The ancient and terrifying legend of vampires comes true for the inhabitants of the small New England town of Jerusalem's Lot, as a plague of nightstalking beings descends upon them.

A man convicted of murder lives in a prison brutally ruled by a sadistic warden and secretly run by a con who knows all the ropes and pulls all the strings.

High in the isolated, wintry Rocky Mountains, terror awaits behind every door of the Overlook Hotel--a place where the guests are deceased but not necessarily departed. Now the only hope against the ghastly forces that threaten to claim the hotel's caretaker and his family is his young son, a boy possessed of a fearsome power he neither knows nor understands.

Among the four unabridged selections from Stephen King's chilling collection of short horror fiction, Skeleton Crew, is the author's rendering of "The Raft."

Here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.

A small town attorney is living testament to the American Dream's pleasures and excesses, with a great career, loving family, beautiful home--and an extra 50 pounds. But his perfect life has become a living nightmare since crossing a mysterious gypsy's path. For one thing, he no longer has a weight problem. In fact, he may soon have no weight left at all.

Something was happening in Bobbi Anderson's idyllic small town of Haven, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman and child powers far beyond ordinary mortals. Something that turned the town into a death trap for all outsiders.