Night Shift (Premium)

I spent much of the summer of 1982, the summer after my freshman year of high school, babysitting for a family with two kids up the street. Those kids were about the same age as my sister and brother, so that worked out fine. I was paid $40 per week, in cash.

I had several interesting experiences that summer.

In that pre-cable TV era, this family had something called Star TV, which had movies and, more important to me at the time, music videos that they played between those movies to fill up the time. These were the first music videos I’d ever seen, and I distinctly remember one in which the members of The Cars were roller-skating.

The kids had a few albums I didn’t own, including the debut Asia album, which I later bought, and “Get Lucky,” a Loverboy album (I know) that had a longer version of the song When It’s Over than the single version played on the radio. I always found that kind of thing fascinating.

But most interesting, perhaps, the father had just read the Stephen King book Night Shift, in paperback. I recall the cover art, which featured a bandaged hand with eyes on its palm and fingers. I felt compelled to read this book.

Before getting to that, understand that I’ve loved reading my entire life. (Still do: Pocket just told me that I am in their top 1 percent of readers, with over 990,000 words read in 2022.) I began reading the newspaper at an early age because there were comics inside, but I quickly graduated to the entertainment section, then the sports section, and then the entire paper. I would literally read anything, resorting to cereal boxes if there was nothing else around.

In the 6th grade, I was fortunate enough to go to a public school with a teacher, Mrs. Roberts, who hosted an accelerated reading program with meetings twice per week before school. We got some kind of credit for this in her English class—maybe a half-grade bump or something—but what I read that year changed my life. The Hobbit and then the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, setting off a few decades of fantasy and science fiction reading. (I also re-read the Lord of the Rings every year for at least 20 years.) Beowulf. And The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer, setting off a similar, years-long exploration of Greek and Roman mythology.

That wasn’t all I read in the 6th grade: one day, Mrs. Roberts handed me a 726-page paperback, The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, told me that I would like it, and recommended that I write a book report about it: she gave me double the normal time to do this because the book was so long. I did so, and I discovered, as she knew I would, that this book was an incredible rip-off of The Lord of the Rings, and so my book report—which spanned two of those “blue books” we used for such things—turned into my first bout of critical writing: I documented many of the things that Brooks had stolen from Tolkien. I got a double A+ for my efforts.

So by the time I came across Stephen King while babysitting, I was well-read for someone my age. Was, in fact, years into my explorations of Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Pournelle, and others in science fiction. And of Alexander, Donaldson, Le Guin, Lewis, McCaffrey, Moorcock, and probably others I’m forgetting on the fantasy side. And let’s not forget Lovecraft.

And I write this now because I was just thinking about collecting my favorite audiobooks of the year into a post, and as it turns out, I’m re-reading Night Shift on the Kindle, for perhaps the 20th time (including pre-Kindle). There’s no proper Audible version of this book for some reason, instead, its stories are collected into other audiobook collections for whatever reason. All of which, yes, I do own as well. And the reason I’m re-reading this book for the umpteenth time is that it holds up. Is one of those rare examples of something from my childhood that is just as good as I remember it being on the first go-round.

This is rare. There are TV shows, like Happy Days, that I loved as a youth that are painful to watch now. Movies. Music. Whatever. But Night Shift? It packs exactly the same wallop today as it did 40 years ago. That’s unique. That’s special.

But here’s what I remember most about that summer of 1982: I recall reading this book on the couch in front of the home’s big front window on warm, sunny days. And having to put it down, again and again, because its contents scared me silly. I’d walk out back, or up to the kids’ rooms, wherever they were at the time, to check in on them. I mean, I was doing it for me. I knew they were OK.

I write this realizing, too, that horror is not for everyone, that many reading this will be categorically uninterested in ever reading this book or anything that King has written, though I will point out that he’s written a lot of non-horror books as well. Many, many non-horror books. And that he is, to my mind, our greatest living writer of fiction.

I’ve not read all of King’s books. He lost me with the meandering Dark Tower series, though the first two, at least, are excellent. I never finished The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon—I just couldn’t get into it—despite it being, in King’s mind, the best book he’s ever written. And there are a few others I didn’t finish, though I can’t find them, and I’ve bought every book he’s ever written. There are some books that don’t hold up, like It and The Tommyknockers, both of which I’ve tried to re-read (mostly unsuccessfully) in recent years. And the books that do. The Stand, his masterpiece. ‘Salem’s Lot. Pet Sematary. Misery. 11/22/63. And many others. Among them, Night Shift.

Indeed, Stephen King’s short story collections—Night Shift was the first—are routinely among his best books. I love that he’s returned to ‘Salem’s Lot a few times, (and the world of The Stand at least once, too), and his many, many cross-references are huge for fans like me. That Night Shift spawned so many movies is interesting, too, though most are notably bad. At least we got the AC/DC album Who Made Who out of one of them.

But here’s the real gift. I know these stories in and out. And yet, in rereading this book again now, I still find myself getting chilled, still wondering if that was something moving in the dark. Nah. It was probably my imagination. Probably.

That’s a gift. This guy is a genius. And Night Shift is proof of that.