Flight or Fright

by Stephen King

  A 29-year-old stewardess fell … to her death tonight when she was swept through an emergency door that suddenly sprang open … The body … was found … three hours after the accident.

  —New York Times

  The states when they black out and lie there rollingwhen they turn

  To something transcontinentalmove bydrawing moonlight out of the great

  One-sided stone hung off the starboard wingtipsome sleeper next to

  An engine is groaning for coffeeand there is faintly coming in

  Somewhere the vast beast-whistle of space. In the galley with its racks

  Of traysshe rummages for a blanketand moves in her slim tailored

  Uniform to pin it over the cry at the top of the door. As though she blew

  The door down with a silent blast from her lungsfrozenshe is black

  Out finding herselfwith the plane nowhere and her body taken by the throat

  The undying cry of the voidfallinglivingbeginning to be something

  That no one has ever been and lived throughscreaming without enough air

  Still neatlipstickedstockingedgirdled by regulationher hat

  Still onher arms and legs in no worldand yet spaced also strangely

  With utter placid rightness on thin airtaking her timeshe holds it

  In many placesand now, still thousands of feet from her death she seems

  To slowshe develops interestshe turns in her maneuverable body

  To watch it. She is hung high up in the overwhelming middle of things in her

  Selfin low body-whistling wrapped intenselyin all her dark dance-weight

  Coming down from a marvellous leapwith the delaying, dumfounding ease

  Of a dream of being drawnlike endless moonlight to the harvest soil

  Of a central state of one’s countrywith a great gradual warmth coming

  Over herfloatingfinding more and more breath in what she has been using

  For breathas the levels become more humanseeing clouds placed honestly

  Below her left and rightriding slowly toward themshe clasps it all

  To her and can hang her hands and feet in it in peculiar waysand

  Her eyes opened wide by wind, can open her mouth as widewider and suck

  All the heat from the cornfieldscan go down on her back with a feeling

  Of stupendous pillows stacked under herand can turnturn as to someone

  In bedsmile, understood in darknesscan go awayslantslide

  Off tumblinginto the emblem of a bird with its wings half-spread

  Or whirl madly on herselfin endless gymnastics in the growing warmth

  Of wheatfields rising toward the harvest moon.There is time to live

  In superhuman healthseeing mortal unreachable lights far down seeing

  An ultimate highway with one late priceless car probing itarriving

  In a square townand off her starboard arm the glitter of water catches

  The moon by its one shaken sidescaled, roaming silverMy God it is good

  And evillying in one after another of all the positions for love

  Makingdancingsleepingand now cloud wisps at her no

  Raincoatno matterall small towns brokenly brighter from inside

  Cloudshe walks over them like rainbursts out to behold a Greyhound

  Bus shooting light through its sidesit is the signal to go straight

  Down like a glorious diverthen feet firsther skirt stripped beautifully

  Upher face in fear-scented clothsher legs deliriously barethen

  Arms outshe slow-rolls oversteadies outwaits for something great

  To take control of hertrembles near feathersplanes head-down

  The quick movements of bird-necks turning her headgold eyes the insight-eyesight of owls blazing into the hencoopsa taste for chicken overwhelm

  Herthe long-range vision of hawks enlarging all human lights of cars

  Freight trainslooped bridgesenlarging the moon racing slowly

  Through all the curves of a riverall the darks of the midwest blazing

  From above. A rabbit in a bush turns whitethe smothering chickens

  Huddlefor over them there is still time for something to live

  With the streaming half-idea of a long stoopa hurtlinga fall

  That is controlledthat plummets as it willsturns gravity

  Into a new condition, showing its other side like a moonshining

  New Powersthere is still time to live on a breath made of nothing

  But the whole nighttime for her to remember to arrange her skirt

  Like a diagram of a battightly it guides hershe has this flying-skin

  Made of garmentsand there are also those sky-divers on tvsailing

  In sunlightsmiling under their gogglesswapping batons back and forth

  And He who jumped without a chute and was handed one by a diving

  Buddy. She looks for her grinning companionwhite teethnowhere

  She is screamingsinging hymnsher thin human wings spread out

  From her neat shouldersthe air beast-crooning to herwarbling

  And she can no longer behold the huge partial form of the worldnow

  She is watching her country lose its evoked master shapewatching it lose

  And gainget back its houses and peopleswatching it bring up

  Its local lightssingle homeslamps on barn roofsif she fell

  Into water she might livelike a divercleavingperfectplunge

  Into anotherheavy silverunbreathableslowingsaving

  Element: there is waterthere is time to perfect all the fine

  Points of divingfeet togethertoes pointedhands shaped right

  To insert her into water like a needleto come out healthily dripping

  And be handed a Coca-Colathere they arethere are the waters

  Of lifethe moon packed and coiled in a reservoirso let me begin

  To plane across the night air of Kansasopening my eyes superhumanly

  Brightto the damned moonopening the natural wings of my jacket

  By Don Lopermoving like a hunting owl toward the glitter of water

  One cannot just falljust tumble screaming all that timeone must use

  Itshe is now through with allthrough allcloudsdamphair

  Straightenedthe last wisp of fog pulled apart on her face like wool revealing

  New darksnew progressions of headlights along dirt roads from chaos

  And nighta gradual warminga new-made, inevitable world of one’s own

  Countrya great stone of light in its waiting watersholdhold out

  For water: who knows when what correct young woman must take up her body

  And flyand head for the moon-crazed inner eye of midwest imprisoned

  Waterstored up for her for yearsthe arms of her jacket slipping

  Air up her sleeves to goall over her? What final things can be said

  Of one who starts her sheerly in her body in the high middle of night

  Airto track down water like a rabbit where it lies like life itself

  Off to the right in Kansas? She goes towardthe blazing-bare lake

  Her skirts neather hands and face warmed more and more by the air

  Rising from pastures of beansand under herunder chenille bedspreads

  The farm girls are feeling the goddess in them struggle and rise brooding

  On the scratch-shining posts of the beddreaming of female signs

  Of the moonmale blood like ironof what is really said by the moan

  Of airliners passing over them at dead of midwest midnightpassing

  Over brush firesburning out in silence on little hillsand will wake

  To see the woman they should bestruggling on the rooftree to become

  Stars: for her the ground is closerwater is nearershe passes

  Itthen banksturnsher sleeves fluttering differently as she rolls

  Out to face the east, where the sun shall come up from wheatfields she must

  Do something with waterfly to itfa
ll in itdrink itrise

  From itbut there is none left upon earththe clouds have drunk it back

  The plants have sucked it downthere are standing toward her only

  The common fields of deathshe comes back from flying to falling

  Returns to a powerful crythe silent scream with which she blew down

  The coupled door of the airlinernearlynearly losing hold

  Of what she has doneremembersremembers the shape at the heart

  Of cloudfashionably swirlingremembers she still has time to die

  Beyond explanation. Let her now take off her hat in summer air the contour

  Of cornfieldsand have enough time to kick off her one remaining

  Shoe with the toesof the other footto unhook her stockings

  With calm fingers, noting how fatally easy it is to undress in midair

  Near deathwhen the body will assume without effort any position

  Except the one that will sustain itenable it to riselive

  Not dienine farms hover closewideneight of them separate, leaving

  One in the middlethen the fields of that farm do the samethere is no

  Way to back offfrom her chosen groundbut she sheds the jacket

  With its silver sad impotent wingssheds the bat’s guiding tailpiece

  Of her skirtthe lightning-charged clinging of her blousethe intimate

  Inner flying-garment of her slip in which she rides like the holy ghost

  Of a virginsheds the long windsocks of her stockingsabsurd

  Brassierethen feels the girdle required by regulations squirming

  Off her: no longer monobuttockedshe feels the girdle fluttershake

  In her handand floatupwardher clothes rising off her ascending

  Into cloudand fights away from her head the last sharp dangerous shoe

  Like a dumb birdand now will drop insoonnow will drop

  In like thisthe greatest thing that ever came to Kansasdown from all

  Heightsall levels of American breathlayered in the lungs from the frail

  Chill of space to the loam where extinction slumbers in corn tassels thickly

  And breathes like rich farmers counting: will come along them after

  Her last superhuman actthe last slow careful passing of her hands

  All over her unharmed bodydesired by every sleeper in his dream:

  Boys finding for the first time their loins filled with heart’s blood

  Widowed farmers whose hands float under light covers to find themselves

  Arisen at sunrisethe splendid position of blood unearthly drawn

  Toward cloudsall feel somethingpass over them as she passes

  Her palms over her long legs her small breastsand deeply between

  Her thighsher hair shot loose from all pinsstreaming in the wind

  Of her bodylet her come openlytrying at the last second to land

  On her backThis is itTHIS

  All those who find her impressed

  In the soft loamgone downdriven well into the image of her body

  The furrows for miles flowing in upon her where she lies very deep

  In her mortal outlinein the earth as it is in cloudcan tell nothing

  But that she is thereinexplicableunquestionableand remember

  That something broke in them as welland began to live and die more

  When they walked for no reason into their fields to where the whole earth

  Caught herinterrupted her maiden flighttold her how to lie she cannot

  Turngo awaycannot movecannot slide off it and assume another

  Positionno sky-diver with any grin could save herhold her in his arms

  Plummet with herunfold above her his wedding silksshe can no longer

  Mark the rain with whirling women that take the place of a dead wife

  Or the goddess in Norwegian farm girlsor all the back-breaking whores

  Of Wichita. All the known air above her is not giving up quite one

  Breathit is all goneand yet not deadnot anywhere else

  Quitelying still in the field on her backsensing the smells

  Of incessant growth try to lift hera little sight left in the corner

  Of one eyefadingseeing something wavelies believing

  That she could have made itat the best part of her brief goddess

  Stateto watergone in headfirstcome out smilinginvulnerable

  Girl in a bathing-suit adbut she is lying like a sunbather at the last

  Of moonlighthalf-buried in her impact on the earthnot far

  From a railroad trestlea water tankshe could see if she could

  Raise her head from her modest holewith her clothes beginning

  To come down all over Kansasinto busheson the dewy sixth green

  Of a golf courseone shoeher girdle coming down fantastically

  On a clothesline, where it belongsher blouse on a lightning rod:

  Lies in the fieldsin this fieldon her broken back as though on

  A cloud she cannot drop throughwhile farmers sleepwalk without

  Their women from housesa walk like falling toward the far waters

  Of lifein moonlighttoward the dreamed eternal meaning of their farms

  Toward the flowering of the harvest in their handsthat tragic cost

  Feels herself gogo towardgo outwardbreathes at last fully

  Notand trieslessoncetriestriesAH, GOD—

  AFTERWORD: AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE FLIGHT DECK

  BEV VINCENT

  Although flying can be scary business, I’ve flown all over the planet and I can’t recall having any scary experiences. While working on this anthology, I spent over 24 hours in the air, and it was all smooth sailing (except I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things that might go wrong, thanks to the stories assembled here). An aborted landing in foggy weather is about as bad as it’s been for me in my entire air travel history.

  However, the first time I was ever on an airplane was in March 1978, on a high school spring break trip to Greece. Our Alitalia 747 landed at Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome the day after the Red Brigade kidnapped former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The airport was on high alert, filled with soldiers carrying Uzis. Tensions were elevated. When one of my classmates went through a metal detector with his camera slung around his neck, he almost caused an international incident.

  Another time, while returning to the US from a business trip in Japan, my coworkers and I learned that the police officers accused of beating Rodney King had been acquitted, setting off riots in Los Angeles. We were supposed to change planes there, but we decided to reroute through San Francisco after hearing unconfirmed reports that people were shooting at airplanes landing at LAX.

  In July 2017, prior to the Bangor premiere of The Dark Tower, Richard Chizmar and I were in a restaurant (across the street from Bangor International Airport, as it happens), when Stephen King approached us. “I just had an idea,” he said. “An anthology of stories about all the bad things that can happen to you when you’re flying. I’ll introduce the stories.” To Rich, he said, “You’ll publish it.” He suggested a couple of titles, then said, “Someone needs to help me find some more stories.” He turned to me. “That’ll be your job.”

  So that’s how this anthology came about. I immediately thought of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and I set to work looking for other examples of scary stories involving airplanes and flying.

  There are plenty of novels and films with terrifying scenes on airplanes. The gold standard is probably Arthur Hailey’s 1968 Airport. Hailey started his writing career with a script called Flight into Danger, which sounds like a good title for a companion to this anthology. I read the novelization, Runway Zero-Eight, as a teenager, and I’m pretty sure I also saw the TV movie based on it: Terror in the Sky. Airport was, of course, turned into a feature film that spawned several sequels during the 1970s, but the hilarious spoof version Airplane! is probably better known these days. And who could forget Air Force One or Red Eye or Snakes
on a Plane? There’s no end to the kinds of disasters that can occur when you’re trapped in a metal tube five, six, seven miles up.

  The sub-sub-genre of scary airplane short stories is much smaller, I discovered. Finding good candidates took some work. Google search results were dominated by real-life scary anecdotes about bad flying experiences—much like the one Steve relates in his introduction. I also sought suggestions from the “hive mind,” posting a query on Facebook, and was rewarded with recommendations for stories I might not have found otherwise. So, hive mind, many thanks!

  While searching for candidates for the anthology, I was working on an essay for the Poetry Foundation and was reminded that one of Steve’s favorite poems—one he has mentioned several times in interviews—was inspired by the real-life story from 1962 of a flight attendant who was sucked out of an airplane when the emergency door popped open in flight. I asked Steve if he thought we should include it in the anthology. As it turns out, he was thinking the same thing. Thus we end with a real-life tragedy made poetic and metaphorical.

  I was also reading Joe Hill’s novella collection Strange Weather while working on this book. “Aloft” starts with an anxiety-ridden young man trying to impress a woman by going sky-diving. Nerves kick in and he tries to back out at the last minute, but he ends up having to bail out of the airplane when the engine quits. We were pleased when Joe told us that he had another—deeply disturbing—idea for a story that was a perfect match for this book. Owen King brought Tom Bissell’s story to our attention.

  Does this anthology cover everything that could possibly go wrong on a flight? Absolutely not. As I was writing these notes, an alert went out about a passenger who went through Chicago O’Hare while suffering from the measles. So even if your flight makes it safely to its final destination, what other passengers might you carry home with you? The possibilities are endless. Something to ponder as you pack for your next journey.