'My father was a skin diver,' Elizabeth Eastlake said. Just six words, and they made no more sense than the thing about the leaking table, but still they brought gooseflesh out on my arms and turned the hair on the nape of my neck into hackles. I had just about decided that she'd forgotten to hang up on her end and was reaching to push the STOP button on the answering machine when she spoke again. It's a return to the monster tales he used to write: haunting, supernatural, freaky don't-look-over-your-shoulder monsters, horror invested in mundane objects, terror transmitted by innocuous, out-of-context phrases. Now he's an aging American Master, still a damn fine writer, but I no longer feel like I'm signing up to get dumped into the creepy-crawly places in the author's brain when I read his books.ĭuma Key had flashes of the old King. I used to love King for the raving skullfuckery he wasn't always in control of where his story went, but damn did it go places.

The visceral, sphincter-clenching horror of It, The Tommyknockers, Cujo, Pet Sematary, the emotional body shots of The Shining, Misery, Firestarter, and The Dead Zone, they are rarely evident in his later work.

But while I still enjoy his work, there is a certain something missing in everything he's written since he got sober. I'm glad he cleaned up, because he probably wouldn't still be alive to write more books. The scariest books Stephen King ever wrote were under the influence of copious amounts of cocaine and hard liquor. The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory, and the nature of the supernatural: Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. You need hedges.hedges against the night.'Įdgar leaves for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with something else: When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived his injuries. A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation.

Stephen king key