Book Review: "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" by Stephen King

Stephen King is one of my all-time favourite authors. When I was in my early teens I remember reading Salem's Lot after borrowing it from a library and I won't lie - I don't think I slept for about a week. I honestly thought that every furniture shop or antiques store had a Straker somewhere. I was terrified. Then, obviously, there was Christine, It, Carrie and a bunch more. I didn't read Gerald's Game until a few years' back and I also had a binge during my degrees with books such as 1922 and The Tommyknockers. I remember reading Dreamcatcher only a year or so ago and I was thoroughly disgusted - it was so gross and gruesome. There have probably been tons more but there is one thing that we can all be sure of: this guy should not ever stop writing. His books, his stories and even his essays are brilliant. Nightmares and Dreamscapes are no exception. They are awesome in every way, from vampires to shootings, from psychopaths to supernatural occurences, Stephen King has done it again. He has scared the crap out of everyone.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes was published in 1993 by Viking Press and is an anthology of thriller, horror and Sci-Fi stories by Stephen King which were first in various magazines such as Omni and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction plus many more. There is something really ominous about these stories and just reading them is a journey into sheer terror. A great amount of tragedy, a great amount of horror, a great amount of gruesomeness - Stephen King's stories prove to be some of the greatest that have been written in years and years.

I have to say, one of the most frightening for me was probably Suffer the Little Children which was published in a 1972 issue of Cavalier. It is about sociopathy and has a horrible underlying story which I have to say, some people probably would not be able to actually read about. A woman who teaches suddenly starts to see a change in a child called Robert - she thinks there is a weird thing about him as if there were something taking him over. After a while, she starts to see something off in all of the children and for a long time, you will believe it too. But as is the case with Stephen King's stories, don't believe everything at first glance because the truth is often much, much more horrific.

Another one I enjoyed was The Night Flier, which is just such a clever story. Also, it is quite terrifying by the end (which I will not reveal). It is one of those vampiric-based Stephen King stories that takes you back to Salem's Lot and brings back all of that reading trauma for me from when I was younger. A brilliantly written, very clever story with atmospheres of darkness, terror and broken glass. It is one of those stories where people need to get what's coming to them and others are just massive tragedies. The final image of this story really does tell you things and if you like stories that foreshadow their own endings constantly in the most ironic way, then you will really enjoy this one.

Other stories I enjoyed include The End of the Whole Mess (another disturbingly ironic ending) and The House on Maple Street (a revenge tragedy). I love Stephen King's short stories and even though I love his longer novels because the immersion is so extreme that if you are not getting frightened then you probably are not reading it properly, there is something really special about his short stories. There is normally something really clever that you do not realise until the latter part of the story, something that has been right in front of you the entire time. Sometimes, things come together at the end, something that has been hinted at earlier on which has a huge ironic but terrifying impact on the ending.

I was really thrilled to read this anthology and I am looking forward to reading one of the others (and I think that may be it for all of Stephen King's short stories unless he writes some more). But this one, I have to say, may not make you sleep with the lights on - but it will make you look over your shoulder, even in broad daylight.