Literature / Nightmares & Dreamscapes

aka: The Night Flier

Original cover

Nightmares & Dreamscapes is Stephen King's third collection of short stories, published in 1993. It contains many stories that appeared in magazines before, and some previously unpublished ones.

Stories in Nightmares & Dreamscapes:

• "Dolan's Cadillac": A schoolteacher plans an extravagant revenge on the mob boss who killed his wife. Later adapted into film.
• "The End of the Whole Mess": In the form of a journal. A genius discovers the cure to humanity's aggressive tendencies — but at a price...
• "Suffer the Little Children": Oldest story in the collection (1972). A schoolteacher discovers that her class has been taken over by monsters. Or have they...?
• "The Night Flier": A journalist goes in search of a serial killer who has apparently been committing the murders flying between airports. Later adapted into film.
• "Popsy": Linked to the previous story. A gambling addict kidnaps a young boy in order to pay off his debts. But this one is a little bit strange.
• "It Grows on You": A house seems to take on a life of its own as new wings are added. Set in Castle Rock and somewhat of an epilogue for Needful Things.
• "Chattery Teeth": A travelling salesman buys a novelty pair of chattering teeth, which come to life and help him when he needs it.
• "Dedication": A hotel maid tells the story of how one of the hotel's regular high-profile guests, a famous writer, passed on his talent to her unborn child — without the two ever meeting outside of her job.
• "The Moving Finger": An ordinary man is confronted by the bizarre sight of a human finger poking out of his bathroom sink.
• "Sneakers": A recording studio executive notices a pair of sneakers in the same position in the same stall every day at work.
• "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band": A married couple lost in Oregon comes across a strange town that seems to be stuck in the 50s and is populated by famous dead musicians.
• "Home Delivery": A woman wants to give birth safely whilst an alien plague causes the world's corpses to come back to life. The story was originally published in a collection of Romero homages called The Book of the Dead.
• "Rainy Season": A married couple choose to stay on vacation in a small town in Maine despite being warned to leave and are attacked by an unusual rain that night.
• "My Pretty Pony": An elderly man brings his grandson up onto a hill behind his house and gives the boy his pocket watch. Originally a chapter in an unfinished novel.
• "Sorry, Right Number": Takes the form of a teleplay. A woman receives a strange phone call from a sobbing and traumatized unknown caller and tries to get to the bottom of who it was. Made into an episode of Tales from the Darkside.
• "The Ten O'Clock People": A smoker is able to see inhuman monsters everywhere due to the chemical imbalance of trying to quit.
• "Crouch End": King's tribute to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, written in the Cthulhu Mythos genre, involving a young American couple who get lost in a quiet part of London where the boundaries between dimensions are wearing a little thin.
• "The House on Maple Street": Four children discover that their house has been converted into an alien spaceship and send their abusive stepfather away on it. Based on one of the illustrations in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
• "The Fifth Quarter": A crook is trying to avenge the death of his friend who died at the hands of his own accomplices after taking part in a caper.
• "The Doctor's Case": King's tribute to the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, using the characters of Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes, originally written for a separate Holmes anthology. Holmes and Watson are called upon to investigate the death of an unpopular aristocrat, but an unexpected development will see the two briefly switch places.
• "Umney's Last Case": A Pastiche of Raymond Chandler in which a private investigator called Umney discovers that his life is falling apart.
• "Head Down": A real life essay about King's son Owen's Little League baseball team, Bangor West.
• "Brooklyn August": A poem about the baseball team Los Angeles Dodgers in their days as the Brooklyn Dodgers under the management of Walter Alston.
• "The Beggar and the Diamond": Not listed in the contents; a re-telling of a Hindu parable.

A television series of the same name was produced in 2006, which adapted several of the stories.

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Nightmares & Dreamscapes contains examples of:

• Action Dad: Woe betide whoever dares to abduct Popsy's grandson. He's a vampire, and not very forgiving.
• A Day in the Limelight: "The Doctor's Case," in which Watson for once has the edge on Holmes.
• The Alcoholic: Peter Jeffreys from "Dedication", to the point that it eventually destroyed his liver and killed him. Even then, he kept drinking right up until he couldnt move under his own power and was confined to a wheelchair.
• Alien Sky: In "Crouch End", Doris Freeman looks up at the sky and sees "crazed stars in lunatic constellations." The sky also begins taking on unnatural shades of blood red and deep purple as nightfall approaches.
• All Animals Are Dogs: At the end of "Chattery Teeth", the teeth hear a dog snarl at Bill and begin chattering softly. He pats his pocket and says "Easy, boy."
• Amphibian Assault: The story "Rainy Season" has a married couple going to vacation in a small town, where they're killed by a rain of killer (but not large) frogs. This happens every seven years without apparent reason.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Doris comes face-to-face with the Horror of Crouch End and catches a brief glimpse of her husband's face taking form in one of Its tentacles, implying that he was devoured by the Horror and became part of it.
  • In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band," non-celebrities who are lured into Rock and Roll Heaven stay forever. Literally. To be more explicit: they're given menial jobs to do all day, and are then expected to attend the nightly rock concerts in the town square—concerts that, despite technically ending at midnight, can last up to a year. To make matters worse, the undead rock musicians that populate the place become twisted, cruel beings that deliberately torture their audience just to make them squirm. If you try to help someone escape, you may have your fingers cut off...or worse. No one ever ages—one woman has been twenty-three for the past nine years—and death never comes, although pain and physical torture are still quite real. Most citizens fall into drugs to numb the fear and sadness, but eventually, everyone completely loses all hope of ever getting out and becomes an Empty Shell.
  • A mild example occurs in "Dedication." Protagonist Martha Rosewall reveals that, as part of Mama Delorme's hex on her, she is compelled to swallow the fresh semen of the racist author whose room she cleans in her work as a hotel housekeeper. She does this for weeks, and is utterly horrified every time she enters the room where it happens, but cannot stop no matter how hard she tries. Martha even describes how she would tell herself over and over again that each day would be different, that she'd be able to resist, that she had the willpower to stop the compulsion...only to look down in the middle of her pep talk and find herself already performing the act.
• Apocalyptic Log: Howard Fornoy's diary explaining what his brother Bobby brought to the world in the quest to bring world peace as he's succumbing to the project's unintended side-effect of accelerated Alzheimer's in "The End of the Whole Mess".
• Asshole Victim:
  • It's very hard to feel sorry for Sheridan in "Popsy" when he gets bled out by a vampire Papa Wolf, except inasmuch as he's trapped in his debt by his gambling addiction and is perfectly aware of the fact but can't stop. It still doesn't justify kidnapping children to sell them off to sex traffickers.
  • Likewise, you don't feel too much sympathy for mob boss Dolan in "Dolan's Cadillac", "Bryan Adams" in "Chattery Teeth", Johnny Rosewall in "Dedication", Lew Evans in "The House on Maple Street", or Lord Albert Hull in "The Doctor's Case".
• Attack of the Monster Appendage: The protagonist of "The Moving Finger" is confronted and attacked by a bizarre, multijointed finger poking out of the drain in his apartment's bathroom sink. After cutting it off, he starts thinking about the creature to which it must have been attached. Eventually, the police arrive, and something starts lifting the toilet lid. The officer goes to the toilet to investigate, and the story ends.
• Axes at School: "Suffer The Little Children" has one for the parents in the story: a teacher at their child's school starts shooting the kids one by one. They obviously freak out and demand justice. Miss Sibley is committed instead.
• Bad Boss: Dolan, possibly. After his car gets stuck in the protagonist's hole, he calmly and thoughtlessly shoots his injured bodyguard/driver. The narration isn't explicit on whether this was a Mercy Kill or just a way to shut him up before negotiating with Robinson.
• Baffled by Own Biology: In "Umney's Last Case", Umney the Refugee from TV Land ends up soiling himself, much to his surprise and confusion, as the Nobody Poops rule typically applies to the world he came from.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:invoked Lampshaded in The Doctor's Case, when Holmes declares that "The game's afoot!", proceeded by Watson saying that despite how often Sherlock's quoted as saying it that was the one time he actually did. Ultimately Subverted as Sherlock does say "The game is afoot!" in the Conan Doyle story The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, meaning King got it wrong (King probably got this quote mixed up with "Elementary, my dear Watson", which is an example).
• Best Served Cold: The theme of "Dolan's Cadillac". The main character waited nine years before being able to enact his revenge.
• Bewildering Punishment: Dolan initially in "Dolan's Cadillac", although he figures out who the perpetrator is quite quickly.
• Bittersweet Ending: "The Ten O'Clock People". The group is betrayed by their leader and all but Pearson, Cam and Moira are slain by the bats, but the remaining three fight their way out of the trap and go on to begin staging a successful resistance.
• Black Magic: In "Dedication," Mama Delorme's powers are described by narrator Martha as evil sorcery. Downplayed in that the magic ultimately cause positive changes in her life—Mama Delorme's spells kill Martha's abusive husband and help a writer create his best-selling work, which in turn inspires Martha's son to do the same—but the means by which those changes happen are decidedly unsettling. For starters, Martha is compelled to devour the semen of the writer every day to make herself pregnant in the first place, and has no control over her actions when she does so.
• Brainy Baby: Bobby Fornoy, the main character Howard's brother in "The End of the Whole Mess".
• Breaking and Bloodsucking: In "The Night Flier", the eponymous vampire pays a visit to the elderly Sarche couple. The following day, the husband shuts down the airfield and the wife visits the beauty parlour. The husband is found with his head torn off on one end of the trailer. The wife is found, her blood completely drained, in bed; with new lingerie, a peaceful expression, and a copy of The Vampire Lestat.
• Brown Note Being: During "Crouch End", Leonard Freeman's (Lonnie) hair turns grey and he seems mentally unhinged (according to his wife) after encountering some groaning creature behind a hedge.
• Buried Alive: Dolan's eventual fate, as part of Robinson's revenge.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In "Dolan's Cadillac", the wife of the protagonist/narrator (Robinson) is killed by a crime lord she was going to testify against (Dolan). For a several years, Robinson follows Dolan to learn his habits and routine, all while plotting his revenge. During one harrowing incident, however, Dolan's car breaks down on the road, and Robinson is forced to pass him. He's angered when Dolan doesn't even recognize the man whose wife he had ordered blown to smithereens in her car, though it's played with when he eventually comes to acknowledge that this works much better for him, as it also means that Dolan will not be expecting any threat from him. Ultimately, though, the trope is then subverted when, after Robinson says the first few words of his Best Served Cold speech, Dolan immediately identifies him.
• Buy Them Off: In "Dolan's Cadillac", Dolan tries to offer Robinson millions of dollars and protection from his mob in return for being set free from his car. It doesn't work.
• Bystander Syndrome: The residents of the town in "Rainy Season", including Laura and Henry Eden. They intentionally allow the married couples to stay there and do the least amount possible to warn them off. This is because they are afraid of what would happen if the rain of frogs came and there was no bait for them there, since it always happens every set number of years and always kills a young married couple from outside of the town.
• By the Eyes of the Blind: "The Ten O'Clock People" had monsters that appeared as human but could only be identified by people who smoke a certain amount (roughly a couple a day, but not heavily).
• Came Back Wrong: In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band," Sissy the waitress explains that regardless of how nice or kind a rock star was while they were alive, something happens to them when they come to Rock and Roll Heaven that permanently warps them into cruel monsters that trap innocent passers-by in the town forever.
• Camping a Crapper: In "Sneakers", the men's room is haunted by a drug dealer who was murdered in one of the stalls.
• Cassandra Truth: The couple in "Rainy Season" laugh when they're told they should leave due to a plague of raining frogs. God, they should have listened. It turns out the town deliberately plays this up so they have a human sacrifice
• Caught on Tape: The transcript of Xiaoping/Truman 's ill-fated mission in "Home Delivery".
• Celebrities Hang Out in Heaven: "You Know They've Got A Hell Of A Band." Gruesomely subverted. Maybe.
• Character Overlap:
  • Richard Dees, protagonist of "The Night Flier", is the same reporter for the tabloid Inside View that Johnny Smith throws off his porch in The Dead Zone.
  • Maddie Pace from "Home Delivery" says that the only famous writer from Little Tall Island is Selena St. George.
• Classical Movie Vampire: The vampires in both "The Night Flier" and "Popsy" are said to dress like one, wearing a black tuxedo and billowing cape lined with red. According to King's notes at the end, it's quite possible they are the same person.
• Constructive Body Disposal: In "Dolan's Cadillac", the protagonist buries Dolan — Cadillac and all — under a section of highway that's being repaved.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Popsy in the eponymous story. He is the little vampire boy's grandfather and kills Sheridan for trying to abduct his grandson.
  • The grandfather in "My Pretty Pony" gives his grandson his pocketwatch, and imparts one last bit of instruction on the nature of time.
• Cosmic Horror Story: "Crouch End" and "Home Delivery".
• Crapsaccharine World: Rock n' Roll Heaven of "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" seems like an idyllic paradise, a humble little town right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, populated by people resembling classic rock stars. Only, they're actually evil spirits (or something...) that lure and entrap new people in this "idyllic" town, giving them meaningless jobs and keeping them as a literal captive audience forever.
• Creepy Long Fingers: "The Moving Finger" involves a finger with many more knuckles than is usual, which appears in the protagonist's life with little explanation or justification and causes him to doubt his safe, rational view of the world.
• Dark World: "Crouch End" is about a couple who get lost in an unfamiliar part of London. The neighborhood looks almost normal with shops, restaurants, etc., and yet there's something off about it; its inhabitants include a couple of scary children and an ugly cat with a disfigured face. The mundane appearance of the place somehow makes it all scarier; in fact, it gets even somewhat less creepy when the actual monsters appear.
• Depraved Homosexual: Paul Jannings, John Tell's boss in "Sneakers", who killed the ghost in the bathroom stall.
• Determinator: The main character of "Dolan's Cadillac" goes from a meek, out of shape schoolteacher to a muscular construction worker and works himself half to death setting up his trap, all to avenge his beloved wife. It costs him too — he ends up hospitalized with a back injury due to the exertion.
• Didn't Think This Through: In "The End of the Whole Mess", this is Bobby Fornoy's Fatal Flaw (as well as being incredibly sensitive to the world's plights). He has never planned a project without overlooking ways it could backfire, anything from possibly crashing into a tree and losing his sneakers and some teeth up to The End of the World as We Know It.
• Directionless Driver: In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band", Clark Willingham and his wife are trying to drive to Toketee Falls and find themselves lost on a completely unfamiliar road. Mary wants to turn back, but Clark refuses to admit that they're lost and says they'll reach Toketee Falls very soon, so he ignores her suggestion. This ends very badly for them.
• Dirty Old Man: The Turk in "Popsy", who commissions Sheridan to kidnap children for him so that he can "send them on a boat ride." Whatever this might mean is unclear to the reader, but it probably involves selling them into slavery overseas.
• Distress Call: "Sorry, Right Number" adds a Karmic Twist Ending to this trope.
• Double Standard: Noted in "Suffer The Little Children" by the parents. If it was a guy teacher who shot several of his students due to paranoid delusions, he'd be in jail and treated more harshly by the system. But because Miss Sibley is an old lady who was seemingly harmless, she instead is given psychiatric treatment and allowed near children as part of her rehabilitation.
• Driver Faces Passenger: In the miniseries adaptation of "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band", when Clark and Mary try to flee Rock 'N Roll Heaven in their car, Mary suddenly gets distracted by the fact that there are no power lines leading out of the town. This causes Clark to take his eyes off the road to check it. And allows the dead musicians from the town to use Offscreen Teleportation to get an enormous tour bus across the road in front of them.
• Eldritch Abomination: In "Home Delivery", a thing best described as a gigantic ball of crawling worms decides to camp over the ozone layer at the South Pole... and causes a worldwide Zombie Apocalypse just by being there. Also, the titular street in "Crouch End" essentially turns into one.
• Eldritch Location: "Crouch End" has the fear and anxiety that can arise from getting yourself lost in an unfamiliar city with no one to help you find your way out of it. Though most of us are fortunate not to have to cope with crossing into an eldritch dimension on top of that.
• Et Tu, Brute?: "The Ten O'Clock People": Duke Rhinemann is said to have a look of sadness and confusion on his face after his group is betrayed and he's shot to death by their leader. This pisses off Brandon Pearson fiercely enough to grab a gun and start fighting back.
• "Eureka!" Moment: In "Dolan's Cadillac", the narrator has a close encounter with Dolan at a road diversion and is tempted to confront him but realises that he's no match for him in a confrontation, and that Dolan is too paranoid and sly to be fooled by something like a fake detour to lure him off the main road. He then hits upon his idea to instead lure Dolan by removing the detours from a real roadwork and trapping him under the road.
• Everybody Did It: The victim in "The Doctor's Case" was killed by his entire family.
• Everytown, America: Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon in "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band". It is described as looking exactly like a Norman Rockwell painting.
• Evil Phone: "Sorry, Right Number", in which the phone isn't precisely evil, but creepy.
  INT. THE PHONE — It lies on the carpet, looking both bland and somehow ominous. CAMERA MOVES IN TO ECU — the holes in the receiver once more look like huge dark chasms. We HOLD, then FADE TO BLACK.
• Excrement Statement: In "Dolan's Cadillac", a year or so after he buries Dolan alive in a hole in the desert, Robinson comes back and urinates on the spot.
• External Combustion: In "Dolan's Cadillac", it's how Robinson's wife was killed.
• Eye Scream: In "Sneakers", the ghost haunting the men's room is the spirit of a drug dealer who was killed by one of his customers "making a pencil disappear."
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: One of the few things Doris can recall about the entity she encountered in the abyss beneath Crouch End was that "there was something else down there...something like eyes".
• Face Death with Dignity: A truly badass example from Frank Daggett in "Home Delivery," who knows his heart is about to give out on him. He says goodbye to his nephew, has three men aim their shotguns in his vital areas, and recites the Lord's Prayer (interrupted by fits of profanity as he suffers a heart attack), then has them all pull the trigger at once. Unlike the zombies, who sometimes reanimate even after a headshot, Frank doesn't come back; the text notes he planned to stay dead and he meant it.
• Fingore:
  • "The Moving Finger" has Howard Mitla try to get rid of a finger living in his bathroom drain by dissolving it with industrial drain cleaner (it intentionally doesn't make sense in context), before cutting it off with an electric hedge trimmer.
  • In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band," Frankie Lymon slices off two of Sissy the waitress's fingers as punishment for her trying to free the protagonists.
• Fish out of Water: Umney is not a real detective but a fictional character that's never had to deal with sickness or bathroom breaks. When he wakes up in the real world, in his author's body, he's wet himself and hates having shingles. Umney is not amused about this, since he has to toilet train himself.
• "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: In "The End of the Whole Mess", young genius Bobby Fornoy discovers how to rid everyone in the world of their violent impulses. He and his brother Howard complete the task in a few years, but they were unaware of a terrible side effect — early onset Alzheimer's. The story is narrated by the brother as the effects catch up to him.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Near the end of the book, after short stories involving the usual fare from King, we have "Head Down," a non-fiction piece focused on his son Owen's little league team and their championship quest.
• Gasshole: Henry Eden's dog Toby in "Rainy Season", to the point where Laura threatens to turn right around and leave unless the dog goes inside.
  Laura: My head hurts like a bastard, and the last thing I need this morning is listening to that dog play "Hail Columbia" out of its asshole.
• Genre Savvy: Trent in "The House in Maple Street" figures out pretty quickly what's going to happen to their house.
  Every American boy knows one of two things happen when a backward-running clock finally reads zeros across the board: an explosion or a lift-off.
• Glamour Failure:
  • In "The Ten O'Clock People" only very light smokers can see the 'bat people' who are steadily taking over. Non-smokers and heavier smokers alike simply see humans where the titular group sees the monsters.
  • Throughout "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band," the undead rockers' true nature occasionally peeks through the glamours they've created of their formerly healthy selves—Janis Joplin vomits up maggots, Buddy Holly starts bleeding behind his glasses, and Elvis Presley's eyes completely vanish, revealing empty, wrinkled sockets. What makes it worse is the implication that the musicians have control over their glamours, and are deliberately showing off clues just to torment Clark and Mary as they try to escape.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: About the only explanation given for the events of "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" is that the rock and roll musicians need an audience, which is why they capture any normal humans that stray into town. As Alan Freed remarks at the end of the story—"Rock and roll will never die!"
• Godzilla Threshold: "The End of the Whole Mess" extremely implies a justification for Bobby Fornoy's firm grasp of the Idiot Ball regarding his project with Howard (Bobby's brother) mentioning a number of extremely bad things happening around the world in passing, including London being blown up by a nuclear terrorist attack. The miniseries adaptation, if anything, just makes it much more clear with showing news casts that have world leaders about to start World War III. As Bobby himself says, either they do something to cause world peace now or there won't be much a world left soon. This ends up becoming an example of the "Godzilla" being worse than whatever mess that caused it to be summoned, though.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: In "The Night Flier", Dees sees the carnage at the airport left behind by "Dwight", and eventually concludes that it couldn't have been a man who killed them. His mind is completely broken when he meets the vampire face to face.
• Groin Attack:
  • In "Chattery Teeth", the eponymous wind-up novelty toy ends up biting the car-jacker to death. Guess whether it goes for the balls.
  • In "My Pretty Pony", Clive's big sister Patty gives him vicious "Peter pinches". Well... some of the pinches are vicious.
• Hate Plague: Inverted in "The End of the Whole Mess".
• Hearing Voices: Robinson in "Dolan's Cadillac" hears the voice of his wife (of the Unknown type of this trope) throughout. It stops when he finally kills Dolan.
• Hell Is That Noise: A truly terrifying example occurs in "The Night Flier." After discovering the airport where the titular vampiric monster has attacked and killed nearly everyone, photographer Dees stumbles into the bathroom to pull himself together. He stands gasping over the sink...and the sound of someone emptying their bladder into a urinal starts to echo. And he can't see anything in the mirror.
• Heroic RRoD: The husband in "Dolan's Cadillac" trains himself and works on a road crew to bury Dolan alive. Afterward, he's treated in the hospital for severe strain to his back, with the doctor asking what the hell he did to wreck it.
• Human Traffickers: "Popsy" has the main character kidnapping children for a trafficker. He lures them to his truck and handcuffs them. You're rooting for the vampire grandfather.
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • The people, or whatever they really were, that Doris and Lonny encounter in Crouch End before things get really bad.
  • Implied with the grandson and grandfather from "Popsy".
  • The rock legends from "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band".
  • The "bats" in "The Ten O'Clock People".
• I Ate WHAT?!: The hotel maid in "Dedication" eats some semen left on the sheets by a talented author in the hopes that her unborn child will inherit his talent as part of a black magic spell. It works. To her credit, she does describe it as being more like an irresistible urge rather than an active choice on her part.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: "Slaughter Towen" is a worse place than it sounds, since "Towen" is an old druid word for the ritual site for bloody sacrifice. Even worse, it is located within the short story "Crouch End", a Cosmic Horror Story within the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Idiot Ball: Though an incredibly gifted genius, Bobby of "The End of This Whole Mess" has the crucial flaw of keeping a small one in his grip at all times that causes him to overlook proper testing methods and neglect possible variables in his research. Using multiple types of live test subjects, for instance, could have revealed that his docility formula wasn't nearly the perfect solution he was hoping for. The miniseries has a scene that tries to explain this, where Bobby states that the international situation is so close to the brink, they don't have time to consider long-term effects.
• I'm Your Biggest Fan: The telephone operator in "Sorry, Right Number" when she hears that the caller is her favourite author.
• Inheritance Murder: The victim in "The Doctor's Case" was murdered to destroy his revised will - the deceased had used the fact that his family was dependent on him for money to make them submit to his abuse for years, and upon learning that he would be dead within the year, declared that he would change his will to strip them of any inheritance and leave the entire estate to a pet shelter out of spite.
• It Came from the Sink: In the surreal short story "The Moving Finger," a man finds a human finger poking out of the drain in his bathroom sink and moving around. His sanity begins fracturing when he realizes the finger is growing longer. The story culminates in an absurd battle involving drain cleaner, electric hedge clippers, and the finger growing long enough to fight back.
• It's for a Book: In "Dolan's Cadillac", Robinson claims that he's writing a Sci-Fi story and asks someone how much dirt the characters would have to excavate in order to trap the alien's vehicle. The person who gives Robinson this information comments something to the effect of, "It's funny, the dimensions of that vehicle are almost the size of a Cadillac." King himself had to ask his brother how he'd go about burying a Cadillac, and got extensive details (even down to how to hotwire a digger). Of course, King had spent years preparing the alibi of being a best-selling writer by this point. He also claimed (in the author's notes) that details of the crime were changed in the story so that it wouldn't actually work, just in case anyone reading it got ideas.
• It's Personal: In "Dolan's Cadillac", Robinson wants revenge on Dolan for killing his wife a number of years beforehand (as she was going to testify against Dolan in a trial).
• Jack up with Phlebotinum: "The Ten O'Clock People" involves a relatively mild example: a certain level of nicotine and withdrawal symptoms found in smokers trying to quit — and only in smokers trying to quit — gives them the power to perceive that humans are being replaced by a race of disguised bat-like monsters.
• Jump Scare: An In-Universe example occurs at the end of "Dedication." Martha remarks that, after the major events of the story, she went back to Mama Delorme's apartment with some cash as payment for the old woman's magical services. As she bends down to slide the money under the door, Mama Delorme's voice starts talking right back to her immediately (as if she is bending down on the other side of the door waiting), and Martha describes her reaction as this trope.
• Just Before the End: The setting of "The End Of The Whole Mess", where war, terrorism and international tensions are spiralling out of control, and the world is one loud noise away from World War 3. Among other things, there's mentions of a terrorist nuclear bomb in London. The world ends alright, but not the way anyone expected it to.
• Karma Houdini: While not guaranteed, it is heavily suggested that the protagonist of "Dolan's Cadillac" will get away with having buried Dolan alive. The protagonist admits that it's possible that someday someone will uncover Dolan and realize what he did, but notes that there are plenty of reasons why it likely won't be any day soon; Dolan's car is heavily armored, so it will withstand the pressure from the heavy traffic passing over it for longer, and will decay more slowly under the dry desert earth, meaning that the cavity it creates won't be revealed for a while. Furthermore, unless an expert happens to see the damage as it occurs, it's likely that any cracks or potholes caused by the presence of the Cadillac will just be put down to natural processes and quickly repaired without major excavation. And even if Dolan is uncovered, his gangland activities mean that there will be plenty more likely suspects for the police to follow than the protagonist. And even then, the sheer amount of (literally) back-breaking labor the protagonist undertook in order to pull off the plan would suggest to investigators that a team of assassins would have to be involved rather than a single man.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: The premise of "Dolan's Cadillac". Mob boss Dolan has been able to avoid karma for nine years after ordering the murder of the protagonist's wife. The protagonist hatches a plan to make sure that Dolan finally gets his comeuppance, and succeeds.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Jerry of "The Fifth Quarter" had every intention of sparing Keenan's life until he sees that one of the pieces of their map has blood on it, and realizes that he was the one who pulled the trigger on Jerry's friend. He shoots Keenan dead on the spot.
• Last-Name Basis: In "Dolan's Cadillac", the main character's first name is never revealed and the only time his surname is mentioned — even though the story is told in the first person — is when Dolan (once he's trapped in his car in revenge for the murder of the narrator's wife Elizabeth) asks "Is your name Robinson?"
• The Last Title: "Umney's Last Case", which details Umney's last case... but not necessarily for the reasons you might expect.
• Laughing Mad: In "Dolan's Cadillac", Dolan starts laughing madly once he realises Robinson is not going to set him free.
• Let Off by the Detective: What ultimately happens in "The Doctor's Case."
• Line-of-Sight Name: In "Chattery Teeth," the protagonist offers a lift to a young hitchhiker who claims his name is Bryan Adams. The protagonist then notices a Bryan Adams cassette sitting on his floor and realizes that he's in trouble.
• Locked Room Mystery: "The Doctor's Case", which is the major reason why Holmes becomes so interested to begin with.
• Made of Iron: Averted in "Dolan's Cadillac" — Robinson collapses and needs surgery for his back soon after spending ages out in the desert digging a massive hole in the highway. Afterwards he notes that even with the surgery, he will still have to be careful about lifting things, probably for the rest of his life.
• Magic Mushroom: A rather dark variety in "Dedication"; it's part of how Mama Delorme works her mojo. She sneaks one onto Peter Jeffries' breakfast plate; it gives him a burst of inspiration for a new war story and he extends his stay at the hotel. Later, Martha squeezes blood out of a similar mushroom to "witch" Johnny Rosewall's handgun.
• Mama Bear: In "Home Delivery," protagonist Maddie Pace is something of a Shrinking Violet—and when her undead husband comes back to her, she's temporarily stunned by his presence. But when she realizes that his attempts to kill her will also kill her unborn child, she summons up the courage and strength to fight back and win.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • It's never made clear in "Suffer the Little Children" if Miss Sibley is delusional or if the children are actually monsters.
  • To a lesser extent, in "Dolan's Cadillac" it's unclear whether the visions and voices of the narrator's wife that urge him on in his quest for revenge are simply reflective of his own deteriorating mental state or are her actual restless spirit seeking closure for her murder.
• Missing Reflection: In "The Night Flier", in the final scene, Dees is unable to see the Night Flier in the restroom mirror, since he is a vampire.
• Mugging the Monster: In "Popsy", Sheridan, who has been abducting and selling children to pay off his gambling debts, kidnaps a young boy from a shopping mall. Unfortunately for him, the boy is a vampire and manages to break his restraints and turn the tables on his kidnapper just in time for his grandfather, the eponymous Popsy, to come pick him up. The two vampires exsanguinate Sheridan.
• Mundane Horror:
  • In "Crouch End", a family couple drives into an unknown district of London. Initially it appears almost normal, but with some minor unsettling details (a strange newspaper headline, a cat with a mutilated face, three bikers who appear to have rat heads). These are the first indications that they are in a Dark World.
  • "Chattery Teeth" is about a pair of novelty chattering joke teeth...which brutally murder a would-be robber by chewing him to death. Slowly.
• Mysterious Mist: In "Rainy Season", the morning after it rains killer frogs, there is a strange mist in the air until the frogs' bodies explode and disappear.
• Nighttime Bathroom Phobia: In "The Moving Finger," the protagonist fears going to the bathroom at night and will even take a trip down to the alley outside his building to avoid it. He's got a good reason, though: whenever he goes in, a human finger pokes out of the sink drain and seems to be searching for him.
• Nobody Poops: Umney's fictional setting never took into account things like using the bathroom, so it's only when he's sent to the real world that Umney finds out the messy way that food and drink have to go somewhere once the body's done with them.
• No Control Group: Played for Horror in "The End of the Whole Mess". Bobby Fornoy's research on the substance that makes people calm would have greatly benefited from having a control group, because it would have revealed the side-effect of accelerated Alzheimer's Disease a whole lot sooner. Overall, Bobby not using one is more evidence of his Fatal Flaw — he Didn't Think This Through.
• Not Enough to Bury: Robinson's wife in "Dolan's Cadillac" was blown to bits by the explosives Dolan rigged to her car. Robinson uses his horror and outrage about this particular aspect to help push through some of the most arduous and painful parts of his plan.
• Once More, with Clarity: A rare literary version occurs in "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band." When Mary and Clark first drive through Rock and Roll Heaven, they notice two groups of people—exhausted, apathetic-looking citizens and a cheerier group that seems strangely familiar. Once they realize that the town is full of undead rock musicians, they drive through again (as they're trying to escape) and figure out that the familiar group are other rockers, while the non-celebrities are innocent souls who got sucked into the town and can never leave.
• One Crazy Night: In "Crouch End", a family couple gets lost in an unfamiliar district of London late in the evening. As night closes in, the place becomes increasingly creepy, eventually devolving into Lovecraftian horror.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The boy and Popsy in "Popsy" and the vampire from "The Night Flier". King suggests that the two adult vampires are the same man.
• Papa Wolf: Woe betide whoever dares to abduct Popsy's grandson.
• Pastiche: If Stephen King were a musician (as something other than a side project, anyway), Nightmares & Dreamscapes would have been his album of covers; many of the stories are King homaging other writers:
  • "Dolan's Cadillac" is basically Edgar Allan Poe (specifically "The Cask of Amontillado") crossing over with a Vegas noir.
  • "The Doctor's Case" is, of course, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche.
  • "Crouch End" homages H. P. Lovecraft.
  • "Umley's Last Case" is a riff on Raymond Chandler's mysteries, with a King-esque supernatural twist.
  • "Home Delivery" is a tribute to the zombie movies of George Romero.
  • "The Ten O'Clock People" reads like a riff of John Carpenter's They Live!.
  • He even dabbles a bit in sports writing ("Head Down") and poetry ("Brooklyn August").
  • While not quite in the same vein, the "cover album" vibe certainly isn't hurt by the inclusion of "You Know They Got A Hell Of A Band", which is all about demonic versions of classic rock stars.
• The Pen Is Mightier: The ghost in "Sneakers" died from being stabbed in the eye with a pencil.
• The Perfect Crime: In "Dolan's Cadillac", Robinson stalks Dolan until he gets a good idea of the mobster's habits and finds out that Dolan regularly drives back and forth between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Robinson successfully buries Dolan alive in a hole in the highway. He speculates that one day the road will collapse on top of the Cadillac because of the open space inside it and the pressure of heavy vehicles driving over it, but as far as the reader knows, Robinson got his revenge and got away scot-free^note Robinson notes that the Cadillac is over-engineered to almost be an armored car to protect Dolan, so it will stand up better than an average car. Also, the dry desert environment will slow down rust taking hold. Furthermore, even if it is discovered it's frequently noted that Dolan is a ruthless gangster with many enemies who would be suspected well before anyone hit on Robinson.
• Pet the Dog: After confiscating the journalist's photographs and evidence, the vampire lets him go. He understands the guy didn't comprehend that he had gotten in over his head.
• Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity: An example where the change is permanent, "The End of the Whole Mess", is about some Phlebotinum applied to the world's water supply in order to make humanity more peaceful. At first, it appears to work, but then the protagonists learn that people exposed to the substance eventually develop dementia. The story ends with the implication that humanity will go extinct as people lose the ability to care for themselves or their children.
• Phone Call from the Dead: Sort of the premise of "Sorry, Right Number". Averted in that the voice she hears is not dead — she is talking to herself five years in the future. However, her first husband does die, and her future self could have saved him had she stopped crying long enough to get the message through.
• Plot Allergy: In "The Doctor's Case," the reason Sherlock Holmes doesn't immediately spot the clue that unravels the mystery is that he's allergic to cats, of which Lord Hull had many. It really doesn't help that one cat takes an immediate affection to Holmes and gets snuggly with him.
• Pregnant Badass: Maddie Pace, of "Home Delivery," is pregnant when her undead husband returns from his watery grave to attack her. Her condition doesn't stop her from successfully fending off the zombie by chopping it in half with an axe.
• Psychic Powers: Mama Delorme, the "bruja woman" of "Dedication," has powerful psychic abilities in addition to her skill in Black Magic—she can read minds, predict the future, and hypnotize people into following her commands without them even knowing what those commands are.
• Public Domain Character: "The Doctor's Case" stars Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Mr. Sheridan in "Popsy" is just trying to pay off Mr. Reggie, and doesn't enjoy abducting children.
• Puppeteer Parasite: The alien worms in "Home Delivery".
• Refugee from TV Land: Umney of "Umney's Last Case" learns that he's a fictional character when his own author usurps Umney's place in the narrative, and forces him out in the the real world.
• Renaissance Man: Bobby Fornoy in "The End of the Whole Mess". He studies in various different research areas including archaeology and zoology. Too bad due diligence isn't among his many talents...
• Revenge: In "Dolan's Cadillac", the main character, Robinson, digs up a hole in a highway that is frequented by mob boss Dolan. He places a canopy over it and once the Cadillac drives over it, it falls into it and becomes trapped. Robinson then refills the hole while Dolan pointlessly begs for mercy down in his car. He does this to avenge his wife's death, who was blown up by Dolan with a stick of dynamite attached to the ignition of her car.
• Road-Sign Reversal: In "Dolan's Cadillac", although it's removing the signs so that Dolan and Co. unknowingly drive into a construction zone; the protagonist notes that Dolan wouldn't fall for the more traditional version.
• Scary Scarecrows: The original cover art (shown above) depicts one of these, mounted in the middle of a country road and sporting a Castle Rock Rockets baseball jersey.
• See-Thru Specs: "The Ten O'Clock People" has the Weirdness Censor become broken by, of all things, moderate smoking. For some reason the chemicals in cigarettes let people see through the monsters' disguises, but only if you ingest them at a rate somewhere between 'smoke occasionally' and 'chain smoking'.
• Shout-Out:
  • For the love of God, Robinson!
  • Most of "Crouch End" is a shoutout to Lovecraft, but more specifically, one of the names Doris sees on the old warehouses is Alhazred, as in Abdul Alhazred, the author of the Necronomicon. (There are also intentionally-scrambled references to Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep.)
  • The family's surname from "The House on Maple Street" is Bradbury. The story itself is based on a single illustration/prompt from the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
    • This wouldn't be the first time that alien events happened to a Maple Street.
  • The premise of "The Ten O'Clock People" is so similar to They Live! (and by extension, the Ray Nelson short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning") that it can't be anything other than a deliberate homage.
  • "Umney's Last Case" is both an in-and-out-of-universe example: written as a Hollywood noir pastiche in the prose style of Raymond Chandler, the names of multiple characters (Vernon Klein, Peoria Smith, and Clyde Umney himself) are all taken from Chandler's stories, and Umney, like Philip Marlowe, also has an office in the Fulwider Building. Sam Landry seems rather sensitive to this fact and is unable to fully own up to it, insisting it's homage and that all great writers do it; Clyde, on the other hand, sees it as plagiarism. However, Sam does off-handedly admit that Clyde's neighbors George and Gloria Demmick — a madcap married duo who drink too much, keep a tiny dog, and apparently solve murders themselves from time to time — are a "lousy imitation" of Nick and Nora Charles.
• Sinister Southwest: "Dolan's Cadillac" concerns an everyday man plotting revenge against the Las Vegas gangster who murdered his wife to keep her from testifying against him. Said revenge involves trapping the gangster's Cadillac in a pit in the Nevada desert and burying him alive in it.
• Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: "Home Delivery" — Type II.
• Spin-Off: "The Night Flier" focuses on Richard Dees, a supporting character from The Dead Zone.
• The Spook: The finger in "The Moving Finger". It is never explained what it is or why it appeared to Howard. As King says in his notes at the back of the book, he enjoys it when things like this happen without explanation in his stories.
• Stable Time Loop: In "Sorry, Right Number", Katie Weiderman receives a phone call from a strange, hysterical woman gasping out a bizarre phrase between sobs: "Take...please take..." The voice sounds familiar, so she spends some time trying to track down the caller's identity, but fails. We later find out that the caller was herself five years in the future—she was somehow able to contact the past briefly in an attempt to warn her younger self that her husband was to die of a heart attack the night of the call. Because she's so overwhelmed by this, she's only able to say "Take...please take...", setting the events of the story in motion and closing the loop.
• Stylistic Suck: In "The End of the Whole Mess", Howard Fornoy's skill deteriorates as his mental capacity does.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Robinson might have gotten in shape, he might have spent months on a road crew in Nevada, learning how to operate heavy machinery and increasing his endurance for heat and his strength. He's still a middle-aged grade school teacher, and the effort of singlehandedly carving out the trap meant for Dolan almost kills him, and does end up giving him serious injuries, including joint damage, severe sunburns, infected blisters, and three slipped discs in his back. He might avoid any legal consequences for his revenge, but he sure as hell paid for it.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: "Umney's Last Case" sees Umney forced into swapping places with his own author. But the story ends with Umney learning to write, and planning to copy the author's technique to take back his rightful place as main character of his stories.
• Thin Dimensional Barrier: "Crouch End" occurs because a dimensional barrier grew thin between a Dark World and one part of London.
• Through the Eyes of Madness:
  • In "Suffer the Little Children", neither Miss Sidley nor the readers are sure if her students are 'something else' or not. They seem to confirm their identity to her, but who knows if the words the teacher hears are what was really said?
  • This comes up again in "The Moving Finger", in which Howard Mitla believes that he sees a finger sticking up out of his bathroom sink's drain. Things get increasingly weird (and he gets increasingly unhinged), until the reader isn't sure what's really going on. The ending suggests one possible 'mundane' explanation, but leaves it ambiguous. This story can also be read without doubting him, and either way the very end seems to be designed to suggest that it was all real.
  • Appropriately for a homage to Poe, the narrator of "Dolan's Cadillac" is also suggested to have a rather fraying grasp on sanity at times. It's not quite as Unreliable Narrator as the others, as there's no suggestion that what he describes didn't happen and the story is more of a crime thriller than a supernatural horror per say, but he describes auditory and visual hallucinations of his dead wife and the man he murders happening upon him in a way that makes it ambiguous whether he's just going mad out of grief and rage or whether he's actually being visited by departed souls needing closure.
• Titled After the Song: "You know They've Got a Hell of a Band" was named after a line from the Rightous Brothers' "Rock and Roll Heaven", which also names the town.
• Toilet Horror:
  • "Sneakers" had the protagonist noticing that one specific stall of his office building's bathrooms was always occupied by a man with a distinctive pair of sneakers and trying to find out who he is he discovers the hard way that the man was the ghost of a drug dealer who was killed some years prior by being stabbed through one of his eyes with a pencil.
  • The ending of "The Moving Finger", where there's gonna be something very unpleasant in Mr. Mitla's toilet...
• Took a Level in Badass: In "Home Delivery," the central character, Maddie Pace, is a meek, shy, indecisive woman who lives alone after her husband dies in a fishing accident at sea. When said husband returns from the dead as a horrific zombie, she's initially frightened, but eventually fights back—and cleaves the creature in two with an axe.
• Town with a Dark Secret:
  • In "Rainy Season", the small town experiences a rain of deadly frogs every seven years which always ends up killing a young married couple from out of town.
  • In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band", Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon. A weird town straight out of the 1950s inhabited by deceased musicians such as Janis Joplin and Buddy Holly. No outsider will ever know the secret because anyone unlucky enough to find the town is forced to remain there for eternity.
  • "Crouch End", while set in a London suburb rather than an isolated small town, carries the same theme, as the inhabitants of the area and the surrounding neighborhoods are hiding something that is unknown to the rest of London - Crouch End is home to a "thin spot" in the fabric of reality, allowing things on the other side to occasionally leak through, creating a nightmarish, alternate version of Crouch End.
  • King himself discusses this trope in the notes to the stories, comparing some typical horror story plots—including the "strange small town"—to the chords on a guitar; they're the same from song to song, but the way you play them changes the tune.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: This is how Sheridan winds up kidnapping children, including one lethally bad choice in "Popsy".
• 20 Minutes into the Future: "The End of the Whole Mess", happening on The 2000s (the characters are mentioned to have been born in the early Eighties) and with mention of such horrors as a Middle Eastern terrorist nuclear strike on London (and mention of an attempted attack on Egypt with airborne AIDS) and the Doomsday Clock (which represents the possibility of nuclear exchange by superpowers) being set on fifteen seconds to "midnight".
• The Undead:
  • In "Home Delivery" the dead are resurrected due to an alien worm plague.
  • In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" there are several famous (un)dead musicians.
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • The vampire in "Popsy" lost track of his grandson while they were at the mall, looking for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Transformers in some versions) action figures.
  • Dees has his up-close and personal encounter with the vampire in "The Night Flier" (suggested to be the same one from "Popsy") after he tries to hide in the terminal restroom and discovers the vampire already inside with him, and he's using the urinal.
• Wasteland Elder: In "Home Delivery", Frank Daggett is the elderly uncle of the middle-aged mayor of a small Maine island that hunkers down during a Zombie Apocalypse. Frank's nephew does provide a good amount of leadership as they prepare to fight the zombies that will inevitably arise from the graveyard, but Frank himself is the real organizer and moral center of the community.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "Dolan's Cadillac" is basically a reworking of the Edgar Allan Poe story The Cask of Amontillado. Both are about the protagonist burying someone alive who has harmed them (though King's character has an actual, explained reason for revenge, and Dolan is clearly deserving of his fate, while Poe's are left open). The victim in both stories even screams "For the love of God!" when they realize how utterly screwed they are.
• Wicked Stepfather:
  • A rare male example in "The House on Maple Street", though he's more uncaring and supremely self-centered than outright evil — either way, he gets blasted into space when the house/spaceship launches off the street.
  • Thoroughly averted with Kate’s second husband in “Sorry Right Number” who received an apology from his oldest stepdaughter for her behavior when she was younger and kindly assured her that all is forgiven.
• Witness Protection: Robinson's wife had this in "Dolan's Cadillac" before she was set to go to trial to be a witness against Dolan. He finds her anyway and attaches dynamite to her car and kills her.
• The Worm That Walks: Implied to be the reason for the Zombie Apocalypse in "Home Delivery", as a massive object that appeared above the South Pole just before the zombies began to rise is revealed to be an enormous sphere made from extraterrestrial worms by a disastrous space flight intended to document and hopefully destroy it. The worms can animate any dead body they infect, and while most zombies die again if you shoot them in the head, some will keep moving, even as dismembered body parts. After the resurrected corpses on Jenny Island are re-killed and burned, some of the ash is still twitching.
• Wrong Turn at Albuquerque: "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" begins with the Willinghams making a wrong turn and ending up in the little town of Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon where things aren't quite as bucolic as they appear.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In "Dolan's Cadillac", when Dolan is trapped in the hole, he calmly and thoughtlessly shoots his injured bodyguard/driver to shut him up so that he can try and negotiate with Robinson to be released. (Arguably a mix of this trope and Mercy Kill, since the man had had an engine block land in his lap, and likely wouldn't have lasted very long in any case without the immediate emergency care he wasn't going to get.)
• Zombie Apocalypse: In "Home Delivery", an object orbiting the Earth (either an asteroid covered with seriously weird worm-like creatures, or it's worms all the way down...) is somehow causing the dead to reanimate.
• Zombie Infectee: Near the end of "Home Delivery", itself an homage to the films of George A. Romero, a member of a group of zombie-killers who protect their small island community realizes he's having a fatal heart attack, and demands that his fellow residents shoot him in all vital organs simultaneously (after he completes the Lord's Prayer) so that he doesn't rise immediately after he dies.

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