Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (#4)

Pages: 505

Uncle Otto’s Truck:

Uncle Otto crashed his truck while driving drunk. It kills his partner by rolling over him. He’s a millionaire so he builds himself a house across the street from the field that the truck crashed in.  He goes crazy, standing in his doorway watching the truck all day, and sleeping with one eye open all night.  He told his nephew, who brings him weekly groceries that the truck was getting closer to his house. The nephew laughs it off because it looks like the truck hasn’t moved.  Then one day he found his uncle dead in his house, and when he touches his face it starts to bleed oil out of his eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and he pulled a spark plug out of his mouth.  It looked to him like the truck had gotten him after all.  It was an okay story.  The ending was definitely the best but it was boring.

Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1):

This was an odd story at first. It was about a milkman who dropped off more than milk. Enough said.

Big Wheels:  Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman #2):

………………………….Don’t get drunk…………………………..

End of story.

I <3 the milkman.

Gramma:

This is a story about a boy named George who is terrified of his grandmother.  His brother breaks his leg and his mother has to go to him in the hospital.  George was left alone to take care of his grandmother.  Strange things start happening and by the end of the story the grandmother died but her spirit was possessing George’s soul.  This was a very disturbing story and it actually makes me kind of leery to be around my grandmother now, which means that Stephen King did an excellent job writing this story.

The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet:

This story was about a man named Henry, called (“the editor” in this story) Henry receives a short story from the novelist Reg Thorpe, and considers the story to be very dark, but also a masterpiece. As he keeps in touch with Thorpe, Henry learns of – and, due to Henry's own addiction to alcohol, eventually begins to believe in Thorpe's various paranoid fantasies. Henry and Thorpe believe that their typewriters are homes for their Fornits (tiny elves) who bring creativity and fornus (good luck dust). Henry told the story at a work barbeque that he went to.  He talked about his descent into Thorpe's madness, and how he recovered. It was such a good story. It was very interesting to see into the mind of a crazy person.

The Reach:

Stella Flanders, the oldest resident of Goat Island, has just celebrated her 95th birthday. She has never crossed the reach, the body of water that separates the Island from the mainland, in her entire life. Stella comes to the realization that the cancer that she's known she has, and kept to herself, is it its final stages when she starts seeing the deceased residents of Goat Island. Her visions start with her husband inviting her to "come across to the mainland." As her impending death draws near, Stella encounters more apparitions of the dead of Goat Island, and she makes peace with the knowledge that it is her time to go. Dressed in her warmest clothes, plus her son's long johns and hat, Stella heads across the frozen reach toward the mainland. Soon it starts to snow, and sleet, and she starts to freeze to death, and on the way she sees friends and family that have passed on.  Her hat flies off sometime in the middle of her trek, and her dead husband Bill is there to give her his.  Stella Flanders is found, dead, sitting upright on a rock on the mainland. Her son, Alden, recognizes his father's hat. He comes to believe that the dead sing and that they love those still living. I think this was an adorable story. Thinking that the dead are still taking care of the living, it makes me feel reassured.