“And in the awful heavy silence of the house, as he sat impotently on his bed with his face in his hands, he heard the high, sweet, evil laugh of a child —
— and then the sucking sounds.” — Salem’s Lot
AND with that description, my nights were never the same again. Forget sleeping next to a window with the lights on. Thanks to Salem’s Lot and the battalion of feral vampires who visited their victims in the dead of the night through the window, I cowered under blankets away from my window with my room lights blazing on for the longest time.
Master of horror and reigning emperor of oh-please-switch-on-the-lights-or-I’ll-combust-with-fright, Stephen King has quite an insight into people’s innermost phobias and the ability to drill into our neuroses. Feel smothered by small-town mind-sets and nosy neighbours? He gives you Salem’s Lot and turns your nosy aunty-neighbour into a bloodsucking fiend. Have a deep-rooted fear of isolation? Try The Shining and literally feel the bleeding walls closing in on you.
Scared of animals? How about zombie pets in Pet Sematary or a rabid Saint Bernard that longs to rip you to shreds called Cujo? Oh wait, you don’t like cars? Read Christine and learn how to take a bus instead. That creepy haunted car would turn most readers into lifelong KTM and Monorail users. Whatever your fear is, King’s got his finger on it and will whip out a yarn that has the capacity to both enthral and captivate his readers.
As such, who doesn’t know King and his horror-rific novels? Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, he’d slashed, killed, ripped and hacked his way to the top as the world’s foremost writer of horror fiction.
His stories showcase his ability to craft a believable, tangible foundation for his world was filled with characters you and I could relate to, while at the same time carefully weaving in the menacing and disturbing elements that has become his signature.
While you brace yourself for the inevitable horror, King gives you a slow burner of a story complete with protagonists who are unremarkable, flawed and unexpectedly thrust into the role of a hero or heroine against evil monsters and all things that go bump in the night — or day.
There are no happy shiny people in King’s novels. They have drinking problems, body image issues, are usually not quite healthy, insecure and driven by their urges and vices. What’s more, they more often than not rarely survive his plots unscathed. His stories are messy, colourful, and give us a window into the everyman’s world — our world — and weaving an unforgettable tale with forgettable people. Like us.
When I got my hands on his latest offering, I literally did a rain dance around this huge whopper of a book. There are 699 pages in all. A super-sized Happy Meal as far as I’m concerned, King collaborates with his son, Owen, on Sleeping Beauties, producing a novel that gives a much-loved children’s fairy tale a horrific twist.
AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
In the fable Sleeping Beauty which most of us know and love, Princess Aurora falls into a deep sleep, never to awake except for her true love’s kiss. In Sleeping Beauties, the story begins with the “Aurora” virus, a pandemic that drops upon the world like some fairy tale enchantment. But that’s where the similarity ends.
In Kings’ hands (a scary father-son collaboration here), the women fall into a deep sleep one day and a web-like entity seals them inside fibrous cocoons, leaving the men in a state of panic and bull-headed disarray. These women are sleeping, but don’t let their slumber lull you into a mistaken notion that you can just tear off the webbing and wake them up with true love’s kiss. That could literally be your final act. Once the webbing is torn, they awaken as feral snarling zombies and immediately start murdering their husbands and sons.
As we secretly suspected, in a world without the calming influence of women, everything goes to hell. Riots take place outside the White House; an apocalyptic gang war bursts out in the streets of Chicago. Everywhere, men are tearing their hair out while their women fall asleep. And if they’re stupid enough to wake them up, their heads get torn out instead — in glorious King-like splashes of arterial ketchup.
Meanwhile in Dooling, West Virginia, as more women start to realise the deadly effects of sleep, some do whatever they can not to slumber, from taking super-strong coffee to cocaine. Most of the men on the other hand react in predictable ways —drinking, looting and arguing over whether to murder a mysterious woman who calls herself Evie Black. She’s the only female who can sleep and wake up.
Harried prison psychiatrist Clinton Norcross gets into a mental jousting with Black, a drifter with supernatural abilities, incarcerated for the grisly murder of a pair of crystal meth cookers. The clock is ticking, the women-less world (except for Ms. Black) is going crazy, and these two somehow remain locked in their Mars-versus-Venus dispute. “We could go on like this forever,” Evie sighs in her cell. “He said, she said. The oldest story in the universe.”
It’s gender relations (and gender war) at its most grisly. Men fight, women slumber, and while all that is going on, the Kings weave a complex tale that points to gender politics. While he’s at it, he puts out many examples of why men are pigs and women would be better off without them — exposing pretty much every male fallacy other than not asking for directions.
What’s hot: This is a book for every woman in the throes of heartbreak, reinforcing that most men are idiots and that we rule the world. That, and copious amounts of ice cream will do the trick.
What’s not: Leave your expectations outside the door. It’s a King production, no doubt. The slow burning plot, the horror that seeps in, the gore and the apocalyptic climax are all there. But the magic that kept me awake at nights in times long past, isn’t.
Know your King
Top Stephen King novels that you must read for a good scare!
1) IT
The movie has finally come, and now most people (including those unfamiliar with King’s novels) are acquainted with the killer clown, Pennywise. The shapeshifting evil entity of Derry, Maine lives in the sewer and eats little children. And if that’s not enough, you’ll never look at another clown again without shuddering.
2) SALEM’S LOT
Nothing good happens in Maine. Ever. In his ode to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, King drums up a tale about the ancient Kurt Barlow who moves to Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine and ignites an outbreak of vampirism in the town. Children turn into fiendish vampires. The sibok aunty next door will be crawling up your window or ringing your doorbell. To eat you. Forget sparkly Edward Cullen; aunty-vampire with her fangs bared is a lot scarier and meaner.
3) THE SHINING
Recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance moves into a remote Overlook Hotel in Colorado with his family to take on the role of off-season caretaker. Then supernatural entity takes over Torrance, convincing him into killing his wife and son. A mix of hantus inhabiting creepy hotel, cabin fever and a pretty bad case of writer’s block — it’s a story that makes you want to avoid all hotels in remote places.
4) CARRIE
In this day and age where bullying has made front-page news often enough, this timeless tale of bullying gone-too-far strikes a chord. A shy, good-natured teenager wants what all high school kids want: to have friends and to be “normal”. Not that Carrie has any idea what normal really is, since she has spent the whole of her young life being harangued by her abusive religious zealot of a mother, and tormented by the cruel kids at school. In King’s first published work, Carrie’s eventual come-uppance on her bullies form the true horrific part of the story.
5) MISERY
Never look at a dowdy middle-aged woman and think she’s a harmless old twit. Ever. Even old aunties can be scary. There are no aliens, evil spirits or creepy clowns in sight. Celebrated but jaded author meets with an accident through a treacherous mountain pass. A local good Samaritan happens to pass by and comes to his rescue. Enters dowdy old Annie Wilkies who’s not only a trained nurse but his number one fan. What follows is a chilling treatise on obsession, celebrity culture and the fathomless depths of the human will to survive axe-wielding deranged aunty.