Crouch End by Stephen King, 1980
The magic trick:
Framing the story for maximum suspense and intrigue
Yesterday, we had Lovecraft’s “Dagon” featured on the magic tricks site. It makes a lot of sense to feature “Crouch End” on the very next day. The two stories share a lot of DNA. I mean, that’s kind of a dumb thing to say. They literally share the same plot.
Something terrible coming from space. It’s maybe a sea creature. It’s so awful it makes people think life isn’t worth living.
I’m not a huge fan.
But my personal tastes aside, you know King is always a master craftsman if nothing else. This story is framed in a way to engender maximum intrigue for the reader. A woman arrives at a police station in London. It’s very late. She’s hysterical. She can barely relate what has happened. All we know is her husband is missing.
I would argue that the Lovecraft connections and references here actually make for a story that is less interesting than its premise initially suggests. But I can’t say I didn’t read on anxiously excited to find out.
And that’s quite a trick on King’s part.
The selection:
Vetter nodded. “Some of ’em very like the one that poor American girl just told us. She’ll not see her husband again—take my word for it.” He looked at Farnham and shrugged. “Believe me, believe me not. It’s all one, isn’t it? The file’s there. We call it the open file because it’s more polite than the back file or the kiss-my-arse file. Study it up, Farnham. Study it up.” Farnham said nothing, but he actually did intend to “study it up.” The idea that there might be a whole series of stories such as the one the American woman had told… that was disturbing. “Sometimes,” Vetter said, stealing another of Farnham’s Silk Cuts, “I wonder about Dimensions.”
“Dimensions?”
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