You’re twelve years old, and trick-or-treating with your two best friends.
You know what they say about the Shipley House. Something very bad happened there in 1959.
For more than twenty years, the Shipley house has stood vacant. No one can live there for long.
You’ve been warned not to enter.
But it’s Halloween, after all. How can you resist?
You try the front door. You’re surprised to find that the Shipley house is unlocked. Almost as if the house has been waiting for you.
You go inside, and walk down the hallway toward the bedroom at the end of the corridor.
Be careful: what you find in that room may drive you mad. And you may discover things about yourself that you don’t want to know.
***
The Shipley house is featured in one of the chapters of 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN, a Gen X coming-of-age supernatural horror tale set on Halloween night, 1980.
Three young friends decide to go out for “one last Halloween before they enter their teenage years. But this will be a Halloween like no other.
12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is available on Amazon, and you can read it for free in Kindle Unlimited.
Jason Kelley is a college student who agrees to take a walk down the most paranormally active road in Ohio. His mission: to document the phenomena he encounters on the cursed stretch of rural highway.
Along the way he encounters hellhounds, malevolent spirits, and trees that come to life.
If you like traditional supernatural horror tales, you’ll love ELEVEN MILES OF NIGHT. Available on Amazon now.
In the Bicentennial summer of 1976, the Headless Horseman returns from history (and the grave!) to terrorize modern-day America. Can one Ohio teenager stop the carnage?
Get the Kindle boxset for half-price, now through the morning of October 31st!
Horror in the American heartland!
Here’s an excerpt from Book 2 (Chapter 1)
August 1882
Ellen Briggs, née Ellen Sanders, was in her own house, and she was absolutely terrified.
Of course, this was not really her house, was it? It was her marital residence, where she now effectively lived in a state of captivity.
Not to mention…absolute terror.
She had married Theodore Briggs—railroad tycoon, necromancer, and murderer—only a few months ago.
In the early days of the marriage, Briggs had warned her: Stay out of unfamiliar rooms. Although the house was not old, it was home to many old secrets, Briggs had explained.
But she had forgotten his warning, in light of all that had happened since then…
Today Ellen had been wandering through the first floor of the massive house. Since her escape attempt earlier in the summer, Briggs seldom allowed her leave. But she could not sit still within these walls. If she remained in one place, she would go completely mad.
So today she had gone wandering, even though she had known better.
That was how she came across the undead child…
The door to the room containing the undead child was located adjacent to the first-floor ballroom. Ellen had opened the door, not realizing that the room connected to the basement via one of the home’s labyrinthine internal tunnels.
She reckoned that only later—after it was too late.
It was in the basement that her husband kept his worst secrets. Bodies were buried in the basement—and they didn’t always stay buried. Sometimes, they found their way to other parts of the house…
Nevertheless, this miscellaneous room had seemed harmless enough when she had first entered it. Heavy draperies were drawn on both of the room’s high windows, but some late afternoon sunlight filtered through.
The room seemed made for casual exploration. Various works of art had been stored within it. Paintings bound in frames, but not yet hung, stood stacked against all four walls.
Throughout the floor, in a random arrangement, were various statues: of nymphs, cherubs, and Greek deities. There was one life-size replica of the Venus de Milo. There were waist-high vases, and teak dividers carved in what looked like Turkish patterns.
The fortunes of Ellen’s husband were vast. He had no doubt purchased most of these items in bulk from a broker, with the intention of placing them around the house at a later date.
That work might have been left to Juba, the maidservant whom her husband had ordered killed, for her part in Ellen’s escape attempt. That same escape attempt had also resulted in her husband murdering Wilbur Craine, her former beau and would-be rescuer.
As she made her way through the cluttered room, Ellen endeavored to push those thoughts from her mind. She couldn’t think about Juba now. And certainly not about Wilbur.
She was kneeling down on the hardwood floor, admiring one of the paintings leant against the wall, when she heard something shift from a corner of the room.
Ellen immediately looked away from the landscape painting, toward the movement. She stood up. Something had stirred behind the teak screen in the room’s far corner, near one of the windows.
The teak screen was suspended above the floor on a set of wooden legs. In the gap between the screen and the floor, Ellen could see two small feet, clad in simple leather shoes. The shoes were caked with dried mud.
The feet moved toward the edge of the screen, but not in proper steps. One foot dragged behind the other.
A small figure stepped out from behind the screen. It was short, between four and five feet tall. The very sight of it was absolutely terrifying.
How egg-throwing teenage boys ruined my last trick-or-treat
My novel 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is a supernatural coming-of-age tale about three young friends who endure the trials of a 12-hour curse on Halloween night, 1980. To survive the night, they must battle vampires, animated trees, and the horrific creature known as the “head collector”.
12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is one of the most autobiographical novels I’ve ever written. Like the characters in the novel, I was 12 years old in October 1980. The suburban Cincinnati, Ohio setting is very similar to the one in which I spent my formative years.
That said, the main character of the story, Jeff Schaeffer, doesn’t have much in common with me, or with the boy I was more than 40 years ago. And while I had a group of friends, neither Leah nor Bobby is an exact representation of anyone I knew back then.
Oh, and I never did battle with any of the supernatural creatures that appear in the book.
Here is another point of fabrication: I went on my last trick-or-treat in 1979, not in 1980.
I set 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN in 1980 because some of the themes I wanted to explore required an adolescent perspective; and I was twelve in 1980, not in 1979.
But like the characters in the novel, I was somewhat torn (as were the adults around me) about the appropriate age for giving up the trick-or-treat ritual.
In the culture of those times, you were generally okay for trick-or-treating up to age ten or eleven. But once you reached junior high, well, people would give you funny looks if you showed up at their door on October 31st, asking for candy. And once you reached high school, you were definitely too old.
***
In 1979, therefore, my friend Ken and I decided to go out for “one last Halloween”, kind of like the characters in the novel. (Ken, being a year older than me, actually did turn twelve that year.)
I wore a prefabbed costume from Kmart. I don’t even remember what it was. (I seem to recall a green skeleton, but I can’t be sure.) Ken, however, had one of the coolest Halloween costumes I’ve ever seen—before or since.
This was the early Star Wars era, and every kid was a fan. Ken was no exception. His mother made for him a very elaborate imperial stormtrooper costume. This was not something store-bought. She made the whole thing from scratch. It was amazing.
Halloween 1979 in the Cincinnati area provided a clear, pleasantly cool autumn night. We set out a little after 6 p.m., and everything went fine…at first. Then we crossed paths with a group of teenage boys, a hot rod, and some eggs.
***
One thing I’ve noticed about the 21st-century: suburban teenagers are less mischievous than they used to be.
This could be because of helicopter parenting. How much trouble can you get into when your parents are tracking your movements on a smart phone app? Kids today are also very absorbed in virtual worlds of different kinds.
In the late 1970s, however, adolescent entertainment consisted of whatever was on network television (cable TV didn’t become common until about 1982), books, and other young people.
And since there were no parental tracking apps, your parents typically had only a vague sense of your whereabouts at any given moment.
In this atmosphere of fewer ready-made distractions and much less supervision, there were more motives and opportunities for getting into trouble. And plenty of teenage boys jumped at the chance.
***
This particular group of teenage boys, riding around on Halloween night 1979, had decided that it would be fun to throw eggs at the kids who were still young enough to go trick-or-treating.
They were obviously selecting their victims at random. I will retroactively blame Ken for our being singled out. His solid white stormtrooper outfit really did make him a target.
The car—it must have been a Dodge Charger or a Trans Am—slowed down as it approached. Ken and I had no time to assess the situation, let alone take evasive action. Then someone in the passenger seat threw some white objects at us via their rolled-down window.
The car roared away before we realized what had happened: they had pelted us with eggs.
Ken had been walking closest to the road, and he was a mess. The stormtrooper outfit his mother had so painstakingly crafted was now smeared with dripping yellow egg yolk.
Some of the eggs had splattered on me, too…though not very much.
After that, we decided to call it an early night. Neither one of us wanted to walk around dressed like an omelette.
At least the boys didn’t throw rotten eggs at us, I would think later.
***
My guess is that the egg-throwing foray was a spur-of-the-moment thing for the boys.
Speaking of the teenage boys: I never learned their identities. Whoever they were, though, they would all be pushing sixty in 2021.
***
So that was how my last Halloween went, in 1979 and not in 1980. By Halloween 1980, I decided for myself that I had had enough of Halloween and trick-or-treat. It was time to let that childhood ritual go.
Halloween, nevertheless, retains a strong grip on my imagination. 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN was therefore a very fun book to write as an adult.
If you want to maintain your abilities in a foreign language, you have to use the language regularly. And one of the best ways to practice a foreign language is by reading.
Forget the “apps”—read an old-fashioned book.
(Note: Yes, certain apps can be helpful when you are first learning a language. I’m not anti-app. But once you’re proficient, real-world materials will help you make the most progress. If you’ve been studying a language for years, you should be well beyond the Duolingo stage.)
I first read Pet Sematary—in English—in 1984. Back then, the book was new to all readers, and widely billed as, “the novel that scared Stephen King while he was writing it.”
Like The Dead Zone, which I recently discussed, I remembered the basic plot line and main characters of Pet Sematary. But I have forgotten enough to make the book entertaining the second time around. Also, when I first read this novel, I was a teenager. I’m now in my mid-50s. That makes a big difference.
What about the Spanish?
I sometimes get tongue-tied when chatting in Spanish, but my reading and aural comprehension abilities are quite high. I can read just about any modern text in Spanish, with only an occasional reference to a dictionary.
Lest this strike you as braggadocio, I will also point out that I had my first exposure to Spanish as a high school student more than 40 years ago. I took one year of intermediate Spanish in college. I used Spanish on the job during frequent trips to Mexico in the 1990s and 2000s.
My Spanish is good, by the standard gringo yardstick, and it should be, after all this time. I’m not a language-learning virtuoso, by any means. But I am a dedicated language learner, and one who has been at it for a number of years now.
I recently received an email from a reader of 12 Hours of Halloween, asking me about “Devil’s Night” and the 1980s. The reader wanted to know if I participated in any Devil’s Night mayhem as a youth.
For those of you who don’t know the term: Devil’s Night, aka Damage Night, or Mischief Night, is traditionally the night before Halloween, October 30.
The observance apparently dates back tothe 1790s. In the 1800s, this was a night when children engaged in innocent pranks, like soaping neighbors’ windows.
But nothing remains innocent for long, does it? By the time I was a kid, in the late 1970s, Devil’s Night had acquired a bad reputation. This was largely owing to the destructive arson sprees that took place in cities like Detroit on October 30, starting in the 1960s.
Strait-laced suburban youth that I was, I wanted no part of any of that. Nor did I hear much about such pranks during my trick-or-treating years. I think a few kids may have toilet-papered trees. But that’s about the extent of it.
My maternal grandfather, mid-1930s
In my personal circle, I have been acquainted with exactly one person who admitted to serious Devil’s Night misconduct: my maternal grandfather.
My maternal grandfather (who loved Halloween) was one of my favorite people. He was also a World War II veteran.
But before all of that, he was a youth in rural Southern Ohio, on the westernmost fringes of Appalachia. He grew up in the 1930s. And if you think those were innocent times, then you’ve been watching too many episodes of The Waltons.
On Devil’s Night, my grandfather and his friends used to engage in some marginally malicious hijinks. Much of this consisted of tipping over outhouses
My grandfather told me about one Devil’s Night on which a crotchety old man (who was the bane of local children) fired a shotgun at him and his friends in the dark.
No one was harmed. According to my grandfather, though, the man had fired his shotgun with the intent of doing serious bodily injury to the trespassers. (And they had just tipped over his outhouse.)
Do I approve of what my grandfather and his friends did that night? No, of course not. But I’m quite grateful that that old man’s aim was off. Otherwise, I might not be here to write this post.
-ET
**12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN**
Halloween night 1980 will be unlike any other!
On Halloween night 1980, three young friends face the perils of a supernatural curse.
Their familiar suburban environment is transformed into a nightmare hellscape of witches, evil spirits, and unimaginable creatures.
A terrifying coming-of-age tale for Generation X, or anyone nostalgic for the 1980s!
A new piece of artwork for 12 Hours of Halloween. (This was made for the “A + content” section of the Amazon listing, so the book cover is deliberately excluded from the graphic.)
As suggested in the graphic, most of the action in 12 Hours of Halloween takes place on October 31, 1980.
This is a coming-of-age supernatural horror story, about three young friends who endure a 12-hour, supernatural curse on the first Halloween night of the 1980s.
I don’t do graphic violence, for the most part. (There is no explicit sex in my books, either.) Think: a spooky version of a Ray Bradbury story, with a few nods to some of the classic horror films from the 1980s.
A few years ago, a reader reviewer of The Rockland Horror complained, “I’m not sure I would have read this if I knew [sic] it started in the late 1800s…”
That’s fair enough. Some readers like period novels, some don’t.
But the reader put himself (and me, I suppose—as I aim to please) through an unnecessary ordeal. The opening line of The Rockland Horror’s book description begins, “One night in March 1882..”
The Rockland Horror is very much billed as a historical horror series. All the reader had to do was to read the book description.
Throughout the world, people who make Internet inquiries about Kuwa6226 meet violent deaths.
In online forums and chatrooms, people are warned not to mention the mysterious entity.
But who, or what, is Kuwa6226? A supernatural force? A cult? A global conspiracy?
Most people say that it’s better not to ask…and Kuwa6226’s reign of terror goes unchallenged.
***
Then two unlikely sleuths, from opposite sides of the world, unite.
Minoru Watase is a corporate IT employee in Japan. Julie Lawrence is a college student in the American Pacific Northwest.
Julie and Minoru have each lost a friend to Kuwa6226. Together, they are determined to discover Kuwa6226’s true identity and eliminate the menace.
Their search will take them from the streets of Tokyo to an American college town in Washington State. When they finally come face-to-face with Kuwa6226, Julie and Minoru will be unprepared for the revelation…and the ruthlessness of their adversary!
Kuwa 6226 is a horror-mystery with endless twists and turns!
Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s main subscription ebook reading program. Kindle Unlimited gives you virtually unlimited (hence the name) reading privileges to a wide variety of titles, for a low monthly fee.
Not every title listed on Amazon is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Literary fiction from the big New York publishing houses generally is not included. You likely won’t find the latest Jonathan Franzen novel in Kindle Unlimited anytime in the near future.
Kindle Unlimited is heavy on genre fiction. This means: romance, space opera, LitRPG, fantasy, and horror.
I have a fair number of horror titles in Kindle Unlimited. I write supernatural horror, in the tradition of Peter Straub, H.P. Lovecraft, Bentley Little and E.F. Benson.
And yes (I know this sounds a bit pretentious) Stephen King. I have achieved barely a gazillionth fraction of King’s commercial success. But his formula of character-based, fast-moving horror is always on my mind when I sit down to write a horror tale.
What kind of horror don’t I write? If you want splatterpunk, or “extreme” horror (aka “torture porn”), then you should skip my books and stories. I have no interest in writing horror fiction that is endlessly grim and/or sadistic. My horror fiction is more akin to the campfire ghost story.
Below are the horror titles that I presently have enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. This means that you can read them for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
To view one of these titles on Amazon, simply click on the image of any book, or any hyperlink below.
(Don’t have a Kindle Unlimited membership? Click here.)
A college student takes a walk down the most haunted road in rural Ohio for a cash prize. This is a “haunted road” story, basically a tale of being stuck on a cursed country road at night. Ghosts, evil spirits, and hellhounds abound. Also, an evil witch that inhabits a covered bridge.
A coming-of-age story set on Halloween night, 1980. This is a tale of supernatural events in the American suburb. A classic horror tale for Generation X.
The year is 1976, and the Headless Horseman rides again. This coming-of-age horror thriller is sure to please readers who appreciate character-based supernatural fiction with lots of twists and turns.
The basic idea is: the ghosts of American history coming back to haunt Middle America in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. (And yes, I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial, although I was rather young at the time.)
In early 2016, I read an article in The Economist about the luk thep “spirit dolls” of Thailand.
Manufactured and sold in Thailand, these are factory-made dolls with a unique sales point: each doll is supposedly infused with the spirit of a young child that passed prematurely.
The luk thep are intended to bring comfort to their owners. (They are marketed to childless women.) To me, though, the whole idea sounded rather macabre.
And I couldn’t help thinking: what if one of the dolls was infused with a child spirit that wasn’t very nice? What if that same doll ended up in the possession of an American woman who happened to visit Thailand on a business trip? Luk Thep is a fast-paced ghost tale that spans two continents.
Looking for horror stories you can read online for free?
While I recommend Kindle Unlimited for fans of horror fiction and ebooks, I should also point out that I have a number of horror stories you can read online here for FREE.
From classic ghost tales to creature features, you’ll find a considerable range. Check them out!
REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS is a coming-of-age supernatural horror novel set near Cincinnati, Ohio in 1976.
But the novel is based on Washington Irving’s 1820 short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.
Revolutionary Ghosts came from the question: “What would have happened, had the Headless Horseman of Washington Irving’s tale invaded 20th-century America in 1976?
In the above video, I describe the series of associations that went into the story, some going back all the way to my childhood. (I was 8 years old in 1976!)
The following excerpt is from Chapter 1 of Kuwa6226!
Go to bed already, an internal voice told him. Be sensible. Be responsible.
Hajime Takagawa rubbed his eyes as he stared at his computer screen. He knew that he should have been asleep an hour ago. The time was already 11:47 p.m.
The main room of his studio apartment was completely dark, except for the glow of his laptop screen. The remnants of Takagawa’s late dinner—ramen and salted pork—still hung in the semi-fetid air.
He would have to clean up the kitchen before he went to bed, too.
More than that, though,Takagawa would have to report to work tomorrow. No different from any other Tuesday. Another grueling morning commute through Japan’s Kantō region, which encompassed Greater Tokyo.
The commute was even more grueling when you were sleep-deprived. (This Takagawa knew from experience.)
But Takagawa, seated in the dark at his kitchen table, was too transfixed by what was on his computer screen.
It wasn’t pornography, nor online gambling. Not even social media—not really.
It was an online forum.
The forum was called: the International Legend Hunters (ILH) forum.
The forum consisted of a series of conversations with complete strangers, about supernatural phenomena and urban legends.
Takagawa leaned forward in his chair, the time and tomorrow’s troubles forgotten again.
Someone in Scotland had just posted a field report about an investigation of a supposedly haunted castle outside Edinburgh.
The poster’s handle was IanK12. Takagawa read IanK12’s report with great interest. He struggled over a few typos, awkward sentences, and unfamiliar words. The language of the International Legend Hunter’s forum was English, which Takagawa understood, though imperfectly.
If nothing else, Takagawa told himself, his new obsession might be improving his English skills. That could come in handy at work.
“I didn’t see any ghosts,” IanK12 typed at the end of his report. “But I didn’t debunk the legend, either.”
Takagawa pondered this. The whole point of the International Legend Hunters forum was to debunk urban legends and ghost stories. IanK12 had therefore failed. (Takagawa, though, would never be so ill-mannered as to point this out.)
But he was determined to do better. When Takagawa carried out the investigation he was planning, he would not fail. He would find the truth, and he would not lose his nerve.
And he already had a doozy of an urban legend in mind.
Takagawa read two more field reports. The first of these concerned a haunted village in the Philippines. The second was about a site in Ireland where UFOs were commonly seen—if you believed the stories.
These field reports, too, were inconclusive. They were little more than descriptions of the locations, with some random speculations thrown in.
The forum has no real purpose if no one ever comes to any conclusions, Takagawa thought. These investigations should be more thorough, more systematic.
Takagawa considered for a moment, and then typed:
“Interesting reports, to be sure. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to make several more trips over the coming days, to see if any phenomena present themselves? Then we may have some concrete data to analyze.”
He paused. Was his English correct, or at least comprehensible? He believed that it was. He typed another paragraph:
“On the other hand: while no one can prove the nonexistence of a negative, a lack of a phenomenon, repeated over multiple days, weighs in favor of disproving an urban legend.”
Then he added:
“Please excuse my poor English.”
Finally he pushed the POST button, and his remarks appeared in the forum.
His handle in the forum was TokyoTaka. Everyone in the forum posted under a pseudonym, often one that suggested nationality or location.
Takagawa’s comments of constructive criticism received several upvotes, but the enthusiasm was muted. Not everyone in the forum was serious about making systematic inquiries, let alone approximating the scientific method. Many of the forum’s contributors seemed content to exchange ghost stories in cyberspace.
Finally, Takagawa went to bed.
The time was 12:21 a.m., Tuesday morning.
His sleep was tortured. He dreamt of being chased through a forest by a giant skeletal creature, one with bulging green eyes and clattering teeth.
I’ve pulled no punches about the fact that I am not a fan of many of Stephen King’s post-1990 novels. Last year, I was less than thrilled with the overlong and rambling Fairy Tale.
In recent decades (King’s career is now so long that this is the most meaningful unit of measurement), his best work has often been his collections of short fiction.
And most recently: You Like It Darker (2024). I purchased this book in hardcover within days of my disappointing read of Fairy Tale, because—when King is at his best, he hits them out of the park.
I only recently got around to reading this latest short story collection, though. (I have a rather large TBR backlog.) I am happy to report that You Like It Darker is one of his best short story collections in years—probably since the aforementioned Everything’s Eventual. Not every story in You Like it Darker is a home run. But a handful of them are.
“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” is a long short story about a man who is framed for a murder he did not commit. The whole thing starts with a recurring bad dream about a buried body.
“On Slide Inn Road” is a shorter tale about a family trip gone wrong. It reverses some of the usual age dynamics that you see in stories. This one is more of a crime story than a horror tale. (There are no supernatural elements.) But it’s a good one.
Rattlesnakes is a novella set in Florida. This is also a sequel to Cujo (1981). The main protagonist of that book, Vic Trenton, is now in his seventies, and he’s been through a lot in the intervening years. He goes through a lot in this story, too.
The Answer Man is another novella. In 1937, a young man meets a roadside hawker who can foresee the future—for a price. The young man interacts with “the Answer Man” over the next sixty years.
This is ultimately a story about finding meaning in life’s unexpected challenges and tragedies. This one is an absolute gem, and worth the entire price of the book.
***
Stephen King is now 77. I started reading his books in the 1980s, when he was only in his thirties, and I was in my teens. (Note: I’ve gotten older since then, too.)
I hope that Stephen King continues to write for many years to come. That was my overriding thought, as I finished this collection.
At the end of 2024 I read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone for the second time.
I had read this book for the first time back in 1984, when I was fifteen going on sixteen. In the intervening years, I had never revisitedthe book. (I did see the 1983 film adaptation starring Christopher Walken. While this was a valiant effort on Hollywood’s part, the movie simply didn’t capture the essence of the complex, multilayered source material of the novel.)
‘The Dead Zone’: an experiment in rereading
I decided in December 2024 that forty years was enough time to wait between readings of The Dead Zone. I therefore gave the book another reading. While I remembered most of the major plot points, I had forgotten enough that the book was “fresh” in my rereading.
I also did this as an experiment of sorts. I have been disappointed by Stephen King’s recent novels. Last year I plodded my way through the meandering Fairy Tale (2022), and I struggled to finish it. I was glad when Fairy Tale was over. I nearly gave up on The Outsider (2018) and Doctor Sleep (2013). I did give up on Cell (2006), Under the Dome (2009), and Lisey’s Story (2006), abandoning all three books midway through.
And yet, I recalled loving Stephen King’s early novels so much. Seemingly everything published under his name between 1974 and 1983 was pure gold. Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, The Stand…I had gone through all of those books like a hot knife through butter. And that was back when I had the distracted mind of a teenager.
I wondered if my tastes had changed, or maybe matured. For example, I still enjoy the music of the Canadian rock group Rush. But I have backed off from my teenage assertions that Neil Peart’s lyrics are absolutely brilliant, a complete system of philosophy set to music.
The fifty-something eye can simply not see the world through the teenage lens. Therefore, a rereading of The Dead Zone would be a worthwhile test. Had Stephen King changed? Or had I changed?
‘The Dead Zone’: not quite a horror novel
The Dead Zone is the story of Johnny Smith, a Maine English teacher who emerges from a car accident and a four-year coma with psychic powers. Not long after his awakening, Smith discovers that he has an important mission to perform, one involving an act of political violence. But in committing this one act, Smith will literally save the world.
Although there is a serial murderer subplot, The Dead Zone is not a horror novel in the conventional sense. If Stephen King hadn’t written it, The Dead Zone would have been shelved in the science fiction section. The Dead Zone reminds me of something the late Michael Crichton would have written.
So what did I think? Forty years later, I will tell you the same thing I would have told you in 1984: The Dead Zone is an absolutely brilliant novel. I enjoyed The Dead Zone just as much as a 56-year-old as I did at the age of not-quite-sixteen. In fact, I enjoyed it more, because there were some layers and references that went over my head forty years ago, that I appreciated this time around.
The power of narrative drive
Why is The Dead Zone such a good novel? The premise? Well, yes, the premise is an intriguing one. But Stephen King, in the early years, made magic with vampires in ’Salem’s Lot, his second novel. Vampires were hardly original by the time ’Salem’s Lot was published in 1975. Bram Stoker had already done them seventy-eight years earlier.
The Dead Zone has a compelling premise and strong central characters. More than that, though, The Dead Zone has a strong narrative drive. Although by no means a short book, there is not a single wasted scene in The Dead Zone. There are no meandering subplots.
The problem of the Frankenstory
Fairy Tale, by contrast, is what I would call a Frankenstory. It lacks a coherent wholeness. If you read the book, you’ll find that it is actually two novels in one. There is the “in-this-world” story that comes in the first half of the book. And then there is the portal fantasy.
Or, no…that isn’t exactly right. It would be more accurate to say that Stephen King devotes a full novel’s worth of space setting up the main story premise in Fairy Tale.
I first noticed that Stephen King’s style had changed back in 1986, when I read It. Whereas before his novels and stories had moved along a straight narrative throughline, now they meandered to and fro.
What else makes a novel a Frankenstory? A story with too many characters, especially point-of-view characters. (This is a particularly pernicious trap for many fantasy authors.)
***
Anyway, I very much enjoyed my reread of The Dead Zone. The book really is that good. I recommend it for those who would like to read Stephen King at the top of his game.
