Stephen King has been scaring the spit out of us for half a century now.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first novel, “Carrie,” the scalding tale of a teenage girl whose pyrotechnic powers are provoked by high school cruelty.
Since then, King, 76, has published more than 70 bestselling books of fiction, sometimes as many as three in one year, dozens of which have become movies or TV series. He’s conjured up our chills with small-town vampires, haunted hotels, possessed cars, revenant pets — much of the success of his fiction grows from his ability to anchor horror in the everyday.
His new collection, “You Like It Darker,” continues that, but like some of his recent books it also looks at terrors that aren’t supernatural, that indeed we all encounter: ageing, loss and death.
The book’s 12 stories vary in length, from the short, sharp shock of “The Fifth Step,” just nine pages long, to some novella-length entries, like the nightmarish “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” at about 150 pages.
Several of the stories feature older people looking back at fateful points in their lives, realizing how much impact a single decision can have for years afterward.
The book’s first story, “Two Talented Bastids,” is narrated by Mark Carmody, the son of Laird Carmody, a bestselling novelist approaching his 90th birthday. Laird has retired from writing and from giving interviews, but a young reporter named Ruth Crawford is persistent.
She wants to “drill down” into the reasons why Laird and his lifelong best friend, artist Dave LaVerdiere, both raised in the same tiny town in Maine, both amateurs at their artistic pursuits, suddenly “achieved fame in their mid-forties, at a time when most men and women have given over the ambitions of their youth.”
The answers lie, perhaps, in a long-ago hunting trip and an uncanny encounter in the woods.
King bookends that with the last story, “The Answer Man.” It arcs across Phil Parker’s life, from his graduation from Harvard Law in 1937 to his old age in the ‘90s. On the horns of a dilemma about where to work — his father’s white-shoe Boston law firm or the minuscule town in New Hampshire where his heart lies — and what his fiancee, Sally, will think of his decision, he goes for a drive and passes a man sitting at a roadside table with a sign that says “The Answer Man.”
It’s a weird encounter, but Phil takes his advice, and returns twice more years later, even though the answers he gets don’t turn out to mean exactly what he thought.
Two of the book’s stories are set in Florida, on fictional Rattlesnake Key, somewhere south of the actual Casey Key in Sarasota County, where King and his wife, Tabitha, have had a home for many years.
“Rattlesnakes” brings back Victor Trenton, the father and husband from King’s novel “Cujo.” Vic is now retired and widowed. While staying at a friend’s beach house, he meets a neighbour with whom he shares a terrible experience: Both have lost young children to gruesome deaths.
Vic still grieves but has moved on with his life. Allie is gently mad, wheeling an empty twin stroller around each day and introducing her boys as if they were still present. They are, of course, as Vic will discover to his horror.
The other Florida story, “Laurie,” centres on another widower, Lloyd Sunderland. He’s disgruntled when his sister gives him the surprise gift of a puppy, a fluffy little border collie mix, but like most people he can’t resist a puppy for long.
He names her Laurie, and she’s a boon companion. The two don’t encounter anything supernatural, but Laurie does prove she has a talent that comes in handy in Florida, the state where everything wants to kill you: She knows what to do in the event of an alligator attack.
“On Slide Inn Road” is King’s hat tip to one of the great Flannery O’Connor’s most memorable short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” He recasts it in the present day, with the squabbling Brown family getting lost on a back road where their GPS doesn’t function.
That unfortunate detour brings them face to face with a pair of criminals, but — and you might not expect this; I didn’t — King gives it a much happier ending than the ruthless O’Connor did.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Among all the ghoulies and ghosties he populates his fiction with, King is often merciful and finds heroes in unlikely places.
“Horror stories,” he writes in his afterword, “are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic. A paradox, but a true one.”
