Although not tied to any previously published source material, King nevertheless chose to work with some of his favorite supernatural themes and monsters—werewolves, vampires, and, in particular, cats (you may recall that 1985’s Cat’s Eye featured a feline in all three story lines, and 1989’s Pet Sematary revolved to a large degree around the unholy resurrection of a family cat named Church). Even though Sleepwalkers may not be the most memorable movie ever dealing with the topic of shape shifters, the R-rated feature makes for a suitably scary and fast-moving ninety-one-minute thriller.
The narrative is essentially a twisted love triangle—an outrageous blending of the supernatural with the forbidden erotic. Charles Brady (Brian Krause) appears to be a handsome high school student who has just moved to a quiet, small town in Indiana with his beloved mother Mary (Alice Krige) from yet another quiet, small town in Ohio. But in truth, Charles is an ancient and apparently immortal shape shifter—a “sleepwalker”—who can instantly change from human to animal form when angered, and render himself and other objects invisible, at least briefly. Except for his mother, he is also apparently the last of his species, a species that survives via a unique process. Charles, you see, is the food gatherer who feeds both himself and his mother. But Charles doesn’t eat meat or vegetables—rather, he feeds on the life force of virgin girls, transmitting what he doesn’t need to his mother through sexual intercourse.
King takes great pains to show that these two creatures are human only in appearance—whenever they look into mirrors, they see their true identities as hideous demonic entities. But apparently even demons have emotions, as Charles develops genuine feelings for his next intended victim, a beautiful student named Tanya (Mädchen Amick).
This leads to a twisted love triangle, for Charles, drawn to Tanya much like any human male would be, knows he must kill her if his mother is to survive. Although this premise would have made for a fascinating story line in its own right, King fails to go any further down that particular path. Rather, after Charles and Tanya go to a local cemetery to obtain gravestone rubbings, his barely controllable animalistic tendencies take over. He attempts to date-rape the girl, and in doing so reveals that he is in fact a predatory shape shifter.
When a deputy sheriff, who just happens to have his pet cat with him on patrol, arrives on the scene, the officer’s feline instinctively attacks Charles after he kills her owner. Apparently, even though the “sleepwalkers” appear to be part feline themselves, they are mortal enemies of all cats—the only creatures, it seems, that can do them harm.
Although grievously wounded, Charles manages to return home and collapse in Mary’s arms. Now it’s up to his enraged mother to return to town and kidnap an already traumatized Tanya so her now-bedridden son can finish the job he started in the cemetery. If he is unable to do so soon, he will die from his wounds, and Mary, in turn, will die of starvation.
Even as dozens of cats begin to gather outside her house, Mary kidnaps Tanya and drags her home. The police, however, also gather there, eager to avenge their comrade. Before this night of incredible horror is over, nearly everyone involved is either terribly injured or killed, including the two mysterious “sleepwalkers.”
Cemetery, Durham DAVID LOWELL
In Sleepwalkers, women play the pivotal roles of both heroine and main villain. With the exception of Charles, all the other men presented herein are either arrogant fools or inherently weak. The most developed and vital figures are clearly Tanya and Mary. Even Tanya’s mother is shown, in her brief time on screen, to be a more complex and stronger character than her husband. King clearly enjoyed creating a new species of supernatural monsters whose incestuous sexual habits are their most shocking and memorable characteristic. The early scene of the erotically charged Mary being playfully “seduced” by the young man whom we have just learned is her offspring never fails to strike an unsettling chord in viewers.
Unfortunately, the author raises too many unresolved questions in his intriguing if not fully developed premise. Why does he call them “sleepwalkers”? Why have we never heard of this species of shape shifter before? Why are there apparently only two of them left in the world? Why can’t the female of the species herself take the life force from young virgin males? Why are they so afraid of cats when they have such immense power? And how did these beings develop the incredible ability to temporarily turn huge objects (such as moving automobiles!) invisible, as well as themselves?
Of course, even though Charles and Mary Brady appear to be destroyed, that certainly doesn’t rule out more of their species from appearing somewhere down the road. Perhaps the answers to all these questions will one day be made known in a sequel.
SLEEPWALKERS: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
CHARLES BRADY: One of the last surviving members of a species of shape shifters called “sleepwalkers,” Charles Brady appears to be an excessively charming young man in his late teens. In reality, he is actually a creature who feeds on the life force of virgin girls, and who can make himself (and other objects) temporarily invisible. Although humans cannot perceive his true visage, it can be seen if he passes a mirror, which would reveal a loathsome creature, a horrid blend of human, reptilian, and feline features. Apparently immortal, his kind greatly fears cats, which inexplicably have the power in number to destroy them. After being attacked by a cat, Charles Brady ultimately dies from his wounds, even though his mother tries valiantly to save him.
MARY BRADY: The lovely mother of Charles Brady, she is also an immortal shape shifter. She, too, needs the life force of virgin girls on which to feed. It is up to her son to suck the life force from “nice girls” he meets in school so that he can in turn feed his mother via sexual intercourse. But after the death of her beloved Charles, Mary Brady is destroyed by the latest “nice girl” whom she had earlier hoped Charles would bring home for dinner … with the chosen young lady as the main course.
TANYA ROBERTSON: The pretty high school student who finds herself attracted to the new kid in school after hearing him read a self-composed fantasy tale entitled “Sleepwalkers” in class. From the way she speaks and carries herself, it appears she is still a virgin, and Charles sets his sights on making her his next meal. After Charles attacks her in a cemetery in his animalistic state, Tanya quickly realizes that no one will believe the wild story she has to tell. Returning home, she is later kidnapped by Mary and dragged to the Brady house. Escaping her captor, Tanya employs all her youthful resources to combat the two supernatural creatures.
With the assistance of a large pack of cats that have surrounded the Brady home, Tanya kills both “sleepwalkers” and escapes. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
DEPUTY SHERIFF SIMPSON: Deputy Simpson has the unfortunate assignment of being on the lookout for speeders when Charles Brady’s vehicle roars past his patrol car on the main road out of town. Chasing madly after Charles, Deputy Simpson eventually tracks him down at the local cemetery. There he encounters a hysterical Tanya, who tries to warn him that something inhuman is after her. While bravely trying to protect her, Simpson is mauled, stabbed, and finally shot to death by an animalistic Charles. However, his pet cat, Clovis, fearlessly attacks this ancient enemy and gravely wounds the shape shifter.
SHERIFF IRA: The local sheriff, he doesn’t understand what is going on in his peaceful community, but he knows his job is to protect the innocent—no matter what the price. After repeatedly wounding Mary Brady, he is slain by her when she impales him on a picket fence.
SLEEPWALKERS: TRIVIA
• Stephen King had a cameo appearance as a cemetery caretaker who complains to anyone within earshot, “You can’t blame this one on me!”
• Popular horror film directors Tobe Hooper (forensic technician), Joe Dante (lab assistant), John Landis (lab assistant), and Clive Barker (forensic technician) also appeared in cameo roles.
• Although the story is set in Travis, Indiana, at one point Sheriff Ira calls to the police station dispatcher to ask for more police backup
from the township of Castle Rock. Although certainly not Castle Rock, Maine, the reference to King’s fictional town is an amusing in-joke.
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NIGHTMARES & DREAMSCAPES
(1993)
In the introduction to 1985’s Skeleton Crew, Stephen King wrote: “Writing short stories hasn’t gotten easier for me over the years; it’s gotten harder. The time to do them has shrunk, for one thing. They keep wanting to bloat, for another (I have a real problem with bloat—I write like fat ladies diet). And it seems harder to find the voice for these tales … the thing to do is keep trying, I think. It’s better to keep kissing and get your face slapped a few times than it is to give up altogether.”
King did indeed keep trying; the sheer size (816 pages in the hardcover version) of Nightmares & Dreamscapes, his third major short story collection, pays mute testament to that. In the introduction to that book, a slightly more militant King again discusses how hard it is for him to write short stories: “These days it seems that everything wants to be a novel, and every novel wants to be approximately four thousand pages long. A fair number of critics have mentioned this, and usually not favorably. In reviews of every long novel I have ever written, from The Stand to Needful Things, I have been accused of overwriting. In some cases the criticisms have merit; in others they are just the ill-tempered yappings of men and women who have accepted the literary anorexia of the last thirty years with a puzzling (to me at least) lack of discussion and dissent.”
Despite these concerns, King was delighted to find he had at hand sufficient short stories to issue a third major collection. Perhaps for the reasons stated above, his short fiction output has indeed dwindled since then, but he continues to work in the form as the mood strikes him. (Evidence of this is found most recently in 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, which featured the multiple-award-winning tale “The Man in the Black Suit.”)
Although The Stephen King Universe is primarily concerned with King’s fiction, it should be noted that Nightmares & Dreamscapes also contains an excellent nonfiction work entitled “Head Down.” This essay/memoir chronicles the triumphs and travails of the Bangor West All-Star Team as it battled for the Maine State Championship in Little League in 1989. King characterizes “Head Down” as “the opportunity of a lifetime,” stating that his editor, Chip McGrath of The New Yorker, “coaxed the best nonfiction writing of my life out of me.”
So who are we to contradict him?
The book also contains a poem about Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers, entitled “Brooklyn August.” The piece, a departure from his usual oeuvre, has since been reprinted several times in various baseball-related anthologies.
[NOTE: “Suffer the Little Children,” “The Night Flier,” “Popsy,” and “The Rainy Season” are discussed in the section on Jerusalem’s Lot and King’s Maine. “The End of the Whole Mess” and “Home Delivery” are discussed in the section entitled Tales from Beyond. “The Fifth Quarter,” “My Pretty Pony,” and “Dolan’s Cadillac” are discussed in the section entitled The World of Richard Bachman.]
“Chattery Teeth”
A bizarre tale that recalls to some degree an early King tale, “The Monkey,” especially as it features a cheap novelty toy in a major role.
“CHATTERY TEETH”: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
BILL HOGAN: A traveling salesman, Hogan purchases a set of windup chattery teeth at a diner. The false teeth, which seem to have a life of their own, come to his rescue when he is threatened by a psychopathic hitchhiker. The teeth attack and kill his assailant. Hogan believes he was delirious, as he thinks he saw the teeth dragging the hitchhiker’s body into the desert. Returning to the diner a year later, Hogan finds that the proprietor has a package for him—a paper bag containing the supernaturally endowed chattery teeth. Struck dumb, Hogan takes the teeth back, concluding they would be a nice gift for his son in case someone ever tried to attack him.
BRYAN ADAMS: A young long-haired drifter who accepts a ride from Hogan. Although he appears harmless enough, he pulls a knife during the course of their trip and threatens to kill the salesman. After a fight in the van in which it appears that Adams is going to carry out his threat to slay the innocent driver, the supernatural chattery teeth viciously bite and tear the drifter to death.
Shop in Auburn that appears in “Chattery Teeth” DAVID LOWELL
“Dedication”
King has often stated that he isn’t afraid of grossing his readers out if that is what it takes to make an effective story. This tale most definitely falls into that category, for reasons that will be made all too clear below.
An African-American, Martha Rosewall has worked as a maid at the LePalais, one of New York’s finest hotels, for decades. In “Dedication,” she tells how her contact with a famous resident of the hotel drastically altered her life. Pregnant by her shiftless husband Peter, Martha is stunned when a neighborhood bruja woman tells her she must find the child’s “natural father.” Although surprised by this statement, a name immediately springs to Martha’s mind who would be far better suited to be that father. And that is the man who resides at the hotel where she works, a Caucasian writer named Peter Jeffries. While cleaning Jeffries’s bedroom each morning, Martha, under the influence of a spell cast by the witch, swallows the deposits Jeffries leaves on his sheets after masturbating each night.
As far as Martha is concerned, the spell works. Her son, Peter Rosewall, grows up to be an author. His first novel, about the ravages of war, is called Blaze of Glory, echoing the title of his “natural” father’s first book, Blaze of Heaven (also a war novel).
“The Moving Finger”
The question not answered in this surrealistic story is that if there can be one gigantic finger waiting to attack us, where are the others? And what about that killer thumb? There are no answers in response to that query—and King in his notes states that “my favorite sort of short story has always been the kind where things happen just because they happen.”
One day, mild-mannered accountant Howard Mitla discovers a finger poking up out of his bathroom sink drain. The only one who can see it, Howard tries to rid himself of the pest by pouring Draino on it, then by attacking it with a pair of electric hedge clippers (the mangled finger grows to a length of over seven feet before disappearing). Howard is later found by police who have been summoned by angry neighbors. He is all alone in the corner of the blood-splattered bathroom, mumbling incoherently to himself.
“Sneakers”
Another entry whose main action takes place in a bathroom, “Sneakers” revolves around a haunted toilet stall. Once again, King is not above examining the “gross-out” when he finds it appropriate to make his literary point. John Tell, the narrator of this strange tale, relates his experiences as a record producer. Visiting a men’s room at a recording studio, he notices a pair of sneakers poking out from under a stall door. Unremarkable in and of themselves, the sneakers are surrounded by dozens of dead flies. He dismisses the strange sight and leaves. Subsequent visits over the next few days reveal that the sneakers haven’t budged—the only thing that has changed is the increasing number of dead flies around the high-tops. Tell, who was also facing some questions about his own sexuality, steels himself and opens the door, confronting the specter inside the stall. The spirit, finally able to tell his story, gratefully abandons the stall.
“You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”
One of two stories (the other is “The Rainy Season”) in Nightmares & Dreamscapes that deal with what Stephen King terms “a peculiar little town,” “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” is also reminiscent of “Children of the Corn,” an early story that was collected in Night Shift (1978). It would also make for a hell of an episode for any revival of The Twilight Zone.
Mary and Clark Willingham get lost on the back roads of Oregon, ending up in a small town named Rock and Roll Heaven. The doomed couple quickly realize that the residents don’t merely look like various deceased rock stars (such as Jim Morrison, J
anis Joplin, Otis Redding, Rick Nelson, and of course Elvis Presley), but are in fact the real thing. Because performers require an audience, people who wander into town are never permitted to leave—for here the cliché “rock and roll will never die” is taken literally.
“Sorry, Right Number”
This is an original half-hour teleplay King originally wrote for Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories (1985–1987) network series, but ended up being produced by George Romero and Richard Rubenstein’s syndicated series Tales from the Darkside (1984–1988). It is a rare example of a published teleplay by the author. (King has also published the scripts for 1985’s Silver Bullet and his 1999 “novel for television” Storm of the Century.)
One evening, Katie Wiederman receives a hysterical phone call from a caller with an oddly familiar voice. Cut off before she can identify the caller, Katie’s attention is diverted shortly thereafter by the death of her husband. Years later, she accidentally dials her old number, and hears the events of that fateful night being played out on the other end of the line. Distraught, she attempts to warn her past self of impending disaster, but can only utter a few meaningless phrases. After being cut off, Katie finally realizes why the voice sounded so familiar all those years ago—it was her own.
The Complete Stephen King Universe Page 39