Skeleton Crew

512 pp. A collection of short fiction. "The master at his scarifying best! From heart-pounding terror to the eeriest of whimsy - tales from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time! In "The Mist", a supermarket becomes the last bastion of humanity as a peril beyond dimension invades the earth. Touch "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands", and say your prayers. There are some things in attics that are better left alone - things like "The Monkey". The most sublime woman driver on earth offers a man "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" to paradise. A boy's sanity is pushed to the edge when he's left alone with the odious corpse of "Gramma". If you were stunned by Gremlins, the Fornits of "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" will knock your socks off. Trucks that punish and beautiful teen demons who seduce a young man to massacre; curses whose malevolence grows through the years; obscene presences and angels of grace - here, indeed, is a night-blooming bouquet of chills and thrills." CONTENTS: Introduction; The Mist; Here There Be Tygers; The Monkey; Cain Rose Up; Mrs. Todd's Shortcut; The Jaunt; The Wedding Gig; Paranoid: A Chant; The Raft; Word Processor of the Gods; The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands; Beachworld; The Reaper's Image; Nona; For Owen; Survivor Type; Uncle Otto's Truck; Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1); Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman #2); Gramma; The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet; The Reach; Notes.