The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: King, Stephen. If It Bleeds. Scribner, 2020. Kindle.

The collection opens with “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone.” The first-person narrator, Craig, is 25 when he begins to narrate the tale of his relationship with Mr. Harrigan. Craig was a precocious reader who was asked to read at church when he was nine. When Mr. Harrigan heard him read, he came over to Craig’s house and asked if he could hire him to read for him a few times a week. Craig’s father agreed, and Craig started working for M. Harrigan, an immoderately wealthy billionaire who owned conglomerates and had been an extraordinary stock market player before retiring to a small Maine town where he could peacefully enjoy his technology-free retirement. Every holiday, Mr. Harrigan gifted Craig a card with a lottery ticket inside. When Craig was eleven, he won a 3,000-dollar jackpot. He decided that he wanted to buy Mr. Harrigan an iPhone as a way to thank him. At first, Mr. Harrigan rejected the idea of the phone because he had never used the internet before and did not want to start, but once he saw what the phone is capable of he became obsessed. Soon after, he died, and Craig found him. At the funeral, Craig slipped the phone inside Mr. Harrigan’s pocket. That night he called Mr. Harrigan just to hear his voice on the recording. The next morning, he had a text from Mr. Harrigan’s phone. His father told him it was a prank, but Craig was not convinced. Later that year, when a bully beat him up, Craig called Mr. Harrigan and told him what had happened. That night, the bully died, supposedly killing himself while engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation, though his hair turned all white and Craig suspected that Mr. Harrigan had actually had a hand in the death. Craig got a new phone that no longer had the ability to call Mr. Harrigan’s phone and left his old phone in his closet. He went to college to become a writer, but when he heard that his favorite teacher had been killed by a drunk driver, Craig went back home and called Mr. Harrigan from his old phone, then asked him to kill the drunk driver. The drunk driver killed himself the next day, and Craig decided that he had to stop. He threw his old iPhone into the lake, and tried to throw his new one in as well, but he could not give it up.

“The Life of Chuck” is divided into three acts. Marty was living in a crumbling dystopian world that was dying. A divorced English teacher, he spent most of his time alone trying to watch cable despite the spotty connection. He loved his ex-wife, and thought she loved him, but he did not work up the courage to tell her so until the world was literally ending. It is revealed that the world of Marty exists only inside the mind of Chuck, a 39-year-old banker who was dying of a tumor. In Act II, Chuck went to a banking conference in Boston and started dancing with two strangers in the middle of the street. In Act III, Chuck’s parents were killed in a car accident so he was raised by his grandparents. His grandmother taught him how to dance. His grandfather warned him that the cupola was haunted, but Chuck went up and looked in the room and saw the ghost of his future death. Chuck decided to ignore the premonition and live his life to the fullest each day.

“If It Bleeds” begins with a police report documenting a mysterious package delivered to Detective Ralph Anderson from a private investigator he once worked with, Holly Gibney. The narration then switches to omniscient and a man pulls up to a middle school and delivers a bomb. The narration finally zooms in on Holly, who is watching television when a special news announcement breaks in. She watches as the news reporter, Chet Ondowsky, reports on the carnage. Something about the reporter catches in her mind, though, and she finds herself unable to stop thinking about him over the next few days. Finally, she realizes that he had a mole in his first report, but not in any others. She researches him online and discovers that it was not a mole on his face, but a strip of fake mustache. She begins to suspect that he somehow disguised himself as the bomber. She worked on two previous cases involving monsters who disguised themselves as humans, and she was certain that Chet was similar. When an elderly man contacts her and says that he has information on Chet, she flies to meet him at his home. He shows her videos dating back to the sixties of Chet reporting on tragedies, looking slightly different but not enough to mask his appearance entirely. Convinced, Holly contacts Chet and shows him the files she has of him, then demands that he pay her 300,000-dollars in blackmail money if he wants her to stay quiet. They agree to meet at her office to trade the video files for the money, and Holly plans to shoot him as soon as he arrives. But when he arrives he brings her dear friend Barbara as a hostage. Holly thinks they are all going to die, but when Barbara’s brother arrives they are able to collectively overpower Chet and throw him down an elevator shaft, killing him and restoring order.

In “Rat,” Drew was an English professor who had written a couple of short stories but had never been able to finish a novel. His last attempt had given him a nervous breakdown. When he gets an idea for a Western, he decides to go to his cabin despite his wife’s protests and spend a few weeks writing alone. Everything goes well at first, but then he gets sick with pneumonia and he beings to experience anxiety and writer’s block. A storm moves in, trapping him at the cabin. That night, a rat appears and begins to talk to him in the voice of Jonathan Franzen. The rat offers to help him finish the novel in exchange for the death of one of Drew’s close friends. Drew agrees. When the storm clears, he starts to write again. He publishes his book, but his friend dies. He returns to the cabin and sees the rat again, then promises he will never attempt another book again.