If It Bleeds

A teenager finds that a dead friend's cell phone that was buried with the body still communicates from beyond the grave.

Craig gets a job working for the retired Mr. Harrigan when he's just nine years old, watering plants and reading to the old man, who has retired to the small town of Harlow, Maine, after a successful business career. As the years go on, Craig buys an iPhone for him as a thank you gift after a scratch-off lotto ticket that Harrigan had gifted the boy pays off. The old man is reluctant to accept the phone at first, but comes to enjoy it. When Mr. Harrigan dies, Craig places the phone in his pocket to be buried with him. One night, missing his friend, he leaves a voice message. To his shock, he gets a text in return. Craig will learn that not everything dead is gone.

The Life of Chuck is three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor at 39 and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house. In the first part of the story, Act III: THANKS, CHUCK!, Charles “Chuck” Krantz was laying on his deathbed as a monitor slowly beeped till his last breath. A teacher, Marty Anderson, was driving home from work and saw a billboard that said “CHARLES KRANTZ. 39 GREAT YEARS! THANKS, CHUCK!” As he came home he kept seeing more, and more, and more of these posters, billboards, or ads on TV. His ex-wife, Felicia, called to talk and tells him of another string of suicides (along with several attempts that were saved by the use of Naloxone) and asks if he has heard the most recent news about California (due to earthquakes, roughly 4/5 of the state is now underwater). The two also speak of the almost constant internet outages (Marty voices the opinion that this may be permanent) and the rampant wildfires covering vast parts of the US. The next day, a sinkhole erupts on Marty's only viable route to work and he is forced to stay home. After speaking with a neighbor, Marty learns that similar catastrophies are happening worldwide and many believe that they are living at "the end" of the world. Consequently, Marty becomes rather depressed and ends up sleeping most of the day. Once he wakes, he decides that if this is the end, he does not want to "go out alone" so he walks to Felicia's house across town. He arrived at Felicia’s house and met a little girl on rollerblades. She pointed out all the faces peering out at them throughout the long neighborhood road. Under all of the faces, the words read, “CHARLES KRANTZ. 39 GREAT YEARS! THANKS, CHUCK!” He told the girl to run as fast as she could back home as the lights slowly went out, one by one. There was no light, all you could see was darkness, he rushed inside Felicia’s house and said the last words, “I love y—-“ the last beep on Charles “Chuck” Kratz’s heart monitor rang and the world went silent. In the second part of the story, Act II: Buskers, Charles “Chuck” Krantz was walking home from a business meeting when he saw a drummer banging on buckets on the side of the road. His name was Jared. Charles couldn’t help himself, he felt moved by the music, he placed his briefcase between his legs and moved to the music imagining he was dancing with his little sister an old band mate's younger sister. The people were cheering as he moved to the music. He moved his briefcase and stepped in the middle of the mob surrounding them and started to moonwalk; the more he wished "little sister" was there, the more he wanted to dance with someone. Chuck pulled a girl from the crowd in the middle with him and they danced till they couldn’t anymore. After that the drummer and the two got lunch and the drummer insisted on paying them their cuts of the $400 that they made. Chuck and the girl denied it but the drummer insisted so they took their cuts, said their goodbyes and went their separate ways. Charles went home the happiest he had been in a long time not knowing that in nine short months he would lose all feeling in his legs and not remember much except that moment, occasionally, lying in his deathbed. In the final part of the story, Act I: I Contain Multitudes, Charles “Chuck” Krantz is only a child. He was expecting a baby sister called Alyssa which he thought sounded like rain. But sadly on an icy patch on the I-95 overpass, his parents' car had crashed, and not only had he lost his little sister, but he also lost his mom and dad. He wasn’t in the car because he was with his grandpa, Zaydee, and grandma, Bubbie. He was only seven at the time. In his grandparent’s house, there was an attic-like place called the cupola. Zaydee and Bubbie told Chuck that he shouldn’t go up there because the floor was so prone to collapsing that he would just fall straight through the floor. One night when grandpa got drunk he let it slip that the attic is full of ghosts and that he had seen Bubbie's death, surrounded by loaves of bread, among others. A few months later, Chuck's grandma died in a convenience store called Zoney’s. She was buying bread then died of a stroke. When Chuck is 17, his grandpa passes away from a heart attack as well. He had enough money from his grandparent's estate to get through college but, after his grandfather's death, he truly felt as if he was an orphan. After his grandpa's funeral, he was given a bag full of his grandpa’s stuff. He got the key to the cupola, opened it, and went out to look out the window on the floor that was perfectly sturdy. It was the exact view as grandpa had described. Chuck turned to leave and saw a man with a crescent scar on his hand (the same as Chucks) lying in a hospital bed (with the heart monitor beeping, although no machines could be seen). Chuck turned around to go down the attic ladder and turned back around to see that the man was gone.

Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog when she sees footage of a school bombing on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realizes there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene.[3] Soon, she will find that she is not the only one to have suspicions about the reporter.

Gibney is one of King's recurring characters, having appeared in his Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers and End of Watch), and in The Outsider.[4]

“Rat”, centers on the aforementioned writer, a man named Drew Larson with an acclaimed short story to his credit. He’s given himself over to academia because every time he tries to turn a good idea into a novel, things go seriously bad – mentally, physically, or both. But his latest concept, a Western thriller, is gangbusters, and he goes out to an old family cabin in the woods to get the novel done. When storms, insecurities, and sickness hit, Drew strikes a sinister bargain with a rat that turns out to be a thought-provoking spin on a “Monkey’s Paw” situation. The rat offers to get rid of his writer's block in exchange for one of Larson’s loved ones dying. Thinking that Larson's imagination is getting the best of him he agrees and goes about his day. Finally, when the storm clears Larson returns home to his family.