“The Dreamers” by Stephen King
You Like it Darker (2024)
Readers unfamiliar with “The Dreamers” may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
"The Dreamers" is a thirty-three page story by Stephen King. It is included in his 2024 anthology You Like It Darker.
I have not read You Like It Darker, but I did read "The Dreamers" today. A social media friend posted that they appreciated it, as it was in the tradition of "N" and Revival.
Say no more. That short story and that novel are two of King's best efforts at cosmic horror, topped only by "Mrs Todd's Shortcut" and The Mist.
"The Dreamers" mixes elements from H.P. Lovecraft's story "From Beyond" and the first section of Machen's 1895 novella "The Great God Pan." The narrator, assisting Elgin "the Gentleman Scientist" at an isolated house, observes an experiment in mind control over dreamers. The first six subjects report mostly mundane experiences. The last dreamer to be tested...
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The story takes place in 1971. Narrator William Davis, after two tours in Vietnam, returns home. He gets a temp job as a stenographer since his Gregg speed is 180 words per minute. He is laconic and affectless, Which is fortunate, since the job requires a male, with "phlegmatic temperament also a must."
During the interview, Elgin's questions focus on a series of books. It's a talk that tells you all you need to know about Elgin, and how the story will end.
He took up another volume from the stack. It was called Gegenwart und Zukunft. “This is my treasure. Rare, a first edition. Present and Future. I can’t read it, but I can look at the pictures, and I’ve studied the graphs. Mathematics is a universal language, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
I wasn’t because no language is universal. Numbers, like dogs, can be taught to do tricks. And the title of his first edition was actually Presence and Future. There is a world of difference between present and presence. A gulf. I didn’t care about that, but the book under Gegenwart und Zukunft interested me. It was the only one not by Jung. It was Beyond the Wall of Sleep, by H.P. Lovecraft. A man I knew in the ’docks, a doorgunner, had a paperback copy. It burned up and so did he.
Essentially, the first-person narrator finds himself working for a man who will go too far.
When the penultimate dreamer relays a message that could only be significant for Davis, he and Elgin have had their last warning.
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"The Dreamers" expertly depicts 1971 USA: news from newspapers, life in rooming houses with the phone down the hall, bullpens where temps wait for assignments, the awful dreams that are part and parcel of everyday life: a worm Ouroboros you don't need a two-bit “scientist” to unlock for you.
Jay
18 June 2024
