When I moved to Stephen King’s home state of Maine, I thought it would be fun (if a bit cliché) to finally read his books in earnest, and discover how I really feel about his work. For this installment, I got blackout curtains so I could sleep during the day and spend the wee hours reading Night Shift.
In 2018, singer/songwriter Lucy Dacus kicked off her second album Historian with “Night Shift,” an epic, 6-minute breakup song. After a sparse opening verse, the arrangement builds slowly and persistently. First the bass joins Dacus’s somber guitar, then the drums, then the atmospherics. It’s not until after 3 minutes have passed that we get to the chorus, which states the artist’s disdain for her subject with devastating clarity: “You’ve got a nine to five / So I’ll take the night shift.” Dacus reprises this moment over and over again during the song’s explosive back half, belting out the notes toward the end, placing it in the pantheon of patiently crescendoing classics like “Hey Jude” or “With or Without You.”
“Night Shift” is a perfectly crafted ballad, but that line is what gives it next-level staying power. Why? Because the graveyard shift is always going to be the least popular slot on the time card. It forces us to live like vampires, working while the moon is out and sleeping while the sun is up, in direct conflict with our biological rhythms as human beings. For someone to choose the night shift on purpose, just to avoid you? You must be a real piece of shit.
In his first collection of short stories, also called Night Shift, Stephen King shares Dacus’s fascination with the circumstances that would drive someone to voluntarily spend all their time in the darkness. He puts readers in the thick of a crew that works nights during an especially humid July, clearing out the basement of a Maine textile mill. Another story is awash in rumors about a man who has covered all the windows in his apartment, subsisting on the cheap beer his son brings him, as well as … other things. And we get two stories set in the fictional Maine village of Jerusalem’s Lot (located in between the real towns of Falmouth and Cumberland), where that vampire metaphor I mentioned earlier takes a turn for the literal.
Night Shift begins with one of those vampire tales, and it’s one for the ages. “Jerusalem’s Lot” is a prequel to King’s 1975 novel ‘Salem’s Lot (now on my short list for what to cover next in this column). Comprised entirely of letters and journal entries, it’s the story of Charles Boone and his loyal servant Calvin, who move into an inherited mansion called Chapelwaite. King hits many classic horror story beats along the way – ominous warnings from local villagers, hidden compartments in moldering bookshelves, noises from behind the walls that couldn’t possibly have been caused by mice – yet his mastery of period language and uncanny ability to build suspense ensures the story’s hold on us. The more Charles and Calvin discover about the history of Chapelwaite’s former residents, the more we feel like we’re right there with them, so invested in the mystery that we can’t turn back. And when their sleuthing leads them to an abandoned village in the woods, putting this book down is indeed not an option:
“The smell of rot and mould was vaporous and nearly overpowering. And beneath it seemed to lie an even deeper smell, a slimy and pestiferous smell, a smell of ages and the decay of ages. Such a stench as might issue from corrupt coffins or violated tombs. I held my handkerchief to my nose and Cal did likewise. We surveyed the place. ‘My god, sir–’ Cal said faintly. ‘It’s never been touched,’ I finished for him.”
As evocative as King’s more traditional horror narratives can be, Night Shift isn’t wholly devoted to investigating old-fashioned bumps in the night. “The Ledge” twists a boilerplate mob boss narrative into a direct appeal to our fear of heights, turning the slightest gust of wind into something viscerally scary. “Children of the Corn” transforms Nebraska’s mind-numbing cornfields into the mind-flaying killing fields of a teenage death cult. “The Lawnmower Man” all takes place under a lazy summer sun, with a Boston Red Sox broadcast murmuring in the background. When a figure summoned from Greek mythology arrives to disrupt our main character’s suburban male ennui, the results are hysterically, unforgettably gruesome. (How the unrelated 1992 cyber-gardener catastrophe of a movie was allowed to use the same title is beyond me.)
And the most remarkable story of all takes place in another seemingly mundane locale – a college campus. “I Know What You Need” is the tale of Elizabeth Rogan, who meets a disheveled boy named Ed while cramming for a sociology final. Well, “meet” isn’t exactly right – even though he’s a complete stranger, Ed interrupts Elizabeth’s studies by asking her out for ice cream, something she actually happened to be craving in that moment. Originally written for the September 1976 issue of Cosmopolitan, “I Know What You Need” is a mesmerizing deconstruction of “nice guy syndrome,” where men feign sensitivity as a facade to trick women into intimate relationships. Throughout the story, Ed is somehow able to anticipate Elizabeth’s every need, from the movies they see to the support she needs after the supposedly accidental death of her boyfriend Tony. It’s all a form of projection, Ed treating Elizabeth the way he feels women should treat him. And as Elizabeth reaches the precipice, convinced she loves Ed in spite of his downright creepy ability to always “know what she needs,” her roommate Alice attempts to break the spell with a stunning sermon about the insidious effects of rape culture:
“Please,” Alice said. “Please, Liz, listen. I don’t know how he can do those things. I doubt even he knows for sure. He might not mean to do you any harm, but he already is. He’s made you love him by knowing every secret thing you want and need, and that’s not love at all. That’s rape.”
While there is a supernatural element running through “I Know What You Need,” that’s not what makes it one of King’s most timeless achievements. With this story, the author takes something we all supposedly want – a super-attentive partner who doesn’t ask us to compromise – and exposes how vulnerable that need makes us. It’s typically seen as a compliment when men call women “goddesses,” as if their feelings are so intrinsically important that they give them the power to mint new deities. King asks us to think about how these men could react if their feelings aren’t validated, and there is where the true horror lies. In Ed’s final scene, he releases all the pent-up misogynistic rage that has actually been fueling his “nice guy” routine. It could’ve been lifted from an incel message board:
“That’s the thanks I get. I gave you everything you ever wanted. Things no other man could have […] It’s never been hard for you. You’re pretty. You never had to find … other ways to get the things you had to have. There was always a Tony to give them to you. All you ever had to do was smile and say please.” His voice rose a note. “I could never get what I wanted that way.”
The story ends with Elizabeth leaving Ed behind, screaming pathetically in a stairwell. You can almost hear her humming, “You’ve got a nine to five / So I’ll take the night shift.”
“THE “CATCHING UP WITH KING” RANKINGS
4. Night Shift
13. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
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