Jesse’s Reviews > Nightmares & Dreamscapes > Status Update

“The Beggar and the Diamond”

A short story based on a Hindu fable where the archangel Uriel is wracked with sympathy for the least fortunate man in the world (it is however this man’s job to be the biggest sufferer). He pleads with God, and God kind of relents as he humors Uriel, but God is kind of a stinker to his archangel in this one. Not mean, exactly; just a stinker.

“Brooklyn August”

A short poem that King wrote about baseball which he likes because it keeps getting selected for inclusion in anthologies and the like, as though this has transcended his reputation for horror.

“Head Down”

I was initially cool to this narrative of King’s son Owen’s last Little League season (Owen is not a major player in this story as it is a total chronicle with its own distinct characters) but boy did I get swept up in it. It might have helped that I didn’t know ahead of time how the state championship tournament was going to play out, but I think that it’s King’s storytelling that sold me.

“Umney’s Last Case”

A private detective starts out his day only to find that things are wrong. No noise from the noisy couple next door; the paperboy is quitting and hates him; his diner, Blondie’s, has shut down; his elevator operator is retiring due to cancer; and his secretary has quit. It’s been a bad day, for sure, but things only get worse for Clyde Umney from here.

“The Doctor’s Case”

John Watson solves the case! This story has a Murder on the Orient finish but also features a Sherlock Holmes who is deathly allergic to cats as well as very antagonistic banter between Holmes and Inspector Lestrade. It’s been awhile since I read Sherlock Holmes so I don’t have recent memory to compare this to, but I was caught off guard by how snippy everyone was.

“The Fifth Quarter”

This is a tough guy noir/crime story where a con hears a tale about an armed car robbery and a treasure map from his dying (murdered) buddy and goes after the haul, because 1) Barney was his friend, and 2) it’s damn near 500,000 dollars! He just has to get the pieces of map from the other three robbers. That’s a lot simpler than it sounds, of course.

“The House on Maple Street”

The BRADBURY family has something weird growing in the walls of their house. It’s something metallic. Meanwhile, the Bradbury family is suffering under their despot of a stepfather, who is slowly killing their mother with his browbeating. These two events coincide, resulting in a dazzling and miraculous escape from fear.

“Crouch End”

A young American woman tells a distressing story to two London policemen. They were on vacation, you see, with two children at the hotel while the parents went to visit one of her husband’s business contacts for dinner, only to get lost in a suburb by the name of Crouch End. Abandoned by their cab, they are left to fend for themselves against the kind of stuff madness is made of.

“The Ten O’Clock People”

Basically They Live, except instead of magic sunglasses it’s brain chemistry that comes from quitting smoking and then picking it back up again. Brandon is saved from a very public freak-out after witnessing a nightmare that appears to be wearing one of his boss’s bodies. The man who saved him, Duke, explains some of the whats, particularly what ties the people who see together.

“Sorry, Wrong Number”

This is a teleplay. What I can tell you is that removing so much of the internal prose of a Stephen King story to present it as a script makes the story about as appealing as what little King touches survive in the few deliberate details and the basic idea of the story itself. Which is, a wife and mother receives a mysterious, sobbing phone call and then tries to figure out who made it.