My quest to read through the Stephen King catalogue continues! My most recent trip to the King well took me to the murky waters of Skeleton Crew, a short story collection full of various horrors, creepy locales, and people who turn out to be more monstrous than actual monsters. The collection includes a novella, tons of quick stories, and a poem. That’s a lot of spooky ground to cover, so let’s hop to it!
Skeleton Crew opens with The Mist, a novella about a small New England town encased in a horrific vapor containing unknown creatures and terrors. It’s the classic King modus operandi, but it sheds the extra fat present in most of his full-length novels. The primary cast—led by protagonist David Drayton and his son Billy—is caught in a grocery store. The group’s descent into micropolitics and panic is a perfect mirror to the usually intangible feeling of severe stress. Mrs. Carmody is a foil to Drayton’s attempt at level-headedness. She sees the mist as a sign from god and encourages her followers that a blood sacrifice is the only solution. Eventually, David and a small cohort leave the supermarket and brave the mist. The novella ends ambiguously but with a King trademark: one minuscule shred of hope.
The Mist was a walloping way to kickstart a collection of shorts, and it stood out as one of my recent favorite King works. The microcosmic civilization created by the mist’s geography gives King a tiny environment where characters can succumb to their base impulses, and that’s where King thrives.
Skeleton Crew’s remaining stories are significantly shorter. It’s a scattered amalgamation of King’s ideas. Some feel fully fleshed out, and others reverberate with the toll of an idea that never took off.
One of the former is The Jaunt, a fittingly quick story about teleportation technology and the secrets behind how it works. A father explains what he knows about jaunting (teleportation) to his children before a big trip to Mars. Travellers are sedated for their journeys. Conscious jaunters have gone insane, died, or both in quick succession. The son chooses to keep his own eyes open during the jaunt, and he appears on Mars fundamentally broken. The Jaunt shows that King can edit. He can appreciate when an idea doesn’t need a full novel or his verbose characterizing anecdotes. It’s a simple story with impressive and compact worldbuilding. It ends with a gut-punch and a twinge of horror. The Jaunt is speedy King fiction at its best.
On the other hand, Gramma struggles to find its footing (much like a crotchety old lady, I suppose). A young lad named George is left to care for his ailing grandma. He remembers hushed conversations about her witchy powers. She dies, but her presence lingers, and George descends into terror and uncertainty as her influence remains. Gramma functions fine as a short fiction outing, but it doesn’t do much beyond being creepy. It’s one example that, in my opinion, could have been balled up and thrown listlessly into King’s trash can. I’m not mad it’s here, though. Sometimes short story collections can have filler like Gramma, and that’s all fine and dandy. Just know that not every story is a home run.
The verdict here is simple: Skeleton Crew has a handful of amazing Stephen King works and a few duds. It won’t move the needle for most; it’s just a nice addition to his insanely large pantheon.
Rating: Skeleton Crew – 8.5/10
