Wicked Women Drivers and Mediocre Men in the Mist (Skeleton Crew, 1985)

Skeleton Crew (1985)

"Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair. . . . A short story is a different thing altogether--a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger." -- Stephen King, "Introduction," Skeleton Crew

Signet 1986 paperback identical to the edition
I owned for 30 years.

Skeleton Crew has always been my favorite King short story collection and that will never change. A big part of its magic is, predictably, the inclusion of some very classic King works ("The Raft" and "Survivor Type" spring immediately to mind), but my own, foundational reason is simply how it made me feel the first time I read it during (when else) the dark, latter days of middle school maudlinmania. There is no way to know how many times I read Skeleton Crew during of my adolescence. By the time I was in New York, the paperback's pages were loose and the spine was so cracked it was unreadable. It stayed until the end. I would never replace it. By then, the artifact was part of the experience. The idea of reading a crisp, new hardcover, for instance, would have been . . . wrong. There's no adequate way to explain why, other than the familiarity of the rough grain of that paperback pulp paper, the set of the type, the yellowing pages, the creaky, knocked about smell. Reading Skeleton Crew in any other way would have . . . tasted funny. 

"woman driver" okay, Signet.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Walter White SAY MY NAME marketing ploy.
Have no doubt: The marketing department is completely unrepentant. 

My conversion to a more minimalist lifestyle upon leaving New York, and the more recent Covid sequester, has turned my previously rigid reading practices to chaos, and I've been rolling with it because why not. It's not going to burst a blood vessel, though at times it does feel like a bit of a papercut to the brain (all wrong all wrong) but then I just do my deep breathing and carry on. It does explain why I always seek out the previously owned every time I borrow a book from the Internet Archive. Even though these books are presented electronically via PDF on a laptop screen, some of that old comfort comes through, although it is like a picture of a picture of a picture. 

The inclusion of Four Past Midnight puts this reprint at press
sometime between 1990 and 1991.

This time around, I endeavored to experience Skeleton Crew on audiobook, intrigued at the idea of a different narrator for every story, and wanting very much the extra freedoms allowed with the audiobook option. It was, as a whole, a delight. For one, short stories are just different. As King says in his introduction, it's a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger, a hot thrill, a brief, bright shot of life, a moment, a tale, an afternoon yarn. Each of the voice actors had something new and special to bring each story to life. Some were wonderful, others were great, one or two were adequate...and one in particular just irritated the living shiznit out of me.

Combination copyright and credits pages. 

Upon finishing the audiobook of Skeleton Crew, I ended up borrowing a scan of the same edition I owned from the Internet Archive, since the audiobook does not include either the introduction or notes sections. A "Constant Reader" misses those little extras in the audiobook presentation, and a former book production manager craves a full meal of front and back matter; to delve into the fussy copyright page, pick apart the typesetting of the table of contents, or savor what strange, wonderful, or beguiling thing King has chosen as a epigraph this time around. It was fun to see someone else's abuses to their own copy, the highlights on the contents page for example, as it reminded me of my own defacement of Skeleton Crew, underlining half the book of favorite lines like some green-eyed little Heather with an eating disorder. But instead of underlining "Eskimo" I was underlining things like "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat!" without even a whisper of irony. At that point in my life, King was akin to some sort of crass, jokester deity, and everything he wrote was a revelation.

Dedication to King's literary agent and his wife.

Not that I loved every story in Skeleton Crew during those youngster days. Some were half-liked, others were just, well...boring. Over all those re-reads in my youth, there were stories I almost always skipped, others I would read if I was in the mood. My absolute favorites were "Cain Rose Up," "The Raft," "Survivor Type," and above all others, "The Jaunt." That last story, just as much future/sci-fi as it is horror, held the top spot in my developing psyche because nothing I'd read, to that point, had scared me as much as this simple story of a family taking a little trip. I obsessed over it for weeks. I'd be sitting in Biology, half-listening, half dozing through the sprawling, squalling class of Aves, when suddenly "longer than you think" would echo outward from somewhere deep and I'd be sitting up straight, frowning, troubled, and wide awake. While the driving theories behind the horrific turn in the story have no doubt existed for at least a century, it was the first time I'd ever encountered such horrible possibilities. Much like a wakeful jaunt, my little monkey mind simple could not handle it. 

We love a marked up Contents page! The best I can say for my own
vandalized copy was that it was all done in pencil. Mostly.

This time around, all these years and lifetimes of living later, "The Jaunt" was fun to hear, but it was old gold, well-worn and a little dusty, every little link familiar. The reader was fine, the story was efficient and brutal as ever, but I knew it back and front and there was nothing new to feel about it. What a wonder it was, then, to find new life in such an old, well-loved book, in stories that had once been above my head or beyond my experiences that were now present and sharp, or stories that I liked just fine back in the olden days of the 80s that were breathed to vibrant, incredible life by the talent selected to read them. I almost always skipped the last tale in the book, "The Reach," because it was "boring," What a difference 30 years makes. The narrator (Lois Smith; Twister, Minority Report) is fantastic, but the story itself is wonderful: A complete world spun from nothing but simple words. And imagine my surprise at finding that the scariest story in the collection, which for me had been "The Jaunt" without reservation and for so long, had now replaced by a story that I once found mildly amusing but would skip half the time because it simply did not speak to me: "Gramma." 

My! God!

Epigraph page. Point of interest: This epigraph always bugged the hell out of me
because in 1986 disco was forbidden. I was into heavy, light, alternative, and trippy
metal plus a whole lot of Top 40 which seriously borrowed and stole from disco but
I was not interested in acknowledging such nonsense. 

Look, I am nearly fifty years old. I have seen things, done things. I do not believe in ghosts or poltergeists (except maybe a little when the cats stare at things unseen with avid curiosity in the black of 2 a.m.), I do not believe in devils or possession, and I mostly do not believe in wicked witches, though I know there are nature witches which are entirely different and truth be told I still am a little scared of witches (but only a little). Listening to "Gramma" at night alone in the apartment was an unexpected experience. I've read it before, I knew the general plot (though I forgot the ending eeeeeep), yet I found myself jumping, gasping, and yelling expletives at my laptop as the narrator (Frances Sternhagen; Misery, Sex and the City) unfurled this Incredibly Scary, Absolutely Terrifying short story. Afterward, I felt discombobulated, paranoid, and seriously wondered if there would be nightmares. I had to put on a few episodes of Schitt's Creek to cleanse my brain of the willies.

Ope, Miss Millie I think she said Hell, No.

Better than finding new scares in old stories was my first experience with a female audiobook narrator, Dana Ivey, a much decorated Broadway actress who has appeared in many movies and television shows. I remember her most clearly as the shrill mayor's wife, Miss Millie, in The Color Purple. As I think back to the performances I can remember (The Adams Family, an episode of Frasier), I do recall a certain clarity in the tone of her voice, but those piercing eyes and flaring nostrils steal some of her considerable show. Listening to her narrate "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" helped me see and understand her in a totally new and breathtaking light. The fact that she is a great, effective actress has never been a question, even if only viewed through a collection of bit parts, little moments made big by her presence. But with this audiobook performance, everything Dana Ivey embodies as an actress is poured into this condensed, precise, perfect rendering of King's story. Her voice elevates the narrative and, in my very humble opinion, "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" is Skeleton Crew's most brilliant voice adaptation. Ivey's accents are spot on and her voice changes with each character in such nuanced, intelligent ways. I feel vindicated for some of the rampages I've had over audiobooks in these very blog posts. Portraying men and women out of one voice can not only be done well, it can be done artfully, beautifully, seamlessly. "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" was one of those stories that I'd skip more than read every time I'd revisit the pages of Skeleton Crew as a teen. Dana Ivey's reading of it is, by far, the best version of the story that exists, period. 

Screengrab from Frank Darabont's The Mist.

This leads me, inevitably, to "The Mist." I've never liked "The Mist." I've always been partial to King's "society breaks down" stories and novels, but this one always left a bad taste in my mouth. It is no mystery why, either. King even references it in the "Notes" section of Skeleton Crew:

"I never liked it that much until the rewrite--I particularly didn't like David Drayton sleeping with Amanda and then never finding out what happened to his wife. That seemed cowardly to me."

Okay. So whydja write it? Dammit?? The thing is, it's only the worst thing the main "protagonist" does in "The Mist." While the "hero" of any given story doesn't have to be morally or ethically flawless, you expect to find some redeeming qualities in the character. There is very little relate to in the character of David Drayton, though you are clearly supposed to see him in the protagonist/hero light. He has a 5-year-old son in tow, but he leaves the kid sleeping unsupervised in an aisle of the grocery store in which they are trapped to go do manly-man busybody stuff. He pawns the kid off on the babysitter the rest of the time. He uses his fists to settle arguments and one of the first things the reader learns about him prior to the main events of the story is that he has some sort of petty property line grievance with his neighbor. Drayton is a man of means with no discernable personality beyond hipshot heroics; a narcissistic, mediocre male with delusions of grandeur. He only seems like a hero because everyone else in "The Mist" is either 2-dimensional or a complete shit.

Do you love? is a theme the runs throughout Skeleton Crew.

As previously mentioned in other posts, King's early writing tends to struggle with portrayals of women. This period of his work quite often finds the narration viewing women of a certain age through an adolescent T&A lens, which is evident in several of Skeleton Crew's stories. In "The Mist" Drayton's wife is seen through this lens--yet another of King's wide-eyed idiot women--and later, a sexy stranger in the grocery store is described in that same, slobbery-dog perspective. 

When I was a kid, all the T&A language never gave me a second thought. First, I was thirteen. Every boy I knew thought and talked this way, and worse. Second, it was the 80s. "Me too" was decades in the future. Sure, "sexual harassment" was a known concept in the culture . . . as something to be sniggered at and circumvented. Listening to these portrayals now--which are not wholly told through the perspectives of characters, either, so no help there--is just embarrassing. Much like the bigoted crap, it reflects the times as much as anything. 

So, Drayton fist fights with the locals, abandons the kid to the babysitter, then screws some hot chick after mere hours of separation from his supposedly beloved wife because . . . what? He's stressed out. I guess. And all the rest of the cast of characters are either one-note blips or obnoxious, despicable, completely irredeemable turds. It was going to be a long shot that the audiobook performance would make me like "The Mist" (although a hat tip is warranted for the saving grace that was the 2007 movie, more on that later). Perhaps, at least, I would hear a great rendering of an otherwise unlikable story.  

"Here's some more short stories, if you want them." Like he doesn't know. Note 
that I didn't bother tracking the frontmatter page numbers because the heathens
over at Signet were just like Whatevs and numbered the frontmatter like the main text.

I've mentioned before my disdain for the sample audio of The Talisman. I have since listened to other samples from this same narrator, and my dislike of his style has only deepened. Frank Muller is a legend in the field and was a favorite of King's. In fact, the original audio version of Skeleton Crew (books on tape!) was performed by Muller. He died in 2008 after a years-long hospitalization from a motorcycle accident. I feel mean, guilty, and frankly confused about my inability to appreciate whatever it is that many others value so highly in Muller's audiobook work. It bothers me, a lot. What am I missing? Perhaps it is simply the newness of the format to me, specifically that I never experienced it in its infancy, and maybe the majority of performers back when audiobooks first began were flat-toned, lifeless bores. I remember when DVDs started to become the norm, discovering these snappy little add-ons, like trailers, behind the scenes, and options to watch the movies with commentary from the cast, the director, etc. What fun! And what a shock it was to watch my very first movie with commentary, the iconic 1984 Ghostbusters, and find the droning buzz of Dan Ackroyd, all business, absolutely no fun at all, through two hours of grinding monotone. 

So maybe Frank Muller was the first gonzo bonzo glitterfest spectacularrrrrr performer to ever grace the audiobook world. To my ear, he sounds, at best, like a well-meaning camp counselor telling ghost stories to sticky-mouthed little nose pickers around the midnight misty campfire, the woods aspookity with clicks and clatters. It's over the top, double-baked, extra cheese. I don't get it. I never will. As the Canadians say, Srry!

Back matter notes section. He only explains the origins of some stories (srry!).

The narrator of "The Mist" (as well as "Paranoid: A Chant," a poem with a schizophrenic perspective) follows that same school of exaggerated dramatics. Now, I adore Will Patton (Armageddon, Yellowstone). He is always reliably weird, spooky, compelling . . . interesting. I've never considered him to be an "over actor." I don't know if his performance was a kind of homage to Muller or if that's just how he chooses to perform audiobooks. Whatever the case may be, it grates. So I suppose the voice matches the story in the end, and it is for the best that "The Mist" is the very first story in Skeleton Crew. It could only get better from there. 

Reading King over these many years should have prepared me for how people
reacted to Covid-19, but alas.

Everyone who has ever read the story "The Mist," then watched the 2007 Frank Darabont movie starring Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden, likely share the same takeaway: OMG that ending. I don't remember much about the movie (though the Wikipedia article confirms that the dipshit adultery was not included, so big improvement at least on that score), but no one forgets that ending. Love it or hate it, it was fearless. I think it's what makes Darabont's The Mist one of the more successful film adaptations of King's work. There are plenty of King stories depicting what idiotic sheep we all are under duress (The Stand, Needful Things, Under the Dome), plenty more depicting crazy/manipulative/hyperreligious megalomaniacs taking advantage of the chaos (Carrie, The Gunslinger, The Dead Zone), but it's rare to find such nihilistic glee in mainstream King (his dark half, Bachman, is another story). The story itself eludes to the possibility of such an ending (the first half of it, anyway), but the twist is what makes it so gloriously awful and unshakably memorable. 

About the Author dates back to the original hardcover release (85).

Ad page and back cover. Point of interest, epilogue: "Allow a minimum of 4-6 weeks
for delivery" is similar to what they tell you when you order CD collections off the
television at midnight in 1993. I know this because I still own The Ultimate Party Album
which is resplendent with copious amounts of boogie oogie oogie disco, hot mamas.
In other words, I repent!

I think what's made this Skeleton Crew experience so fulfilling is the sense of community and depth of experience that has accumulated since those early days in mid-80s, jonesing for some cheap thrill-kills, slow burn, hot ash scares so bracing they lasted all the way through casserole dinner to bedtime, wide awake and staring into the rustling dark. I still adore the shocking horror of "The Jaunt," the lonely terror of "The Raft," and the (ha ha) maniacally hideous-yet-humorous grotesquery of "Survivor Type," but I love the fact that I have found some of these stories come suddenly alive and anew, sometimes because of the narrator, more times because I'm a different person, ofttimes due to some combination of both. Even though I've read these stories plenty of times before, it was as though I'd never read them: "The Wedding Gig" brought to full color by Paul Giamatti, "Gramma" so effective and unnerving from the wonderful voice of Frances Sternhagen, "The Reach" a 3-dimensional woman at the end of her long life brought in clear focus by Lois Smith, and of course "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," an unforgettable performance by Dana Ivey that will stand unrivaled for a good, long time. 

All these different voices, different interpretations, reminded me that while I was very much alone in my King universe when I was a kid (though my mother eventually got into reading him from time to time), there was a whole world of people out there who read and loved his work, too. For every person similar to me, loving It and Lisey's Story, there are plenty more who count dopey Salem's Lot as a favorite, or thoroughly enjoy the yank-and-thrust, gritty cadences of Frank Muller. There's room for all of us in this jacked up '58 Plymouth Fury, so long as King picks the music and shotgun agrees to shut their collective cakeholes and just enjoy the ride.

I have to give a shout out to the version of "The Raft" that appeared in 1987's
Creepshow 2. It was simple and straightforward, similar to the story, but
with another twist ending that, while not as abusively shocking as Darabont's
The Mist, still delivers a nice Zing! of surprise. This shot (grabbed from YouTube)
always haunted the hell out of me. The giant, evil trash bag will dissolve you in seconds!

Grade: B+ 

Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 9. While most of the stories included in Skeleton Crew could be classified as "horror," some are just straight storytelling without any elements of horror ("The Wedding Gig", "For Owen," "The Reach"). Others are a teaspoon of horror with fantasy or science fiction on the side. But the scare-factor gets a solid 9 rating from me based on "Gramma," "The Jaunt," "The Monkey," "The Raft," and several others. 

Warnings: Bigotry, wide-eyed idiot women, cannibalism, completely gratuitous adultery, bros being bros, fornits, Ace Merrill sighting, fat phobia. 

Artifact: I get all of my audiobooks from Audible. I have a membership that has gotten away from me like Mickey with all his dancing broomsticks. I've started taking little breaks in between Stephen King books to delve into a reading list curated from very helpful Reddit users and uber fans of my very favorite show, Halt and Catch Fire. The thing we've all agreed upon is that once you've finished the first viewing of HACF, all you want is more. The show is perfect as is, and no one would want to bloat it up just to make more, so someone in the fandom was like, "Are there any books like HACF?" And the list is plentiful and dear. I borrowed two from the IA (Masters of Doom and The Soul of a New Machine), and just started The Cuckoo's Egg on Audible. None of them are exactly like Halt and Catch Fire, but the flavor profiles are similar. YUM, early computer history books.

While I'm loathe to spend money on anything non-essential (save lights, always lights), I do like how easy Audible has been. Prospective buyers can listen to a sample of the reading and there are plenty of reviews to give an idea of what to expect from the performance (and the book itself, though I tend to ignore those reviews for my purposes). Buyers can even return books when warranted. While I like the story Thinner well enough, the audiobook was an abomination. Not only should no one pay for it, whoever is responsible for that production should be punished. At least with some hand smacks. I didn't dive deep to find out, but I wonder if the producers of Skeleton Crew and Thinner were the same or at least in some way affiliated. There are different, short musical interludes between each of the stories in Skeleton Crew, most of which are fine, though there are a couple of jangledy-bangledy transitions that reminded me of the atrocious music that disrupted, mangled, tortured, and maimed the otherwise fine Thinner. In Skeleton Crew, the transition music makes at least some sense, but there really is no need for it.

This shot from "The Raft" is probably one of the most chilling scenes of any King
film, with its tranquil desperation. The open car door, the clothes discarded
along the beach, the still water. It's just a short, easy swim from the raft to the
safety of the car. The story was a gruesome and troubling read, but this shot
really captures the isolation and terror of the moment. No one knows where
they are, no one is coming.