charming if it weren't for all the tiny bullets and tiny helicopters tearing the guy up and making him bleed all over. He kills some but has to retreat eventually to his bathroom. They blow a hole in the door with a little plastic rocket launcher (the rockets of which are apparently not filled with plastic), and demand his surrender. Instead to crawls out onto the ledge and reaches his balcony, flanking the little army men. He improvises a Molotov cocktail and tosses it to blow up their rear guard and their box while he makes his escape, but it turns out there was a tiny plastic nuclear weapon in the box, and it takes out the entire apartment in a blinding miniature mushroom cloud. And they all lived happily ever after!

A fun, snappy little story that takes a brief concept and just lets it all out. Nothing special, but for whatever reason it made me smile. There aren't enough stories about mercenaries battling tiny plastic army men, and I can't see any reason for that.

Grade: B+



9 - Trucks

I'll say it right now, this is my favourite story of the collection so far. It's King's first stab at a story structure that I feel is one of his most effective, and which he would later expand in The Mist and Storm of the Century (and maybe more, but those are the only two I know from movies) — take a small group of people, put them in a limited environment they cannot escape from, and put something terrifying either in with them or just outside.

Here we have six people: the main character, a trucker, a truck stop counterman, a salesman, and a young couple. At first I was confused because there was talk about smashed-up cars outside and dead people lying in the parking lot but no one has done anything about it. One of the smashed-up cars is a Plymouth Fury, which is actually the second time King has mentioned a Fury. I believe Hallorann owned one in The Shining as well. King would go on to write a whole book about an evil Plymouth Fury in Christine. But this Fury is just smashed up.

The salesman breaks and runs outside. That's when you realize what's up, as the big-rig trucks out there chase him down and smash into him. No one is driving the trucks, because all the trucks in the world have gained a malicious sentience and are killing people. Farfetched, but King pulls it off. These trucks seem very real, and they don't care for people at all.

The five remaining characters settle in for a siege, but then the trucks knock the power out, meaning the humans can only last a week or so before they'll run out of water. But the trucks have a more pressing problem, as the trucker notices that one of them powers out and dies when it runs out of gas. Kind of hard to hold a revolution when you're incapable of feeding yourself.

There's a great moment in the night when the main character and the girl wake up and hear the salesman, half-dead out in the ditches, calling for help. The main character coldly says that he can't hear anything, and when the girl expresses disbelief he points out that if her boyfriend woke up, maybe he would hear something, and maybe he would want to go out there and do something about it. The girl goes quiet and then says that no, she can't hear anything either. And after a little while it's true.

In the morning the trucks send an ambassador forward to blare Morse code at them with its horn, which the boy can translate. What would happen if no one knew Morse code? Maybe more people knew it in the 70s? I don't know. The chances of finding someone who knows it in a random group of people today would be pretty low, I think. At any rate, the trucks are demanding to be fueled, and state that the humans will not be harmed if they fuel the trucks. The main character is in favour of the idea, thinking it's best not to provoke them, best to wait for a better chance to beat them. The others vote him down. They don't want to be slaves to the vehicles, and they think they can out-wait them and let them run down.

The vehicles have other ideas, and send a bulldozer to smash the building down and crush the puny humans who refuse to fuel them. The main character and the boy improvise Molotov cocktails (for the second story in a row). The boy is less than useless with his and gets crushed and killed by the bulldozer, but the main character takes the thing out of commission with shots to the cab and engine compartment. The building is still standing, barely. So the trucks come forward and demand once again to be fed.

So this time the humans feed them. They go through all the gas in the tanks, then refill the tanks from a tanker truck that pulls up. They fuel the trucks through the day and into the night, miles of them lining up to be fed so they can continue their murder spree. And I can't help but think the others were right. Better to take your chances, try to defend yourself, and let them run out. They can only last for so long. And maybe other places will choose to feed them, but not everyone knows Morse code, and the gas will run out. But I guess they'd probably kill you first. You'd take a bunch of them with you by denying them gas, but you'd still be dead. Better to worship our new combustion-powered overlords? I'm not sure. As the story closes, they notice planes in the sky and wonder if there's anyone in the cockpit. And they lived happily ever after!

A fantastic little story, with that brooding end-of-the-world energy that King does so well. There's never any reason given for why trucks and other machines turn against us (but not cars?), but that's just as well. You don't need a reason to get the sense of how bad it would be.

Grade: A



10 - Sometimes They Come Back

This one starts out innocently enough, as a high school English teacher (just like Stephen King used to be) named Jim Norman gets a new job at a new school. But the problem is, he has nightmares of 16 years earlier, when he was nine and his older brother was murdered by high school punks with switchblades in a dark underpass in their old town, which is certainly enough to give a person nightmares. And then when he was a student teacher, different high school punks were beating up a student and attacked him too when he tried to intervene, after which he was unable to enter that school. Jim's got issues, justifiable issues. But he's got a good job and a good wife.

That's when one of his students is killed in a hit and run, and a new student arrives who looks just like one of the punks who killed his brother 16 years ago. The new kid is trouble, and soon a second student dies, suspiciously, and a second new student arrives who also looks just like one of the old murderers, who should be in their 30s by now. But here they are, high school students, looking just like they did on that day so long ago, and when he looks at them not only does he know, but they know he knows. A third student dies and a third new student arrives, once again part of the gang of murderers from his childhood.

Jim finds out that all three of them actually died about six months after they killed his brother, so apparently he's dealing with zombie ghost things. He confronts them and they laugh and promise that they're going to kill him to finish the job, and threaten to kill his wife too. And there's the part that really gets me. With that one strike, King sliced through to my guts. I can't stand bullies, and I can't stand punks, and more than all that combined I can't stand when they sometimes become actual murderers who cause pain for fun and just don't give a shit about anything. And more than anything I hate it when they're also zombie ghosts, because come on. That's just not fair. What I'm saying is that I want these fuckers not only to die, but to die again, and then preferably again and again.

They follow through and kill Jim's wife in a hit and run, which sends Jim calmly over the edge, where he comes up with a plan. At this point I'm eagerly anticipating Jim doing something clever and destroying the sons of bitches, but instead he just summons Satan and makes a deal with him, sacrificing both of his own index fingers to gain a demonic boon. So, okay. Not the clever solution I was looking for, but it works, as they all get trapped in a replay of what happened 16 years ago, and a demonic version of Jim's brother appears. When the punks try to stab him this time, they all get sucked into hell, presumably. Jim walks away, having taken care of business, but as the story fades we see a hint that Jim is now being stalked by the demonic ghost of his brother. And they all lived happily ever after! Except for all the dead people, which is everyone but Jim now.

The setup and execution of this story were quite good, and had me engaged with the story and caring about the characters. The conclusion, with the sudden shift into demon summoning and satanic rituals, wasn't what I was expecting and left me wanting something more. But at least the fucking zombie punk ghosts got what was coming to them.

Grade: B