The Ten O'Clock People
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| "The Ten O'Clock People" | |
| Author | Stephen King |
|---|---|
| Country |  USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Short story |
| Published in | Nightmares and Dreamscapes |
| Publication type | Anthology |
| Publisher | Viking Adult |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Publication date | 1993 |
Ten O'Clock People is a short story by Stephen King published in the Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection. Unlike many of King's stories that which place in fictional places like Castle Rock, Maine, "Ten O'Clock People" takes place in the distinctly recognizable Boston, Massachusetts.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The main character, Pearson, is a smoker trying hard to quit for health reasons. He discovers a horrible aspect of reality that only those attempting to quit like him are capable of seeing - that many of the people living among us in positions of power, including many police officers and political figures and even the Vice President of the United States, are in fact inhuman monsters disguised as people. A unique chemical balance, caused by his smoking only on his morning break (thus the reference to Ten O' Clock in the title) makes him able to see the true nature of these creatures through their disguises. When Pearson first notices one of them, a young black man named Dudley "Duke" Rhinemann stops him from screaming.
Dudley later explains that if Pearson wants to live, he must go about his day as usual and meet him at 3 o'clock after work. Pearson does as he is told and discovers that his boss is also one of the "batmen". He leaves work a bit shaken, meets Dudley and goes to a bar with him. After explaining that smokers trying to quit are the only ones who see them, Dudley invites Pearson to a meeting of those who can see the "batmen".
Shortly after arriving, the leader of the group says he has "big news" for them all. Pearson, who already had some suspicion about the idolized leader, notices nearby batpeople and says they all need to get out of there. The leader then says the batmen have granted them amnesty, but soon after a horde of them attack those in the meeting. Pearson along with two others manage to escape the meeting, while the others are presumably killed. Later the survivors, along with twenty or more, kill a few batpeople who are executives and CEOs.
[edit] Intertextual References
In King's novel Wolves of the Calla, the fifth in the Dark Tower series, Father Callahan tells the story of his post-Salem's Lot existence as a transient and occasional amateur vampire hunter. Callahan divides the vampires into three types. Type Three vampires, as Callahan describes them, are barely vampires at all -- they appear and act completely human, and when they feed, the human involved is neither permanently harmed nor affected in any way. In keeping with their nearly human status, Type Threes have no aversion to typical vampiric banes (such as sunlight, running water, or garlic), and can be killed by any method that would kill an ordinary person. When killed, their bodies immediately dissipate into powder, and leave behind only their clothes and a foul stench.
This describes exactly the batpeople of the short story, leaving no doubt that Pearson's batpeople and Callahan's Type Three vampires are the same creature. The only difference is that Callahan does not see them as the horrible bat-looking abominations that they are in the short story. This may be because, as characters in the short story themselves speculate, the batpeople do not actually look like that, and their horrible appearance is just the Ten O'Clock Person's brain trying to convey the monster's nature in any way it can. It is equally possible that the batpeople's appearance truly is that horrible, and Callahan never sees it simply because he, himself, is not a Ten O'Clock Person.
[edit] External References
The story has many similarities to John Carpenter's film They Live. The movie is based in the short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", by Ray Nelson. Dean Koontz's novel Twilight Eyes also features protagonists who are able to perceive others as monsters in human form.
[edit] Notes
In the book's ending notes, King relates that this story had one of the shortest gestation periods of any of his pieces—he conceived and wrote it feverishly over a mere three days.
