The Langoliers

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"The Langoliers"
Author	Stephen King
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror, Science fiction novella
Published in	Four Past Midnight
Publisher	Penguin Books
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Publication date	September 1990

The Langoliers is one of four novellas published in the Stephen King book Four Past Midnight in 1990.

[edit] Plot summary

On a cross-country red-eye flight aboard American Pride Flight 29, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar from Los Angeles, California to Boston, Massachusetts, off-duty airline pilot Brian Engle, heading east to his ex-wife's funeral, awakens to find that all of the other passengers and crew have disappeared, and all that remains of them are their clothes, and items such as watches, headphones, playing cards, etc, even pace-makers and surgical pins. Only a handful of other passengers remain on the plane.

As the sleepers regain consciousness, they are introduced to the reader: Dinah Bellman, a blind girl about age ten; fifth-grade teacher Laurel Stevenson; Nick Hopewell, a mysterious Englishman; Don Gaffney, a retired tool-and-die engineer; Rudy Warwick, a perpetually hungry businessman; Albert Kaussner, a talented Jewish teen violinist from Texas; Bethany Simms, a teen girl with a drug problem; Bob Jenkins, a mystery author; and Craig Toomey, an investment banker on the verge of a psychotic breakdown.

Brian goes to the pilot's cabin to fly the plane. Although the autopilot has kept the plane aloft and on course, Brian finds himself unable to make radio contact with anyone. Even nearby Air Force bases do not respond to his calls. Stranger still, after flying over Denver, Colorado, they find that the city cannot be seen as there are no lights visible on the ground, indeed all cities flown over are in pitch darkness. There follows a brief confrontation between Brian, Nick and Craig Toomey resulting in Nick subduing Craig with a nose hold. Brian decides to divert the flight to Bangor, Maine, reasoning that Bangor International Airport is a safer landing site with its extra-long runway and light traffic than the potentially crowded skies of Boston's Logan Airport. Upon learning that they will not be flying to Boston as scheduled, Craig Toomey becomes enraged. We learn that Toomey views other people not as human, but as distorted, blurry, and frightening images that the blind girl, Dinah, is also able to see through Toomey's eyes.

Once the plane is on the ground, the group makes some terrifying discoveries. It turns out that not only have most of the people on the plane disappeared, so has every other person in the world. Bangor Airport is a complete ghost town. Dinah begins to develop a type of "second sight," and Craig Toomey, hard-pressed to get to Boston to attend a meeting, begins sliding into profound madness. Part of this involves a neurosis given to him by his overbearing and abusive father: a vision of the "Langoliers", small demonic beasts with fast legs that chase down the purposeless and lazy, and eat them alive.

The passengers also make other bizarre discoveries, such as a lack of electricity anywhere in the airport, abandoned service vehicles on the airport's tarmac, daylight lasting only a couple of hours before becoming night and vice versa, odd weather patterns, such as a total lack of cloud movement despite the presence of wind, and a curious lack of echoes.

Trying to make sense of what is happening around them, the travelers decide to settle down in a snack bar. There, they find that the sandwiches have no taste, the soft drinks and beer are flat, and books of matches don't light.

As they search for the cause of their plight, first Dinah, and eventually the rest, hear a strange sound something like radio static, slowly approaching their location. This plot element is echoed by Craig Toomey's compulsive need throughout the movie to slowly tear pieces of paper, making a similar sound. The passengers of American Pride Flight 29 quickly find that time is their problem. Bob Jenkins theorizes that while they were all asleep on their flight, the plane flew through a "time rip", a tear in the fabric of time. He also deduces that the reason they are the only ones who remained on the plane was because they were all asleep when it flew through the time rift.

They have now ended up in the past, a dead, lifeless world that is slowly winding down, and the longer they stay there, the more likely the chance that they too will "wind down" with it. Time has moved on without them, and there is no real substance or essence in the past. They contemplate leaving Bangor, a plan Brian rejects when he points out it is impossible as their plane is extremely low on fuel. When asked why he cannot refuel the plane, Brian explains that in the same way that matches here don't burn, the jet fuel will be similarly "dead". They now attempt to deal emotionally with the conviction that they are stuck there, with the unidentifiable sound getting steadily closer.

Albert has a sudden inspiration, and, accompanied by Brian, Bob and Nick, takes food, drinks and matches from the snack bar back to the plane. The sandwiches regain their flavor, a soft drink fizzes when poured into a glass, and the matches light and burn brightly. Albert explains that the airplane, though it has traveled into the past, still contains the present inside, which explains why everything that is dead outside the aircraft suddenly comes to life inside. They then embark on a plan of action: to refuel the airplane as quickly as possible, now that they know the jet fuel will burn once it enters the engines. The matter is complicated by the fact that the fuel must be pumped using the airliner's own engines since the refueling trucks that normally serve that purpose are inoperative.

Further revelations unfold: Nick is revealed to be an MI5-type soldier and assassin; he and Laurel begin to fall in love. Bethany and Albert begin a similar attraction. Craig's stress continues. We learn that, before boarding the flight, he had opted out of the busy lifestyle his father had pressed him into, by losing his company forty-two million dollars, ensuring his eventual firing and disgrace.

Craig Toomey, driven fully insane by the fear of the approaching sound, which he believes to be the Langoliers, stabs Dinah in the chest with a butcher knife, fearing her as the "head Langolier". Summoned back to the airport from the plane, Nick attempts to save Dinah by removing the knife from her chest. Albert and Don go to search for a stretcher, but Craig ambushes them. He kills Don with a letter-opener and attempts to kill Albert. After a brief battle, Albert smashes him to the ground with a toaster wrapped in a table-cloth (a weapon he arms himself with based on his experience as a young child, when he accidentally injured his brother with a similar weapon). Believing that he has killed Craig, Albert is emotionally tormented. Nick sets out to find Don and Albert; as he is leaving, Dinah tells him not to kill Mr. Toomey, because "they need him". Nick finds Albert, and tries to steady him emotionally. He also determines that Craig is not dead, merely unconscious. Nick sends Albert back to the plane, then contemplates killing Craig. Based on a hunch that the girl is somehow right, Nick complies with her advice to the extent of leaving Toomey unconscious in the airport, as the others return to the plane with Dinah on a stretcher.

Just as the plane is ready to take off, the source of the sound finally appears. The characters see strange creatures emerging from the forest east of the airport. Spherical, with large mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth that spin around like chainsaws, they travel through the air with agility and great speed, devouring everything in their way. Dinah telepathically convinces Toomey that his meeting is actually being held on the tarmac, using him to decoy the creatures away from the plane. Toomey participates only briefly in the hallucination before he realizes the danger. He is swiftly consumed by the monsters, his last thought being that they can't be running as they have no legs. As the plane lifts off, the group watches as all of Bangor is devoured, leaving behind only a dark, formless void.

Brian navigates the plane to retrace their course, which should take them back through the time rift (over the Mojave Desert), if it still exists. During the flight, Dinah succumbs to her injury and dies. In the cockpit, Brian and Nick watch as the Langoliers traverse the dead lands and continue to eat away at the world. Just before they enter the rift, Bob deduces that they will not be able to traverse the time rift successfully, unless they are all unconscious, as they were when they came through it. Brian decides to lower the cabin pressure to make everyone pass out, but someone must stay awake to restore the cabin pressure to normal, sacrificing him- or herself in the process. Nick, seeking redemption for his past misdeeds and murders during a violent career, volunteers. He has a brief meeting with Laurel, whom he convinces to take a message of apology and regret to his father. As the others black out, Nick watches the approaching rift from the cockpit, entranced by its beauty. Just before he disappears, he flips the switch to restore full air pressure to the cabin.

Brian awakens minutes later to find Nick gone, and the skies still empty. As the plane approaches Los Angeles, the passengers are devastated to find a city deserted and devoid of human life, just as Bangor was. They begin to think that all that they have sacrificed to get this far has been in vain. Brian decides to land at LAX anyway. Once on the ground, the passengers realize that something is different. Sounds echo, there are actual smells, and they can hear a new sound approaching: not the subtle and terrifying tearing sound of the Langoliers, but rather a soothing hum. Once inside the terminal, they find another snack bar. The sandwiches taste normal, the soft drinks and beer aren't flat, and the sound is gradually getting louder.

Bob then theorizes that their passage back through the time rift has taken them a little bit into the future. Deducing that they are shortly going to rejoin the present, and that the terminal will, of course, be full of people and luggage carts, he urges them to move to the side and lean against a wall. As they watch all around them, people begin to appear, and colors dance in front of their eyes. The sound crescendos, and they suddenly find themselves once again in the present. They are all filled with happiness and relief. Bob suggests that they alert the air traffic controllers and inform them of the rift before another plane flies through it, but before they do so, they all step outside together to enjoy the fresh air.

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The Langoliers was adapted for a two-part TV Movie in 1995. The TV movie starred Kate Maberly, Kimber Riddle, Patricia Wettig, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Frankie Faison, Baxter Harris, Dean Stockwell, David Morse, Christopher Collet and Bronson Pinchot. It will air on Chiller in July 2008.

The movie version of "The Langoliers", produced for broadcast on ABC-TV, was filmed almost entirely in and around the Bangor International Airport in Bangor, Maine (author King's hometown) during the summer of 1995. King himself made a cameo appearance in the film as Craig Toomey's boss, during Toomey's hallucination.