You Like It Darker: Stories Hardback - 2024

You Like It Darker is a collection of twelve short stories by best-selling award-winning American author, Stephen King. In Two Talented Bastids, a persistent journalist manages to get some answers from ageing Castle County author, Laird Carmody, but the secret of the success, in their mid-forties, of both himself, and his close friend, artist Dave LaVerdiere remains a mystery. Until, that is, Laird dies and his son Mark reads the story of their hunting trip in the 30-mile wood in 1978. But can he believe it? In The Fifth Step, a recovering alcoholic convinces a stranger in Central Park to help him with one of his twelve steps, much to his regret: who knew listening could be so dangerous? In Willie The Weirdo, a ten-year-old boy with an unhealthy obsession with death ends up closer to it than he might have wanted. In Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream, a high school custodian has a disturbing dream: a half-moon, a deserted gas station, a stray dog, a partially-exposed buried body, and a charm bracelet. It so unsettles him that sets out to prove it was only a dream, only it turns out not to be. He decides to do the right thing, to report it, anonymously: who would believe him if he told how he knew? But, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Both KBI agents who track him down are sceptical of the dream story, but Inspector Ella Davis allows some doubt while Inspector Franklin Jalbert fixates on Danny as a murderer, and life becomes much worse than any bad dream. In Finn, it's clear that, from the day he was born, Finn Murrie's life has been one big streak of bad luck. His grandma says he'll be due a big helping of good luck but, at nineteen, plucked from the street in a case of mistaken identity, and then tortured by people who want answers he doesn't have, he wonders if he'll survive to see it. In On Slide Inn Road, the Brown family (Frank and Corinne, eleven-year-old Billy, nine-year-old Mary, and seventy-five-year-old Granpop Donald) are on the road to visit Donald's ailing, perhaps dying, sister. At Donald's insistence, they are in his old Buick, which manages the rutted road (a short cut?) better than the Volvo would have, until they reach a crevasse. They have to reverse back to the burnt-out remains of the Slide Inn before they can turn. But the Slide Inn isn't quite deserted… In Red Screen, Detective Wilson's day starts with a call to a murder scene. A plumber has stabbed his wife. He has a good excuse, which he patiently explains to Wilson, and some of that wife's changed behaviour sort of rings a bell: what he's noticed at home … But no, the guy is clearly deranged. Or is he? In The Turbulence Expert, Craig Dixon's facilitator has him booked on a flight to Sarasota, and his pulse begins to race. He's seated in coach, next to Mary Worth, a retired librarian excited about her trip, and grumpy businessman, Frank Freeman. When the clear air turbulence begins, Craig has a white-knuckle grip on the armrests, certain that this time, they're all going to die. But his fear is the whole point… Laurie begins predictably enough, with recent widower Lloyd Sunderland's bossy older sister, Beth turning up at his house on Carmen Key with a puppy, a little female Border Collie-Mudi cross. Lloyd is adamant that he does not want a pet, reasoning that he can barely care for himself. Beth can see that he has lost weight, but she's insistent that he give the puppy a trial. From there, the story proceeds as expected: the puppy gets a name (Laurie) and the situation, after a few weeks, is no longer temporary. Then, some three months later, Lloyd and Laurie are taking their usual route to lunch at the Cayman Key Fish House: the Six Mile Path, a dilapidated canal boardwalk… In Rattlesnakes, a sequel to Cujo, Victor Trenton, now widowed, is staying a while during the first summer of the pandemic in Greg Ackerman's McMansion on Rattlesnake Key. He encounters Allie Bell pushing, as she always does, an empty double stroller from which she introduces her twin sons, Jacob and Joseph, more than forty years dead from rattlesnake bites. Having lost his own young son, Vic understands the there/not there nature of deceased children, but the squeaking of the stroller wheel haunts him, even before Allie meets her fate, and leaves a legacy Vic doesn't want. In The Dreamers, twenty-four-year-old Vietnam vet, William Davis, a super-fast stenographer, takes a job with Elgin, who calls himself The Gentleman Scientist. The man is experimenting on paid subjects with dreams, convinced he can learn what holds the world together. William has to take notes. A bit out there, but it pays well. Some subjects are mundane, some a bit weird, but the last one they see, downright scary. In The Answer Man, it's 1937, and newly-minted lawyer Phil Parker has a dilemma about his future to resolve, and a few days alone at his favourite getaway hasn't helped. The Answer Man sits at a roadside stall on the way into town, and the answers Phil gets when he asks the right questions help him decide. And he is amazed at just how accurate those answers are. Their second encounter, in 1951, leaves Phil with a niggle. Again, the answers are accurate, but Phil begins to wish he hadn't asked. By their third encounter, Phil's priorities are very different… King gives the reader fully-formed characters in these brilliantly plotted, often thought-provoking tales. He gives an alien predicting Earth's demise an insightful observation: "When intelligence outraces emotional stability, it's always just a matter of time." The stories vary in length, between 9 pages and 145 pages, but whether in long form or short, Stephen King is a consummate storyteller, and You Like It Darker deftly illustrates the fact. Definitely dark, and so, so good!

CloggieDownunder