Krishna
Of course, we have reviewed many of the author’s books here earlier. Samples include Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game, to name just two.
Four long novellas into one collection. Often, in a collection like this, you get some good stories mixed in with some so-so stories. (Read our review of Bazaar of Bad Dreams as an example). But in this book, each of the four stories is amazing, and so this one is a fine collection and exciting till the last page. Literally the last page.
The first story is Langoliers, which, if my memory serves me right, was made into a movie all by itself. Brian Engle, a pilot, has narrowly averted disaster in a flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles and would like nothing more than to go to his hotel and have a long sleep. But he hears that his ex wife, Anne, is dead in an accident involving apartment fire and he immediately takes a red eye flight to Boston. Fellow passengers include a blonde woman with her blind daughter – Dinah was the girl and Aunt Vicky. When Dina awakens about three hours into the flight, she is disturbed to see that Aunt Vicky is not in her seat but her purse is. A disquiet grows inside her.
The author skilfully brings home the fact that most of the passengers in the plane have simply disappeared. Brian Eagle was the lone passenger in the first class that was previously full. In business class, there is an old man suffering from arthritis (but now fast asleep). In the ‘cattle class’ there is Dinah and Albert Kaussner, a teenage Jewish boy and at least three other passengers. The plane was not exactly empty but most passengers seem to have simply disappeared, including the stewardess (are we allowed to use this job title anymore?) who attended to Brian Engle when he boarded this flight.
We get to know the other passengers slowly : Laurel Stevensen, whom Dinah identifies just by her tone as a teacher; a seemingly unflappable Brit called Nick Hopewell; the obligatory meanie – an investment banker – in a crew neck jersey brimming with self importance. Don Gaffney, whom we first only know as ‘the man in the red shirt’. There is also a young girl there who seems bright for her age – called Bethany. Bob Jenkins, a writer who has written mysteries, is also there.
Meanwhile, Brian realizes that all the lights down below are gone, and there is no radio communication either. And we learn that on the plane, only those who were fast asleep did not disappear. Brian makes a decision to revert to Maine instead of Boston as that is closer and he wants to land the plane at the nearest safe place.
When the meanie – Greg Toomie – throws his weight around, he is subdued and sent packing to his seat where he sits, planning mayhem in anger that they had refused to go to the original destination so that he could be there for the deal of his life. We learn of his strict disciplinarian background which made him give up his dreams for ‘success’ and his slowly unraveling mind.
When Brian lands the plane in Maine, he is relieved to see that the runway and the airport – complete with the shops around it – are still there and have not disappeared. However, he cannot raise anyone on the wireless, nor are the runway lights on, when he lands the plane.
They get down in the airport and what follows is the split scenes that Stephen King does so well (and has done in other stories, like Under The Dome or Desperation. ) Toomey goes to the security room and gets a pistol. In the meanwhile, Don has an inkling of what may have happened to them – he correctly guesses that all the food and the drinks are tasteless and the matches do not work – except those that they had with them in the plane.
He surmises that the world has not lost all its inhabitants – it is they who have crossed over to another dimension or something. The world is ‘ticking along fine somewhere out there’.
Meanwhile both Toomey and the girl both realize that something evil is coming their way but in different ways. Toomey fears the Langoliers, used as a threat by his dad to discipline him as a child. Dinah simply feels and knows that something unspeakably evil is headed their way.
We get to know that the teacher Laurel is going for a fling with a man she met online and barely knew, to add spice to her life. Toomey was coached to excel and incredible pressure was put on him but he was going to face exposure after the greatest cheating game he had employed – his mind finally gave up.
Nick seems to be some kind of a special agent with a British accent – but refuses to talk about himself.
The airport has some interesting scenes. Toomey get a gun from the guardroom and then tries to threaten everyone by holding Jennifer, a young girl, hostage. Albert bravely tries to intervene and Toomie shoots him.
That should have been the end of Albert but the bullet does not come with any speed and touches him and falls off. Toomey is trussed and left.
They also know that they need to leave right away. But where to? If their assumption is right, they have entered a world unpopulated and wherever they go, they will be in the same situation as the Bangor airport, here. But Nick has an idea. What if they reversed course and see if the rent in the fabric that brought them here is still open, and head back into ‘their’ world through it?
But how? Getting petrol from the airport back to the plane will give non burning fuel to the plane and so it cannot work, right? In addition, even the stuff they brought from the plane starts fading in potency. The matchsticks from Jennifer do not burn as quickly anymore.
Now Albert has another brainwave. They go into the plane and see that the tasteless beer stars fizzing (slowly) and the matches ‘come back to life’. The plan seems to be carrying something from the ‘other side’ if their theories are correct.
Toomey manages to escape and goes to the service elevator. When Albert and Gaffney go there, Toomey manages to kill Gaffney with a letter opener. Gaffney had no chance because it was dark there. Albert, however, manages to overpower him using a toaster strung in a rope as a weapon.
Nick, who arrives there, wants to kill Toomey but he remembers Dinah’s request to ‘leave him alive because I sense we will need him later’ and, against his own instincts, leaves him alone.
Dinah mentally incites Craig to get up and go ‘confront the bankers’ who seemed to be waiting for him in a piece of (empty) lawn. She seems to be using him for a deep purpose and she herself seems to be dying on the stretcher. It becomes clear when the langoliers come and swarm on him, giving the plan precious extra time to escape. The langoliers are ‘eating the world and all that are in there’ as one man in the plane puts it.
Dinah does not survive the wounds. Meanwhile, when they find the rip where they expected it to be, they want to go through it to the ‘normal side’ but the writer Bob realizes that there is something missing. When they came through the rip, the only ones who survived were the ones who were asleep at that time. Now, they were all awake.
Realizing this from Bob, Brian manages to avoid going through the rip at the last minute and they hatch a plan of how to manage this problem and still arrive alive on the other side. The ending is brilliant, with another little puzzle on the way.
Excellent story, and wonderful narration, a joy to read.
The second story is ‘Secret Window, Secret Garden’. It is about an author called Morton Rainey. One day he is accosted at his home by a stranger who accuses him of stealing his, the stranger’s, story. He initially just swats it away but when he reads the story, is struck by how similar these are.
When the pesky stranger, John Shooter, comes back, he gives an irrefutable argument as to why this was not stolen from Shooter. He happened to publish the story a few years earlier in a magazine and Shooter wrote his version, as per his claim, after that date. Shooter refuses to believe him and says that he will accept, if within the next three days, he, Morton, can produce the magazine, he will accept that Morton’s story is not plagiarized.
To drive home the point, he leaves a message to Mort: A note saying that ‘I am serious; you have three days’ and his cat Bump, nailed to the garbage can with a screwdriver through the chest. Mort is now worried enough to call his ex wife Amy, only to find that his house has burned down due to an arson attack. He checks next with his longtime agent, only to find that the agent does not have a copy of the magazine either, as he became Mort’s agent only after that magazine article was published.
The title shocks him because it was something that Amy, his ex wife, had suggested. He is now puzzled as to how Shooter came by the title. In addition, when Amy’s current flame Ted informs him that he came from Tennessee and was born in a town called Shooter, it momentarily knocks Mort off – marveling at the coincidence, if coincidence is what it was.
But more of the efforts of Mort to get a copy of the magazine comes to nought. In a surprising turn, when Mort asks Greg to find Tom Greenleaf and ask him about seeing both Mort and Shooter, Greg comes with the surprising response later : Tom saw Mort but he was alone. There was no man or indeed no car (Shooter’s) with him! Mort, however, not only remembers Shooter but remembers being painfully gripped above his elbow and shoved against Shooter’s car. He begins to wonder if Tom was ‘persuaded’ by Shooter or whether he is going nuts.
Especially when Shooter seems to be able to get into his house at will (He stole the keys of Mort’s car, moved it, and put the keys back but not in the usual place and even left his felt hat on the back porch for Mort to find).
When Mort still wavers and shows no sign of moving towards Shooter’s compensation – which is that Mort write a short story and give it to Shooter in lieu of the one he stole – he calls Mort and directs him to a desolate place where Mort finds both Tom and Greg lying dead, with Mort’s screwdriver and knife from the toolshed used for the purpose.
He is now genuinely scared but still stubborn enough not to go to the cops. Unusually in Stephen King’s stories, this irrationality grates.
Finally he knocks Shooter off balance by disclosing that he is getting a magazine by mail that day – original, no less.
Then the magazine arrives by post and when he opens, after going back home, he finds that the magazine has no index and a few pages are missing – exactly the pages where his story should have been. He wonders how Shooter was able to get to the magazine which was in registered post – impossible!
When the twist comes it is like a punch in the gut and even the weird things like the reluctance of Mort to declare to the police that he was being blackmailed, how his story with the exact wording but a different title could have been created by Shooter, how Shooter’s location was related to Amy’s boyfriend’s city – all fall into place. I know that the same twist has been employed by other authors in other stories but still it came as a totally unexpected shock to me.
I don’t want to give anything away – so no spoilers here – but this story in total is as interesting as Langoliers – which I did not think it was, when I was reading through it initially. The only gripe I have is that after what I thought was the perfect ending, the author had to go and spoil it with intimations of something supernatural to boot. That kind of brings the story a bit down, in my opinion but still an exhilarating story.
The Library Policeman is the next story. Sam Peebles is the owner of a small Realty company in Junction city. They had arranged for a circus acrobat to speak in Rotary Club. But since he had an accident, Craig Jones, the President of the Rotary Club, compels Sam to stand in for a half an hour speech on something – anything.
Sam writes the speech but his agent/ consultant advises him to add some humorous bits in it and he agrees. He goes to the library to find a book and finds the library deserted and extremely spooky. Spooky enough for him to momentarily consider turning around and leaving.
He finds several freaky pictures even in the children’s section and then meets the librarian, to all intents and purposes a kindly old lady with gray hair but with eyes that are disturbing. He is warned to return the book in a week and he manages to rub her the wrong way in the process by asking questions that annoy her. Her name was Ardelia Lortz.
His talk is a roaring success. But in the drunken stupor, he has put the book in a box which is cleared by a person who collects old papers from him and then sends it to be recycled! When he misses the deadline, he gets a curt phone call from the librarian reminding him that the book is overdue and she is very disappointed. She however gives him until next week to return the book before sending the library police after him. When he discovers that the book is gone, he panics and tries to retrieve it, to no avail. When he finds it has been destroyed, he simply feels he needs to pay for it, that is all.
When he goes to the library (in broad daylight) to pay for the books, he finds that the library is transformed – modern ceilings, different posters and books, and a different librarian too. Changes that could not have been made in just two days. When he tries to find out who Ardelia Lortz is, either no one knows or an old lady who seems to know chews his head off for mentioning her name, without explaining why.
He is feeling increasingly spooky! When he has just decided that – even though there was a concrete voice mail from Ardelia that reminded him that the book was due the next day – which he unfortunately deleted in a hurry – he concludes that the whole thing was his imagination alone. Then he gets a visitor – the library police ‘itself’ – who makes him pee in his pants in fear. He is warned not to ‘ask questions but find the book in the 24 hours he has’. He knows that he does need to find his solution and goes to a newspaper office in search of old microfilm archives. His old friend Donna finds him there. He tells her everything that happened.
They find Dave and Dave tells the old story of how Ardelia waltzed into the town and how he was in love with her, and how she played hide and seek with him in the fields, impossibly moving locations. It gets worse. When Ardelia joins the library, she actively scares the kids. Slowly, even through the drunken stupor, Dave realizes that she is a kind of an emotional vampire and has killed the librarian xxx to get his post too. She only gets the kids to see the real scary tales but they seem fully hypnotized and under her control.
Dave has lost everything not caring about his work, friends, anyone until she tells him that she needs to sleep and whether Dave can join her. Just before, Dave has witnessed an eerie scene – from a hidden place – where he sees Ardelia as she really is – insectile, with a proboscis, trying to physically suck the fear from the totally frightened children!
Meanwhile the assistant Police Chief gets suspicious about her and she has to leave. She is hoping to either take Dave to be her eternal companion or kill him, since he knows already too much about her. He says he wants to join her and deceives her later.
He gets knocked out under the bridge after warning the chief to ‘protect her daughter’. When the chief goes investigating, Ardelia kills him and the two kids. Realizing that the ‘submissive darling Dave’ has betrayed her, she tries to ‘find him’ with her supernatural gifts but could not ‘see’ him because he was knocked out at a deeper level. Dave would not be alive today if he was conscious then.
Meanwhile Dave tells Sam that Ardelia has him, Sam Peebles, in her sight. Not to use him like she did Dave but actually become him. He says that the ‘real’ Ardelia was taken over by the inhuman thing there, and when the time came it left the body to ‘sleep’ and recover. Now it is back and wants another body to inhabit. Sam is the ‘chosen one’. Freaky imagination.
The three – Dave, Sam and Donna decide to fight back because it is not just Sam’s fight anymore. The moment “it” becomes Sam, the next thing he would do is to kill the two who betrayed her – and officer’s daughter to complete the earlier debt, and then move to another city to become a librarian there. How they do it is the rest of the story. Just another brilliant gem in the quartet of yarns that Stephen King has skillfully woven. Donna and Sam seem to be falling in love with each other as they work together to extricate themselves from the revenge of the thing that was Ardelia.
They now get the library book back from an obscure bookshop and return to confront the thing that is Ardelia. He now has to remember his “library policeman” who is a pedophile who waylaid Sam when he was a kid and forced himself on Sam, much to the terror of the kid.
He buys licorice from the shop as a ‘gift’ to Ardelia and they set out.
Then the story goes to its climax. They wait for the library to move from the ‘new’ to ‘old’ and Sam first confronts the Library Policeman and returns the books with the fine. Then he faces Ardelia, who is changing into a spider like thing. Will not go into details but Dave, Sam and Donna go against the supernatural thing where they lose a life.
The destruction of Ardelia “thing” is brilliantly told but that is not the end. There is another remnant of the thing in one of the survivors and Sam also manages to destroy it at the end. I know I am being cryptic and vague here but I do not want to give everything away in this review. Definitely a brilliant read.
The last story in the quartet is Sun Dog. The story happens in Castle Rock, the fictional town in Maine that features in many of Stephen King’s books. (Needful Things is one and The Dark Half is another). This tale stars with the fifteenth birthday of Kevin Delevan, who gets a Poloroid camera (Sun 660) for his birthday as a gift. Kevin has a sister, Meg.
When he takes a picture, though, he sees an unrelated outside scene with some folks in it. He thinks that the camera has a malfunction but it cannot be returned as it fell down accidentally and got chipped. They decide that Kevin should keep it for a bit. He has a strong mental impulse that cries It is mine!
He goes to the local store owner Pop to discuss this. Pop gets very interested and even puts up some money for another reel and asks Kevin to take pictures at specific intervals. When Kevin looks at the pictures, he is scared and is convinced that he should smash the camera right away.
Pop convinces him to hold on for a week and then bring his dad to his shop one week later, where he will help Kevin smash it. But he has a diabolical plan of his own: He fakes another camera with the same kind of chipped piece as Kevin’s before they come.
His dad knows how evil Pop is and is extremely upset to go with Kevin. He explains how he got involved in Pop due to losing money in a very stupid bet and how it nearly killed him before he could pay the usurious interest and the principal. Kevin is astounded.
Pop manages to palm off the camera and destroy an identical looking fake, convincing them that the evil camera has been finally destroyed. Then he tries to sell this supernatural camera to his clients who have in the past been interested in (faked) supernatural phenomena from him. His first attempt fails miserably as his client accuses him of mechanical trickery and throws him out. Then he goes to the Pus Sisters (yes, his nickname for them as both their first names end in ‘pus’) and they reject it in revulsion.
Meanwhile every demonstration reveals the dog transforming into something else with ugly fangs and red eyes. (There is a reference to Cujo of the eponymous book Cujo somewhere in the middle).
The story completely moves to Pop and he tries to sell the camera but one by one all those clients who bought (worthless) paranormal stuff from Pop decline – one of them accusing him of trying to sell a clever mechanical fake and breaking off relationship. When Pop finally realizes how dangerous it is, he decides to destroy it after all but as he is about to do so, goes into a trance and destroys a cuckoo clock instead. He actually ‘sees’ the camera being destroyed as he is smashing the clock. And then, next day, he goes and buys a new role of polaroid film!
Meanwhile, convinced by his recurring dreams, Kevin is convinced that Pop probably did a switcheroo on him and his dad. He convinces his dad by providing proof – retrospectively. When they smashed ‘his’ camera, there was film in it, which would have been impossible as Kevin had shot all films from the problematic camera before handing it to Pop. His dad takes Kevin to confront Pop.
There are impressive scenes where Pop, still under trance, avoids the father son duo and Kevin seems to ‘sense’ the fact that the dog in the picture is about to be unleashed in the real world, spelling the end of his, Kevin’s, own life. The descriptions here are classic King, ratcheting up the tension one little bit at a time!
The story reaches a crescendo at the end, and what happens, as I said earlier, is so taut and thrilling that you can’t turn the pages fast enough.
A brilliant collection. 9/10
== Krishna