Night Shift

by Stephen King

I fear also that Like has mated with Like, as so many of the Faces are similar. It seemed that each way I turned I beheld the old Man's Visage . . . all are so wan; they seem Lack-Luster, as if sucked dry of all Vitality, I beheld Eyeless and Noseless Children, Women who wept and gibbered and pointed at the Sky for no Reason, and garbled talk from the Scriptures with talk of Demons; . . .

“Well, like the man said when he saw the black-haired Swede, it surely is a Norse of a different color.”

The ladder had always held us before, we thought it would always hold us again, which is a philosophy that gets men and nations in trouble time after time.