I've always enjoyed the Mangler. As someone who has worked around heavy machinery like the industrial laundry press, I know that those machines are loud, powerful, and remorseless. I've seen fingers lost in the blink of an eye. This story strikes home in a powerful way, and I enjoy the mysticism in the accidental demon summoning. Plus, the last image of the Mangler prowling outside the residence of the main characters, bursting with malice and infernal purpose, it's the best. A classic King ending through and through.
Anybody else like this one?
Absolutely. When I was younger, certain concepts did not seem to frighten me so I didn't read them. An example is Christine, which I still haven't read. It just didn't seem scary to me. The idea I mean. A haunted car, whatever. So as I was reading Night Shift, I didn't expect the Truck story to do much for me and I was wrong. It was terrifying in the reader, frisson sense. Not personally like "It" was to me, but still. The Mangler was too. I didn't expect it to be when I started it, but then it grabbed me and really was frightening.
When I was in the Army I spent a couple years around tanks before I was in the cavalry scouts. I was the platoon leader of a tank platoon (the four horsemen of the apocalypse, my tank was The Reaper). One of the things drilled into us was that a tank is a 60 ton killing machine. And it doesn't care who it kills. You're just as handy as the other guys. Another officer I know lost his thumb in the breach of the main gun loading rounds on a firing range. When the breach snapped up to close he didn't have his thumb tucked and it caught it just right. Took it off clean at the base knuckle. Blood everywhere, like a spout. That was at AOBC where officers learn all the roles on a tank and he was loader that day. Another platoon leader friend of mine got his tank shot accidentally by his platoon sergeant on a platoon firing range in Yakima. It was bad. Round hit right at the base of the turret ring. Gunner hit in the back, which broke it (training round, fortunately). It cooked off the TC's .50 cal rounds and filled my friend and the loader with shrapnel. Started the tank on fire with the driver trapped inside. The loader saved him getting him out, sustaining third degree burns on his arms and hands doing it. And that wasn't a direct hit with a real round.
Once I jumped from the tank to the ground on the side and I was wearing my class ring (a huge no no, for really good reasons, but I'd forgot), and my ring caught on a piece of metal at the top above the tracks. When my feet hit the ground, I was at full extension with my hand pulled up tight. There was just enough space to not have my finger stripped clean by my ring. If I'd been an inch shorter; goodbye ring finger. Anyway, machinery can be scary if it isn't treated with a good degree of fear.
Those things make a story like the Mangler or Trucks more seriously dangerous to me.
Kelly