Night Shift

While waiting at JFK International airport, Richard Morrison runs into a friend, Jimmy McCann, from college. Over drinks, McCann credits his newfound success in life to quitting smoking by using the secretive methods of Quitters, Inc. McCann gives Morrison contact information for the service and promises they will help him too. Morrison forgets about the interaction until a month later. Work stress has caused him to turn to alcohol, and the card falls out of his wallet. Despondent, Morrison decides to enlist their help.

At Quitters, Inc., Morrison is introduced to Vic Donatti, a blunt and aggressive man who is in charge of Morrison’s case. After several very personal questions about Morrison’s relationships with his wife and son, Donatti instructs Morrison to return the next day to begin his treatment. The next day, Donatti reveals the procedure to by a type of aversion training, showing Morrison a room in which a rabbit is electrocuted with increasingly painful intervals. Morrison will be under constant surveillance; if he smokes a cigarette, his wife or his son (who has an intellectual disability) will get “the rabbit room” while Morrison watches (231). Should Morrison continue to smoke, the punishment of his wife and son will grow increasingly severe until they are executed.

For the next month, Morrison struggles but manages not to smoke. However, after a minor traffic jam, he instinctually grabs and lights a cigarette. When he returns home, his wife is gone. At Quitters, Inc., an infuriated Donatti tells Morrison that his wife won’t be hurt this time but that next time she will. Morrison explains his usage of the service to his terrified wife, and she responds favorably. A few weeks later, Morrison happily reports to Donatti that he has quit smoking. Donatti, however, has noticed that Morrison has gained weight. He gives Morrison diet pills and sets a target weight: If Morrison exceeds the target, Donatti informs him, he will cut off his wife’s index finger. A year later, Morrison and his wife meet Jimmy McCann and his wife, and Morrison notices that McCann’s wife is missing her index finger.

Elizabeth, a college student, finds herself strangely drawn to a disheveled young man who offers to buy her ice cream her while she is studying in the library. She accepts because she was just thinking about ice cream, and she becomes intrigued with the awkward young man, whose name is Ed Hamner. When Elizabeth frets over needing to study for her exam, Ed tells her he took the exam last year and that he has an eidetic memory; he gives her all the questions and answers. Ed meets Elizabeth after she aces the exam. He buys her a burger, but Elizabeth confesses that she has a boyfriend.

After her junior year, Elizabeth travels to Boothbay, Maine, where she and her boyfriend, Tony, work through the summer. She feels she should be content, but after Tony pressures her to marry him and drop out of college, Elizabeth has nightmares about being with him. A week later, Tony dies. The day before she returns home, Ed appears in Boothbay to comfort her, explaining that he ran into her roommate, Alice, and learned of Tony’s death. Later, Ed admits to Elizabeth that he loves her.

When she returns to school, Elizabeth begins dating Ed despite the reservations of Alice, who swears she didn’t see Ed that summer. Elizabeth puts this out of her mind, as Ed appears to be the perfect boyfriend, anticipating all of her needs a dutifully providing for her. To allay her suspicions, Alice hires a detective agency to look into Ed. She then reveals their findings to Elizabeth: Ed has known Elizabeth since the first grade, though she didn’t notice him due to his shyness. Ed’s father was a heavy gambler, who used Ed as a “good luck charm” before striking it rich in the stock market (256). His mother was deeply religious and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals after trying to kill Ed with a pair of scissors. Alice implies that Ed was responsible for his father’s luck, as “he knew what his daddy needed” (257). Both parents died when their car went off a dropoff after Ed’s mother tried to run him down.

Elizabeth sneaks into Ed’s empty apartment and finds a diary confirming what Alice told her, including Ed’s enduring love of Elizabeth and his use of black magic to manipulate Elizabeth and to murder Tony. She finds voodoo dolls of Ed’s parents and of herself. When Ed arrives, Elizabeth confronts him with her findings. He grows petulant and childish, admitting that he murdered Tony but claiming he did so to save Elizabeth from an unhappy life. Elizabeth then sees him for the “little boy” he is and destroys her own voodoo doll, taking away the power he holds over her. However, as she leaves, she cannot shake Ed’s suggestion that he will better meet her needs than anyone else.

Burt and Vicky, a young couple with a fractious marriage, drive to California. They are ostensibly vacationing with Vicky’s brother, though each suspects their marriage depends on the outcome of the trip. While driving through rural Nebraska, Burt hits a young boy who stumbles out onto a road bisecting a huge cornfield. Discovering the boy’s throat “cut raggedly and inefficiently” (268), Burt assumes he was thrown into the road by his murderer moments before the car struck him. Burt and Vicky decide to take the boy’s body to Gatlin, the nearest town, and report the incident to the police. In the boy’s suitcase, Vicky finds a crude crucifix fashioned out of corn husks.

On their way to Gatlin, a strange radio broadcast of evangelical preaching comes over the air waves. Vicky is disquieted and turns it off, but not before Burt hears something ominous about “the defiler of the corn” (270). They arrive in town to find it deserted; the menu prices, calendars, and gas rates are all outdated. Vicky wants to continue driving, but Burt is determined to report the murdered boy to someone. Noticing a church that shows signs of recent activity, he enters over Vicky’s protests. Inside, Burt finds the town’s record book, which gives evidence of a mass changing of names from contemporary to biblical names. It also lists birth dates alongside a second column of dates; this second set of dates correspond to each individual’s 19th birthday. Burt realizes that the town’s children murdered all the adults and have since sacrificed those who turn 19 “in the corn” (283). Sharp blasts of the car horn draw Burt outside, where a group of children dressed in agrarian Quaker-type clothing are attacking Vicky in the car. Burt kills one of them, but the rest of the children drag Vicky away.

Burt escapes the children and runs into the lush cornfields that surround the town. He grows lost and wanders throughout the afternoon. As evening falls, he comes across an open area where he finds Vicky, crucified and with cornhusks stuffed into her mouth and empty eye sockets. Two other skeletal crucifixions appear to be the town’s old minister and the police chief. Burt realizes that he cannot escape, as the rows in the field have closed, and very shortly after he is devoured by a huge, green monster with red eyes. A harvest moon rises in the sky.

The next day, Isaac, the nine-year-old leader of the children of the corn, relates to the other children that “He Who Walks Behind the Rows” is displeased with their sacrifice (292). As punishment, the “Age of Favor” will be lowered from 19 to 18 (292). Several of the children must consequently sacrifice themselves to the corn that evening, including Malachi, who cut the young boy’s throat and tossed him before Burt’s car. A girl named Ruth, pregnant with Malachi’s child, bitterly watches him disappear into the corn. For a moment, she dreams of burning the corn and the monster that lives within it, but she fears that the being in the corn knows “everything,” including her thoughts. The corn accepts the sacrifice and is pleased.