The Stand - complete edition, by Stephen King
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 46
that was when Stu told us for the first time that he wanted to go to Nebraska, that he wanted to check out his dream. He had a stubborn, sort of embarrassed look on his face, as if he knew he was going to have to take some more patronizing shit from Harold, but Harold was too unnerved from our “tour” of the Stovington facility to offer more than token resistance. And even that stopped when Glen said, in a very reticent way, that he had also dreamed of the old woman the night before.
“Of course, it might only be because Stu told us about his dream,” he said, kind of red in the face, “but it was remarkably similar.”
Harold said that of course that was it, but Stu said, “Wait a minute, Harold—I’ve got an idea.”
His idea was that we all take a sheet of paper and write down everything we could remember of our dreams over the last week, then compare notes. This was just scientific enough so that Harold couldn’t grumble too much.
Well, the only dream I’ve had is the one I’ve already written down, and I won’t repeat it. I’ll just say I wrote it down, leaving in the part about my father but leaving out the part about the baby and the coathanger he always has.
The results when we compared our papers were rather amazing.
The Stand - complete edition, by Stephen King
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 27
“Monsters coming now!” The monster-shouter was a tall man who looked to be in his middle sixties. Larry had first heard him the night before, which he had spent in the Sherry-Netherland. With night lying over the unnaturally quiet city, the faint, howling voice had seemed sonorous and dark, the voice of a lunatic Jeremiah floating through the streets of Manhattan, echoing, rebounding, distorting. Larry, lying sleepless in a queen-sized double with every light in the suite blazing, had become irrationally convinced that the monster-shouter was coming for him, seeking him out, the way the creatures of his frequent bad dreams sometimes did. For a long time it had seemed that the voice was drawing ever closer—Monsters coming! Monsters on the way! They’re in the suburbs! —and Larry became convinced that the suite’s door, which he had triple-locked, would burst inward and that the monster-shouter would be there… not a human being at all but a gigantic troll-thing with the head of a dog and saucer-sized fly eyes and champing teeth.
But earlier this morning Larry had seen him in the park and he was only a crazy old man wearing corduroy pants and zoris and horn-rimmed glasses with one bow taped. Larry had tried to speak to him and the monster-shouter had run in terror, crying back over his shoulder that the monsters would be in the streets at any moment. He had tripped over an ankle-high wire fence and went sprawling on one of the bikepaths with a loud comic thwap! sound, his glasses flying off but not shattering. Larry had gone to him, but before he could get there, the monster-shouter had scooped up his glasses and was gone toward the mall, crying his endless warning. So Larry’s opinion of him had swung from extreme terror to utter boredom and mild annoyance in the space of twelve hours.
There were other people in the park; Larry had spoken to a few of them. They were all pretty much the same, and Larry supposed that he himself wasn’t much different. They were dazed, their speech disjointed, and they seemed helpless to stop reaching for your sleeve with their hands as they talked. They had stories to tell. All the stories were the same.
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 3:26 PM Pacific-timezone USA Thursday 08/21/2025
