Midnight Hobo is a horror short story written by Ramsey Campbell.
Late night radio jockey Roy is under quite a bit of stress. His new co-host Derrick is an incompetent Jerkass trying to take over Roy's show, and his boss clearly favors Derrick over him. And on Roy's walk back home, he keeps encountering a crazed homeless old man who warns of something lurking in a nearby tunnel. When Roy tries to investigate for himself, he finds the homeless man was right when something living in the tunnel begins stalking him.
List of tropes applying to this story:
- Asshole Victim: Derrick is a smarmy, entitled Jerkass who spends the entire story being obnoxious. Whatever the Eldritch Abomination in the tunnel does to him, it's hard to feel too bad.
- The Assimilator: The thing living in the tunnels may be this. It's left ambiguous if it assimilated Derrick, or simply killed and replaced him.
- Can't Take Criticism: One of Derrick's defining traits, which fuels his rivalry with Roy. Derrick constantly makes rookie mistakes, but refuses to learn from them and takes Roy's admittedly harsh critiques as personal slights.
- Crazy Homeless People: The titular Midnight Hobo. Though he is right about something monstrous living in the tunnel.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Roy is a curmudgeon, but Derrick is mainly trying to take over his show because Roy criticized him for making rookie mistakes.
- Eldritch Abomination: Whatever lives in the tunnel. It's unclear what it is, but it's implied to be some kind of Living Shadow and it assimilates Derrick to use him as a disguise.
- Jerkass:
- Roy himself is quite grumpy and abrasive, although he's somewhat sympathetic and shows signs of compassion.
- Derrick is extremely smarmy and much nastier than Roy.
- Surprisingly Happy Ending: Most of Campbell's stories ends with the protagonist being killed, but Roy is able to notice the creature is trying to trap him and manages to escape to safety.
