The Langoliers

"The Langoliers"
Short story by Stephen King
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror, Science fiction novella
Publication
Published in	Four Past Midnight
Publisher	Penguin Books
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Publication date	September 1990

The Langoliers is one of four novellas published in the Stephen King book Four Past Midnight in 1990.

Plot summary

On a cross-country red-eye flight aboard American Pride Flight 29 from Los Angeles, California to Boston, Massachusetts, Brian Engle, an airline pilot, awakens to find that all of the other passengers and crew have disappeared except for those who were asleep. Their clothes and items, such as watches, surgical pins, and pocket change, remain aboard the plane.

As the sleepers regain consciousness, they are introduced to the reader: Dinah Bellman, a blind girl about age ten; fifth grade teacher Laurel Stevenson; Nick Hopewell, a mysterious Englishman; Don Gaffney, a retired tool-and-die engineer; Rudy Warwick, a perpetually hungry businessman; Albert Kaussner, a talented Jewish teen violinist from Texas; Bethany Simms, a teen girl with a drug problem; Bob Jenkins, a mystery author; and Craig Toomey, a Type A personality investment banker in the midst of a psychotic break. Brian Engle is heading east to his ex-wife's funeral.

Brian takes control of the flight. Although the autopilot has kept the plane aloft and on course, he finds himself unable to make radio contact with anyone. Even nearby Air Force bases do not respond to his calls. Stranger still, after flying over Denver, Colorado, they find that the city cannot be seen as there are no lights visible on the ground, indeed all cities flown over are in pitch darkness. There follows a brief confrontation between Brian, Nick and Craig Toomey resulting in Nick subduing Craig with a nose hold. Brian decides to divert the flight to Bangor, Maine, reasoning that Bangor International Airport is a safer landing site with its extra-long runway and light traffic than the potentially crowded skies of Boston. Upon learning that they will not be flying to Boston as scheduled, Craig Toomey becomes enraged. We learn that Toomey views other people not as human, but as distorted, blurry, and frightening images that the blind girl, Dinah, is also able to see through Toomey's eyes.

Once the plane is on the ground, the group makes some terrifying discoveries. It turns out that not only have most of the people on the plane disappeared, so has every other person in the world. Bangor Airport is a complete ghost town. Dinah begins to develop a type of "second sight," and Craig Toomey, hard-pressed to get to Boston to attend a meeting, begins sliding into profound madness. Part of this involves a neurosis given to him by his overbearing and abusive father: A vision of the "Langoliers", small demonic beasts with fast legs that chase down the purposeless and lazy, and eat them alive.

The passengers also make other bizarre discoveries, such as a lack of electricity anywhere in the airport, abandoned service vehicles on the airport's tarmac, daylight lasting only a couple of hours before becoming night and vice versa; odd weather patterns, such as a total lack of cloud movement despite the presence of wind, and a curious lack of echoes.

Trying to make sense of what is happening around them, the travelers decide to settle down in a snack bar. There, they find that the sandwiches have no taste, the soft drinks and beer are flat, and books of matches don't light.

As they search for the cause of their plight, first Dinah, and eventually the rest, hear a strange sound not unlike radio static, slowly approaching their location. The passengers of American Pride Flight 29 quickly find that time is their problem. Bob Jenkins theorizes that while they were all asleep on their flight, the plane flew through a "time rip", a tear in the fabric of time. They have now ended up in the past, a dead, lifeless world that is slowly winding down, and the longer they stay there, the more likely the chance that they too will wind down with it. Time has moved on without them, and there is no real substance or essence in the past. They contemplate leaving Bangor, a plan Brian rejects when he points out it is impossible as their plane is extremely low on fuel. When asked why he cannot refuel the plane, Brian explains that in the same way that matches here don't burn, the jet fuel will be similarly "dead". They begin to deal with the fact that they are stuck there, with the sound getting closer and closer each second.

Albert has something of an epiphany and, along with Brian, Bob and Nick, take items from the snack bar back to the plane. The sandwiches regain their flavor, a soft drink fizzles when poured into a glass, and the matches light and burn brightly. Albert explains that the airplane, though it has traveled into the past, still contains the present inside, which explains why everything that is dead outside the aircraft suddenly comes to life inside. They then embark on a plan of action to refuel the airplane as fast as possible now that they know the jet fuel will burn once it enters the engines. The matter is complicated by the fact that the fuel must be pumped using the airliner's own engines since the refueling trucks that normally serve that purpose are inoperative.

Further revelations unfold: Nick is revealed to be special forces; he and Laurel begin to fall in love. Bethany and Albert begin a similar attraction. Craig's stress continues; before boarding the flight, he basically opted out of the busy lifestyle his father had sketched out for him, by losing his company forty-two million dollars, ensuring his firing and disgrace.

Craig Toomey, becoming completely mad from fear of the approaching sound he believes to be the langoliers, stabs Dinah in the chest with a butcher knife fearing her as the chief Langolier. Summoned back to the airport from the plane, Nick attempts to save Dinah by removing the knife from her chest. Albert and Don go to search for a stretcher, but Craig ambushes them. He kills Don with a letter-opener and goes after Albert. After a brief battle, Albert smashes him to the ground with a toaster wrapped in a table-cloth (a weapon he arms himself with as he accidentally injured his brother with a similar weapon as a young child). Nick goes in search of Don and Albert. As he is leaving Dinah tells him not to kill Mr Toomey because they need him. Nick recognises "an order" when he hears one and leave Toomey unconscious in the airport as the others return to the plane with Dinah on a stretcher.

Just as the plane is ready to take off, the source of the sound finally appears. They see strange creatures emerging from the forests north of the airport. Spherical, with large mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth that spin around like chainsaws, they travel through the air with agility and great speed, devouring everything in their way. Dinah telepathically convinces Toomey that his meeting is actually being held on the tarmac, using him to decoy the creatures away from the plane. Toomey participates only briefly in the hallucination before he realizes the danger. He is swiftly consumed by the monsters, his last thought being that they can't be running as they have no legs. As the plane lifts off, the group watches as all of Bangor is devoured, to be replaced by a cold, eternal nothingness.

Brian sets a course that will take them to where the time rip should be over the Mojave Desert. During the flight, Dinah succumbs to her injury and dies. In the cockpit, Brian and Nick watch as the Langoliers traverse the dead lands and continue to eat away at the world. Just before they enter the rift, Bob realizes they all need to be unconscious. Brian decides to use the adjustable cabin pressure to put everyone to sleep, but someone must stay awake to revert the cabin pressure to normal, and thus sacrifice him or herself. Nick, seeking redemption for the accidental killing of innocent kids during his violent career, volunteers. He has a brief meeting with Laurel, whom he convinces to take a message of apology and regret to his father. Settled in the cockpit, he is entranced by the rift as the others nod off. Just before he fades away, he flips the switch to bring the others back awake.

Brian awakens minutes later to find Nick gone and the skies still empty. As the plane approaches Los Angeles, the passengers are devastated to find a city deserted and devoid of human life. They begin to think that all that they have sacrificed to get this far has been in vain. Brian decides to land at LAX anyway. Once on the ground, the passengers realize that something is different. Sounds echo, there are actual smells, and they can hear a new sound approaching. It is not the horrifying crunching sound of the creatures, but more of a soothing hum. Once inside the terminal, they find another snack bar. The sandwiches taste like sandwiches, the soft drinks and beer aren't flat, and the sound is continuously getting louder.

Bob then realizes that their passage back through the time rip has taken them a little bit into the future. The group leans against a wall, to be out of the way of human traffic. As they watch all around them, people begin to appear, and colors dance in front of their eyes. The sound crescendos, and they suddenly find themselves once again in sync with the present. As they celebrate, Bob suggests that they alert the air traffic controllers and inform them of the rip before another plane flies through it, but before doing so, they all step outside and get some fresh air.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The Langoliers was adapted for a two-part TV Movie in 1995. The TV movie starred Kate Maberly, Kimber Riddle, Patricia Wettig, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Frankie Faison, Baxter Harris, Dean Stockwell, David Morse, Christopher Collet and Bronson Pinchot.

The movie version of "The Langoliers", produced for broadcast on ABC-TV, was filmed almost entirely in and around the Bangor International Airport in Bangor, Maine (author King's hometown) during the summer of 1995. King himself made a cameo appearance in the film as Craig Toomy's boss in a hallucination.

External links

• The Langoliers title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• The Langoliers at IMDb