CBR11Bingo: The Collection
The stories in Night Shift, Stephen King’s first collection of short stories, read for the most part like spec scripts for The Twilight Zone. They’re high-concept stories with dynamite premises and most of them have that signature Twilight Zone ironic ending or twist. King is great at establishing a world filled with realistic characters even as the plots themselves are bizarre and occasionally ridiculous.
The collection kicks off with “Jerusalem’s Lot”, set in the vampire-infested town of King’s Salem’s Lot more than a century prior to the novel. It’s epistolary format helps establish an eerie mood as a newcomer moves into a seemingly haunted house and alienates his neighbors. In “Night Surf” a group of survivors try to cope with a world devastated by the flu pandemic later used in The Stand.
The stand-alone stories work as well or better. Some of them take that classic horror format, “what if (seemingly harmless object) was evil?” In “The Mangler” a cop and his friend try to figure out how a laundry machine seemingly acquired a taste for blood. In “Trucks” a group of people bunker down in a diner while vehicles come to life wait them out.
Another recurring theme is people who aren’t what they seem, which forms the basis for the chilling stories “Strawberry Spring”, “I Know What You Need”, and “The Man Who Loved Flowers.” There are also some stone-cold classics, like “The Boogeyman”, “Children of the Corn” and “Quitters, Inc.” My personal favorite may be “Sometimes They Come Back” in which a schoolteacher is haunted, literally, by a childhood incident which revisits him in his classroom.
Then of course there are the stories that are frankly just bizarre, with outrageous premises of the sort that make you wonder, “How does anyone think of this stuff?” In “Battleground” a hitman gets his comeuppance is an absurd fashion. “Gray Matter” features a contaminated beer can with disastrous consequences. And “The Lawnmower Man” simply has to be read to be believed. Still, even at his silliest King is never boring.
There are people who will tell you that for all his success as a novelist, short stories are where King truly excels. Night Shift contains several stories that help make that argument.