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1
I Am the Doorway
Night Shift. An astronaut returns from a mission to Venus with eyes opening in the skin of his hands. The fear is of keeping something inside so that it can’t use him to see. Try it if a disturbing bodily detail is enough to carry your science-fiction horror.
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The Jaunt (2009)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
Skeleton Crew. At a teleportation terminal, a father tells his children why passengers go to sleep before the jump. Try this for a scary story that works as a science-fiction thought experiment. The most troubling part of the trip is something the technology usually takes care of for you.
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1408 (2016)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Everything’s Eventual. A writer who makes his living investigating ghost stories checks into a New York hotel room with a fearsome reputation. The manager’s effort to talk him out of it makes the room feel dangerous before you get inside it. Pick this if you want a haunted-house story in which the front door opens right onto the worst part.
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N. (2016)
Published
Just After Sunset. A psychiatrist’s notes record a patient’s account of a Maine field where the number of stones seems to change. The counting is what keeps this longer pick frightening. King leaves you room to wonder whether a repeated ritual protects anybody or makes the fear harder to escape.
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The Boogeyman
Night Shift. A father sits in a psychiatrist’s office and tries to explain why he’s afraid of closets. The door that keeps turning up slightly open gives you an ordinary detail to dread. Read it for a concentrated piece of domestic horror that’s short enough to make that one image stick.
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Children of the Corn (1978)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Night Shift. A couple driving through Nebraska reaches a small town after a roadside accident. The orderly streets make their questions feel more urgent. Choose this if you want a rural horror story that puts the weight of its menace in community customs and the corn surrounding them.
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Survivor Type
Skeleton Crew. A surgeon’s diary begins as a record of what he can do to stay alive after a shipwreck. His training makes the entries harder to read as the choices narrow. This is one of the most physically gruesome stories here, and the dry accounting is part of what makes it so hard to shake.
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The Man in the Black Suit (2002)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Everything’s Eventual. An elderly narrator remembers meeting a strange man on a childhood fishing trip. Read it for the difference between the pace of a boy’s fright and the slow way an adult can go on carrying it. The familiar routine of fishing gives the encounter a place to wait.
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One for the Road (2010)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Night Shift. A visitor staggers into a bar during a snowstorm, asking for help for the family he left in a car. The locals know the road he took. Read it if you want a fire, a drink, and a little local knowledge to make everything waiting outside feel colder.
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The Monkey (1989)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Skeleton Crew. The toy monkey that haunted Hal’s childhood comes back into his family’s life. The sound of its cymbals lets King put the tension into one movement of a cheap object. The family history is the reason the noise carries beyond the first scare.
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The Raft
Skeleton Crew. Four friends swim out to a raft and notice a slick on the lake moving in a way they can’t explain. A small platform gives you nowhere else to look for relief. Pick it for the kind of gruesome suspense that makes you count the distance to shore.
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Gramma (1987)
Published
Skeleton Crew. A boy stays with his unwell grandmother while his mother goes out. He has to decide how much to believe the stories he’s heard about her. Choose it for the feeling of being young and responsible for something you’d rather ask an adult to handle.
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Mrs. Todd's Shortcut (1986)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Skeleton Crew. A woman’s search for shorter drives through Maine takes her onto roads that make less sense every time she uses them. The uncanny detail is the mileage. It’s a good choice when you want the impossible to feel like something a person might choose.
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The Reach
Skeleton Crew. An elderly woman who has lived her life on a Maine island considers crossing the ice to the mainland, after a winter freeze changes what the reach between them means. Try this for King’s gentler side. The ghosts feel as much part of an old community as a path she has never taken.
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The Lawnmower Man
Night Shift. Harold hires someone to cut the lawn, then sees something that gives him second thoughts about the service. Try it for the way a perfectly ordinary household chore tips into the surreal in just a few pages.
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Word Processor of the Gods (2006)
7.0/10on Open Library
Published
Skeleton Crew. A writer inherits a homemade word processor that can change things beyond the screen. A familiar key gives him a great deal more power than he intended to have. Read it for a wish-fulfillment story that tests how long a wish feels innocent when there’s a way to undo one person’s life.
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Graveyard Shift
Night Shift. The extra pay for cleaning a textile mill basement sounds worth it until a crew has to deal with what lives downstairs. The worse the working conditions get, the more you learn about the workers and their foreman. The rat-infested dark is only one reason this is an uncomfortable shift.
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Jerusalem's Lot (1999)
Published
Night Shift. Letters follow Charles Boone as he moves into a family house and begins asking about a deserted village. Pick it if you want a slow walk into Gothic horror, with an old building, family history, and a narrator who depends on correspondence to make sense of what’s happening.
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The Last Rung on the Ladder
Night Shift. A man remembers a childhood game in a barn, when a ladder gave way and his sister was suddenly relying on him. Choose this for the feeling of a small rescue remembered much later. The space between what two siblings can do for each other then and now gives the story its ache.
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Grey Matter
Night Shift. One snowy night a boy comes into the Nite-Owl store with a story about his father. The listening men have to decide whether to believe him and what they’ll do if they do. Read it when you want a small group talking itself into facing something outside the light.
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Quitters, Inc (1996)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Night Shift. A smoker signs up with a business that guarantees he’ll quit. Its rules give you a sentence or two of apparent reassurance before you realize what the business considers an acceptable consequence. Try it for the mean comedy of somebody taking a promise too literally.
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