Originally, this book was part of King's short story collection called "Four Past Midnight", but at 300 or so pages and a great storyline with an interesting plot, this has become a "novella" of it's own.
A red eye flight from LA to Boston full of 200+ passengers. Shortly after take off, nine people are awaked by the sound of screaming. Ten people are left on the plane. Everyone else had simply vanished. Not only disappeared into thin air, but left behind personal and important items like wallets, purses, glasses, coins, watches. But not only those type of items, but also items that seem to have come from INSIDE of the passengers like implants, pacemakers, pins.
Where did everyone go? HOW did everyone go?
Like most Stephen King novels, this one is full of fabulous characters.
1. Luckily for them all, one passenger (Brian Engel) is a pilot who had just landed in LA, but at the sudden news of his ex wife's death, he had turned around and boarded the next plane, this time as a passenger.
2. Dinah is a young blind girl on her way to get eye surgery in the hopes of gaining her sight.
3. Laurel Stevenson is a grade school teacher with a sweet nature that automatically takes on the caretaker position of Dinah.
4. The mysterious Nick Hopewell with skills that cause everyone to wonder just what his profession actually is.
5. Don Gaffney, an older, dependable fellow on his was to visit family.
6. Albert Kaussner, a teen violin prodigy who has an old west alter ego he calls "the fasted Hebrew west of the Mississippi".
7. Bob Jenkins is an older gentlemen, a mystery author who is very handy in trying to explain and solve the very real mystery they all find themselves in.
8. Bethany is a teenage girl who is on her way to rehab at her parents request.
9. Rudy Warwick is a nice enough fellow who sleeps through most of the first half of the story while the others are discovering what has happened and wondering HOW it happened. When he wakes, he joins the group and is notable always hunger.
10. And finally, Craig Toomey. Toomey is an angry man raised by an angry man. On his way to an important meeting and a psychotic break, Toomey losses control when the plain needs to re-route due to the disappearance of hundreds of passengers. He sits in his seat, sullen and silent, ripping paper into tiny pieces and plotting his revenge.
So we have nine wonderful characters, a plane mysteriously emptied midflight, an angry psycho passenger, thousands of tiny monstrous creatures similar to balls of sharp chainsaw like teeth who, according to young Toomey, eat children who don't behave, but might actually be the what eats away the past, yesterday, to make room for the future.
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