The Monsters Were Real

The Boogeyman, bad parenting, cowardice and narcissism

Good morning book lovers, and welcome to The Barrens, Kindling’s first ever book club. If you’re new here, we’re making our way through Night Shift, Stephen King’s first story collection. Today we talk The Boogeyman, the short story that was recently made into a movie. You can find a great writeup about the film by

Jade Eby

who writes The Rebel MFA here.

If you would like to join in, grab a copy and read Gray Matter!

I’ve included some audio with extra commentary from yours truly. Give it a lesson if that’s your thing and let me know your own thoughts on this story in the comments below!

Without further ado, let’s head to Dr. Harper’s office, where a new patient, Lester Billings, is telling his story.

Photo by Dima Pechurin on Unsplash

Lester Billings has something to get off his chest.

“I can’t go to a priest because I’m not Catholic. I can’t go to a lawyer because I haven’t done anything to consult a lawyer about. All I did was kill my kids. One at a time. Killed them all.”

Dr. Harper turned on the tape recorder.

Lester Billings was a young father. He married after his girlfriend Rita got pregnant and dropped out of college to take care of her and his new young son Denny. A year after, he had a daughter named Shirl, and that was when the trouble started.

Denny starts having trouble sleeping, crying in the night, refusing to get in his crib. He’s afraid. Initially, the young parents assume it’s because he doesn’t have his bottle anymore, then that he may need a nightlight, but both things are refused the boy for fear of spoiling little Denny.

“But that’s the way kids start off bad. You get permissive with them, spoil them. Then they break your heart. Get some girl knocked up you know, or start shooting dope. Or they get to be sissies. Can you imagine waking up some morning and finding your kid—your son—is a sissy?”

Lester has no patience for Denny’s fears. He has an infant daughter waking him at all hours of the night, and a job he hates loading Pepsi-Cola trucks. He’s tired, distracted. One night, after Denny points to the closet at bedtime and says, “Boogeyman,” Lester wakes up to his screaming. He wants Rita to deal with it, and when she goes in, she finds her son dead. The only thing out of place is a cracked closet door, open despite Lester’s insistence that he shut it before turning out the light.

The authorities rule it crib death, even though the boy was three years old. Lester and Rita quickly move his little sister into her older brother’s room. Lester insists they have to move on with their lives, refusing to give into Rita’s misgivings about moving Shirl into the same room where her brother died.

“So a year goes by. And one night when I’m putting Shirl into her crib she starts to yowl and scream and cry. ‘Boogeyman, Daddy, boogeyman, boogeyman!”

That scares Lester a bit, and he wants to take Shirl into his room. But he doesn’t. A combination of pride—he doesn’t want to admit to his wife that he was wrong about moving her—and the feeling that his job is to toughen his wife up after the loss of their son, makes him act against his better judgment. A month later, Shirl dies too. Her death, due to convulsions according to the doctors. But Lester knows better now.

When Rita returns home after being sedated to help with her grief, Lester again tries to move their lives forward, insisting it is time for them to enjoy one another.

“I knew she’d get over it. When they’re that little, you don’t get so attached to them. After a while you have to go to the bureau drawer and look at a picture to even remember exactly what they looked like.”

A pause here.

Lester Billings, a man who says he loved his children, but never showed an ounce of compassion until they were dead. A father too young and unprepared, stressed by his job and responsibilities, fails to see that his children need him until it is too late.

Throughout the story, we get the sense that he has no respect for Rita. From his constant belittling of her feelings, wishes, and grief, to his comments on her willingness to go to bed with him before they were married. His own mother refused to visit, and never saw her grandchildren because Rita got pregnant out of wedlock. She called her a corner-walker, a prostitute, a word that Lester doesn’t seem too bothered by in reference to his own wife.

His backstory leaves some clues as to why he is the way he is. His mother was overprotective, making him afraid of everything. His reaction is to neglect rather than overparent. We have hints that her influence is what makes him view his wife and children in the dark way he does.

Rita wants another baby.

And despite Lester’s hesitation and an IUD, she ends up pregnant, and has Andy the year after Shirl died. Initially, Lester is upset, but the baby looks like him, more than his other children did.

“Then one night, here I am coming out of a drugstore with a mobile to hang over the kid’s crib. Me! Kids don’t appreciate presents until they’re old enough to say thank you, that was always my motto. But there I was, buying him silly crap and all at once I realize I love him the most of all.”

They move to a new house when Andy turns one. Everything goes by fine the next year. Lester has a good job. They like the new neighborhood. Then something starts to change. First he feels strange in the house, leaving his boots outside the closet to avoid having to open the door. He hears squishy noises and slithering, and becomes convinced the monster has found them.

He becomes irritable, snapping at Rita. He is afraid when he goes to work, but even more afraid when he’s at home.

“Maybe all the monsters we were scared of when we were kids, Frankenstein and Wolfman and Mummy, maybe they were real. Real enough to kill the kids that were supposed to have fallen into gravel pits or drowned in lakes or were just never found. Maybe…”

Rita leaves town after her mom gets hurt in a car crash, leaving Lester to care for Andy on his own. He hires help during the day, and at night he sleeps with Andy in bed, haunted by the the Boogeyman each night. With Rita gone, the monster openly moves through the house, leaving trails of mud, opening doors, laughing in the darkness.

So he moves his son into a different room. He knows the monster will go for Andy. The first night that the boy is in a different room, Lester awakens to screams. “Daddy…boogeyman…wanna go wif Daddy.” But Lester does not take his son. He leaves him there, and an hour later the Boogeyman kills him.

Terrified, Lester flees the house, heading to an all night diner, gulping coffee until morning comes. He calls the police who rule it an accident. The boy must have fallen out of his crib. The closet door is open just a crack.

Lester gets his.

Dr. Harper tells Lester to make a few followup appointments with the nurse outside to help him deal with his feelings of guilt, but when Lester heads to her desk, he finds the place empty. When he goes back in, Dr. Harper is nowhere to be seen, and the closet door is cracked a smidge.

Billings stood rooted to the spot as the closet door swung open. He dimly felt warmth at his crotch as he wet himself.

“So nice,” the boogeyman said as it shambled out.

It still held its Dr. Harper mask in one rotted, spade-claw hand.

Unpacking the story.

There’s a lot going on here, at least in my mind. We have a father who seems like he doesn’t want to be a father. His own fears, planted by an overprotective mother during childhood, overtake him. He puts his own safety above his children’s, something that is the antithesis of parenthood and the typical, protective role a father plays.

One of the most telling scenes is when he returns to an empty house after Shirl dies, and has to sleep with a light on because of his fear, the very thing he denied little Denny when Rita asked for a nightlight. He seems to represent a certain kind of abuser. The narcissistic parent who can’t see their child’s needs, or is upset by them, but insists that they be taken care of. Their own emotions trump every other person’s needs.

Even though this is, in some ways, a cheesy horror story, there is a more horrific undertone that I caught. The reality of abusive fathers, neglectful parents, who refuse to see their children’s needs and attend to them. Always opting for the cruelest choice in the endless pursuit to teach children the ever important lessons of the narcissist: you are alone, no one will take care of you, your feelings are irrelevant, your sense of safety doesn’t matter.

I watched the movie and one line from the film stood out.

“It’s that thing that comes for your kids when you’re not paying attention.”

I expected a certain type of story because of this quote. Distracted parents who don’t believe their kids when they cry monster in the night. But King’s story is much darker in my opinion. It’s not just the Boogeyman the kids have to be afraid of. It’s their own father.

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What did you all make of this story? This was the first Night Shift story that felt like King to me. The dialogue, the incredibly screwed up main character (I can’t exactly call him the protagonist), the dual physical and supernatural evil forces at play.

Did you hate Lester Billings? I really did and was honestly relieved the Boogeyman got him in the end. Between abandoning his son and his clear detachment and even hatred of his own family, I thought he got what was coming.