Stephen King's 'Creepiest' Short Story
"The Raft," first published in November 1982, is a pretty terrifying yarn.
A few nights ago, I had some major déjà vu while reading a short story written by Stephen King in his Skeleton Crew collection. It was called The Raft.
Wait, have I read this before?
I had not, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that I had. (More on that in a minute.)
One of King’s classic horror short stories, The Raft tells the tale of four friends—Randy, Deke, LaVerne, and Rachel—who decide to take a swim in a remote Pennsylvania lake one night after drinking a few beers, only to find themselves trapped on a wooden raft with a mysterious blob-like creature lurking beneath. Typical to the slasher genre, the characters are archetypes. Randy is the brain. Deke is the jock. Laverne is the sexy bad girl. Rachel is the pretty nice girl. They are just regular college kids, but there’s a sexual tension in the group, and it lurks beneath their friendships much like the blob-like creature lurking below the raft.
Randy wants Laverne. Laverne, however, is into Deke. Unfortunately, Deke is dating Rachel. But at the lake, Deke decides he might be more into LaVerne than Rachel. (Got all that?)
Despite the division over girls, the friendship between Deke and Randy feels very real. There’s a genuine affection there, and it comes through in King’s masterful writing, like when the boys—who refer to each other as Poncho and Cisco—drawl to each other in bad Spanish. This makes it all the more horrifying when the kids start to get consumed by the creature in the lake, which is hungry for human flesh and appears to be somewhat intelligent, even seductive.
And that’s what makes The Raft so scary. It’s not just that the kids are one-by-one devoured by a blob, a gurgitation King describes in graphic and careful detail. It’s the idea that the blob just might symbolize something lurking in us. Something dark and revolting and malevolent that is buried deep in our heart or subconscious.
And that feeling—not an idea, but a feeling—is what made me remember how I knew the story. I had never read The Raft before, but I had watched it. It was adapted for the screen by the late George Romero, another horror legend, and was one of several mini-productions in Creepshow 2 (1987).
At some point, I watched this story on TV as a kid, and it scared the hell out of me. Watching it now, it seems more campy to me than scary—but I think it actually holds up pretty well.
Either way, if you’re a fan of the genre, watch it yourself below and let me know what you think in the comments.