by Stephen King
Night Shift (1979)
* * (Okay) Horror
Hall and a handful of other men volunteer to clean the long-abandoned, rat-infested basement of the mill during the Fourth of July shut down. No one expected to find the old wooden door leading down to a forgotten sub-basement, and the evils lurking beneath the mill.
If you did not already dislike rats before reading this story, I imagine you’d look upon them now in a new, disgusted light. In this tale King spends too much time on the atmosphere and setting, ignoring the story. I never had a feel for the character of Hall, something unusual in a story penned by King, and that lack of connection kept me coolly aloof as a reader. While it is a creepy tale, and you can easily imagine the glassy-blind black eyes staring out at you from the shadows of the room, you reach the end and can do little but shrug your indifferent shoulders. Horrific, yes; entertaining, not so much.
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