by Stephen King
Her eyes flick to the half-open door slyly.
--Can you sneak me a couple of my pills, Johnny?
It is how she always asks. She is not supposed to have any pills outside of her regular medication because she has lost so much body weight and she has built up what his druggie friends of his college days would have called "a heavy thing." The body's immunity stretches to within a fingernail's breadth of lethal dosage. One more pill and you're over the edge. They say it is what happened to Marilyn Monroe.
--I brought some pills from home.
--Did you?
--They're good for pain.
He holds the box out to her. She can only read very close. She frowns over the large print and then says,
--I had some of that Darvon stuff before. It didn't help me.
--This is stronger.
Her eyes rise from the box to his own. Idly she says,
--Is it?
He can only smile foolishly. He cannot speak. It is like the first time he got laid, it happened in the back of some friend's car and when he came home his mother asked him if he had a good time and he could only smile this same foolish smile.
--Can I chew them?
--I don't know. You could try one.
--All right. Don't let them see.
He opens the box and pries the plastic lid off the bottle. He pulls the cotton out of the neck. Could she do all that with the crippled helicopter of her left hand? Would they believe it? He doesn't know. Maybe they don't either. Maybe they wouldn't even care.
He shakes six of the pills into his hand. He watches her watching him. It is many too many, even she must know that. If she says anything about it, he will put them all back and offer her a single Arthritis Pain Formula.
A nurse glides by outside and his hand twitches, clicking the gray capsules together, but the nurse doesn't look in to see how the "cortotomy kid" is doing.
His mother doesn't say anything, only looks at the pills like they were perfectly ordinary pills (if there is such a thing). But on the other hand, she has never liked ceremony; she would not crack a bottle of champagne on her own boat.
--Here you go,
he says in a perfectly natural voice, and pops the first one into her mouth. She gums it reflectively until the gelatin dissolves, and then she winces.
--Taste bad? I won't . . .
--No, not too bad.
He gives her another. And another. She chews them with that same reflective look. He gives her a fourth. She smiles at him and he sees with horror that her tongue is yellow. Maybe if he hits her in the belly she will bring them up. But he can't. He could never hit his mother.
--Will you see if my legs are together?
--Just take these first.
He gives her a fifth. And a sixth. Then he sees if her legs are together. They are. She says,
--I think I'll sleep a little now.
--All right. I'm going to get a drink.
--You've always been a good son, Johnny.
He puts the bottle in the box and tucks the box into her purse, leaving the plastic top on the sheet beside her. He leaves the open purse beside her and thinks: She asked for her purse. I brought it to her and opened it just before I left. She said she could get what she wanted out of it. She said she'd get the nurse to put it back in the wardrobe.
He goes out and gets his drink. There is a mirror over the fountain, and he runs out his tongue and looks at it.
When he goes back into the room, she is sleeping with her hands pressed together. The veins in them are big, rambling. He gives her a kiss and her eyes roll behind their lids, but do not open.
Yes.
He feels no different, either good or bad.
He starts out of the room and thinks of something else. He goes back to her side, takes the bottle out of the box, and rubs it all over his shirt. Then he presses the limp fingertips of her sleeping left hand on the bottle. Then he puts it back and goes out of the room quickly, without looking back.
He goes home and waits for the phone to ring and wishes he had given her another kiss. While he waits, he watches TV and drinks a lot of water.
BY STEPHEN KING
NOVELSAS RICHARD
BACHMAN
CarrieRange
'Salem's LotThe Long Walk
The ShiningRoadwork
The StandThe Running man
The Dead ZoneThinner
Firestarter
CujoCOLLECTIONS
The Dark Tower:Night Shift
The GunslingerDifferent Seasons ChristineSkeleton Crew
Pet Sematary
The TalismanNONFICTION
(with Peter Straub)Danse Macabre
It
The Eyes of the DragonSCREENPLAYS
MiseryCreepshow
The TommyknockersCat's Eye
The Dark Tower II:Silver Bullet Drawing of the
Three
The Dark Half
The Stand: The Complete &
Uncut Edition
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
www.doubleday.com
Grateful acknowledgment is made by the author to the editors of the following magazines, where many of these stories first appeared, for permission to reprint.
"Graveyard Shift" appeared in Cavalier, October 1970; "I Am the Doorway" appeared in Cavalier, March 1971; "Battleground" appeared in Cavalier, September 1972; "The mangler" appeared in Cavalier, December 1972; "The Boogeyman" appeared in Cavalier, March 1973; "Trucks" appeared in Cavalier, June 1973; "Gray Matter" appeared in Cavalier, October 1973; "Sometimes They Come Back" appeared in Cavalier, March 1974; "Night Surf" appeared in Cavalier, August 1974; "The Lawnmower Man" appeared in Cavalier, May 1975; "Strawberry Spring" appeared in Cavalier, November 1975. Copyright (c) 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 by Cavalier.
"One for the Road" appeared in Maine magazine, March/April 1977. Copyright (c) 1977 by Maine Magazine Co., Inc. "The Ledge" appeared in Penthouse, July 1976; "Children of the Corn" appeared in Penthouse, March 1977; "I Know
What You Need" appeared in Cosmopolitan, September 1976; "The Man Who Loved Flowers" appeared in Gallery, August 1977.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
King, Stephen, 1947-Night Shift.
1. Horror tales, American. I. Title.
PZ4.K5227Ni[PS3561.I483]813'.5'477-75146
Copyright (c)1976, 1977, 1978 by Stephen King
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
eISBN: 978-0-385-52884-9
v3.0_r1
Sodierzhaniie
Title Page2
Contents4
Introduction6
Foreword8
Jerusalem's Lot13
Graveyard Shift27
Night Surf34
I Am the Doorway38
The Mangler43
The Boogeyman51
Gray Matter56
Battleground61
Trucks65
Sometimes They Come Back72
Strawberry Spring84
The Ledge88
The Lawnmower Man95
Quitters, Inc.99
I Know What You Need108
Children of the Corn117
The Last Rung on the Ladder129
The Man Who Loved Flowers134
One for the Road137
The Woman in the Room143
By Stephen King149
Copyright150
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