King once again shows the fullness of his artistry. In the eponymous novel, Holly Gibney, the reader’s favorite heroine (known from the Bill Hodges and Outsider trilogies), has to face her fears and perhaps another outsider – this time alone. “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” describes an intergenerational friendship that lasts to death … and even longer. The Life of Chuck illustrates the idea that each of us has multiple personalities. And in “Szczura” the unfulfilled writer struggles with the dark side of his ambition.
These stories not only present the author’s mastery in all their glory, but also show that certain topics are eternal. One of the leitmotifs of King’s works is evil, which also appears in “There is blood …”, presented in the eponymous novel as “a large, tattered, ice-gray bird”. However, the opposite of evil is also constantly present, in King’s works it often takes the form of friendship. King reminds us that everyday pleasures, although fleeting, are beautiful thanks to this fleetingness – whether it is an unusually beautiful, clear day after long weeks of gray, or the fun of dancing in which every step is perfect, or an unexpected pleasant meeting. At such moments, we find out that Stephen King can not only make you shudder, but also perfectly describe joy in its purest form.
Fragment of the book
In January 2021, a small padded envelope addressed to Detective Ralph Anderson is delivered to his neighbors, the Conrads. The Anderson family are on a long vacation in the Bahamas, from where they are due to return on February 3, and the Conrads have agreed to receive their mail by then. When Ralph opens the package, he finds inside a flash drive called “There is blood”, possibly echoing the old journalistic saying, “There is blood, there are headlines.” A flash drive contains two things. One is a catalog with photos and sound spectrograms.
The second is a kind of report, or rather an oral diary, by Holly Gibney, with whom the detective was conducting an investigation that began in Oklahoma and ended in a Texas cave.
This case has irreversibly changed the way Ralph Anderson views reality. Holly recorded the last words of her report on December 19, 2020. She says in a breathless voice:
I did my best, Ralph, but I don’t know if it’s enough.
Despite all my preparations, the possibility exists that I won’t make it out alive. If we were never to see each other again, I want you to know how much your friendship meant to me. If I die after all and you decide to finish what I started, please be careful. Remember you have a wife and a son.
