Countdown: The Top 20 Stephen King Works of American Gothic Short Fiction--#18

#18. "Dolan's Cadillac"

In this dark-crime novella collected in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, King modernizes and Americanizes Edgar Allan Poe's classic revenge tale, "The Cask of Amontillado" (which is set in an unnamed European city during Carnival season).  Would-be government witness Elizabeth Robinson is killed by a car bomb before she can ever testify against the titular gangster Dolan.  And so for the next nine years her husband watches and waits (all the while goaded by the ghostly voice of his dead wife inside his head) for the opportunity to dish out appropriate retribution.  Finally, Robinson hatches a plan to dig "the world's longest grave" on a dark desert highway (cue the Eagles music) stretching between Los Angeles and Las Vegas; he will bury Dolan alive inside the very Sedan DeVille he is chauffeured around in, converting the vehicle into "an upholstered eight-cylinder fuel-injected coffin."

King's narrative skills are perfectly employed in this self-described "archetypal horror story, with its mad narrator and its account of a premature burial in the desert."  The author ratchets up the suspense as only he can, detailing Robinson's rigors and fears as the still-grieving widower sets up his elaborate trap.  The climactic confrontation between Robinson and the trapped Dolan is also a virtuoso act of scene-building on King's part.  Here the echoes of Poe's Montresor and Fortunato characters grow quite strong, as Robinson answers his victim's screams with those of his own, and mocks Dolan's desperate cries:

"For the love of God!" he shrieked.  "For the love of God, Robinson!"

"Yes," I said, grinning.  "For the love of God."

I put the chunk of asphalt in neatly next to its neighbor, and although I listened, I heard him no more.

Still, this isn't the end of the story, because Robinson (even as he succeeds in his murderous scheme) becomes haunted by the bogeyman image/mad laughter of Dolan.  King proves to be an astute student of Poe, picking up on a key (yet often overlooked) fact of Montresor's narration: for all its superficial bravado, Montresor's tale--told fifty years post facto--has an undercurrent of guilt and dread running through it.*  As Robinson's sanity caves inward, the reader of King's novella is forced to consider that much like the patch of faux roadway that dooms Dolan, vengeance might not be all it's cracked up to be.


* If you'll forgive a bit of shameless (is there really any other kind?) self-promotion: this is the same undercurrent that I trace out in my short-story sequel to "A Cask of Amontillado," entitled "Something There Is" (available as a free podcast [episode #166] from Pseudopod).