Readers unfamiliar with "1408" may prefer to read the below note only after reading the story.
The stories selected for The Folio Book of Horror Stories (2018) are noteworthy. The anthology features only two tales from the nineteenth century, and three from the twenty-first. At first I thought this gave the contents a lopsided shape, but we've all bought too many anthologies that start with Defoe and are still not up to 1900 by the halfway point.
Still, "1408" (2002) by Stephen King seemed like a curious canonical selection.
I first read "1408" in March, 2020, as part of a series of blog posts under the heading "50 Years of Stephen King." My note on "1408," when I wrote about the short story collection Everything's Eventual, consisted of this:
Best Selling investigator of haunted sites plans to spend the night in a hotel room of sinister repute. He lasts about seventy minutes. #learnsbetter
All true as far as it goes. But the arc and density of the forty page story presents for the reader a rare and notable example of aesthetic amplitude. It's the richness we appreciate when reading authors like B.M. Croker and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. As a reader I am grateful.
* * *
The first half of "1408" is a modified fireside tale. Mike Enslin, arriving in the evening at NYC's Dolphin Hotel, is invited to manager Mr. Olin's office for one last warning.
King's omniscient third person narrator back-fills facts about Enslin's career as well as the longer career of room 1408.
"Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses," Olin read. "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards. Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Castles." He looked up at Mike with a faint smile at the corners of his mouth. "Got to Scotland on that one. Not to mention the Vienna Woods. And all tax-deductible, correct? Hauntings are, after all, your business."
"Do you have a point?"
[....] "What concerned me—what frightened me—is that I found myself reading the work of an intelligent, talented man who doesn't believe one single thing he has written."
Olin has, before the tale's beginning, tried every legal method to stop Enslin from staying overnight in room 1408 of The Dolphin. His final appeal is to Enslin the rational, perhaps cynical, writer.
[....] "I'm not calling you a liar," he said, "but, Mr. Enslin, you don't believe. Ghosts rarely appear to those who don't believe in them, and when they do, they are rarely seen...."
[....] Mike stood up, then bent to grab his overnight case. "If that's so, I won't have anything to worry about in room 1408, will I?"
"But you will," Olin said. "You will. Because there are no ghosts in room 1408 and never have been. There's something in there—I've felt it myself—but it's not a spirit presence. In an abandoned house or an old castle keep, your unbelief may serve you as protection. In room 1408, it will only render you more vulnerable. Don't do it, Mr. Enslin. That's why I waited for you tonight, to ask you, beg you, not to do it. Of all the people on earth who don't belong in that room, the man who wrote those cheerful, exploitative true-ghost books leads the list."
How Olins's prediction will be confirmed is part of the structural irony King plays with in his 50/50 plot. The first half of "1408" is Olin's warning, fleshed out with some uncanny experiences he retells about the room.
"[....] you can make fun of the room 1408 bogies as much as you want, Mr. Enslin, but you'll feel them almost at once, of that I'm confident. Whatever there is in that room, it's not shy."
"On many occasions all that I could manage I went with the maids, to supervise them. He paused, then added, almost reluctantly, To pull them out, I suppose, if anything really awful started to happen. Nothing ever did. There were several who had weeping fits, one who had a laughing fit I don't know why someone laughing out of control should be more frightening than someone sobbing, but it is and a number who fainted. Nothing too terrible, however. I had time enough over the years to make a few primitive experiments beepers and cell-phones and such but nothing too terrible. Thank God. He paused again, then added in a queer, flat tone: One of them went blind."
"What?"
"She went blind. Rommie Van Gelder, that was. She was dusting the top of the television, and all at once she began to scream. I asked her what was wrong. She dropped her dustrag and put her hands over her eyes and screamed that she was blind but that she could see the most awful colors. They went away almost as soon as I got her out through the door, and by the time I got her down the hallway to the elevator, her sight had begun to come back."
"You're telling me all this just to scare me, Mr. Olin, aren't you? To scare me off."
"Indeed I am not. You know the history of the room, beginning with the suicide of its first occupant."
Mike did. "Kevin O'Malley, a sewing machine salesman, had taken his life on October 13, 1910, a leaper who had left a wife and seven children behind."
"Five men and one woman have jumped from that room's single window, Mr. Enslin. Three women and one man have overdosed with pills in that room, two found in bed, two found in the bathroom, one in the tub and one sitting slumped on the toilet. A man hanged himself in the closet in 1970."
"Henry Storkin," Mike said. "That one was probably accidental erotic asphyxia."
"Perhaps. There was also Randolph Hyde, who slit his wrists, and then cut off his genitals for good measure while he was bleeding to death. That one wasn't erotic asphyxiation. The point is, Mr. Enslin, that if you can't be swayed from your intention by a record of twelve suicides in sixty-eight years, I doubt if the gasps and fibrillations of a few chambermaids will stop you."
The second half of "1408" is where Enslin #learnsbetter. He isn't spending the night in an old dark house: The Dolphin is no Baldpate. It is a modern Manhattan hotel with a room on the 13th floor (press 14 in the elevator), a room whose number, for the numerologically inclined, adds up to 13.
* * *
There are some doublings worthy of note in "1408." The most obvious: Mr. Olsin and Mr. Enslin. One knows the truth; the other, who once wanted to be acknowledged as a Yale Younger Poet, thinks there is no truth, and thinks even if there was, it has no claim on him.
The other doubling:
"[....] you can make fun of the room 1408 you can make fun of the room 1408 bogies as much as you want, Mr. Enslin, but you'll feel them almost at once, of that I'm confident. Whatever there is in that room, it's not shy.
On many occasions all that I could manage I went with the maids, to supervise them. He paused, then added, almost reluctantly, To pull them out, I suppose, if anything really awful started to happen. Nothing ever did. There were several who had weeping fits, one who had a laughing fit I don't know why someone laughing out of control should be more frightening than someone sobbing, but it is and a number who fainted. Nothing too terrible, however. I had time enough over the years to make a few primitive experiments beepers and cell-phones and such but nothing too terrible. Thank God. He paused again, then added in a queer, flat tone: One of them went blind.
What?
She went blind. Rommie Van Gelder, that was. She was dusting the top of the television, and all at once she began to scream. I asked her what was wrong. She dropped her dustrag and put her hands over her eyes and screamed that she was blind but that she could see the most awful colors. They went away almost as soon as I got her out through the door, and by the time I got her down the hallway to the elevator, her sight had begun to come back.
You're telling me all this just to scare me, Mr. Olin, aren't you? To scare me off.
Indeed I am not. You know the history of the room, beginning with the suicide of its first occupant.
Mike did. Kevin O'Malley, a sewing machine salesman, had taken his life on October 13, 1910, a leaper who had left a wife and seven children behind.
Five men and one woman have jumped from that room's single window, Mr. Enslin. Three women and one man have overdosed with pills in that room, two found in bed, two found in the bathroom, one in the tub and one sitting slumped on the toilet. A man hanged himself in the closet in 1970
Henry Storkin, Mike said. That one was probably accidental erotic asphyxia.
Perhaps. There was also Randolph Hyde, who slit his wrists, and then cut off his genitals for good measure while he was bleeding to death. That one wasn't erotic asphyxiation. The point is, Mr. Enslin, that if you can't be swayed from your intention by a record of twelve suicides in sixty-eight years, I doubt if the gasps and fibrillations of a few chambermaids will stop you....
[....] 'Few of the pairs [of cleaners] who have turned 1408 over the years care to go back more than a few times,' Olin said, and finished his drink in a tidy little gulp.
'Except for the French twins.'
'Vee and Cee, that's true.' Olin nodded.
Mike didn't care much about the maids and their . . . what had Olin called them? Their gasps and fibrillations. He did feel mildly rankled by Olin's enumeration of the suicides . . . as if Mike was so thick he had missed, not the fact of them, but their import....
"[....] Listen very closely, please. Vee's sister, Celeste, died of a heart attack. At that point, she was suffering mid-stage Alzheimer's, a disease which struck her very early in life.'
'Yet her sister is fine and well, according to what you said earlier. An American success story, in fact. As you are yourself, Mr. Olin, from the look of you. Yet you've been in and out of room 1408 how many times? A hundred? Two hundred?'
'For very short periods of time,' Olin said. 'It's perhaps like entering a room filled with poison gas. If one holds one's breath, one may be all right. I see you don't like that comparison. You no doubt find it overwrought, perhaps ridiculous. Yet I believe it's a good one.'
He steepled his fingers beneath his chin....
* * *
Room 1408, as King portrays it through Olin's warning anecdotes and Enslin's 70 minutes of first-hand exposure, is a trickster site inimical to living things. It houses no spirits of former guests or staff; it simply makes small adjustments to an experiencer's perceptions. It wrong-foots alike the oblivious and the suspicious guest. The weird effects Enslin initially experiences while in the room are sophomoric in their banality, which testifies to the subtle wrongness of the room as a bad place from inception, and to King's talents as a writer of strange stories.
"1408" (2002) seems too recent for a canonical anthology like The Folio Book of Horror Stories (2018). But it fits with the other contents: it is an ambitious story of small compass, well-organized and finely balanced. It is unsettling. "1408" explores what John Clute in The Darkening Garden called vastation: "the naked, impersonal malice of the world...."
Jay
9 September 2022
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