Nowadays, it’s easy to see Stephen King’s name and have a conceived notion of his legacy. He remains well into old age one of the most prolific authors of his generation, producing masterpieces that dig under people’s skin and recontextualizes fears we’ve long taken for granted. In this Short Stop series, I will explore a period before he was the icon we know and love. Even with a handful of bestsellers to his name, his status had yet to cement. That is why I’ve chosen to take a look at his first story collection, “Night Shift,” and hopefully get a glimpse into the writer taking shape, before his style was cemented into a cultural touchstone. Was he always the master of horror, or was there a simpler time when he was as messy and weird as the rest of us? All it takes is turning the page to find out.
The most underappreciated thing about King this early in his career is the versatility with which he can twist the horror. In just six stories, he’s managed to cover everything from drawn-out tension to moments so visceral they traumatize the reader. He does this while reveling in grotesque detail that often overrides character development, but finds something more relatable in the process. So far in “Night Shift,” he has been a master of exploring common fears of the working class in neighborhoods that long ago were cursed. Without certainty about how to fix these problems, they’ll just continue until time runs out.
He has crafted more meaningful stories throughout this anthology, but “The Boogeyman” may be the sharpest shot of straight horror that he’s done so far. There’s no getting bogged down in external commentary. This is the study of one man’s soul as he determines whether he’s responsible for his children’s deaths. King writes this as if he’s minutes from suffocating, doing everything to push the information out while he can. The structure of the story, largely dialogue-driven, creates an intense rush through his anxieties as every aside reveals further details of him before ending on something that’s both terrifying and somewhat ambiguous.
My personal experience with the ending was confusion. While not the most complex narrative, I felt like I missed something as everything shifted from “normalcy” into fantasy. Like with Chekhov’s Gun, there had to be a setup to earn this execution. At some point, the therapist had to produce a sense of doubt in the reader’s mind. And yet, I’m not sure that there is. Protagonist Lester Billings seems to be talking mostly to himself, where the only clues of an external world are the therapist acknowledging that time has been passing. Lester’s personality suggested that he was talking faster, but King paints this exchange as lasting longer, as if every sentence is being slowly extracted from his mind. Even so, it feels contradictory to the context clues of him feeling an urgency to speak his mind, which creates its own surreality.
Once again, King deserves accolades alone for knowing how to grip the reader. Through a brief exchange with his therapist, the setting is clear. Lester has a guilty conscience. His therapist, Mr. Harper, appears to be a last resort as he suggests that he can’t talk to priests or lawyers. By the end of the first page, red flags emerge suggesting that he’s not being totally honest. He admits to killing three people despite telling Harper that he didn’t. What’s bizarre is how eager he is to speak, ignoring formalities. Already, he seems nervous and rude, suggesting he tends to overlook common decency practices. The reader never spends time with his family, and yet it’s easy to assume he lacks emotional reciprocation.
It’s also not clear if King writes Lester as detestable on purpose or if he’s reflecting the average married man in 1970. He’s a bit high-strung and desperate to please, but he believes in the familial hierarchy. His casual willingness to berate his wife with language that suggests she’s not loyal enough already puts him at odds with domestic situations. Given that he’s also racist and uses racial epithets numerous times, there’s a lot about this exchange that feels like Lester is clearing his deepest thoughts, which are acidic. In theory, none of these has anything to do with the titular boogeyman, but at the same time there is a sense of repression, as if violent tendencies are just out of reach.
The writer does a great job of painting him as a man capable of killing his children. Even if Lester never paints himself as the culprit, his aggression makes him the perfect culprit. At the same time, the author recognizes the dirty joy of voyeurism for the reader. There is a thrill in watching an awful man bare his soul while spreading enough doubt to make him sympathetic. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding that will clear up if we look closely enough. Even so, the contradiction of being obnoxious means that the reader is primed to seek comeuppance, even if the situation is so recognizable that it’s already morbid.
A risk for any new family is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (S.I.D.S), where a child can pass away without any significant signs. The story provides one of the worst fears for parents, albeit with a horror twist. Lester claims that both of his children died in separate ways, except that they each yelled the word, “boogeyman!” There’s helplessness to this scenario, where there’s nothing that can be done to rescue the child. Along with the burden of a life unlived, it’s easy to see the post-mortem as taking a terrible strain on the living. Maybe the resentment Lester is feeling is more reciprocation from unexpressed regret. Could his resentment for his wife be a sign of different grieving strategies?
The boogeyman is never really defined throughout the story. Even when his description comes into play, he’s more of an amorphous force that is not dissimilar from a metaphorical void. He lives in the closet, just out of sight and waiting for a vulnerable moment to strike. Given a baby’s inability to fight back, it’s easy to see it as the scapegoat for S.I.D.S. or parental neglect. Given that Lester admits to refusing to coddle the child due to behavior inherited from his father, there’s already an effort to distance oneself from the trauma. Everyone is on their own. They will have to get over their problems without assistance. Even if he’s smart enough to move the child to a new bedroom due to bad energies, he’s never able to break the need for distancing himself from any problem.
What makes this story effective on top of form is how emotionally driven it is. Lester isn’t goaded to provide information. He shares his story at his own free will, and there’s constant suspense. Each moment feels like a gut punch, whether it’s a dead child or his emotional detachment. Everything is removing him from a healthy response system. While it’s believed that talking to someone will help alleviate certain pressures, he considers the potential of telling anyone about the murder to possibly ruin his life. His stuttering cadence suggests that he knows this and wants the least amount of pushback. Whereas most authors would get caught up with adjusting tempo throughout the story, this is one continual push to the end.
For being a topic so bleak, the indirection makes it sound less disturbing. Despite admitting to murder, he doesn’t actively engage with that reality. Instead, he scapegoats the boogeyman at every turn. If there’s one tell, it’s that he decides to spend the hours after his second child’s death by going to an all-night diner. He attempts to escape the situation in a literal way, hoping to resolve the problem at a later hour. It makes sense given that his life is falling apart, but also, there’s something suspicious about him not confronting his environment and trying to make it a safer, happier place to live.
Like with “The Mangler” beforehand, the ending feels abrupt and out of place. However, it all falls into place once considering how flimsy Lester’s identity is. He’s a man running from himself like he would a boogeyman. The idea of literalizing the monster into Harper suggests that he’s deep in conversation with himself, or at least trapped in a debate for his own honesty. Could he possibly accept his own guilt, or will he continue to be tortured by this faceless creature that has no choice but to harm him?
The best I can say is that “The Boogeyman” works because of its own practicality. While the situation is exaggerated, there have been many real-life narratives where people’s psychological states have fallen apart. King writes a recognizable fear very well despite picking the least supportive example. Lester sounds like more than his child died between the first and last page. It’s possible his marriage will never be whole again. Questions of what is and isn’t his fault remain, but it’s done so in a persuasive manner that the best of horror can.
The child mortality angle also makes sense when considering the era in which it was written. The story was originally published by Cavalier in 1973 during the height of demonic child possession. There was a public fear of the youth losing their humanity, and that includes considering what it means from a parent’s standpoint. Sure, this is closer to a S.I.D.S. story than misbehavior, but the uncertainty of a happy future drives both to disturbing places. The boogeyman may never feel fleshed out as a concept, but that doesn’t matter. This story is ultimately about Lester’s personal guilt, and he presents it with the heart of a film noir detective. That may explain why this just flies by. That may also explain why it led to a film adaptation in 2023 directed by Rob Savage. If nothing else, it currently ranks as the most commercially successful adaptation from “Night Shift” with a box office total of $82.3 million.
When thinking of King as The Master of Horror, it’s stories like “The Boogeyman” which stand out as real highlights of his career. It’s here that his ideas click with their execution and present a richer emotional palette that is uncompromising and bleak. It never sacrifices personality and instead plays into the reader’s morbid fascination with the profane. He gives them permission to consider the ugliness while judging a man who can either be reprehensible or tragic, depending on the sentence. Even in its simplicity, it does a lot to make the somewhat predictable twist mean a lot. The more it lingers, the more it comes to encapsulate the fears of parenthood and the greater the risk of failure. Can you possibly live with that guilt? Lester sure can’t. It’s not likely that anyone would do better.
Coming Up Next: “Gray Matter”
Comments
Post a Comment