You Like it Darker is One of Stephen King’s Best Horror Story Collections

It has been a long time since Stephen King has written a really great short horror story collection. I’m a huge fan of King’s work, his horror ideas are out of this world, and I love how uncanny his stories can become.

I thought it would be cool to share my personal ranking of these stories, because some of these tales were freaking great!

12. The Fifth Step

A man named Harold Jaimeson meets a random stranger named Jack, who explains to him that he is currently trying to complete the fifth step in a Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program.

Harold agrees, and lets Jack talk about all of the wrongdoings of his life. The conservation instantly becomes dark when Jack reveals that he murdered his wife. After the confession, Jack kills Harold, revealing that he loves to kill.

This one was a pretty sweet short, but it was kind of predictable when it came to the reveal and ending. However, it was pretty well written when it came to the dialogue!

11. Red Screen

This was a nice nod to alien horror movies that we horror fans know and love. The story focuses on a detective who interviews a man who murdered his wife. He explains that his wife was now some kind of alien, and the biggest clue was that he saw a red screen, which led to her murder.

The detective doesn’t believe this story, and he goes home to his wife. His wife has apparently been acting strangely for a couple of months, but she reveals to him that she had been dealing with menopause.

While the detective and his wife are in the dark, a red screen appears on the detective’s phone. The wife smiles in the dark.

This one was also predictable, but I really liked how the red screen never provided an explanation to the secret alien invasion. Why the wives were being targeted was a huge mystery, and it was a nice creepy tale.

10. Willie the Weirdo

This mini story probably features one of the best endings. A kid named Willie is a ten year old boy who is deemed to be quite strange by his entire family. There appears to be something really wrong with the kid, due to his obsession with death.

He grows close with his grandfather, and once he hears that he is going to die soon, he gets excited, and asks if he can watch him die.

The grandfather suddenly grabs Willie, and tells him to get a mouthful of death. The story ends with Willie telling his family his grandfather died, but he does this habit from out of nowhere that his grandfather did when he was alive.

I really did like this ending.

I believe that the grandfather took over Willie’s body. He was able to get possession of him, all because of his obsession with death.

It’s a great spooky story to read before you go to bed!

9. The Dreamers

This one was by far the weirdest story in this collection.

Some random guy decides to work with a scientist to make money. His experiments really go over the top, endangering many people who decide to sign up for this project.

Something bad eventually happens with one of the patients, and the two men are forced to cover up their tracks. The story ends with the main character actually doing something really smart for once when it comes to horror story protagonists.

He straight up quits his job, and never returns. He does find out later that his boss was pretty much dead, and the guy decides to burn down his boss with the house.

Then the guy completely leaves, starting fresh with his life, working in a new job.

I really liked that King had the main dude do something really smart for once. He literally took off on his own terms, without wanting to delve further into the madness of this terrifying horror.

And I loved that he burned the house down, making sure that the experiment would never have the chance to spread.

Genius!

8. The Turbulence Expert

This story was actually a wholesome one.

Craig Dixon is working for a mystery company, who tells him to get on a plane. He meets a woman named Mary Worth, who is a kind soul with a good heart. While they are in the air, the plane experiences a problem, and Mary claims that she thought she had a vision of their plane crashing.

Dixon tells Mary about his job later on, asking if she would like to work for his company. Mary agrees, and Dixon is content that he finally gets to retire. Mary is told to get on a plane, where she will supposedly save lives like Dixon once did on that day.

I like how saving the lives concept is never explained. It makes you wonder who Dixon was working for, and it’s a interesting mystery that doesn’t need to explain everything to the reader!

7. Finn

This story is both hilarious and freaking tragic as hell.

Finn is a man that was born with the worst luck in the world.

Throughout his entire life since he was a child, he went through the worst things. Every where he goes, something bad always happens to him.

Finn’s life takes a huge turn for the worse when he is mistaken for being some random guy who stole from a gang. They don’t believe his word, and they torture poor Finn for a long time.

The group realizes that they made a mistake, and they let Finn walk free.

Finn wonders if his good luck is all in his head, and he decides to test it by interacting with a playground set that will determine whether or not he will reach the bottom.

I liked how this story was so ambiguous in the end. I really hope that Finn finally got to escape from his curse. I felt so bad for this dude…

6. Laurie

This was another wholesome story with a dark moment toward the end of the story. Lloyd is a depressed man who lost his wife. Through his sister’s determination, she offers to help him heal from his pain through an adorable puppy she gets for her brother.

Despite showing a lot of anger towards his sister’s offer of helping him, he decides to keep the puppy and name her Laurie. Over time, Lloyd grows really close with the dog, treating her like a family member.

One day, while Laurie and Lloyd are going for a walk, Laurie freaks out and begins to bark at something. When Lloyd takes a peek, he finds that a man he considered a good friend had his head eaten off by an alligator.

Lloyd and Laurie are able to escape from their fate, and Lloyd contacts authorities, that unfortunately let his friend’s wife know that her husband was dead.

The story ends with Lloyd finding out that the alligator attacked his friend, because she was protecting her babies. It’s hinted that Lloyd is going to keep Laurie, as he wonders what Laurie sees when she looks at him.

I gasped out loud when the alligator scene was revealed. I couldn’t believe the fate his friend had suffered, and I can’t imagine the trauma of finding something like that…damn.

5. Two Talented Bastids

I wasn’t expecting this story to be about aliens, but the execution was so unique! I was in shock that this story came from King!

Mark Carmody is a retired man who decides to look after his old father, Laird Carmody. He was a successful book writer, who attained his success at the same time like his old friend, Butch, many years ago.

Before the father reaches the end of his life, Laird tells Mark about where he can find out how he became successful, a secret that only Butch and he knew. Mark finds old newspaper clipping, along with a written story about how his father became successful.

He learns that Laird and Butch had run into alien lifeforms, after they attempted to save a woman who was not from Earth. They are thanked for saving her, and are given a gift, that will make their talents come to life.

Mark becomes quite curious, and embarks on his own journey of finding this mysterious item that brought such success to his father.

It is a case, and it can be opened if you breathe into it.

Mark breathes into it, but it doesn’t open. Mark doesn’t mind this, since he knows that he never had any sort of hidden talent to begin with. Mark is at peace, accepting this realization.

I kept expecting something really bad to happen, or the story of Laird’s history to be super disturbing. Instead, I got a happy ending of sorts, and I thought it was really cool how the aliens gave his father a successful career.

It was a wonderful twist on the concept of aliens in horror!

4. On Slide Inn Road

This story had me on edge during my entire read of this dark tale.

We follow a family who is in a bad mood, experiencing a terrible road trip that isn’t going their way. The family consists of parents, their two children, and a grandfather that the kids adore to death.

After their car gets unexpectedly stuck in a ditch, the family leaves the vehicle to figure out what they are going to do next. The kids find an abandoned hotel called The Slide Inn, where they find a dead body.

The kids run into two men who appear out of nowhere, talking to the children in a friendly manner. One of the children knows that these strangers had something to do with the dead body, and their bad luck only gets worse when the men become threatening and dangerous.

The grandfather finds a way to get his family out of their horrifying situation, by tricking the men into believing that there was a lot of money stored in the family vehicle. The grandfather uses a baseball bat from the car to kill one of the men, and the other one escapes from the scene.

The family survives their scary ordeal, and they drive off into a happily ever after.

I was so tensed up during the entire scene with the two men…I kept thinking that something really bad was about to happen to them, but that grandfather really caught me by surprise when he killed one of them.

Man, this story was great!

3. Rattlesnakes

I was thrilled to learn that Rattlesnakes was the sequel to Cujo, an old story Stephen King had written years ago. I was so curious how he continued this story, and I was really surprised to see the character the story followed.

Vic Trenton, the husband of Donna, who sadly went through one of the most traumatic experiences when she fought off a dog to protect her son, only to lose him anyway after everything.

Vic is now a older man, who got a divorce with his wife, because she couldn’t handle the guilt of losing their son. Vic meets a woman who lost both of her twin sons, and pretends that they are still alive.

Vic learns that her boys had been killed by rattlesnakes, a horrible fate that her boys did not deserve. The woman dies all of a sudden later on in the story, and she leaves everything she owned to Vic’s name.

The biggest issue…is that she left him with the ghosts of her twin boys, who have now became a menace to Vic’s life.

Vic figures out a way to escape from the twin’s clutches, using the stroller that the woman had her boys in, taking the ghosts of the boys somewhere else, to be rid of them once and for all.

I really liked how King tackled Vic’s story. It was smart to focus on a character who had not gone through anything, because Donna had already suffered enough after losing their boy.

I did like the callback to the first book, and I was so sad when I learned that Donna had passed on from cancer. That family had been through so much, and I felt so bad for Vic, knowing that he was all alone now, with no one to comfort him after what he went through.

2. The Answer Man

This is one of the best short horror stories King has ever written. The story follows a man named Phil Parker, who is determined to lead a great life with the love of his life.

Phil stumbles across a mystery man on the side of the road known as The Answer Man, who offers to tell him three answers to anything he seeks (for a heavy cost of course). Phil encounters The Answer Man about 3 times in this story, throughout his life.

Phil goes through a number of horrible scenarios, losing his entire family as one of the biggest blows to his life. Despite everything he goes through, Phil continues to thrive, living a successful life.

I loved how Phil was able to move on from what he went through. The way he lost his wife and son was beyond tragic, and I couldn’t believe how strong he remained through it all!

The Answer Man was a great concept, and I loved how we never get a single explanation to who his character is!

1. Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream

I don’t remember a story of King’s ever frustrating me to this LEVEL.

The villain in this one will piss you off, and I wanted this guy dead throughout the entire story!

A man named Danny Coughlin has a crazy dream about a woman who was murdered by an unknown killer, who was buried behind a building. Danny reports his discovery to the cops, but he doesn’t do very well to cover his tracks, and not surprisingly, the two cops accuse him of the murder.

The two cops, Jalbert and Davis, don’t believe the dream theory at all, and continue to investigate Danny. Jalbert takes his investigation a step too far, and begins to go after Danny, wanting to break him into confessing the murder of the poor woman.

Danny continues to refuse her murder, angering Jalbert throughout the story. Jalbert’s suspicions continue to grow when the evidence against Danny is no longer valid to consider him as the killer.

Jalbert grows obsessed with Danny, and has the entire town turn against him when he would not stop harassing Danny in horrible ways. He takes the crooked route, going as far to pin evidence on him, which Danny luckily finds to avoid Jalbert’s wrath.

Davis has pretty much given up on Danny at some point, knowing that it’s impossible for him to be the killer. Jalbert continues to grow mad, determined to capture Danny and put him behind bars.

Davis decides to stop Jalbert from continuing the investigation, and forces him to retire early when she finds out how bad Jalbert took advantage of his position as an authority figure against Danny.

Danny is then targeted by the brother of the victim, who shoots him in his own car. Danny survives the attack, and is taken to the hospital, where he makes a recovery. A madman Jalbert finds out about his recovery, and goes after him, ignoring the fact that Davis found the real killer later on.

Danny has another dream about Jalbert coming to murder him, and he calls Davis, letting her know about Jalbert’s mission. The two cops arrive at the same time at the hospital where Danny is staying, and they pull their guns on each other.

David pleads with Jalbert to believe her, telling him that it was because of Danny that she knew about his arrival. Jalbert refuses to believe her, and ends his own life with his weapon.

The story ends with Davis and Danny talking in the hospital, knowing that Jalbert went mad in the end, not wanting to believe this supernatural occurrence.

I hated Jalbert so damn much. I don’t normally say this about a fictional character, but wow, did he get under my skin. He didn’t know when to quit, and his determination was pure hell. I was so scared with the ending of this story, I thought that Danny was going to get killed by this asshole.

I was relieved that Danny got to live, and I felt bad for Davis, because she really did want to help her ex — partner before he died.

This story is the best one in King’s novel collection! Man, what a wild ride this one was!

Thank you for reading!

Emy Quinn