By Christine Yunn-Yu Sun
Horror stories don’t need murder, mayhem and madness to create a sense of dread, despair and doom.
The best stories in this genre both disturb and inspire.
While monsters do and often appear in the broad daylight, one can still seek and find hope on dark and stormy nights.
The 12 stories collected in Stephen King’s latest book You Like It Darker “delve into the darker part of life – both metaphorical and literal”.
Some of these tales share the themes of old age and death, and are perhaps informed by the author’s reflections on the myriad ways in which our twilight years can and should be lived meaningfully.
“Define ‘meaningful’,” one might ask.
In the case of “Laurie”, it’s to never give up fighting even when all hopes are lost.
In the case of “The Answer Man”, it’s to accept that life’s triumphs and tragedies may or may not be your doing – and, either way, it doesn’t matter.
What remains important is doing the decent thing to the best of your abilities.
Other stories showcase the kind of brilliance that King is known for, the seemingly natural ability to lure the reader into an alternative reality where anything is possible and everything has its cause and consequence.
Take “The Turbulence Expert”, a reminder of Richard Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. Or “The Dreamers”, a Lovecraftian cosmic horror tale that echoes “Jerusalem’s Lot”.
Or even “Two Talented Bastids”, a very subtle story that somehow brings back memories of the character David Drayton in “The Mist”.
Meanwhile, “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” seems to have won over most of the readers out there.
While King admits that Inspector Franklin Jalbert is “sort of like Inspector Javert in Les Misérables”, the character reminds this reviewer of the paper-ripping Craig Toomy in “The
Langoliers”.
As in the case of “Finn”, the horror in this story is how everything is possible in this reality, if someone in the right place at the right time is determined to make it so.
An equally welcomed story is “Rattlesnakes”, which is as much a sequel to Cujo as Doctor Sleep is a follow-up to The Shining.
The story could work if the first-person narrator were another man grieving the loss of his family, but Vic Trenton’s sense of guilt over what happened to his wife Donna and their son Tad enriches the plot while adding another dimension to the already impressive tale of haunting monsters and the many unknowns of the afterlife.
It’ll be interesting to see if King plans to bring closure to some of his other fictional characters in the years to come. For starters, this reviewer would like to know what happens to Dinah Bellman after “The Langoliers”, and what happens to David Carver after Desperation.
We just have to wait and see.
