"Uncle Otto's Truck" is a

horror Horror may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Genres *Horror fiction, a genre of fiction ** Japanese horror, Japanese horror fiction **Korean horror, Korean horror fiction * Horror film, a film genre *Horror comics, comic books focusing o ...

short story by

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...

, first published in '' Yankee'' in 1983, and collected in King's 1985 collection '' Skeleton Crew''.

Plot summary

The story concerns an abandoned red Cresswell truck owned by Otto Schenck and George McCutcheon, wealthy Castle Rock businessmen in the post-depression era. After Schenck deliberately crushes McCutcheon beneath his derelict vehicle, the murderer becomes fixated on the truck. Schenck insists that the truck is not only moving on its own accord, but planning to kill him. At the same time, he becomes a social recluse, living in a house he built across from the truck itself, and generally begins to lose his sanity. Schenck's nephew, who tells the story, finally finds him dead – the corpse has been drowned with

motor oil Motor oil, engine oil, or engine lubricant is any one of various substances used for the lubrication of internal combustion engines. They typically consist of base oils enhanced with various additives, particularly antiwear additives, deterg ...

and there is a

spark plug A spark plug (sometimes, in British English, a sparking plug, and, colloquially, a plug) is a device for delivering electric current from an ignition system to the combustion chamber of a spark-ignition engine to ignite the compressed fuel/air ...

rammed down his throat. The nephew goes on to describe how, on the day he found his uncle dead, he began to see strange happenings with the truck himself. Also, he couldn't accept his uncle's death as a suicide because there was no jug near the body with which Otto could have fed himself the oil. The nephew would dismiss what he saw as a hallucination, were it not for the derelict spark plug he took away from the corpse and kept as a reminder.

Adaptations

"Uncle Otto's Truck" has been adapted by artist Glenn Chadbourne for the book '' The Secretary of Dreams'', a collection of comics based on King's short fiction released by Cemetery Dance in December 2006. "Uncle Otto's Truck" has also been adapted into a short film via King's "Dollar Baby" program, and was directed by Brian Johnson in 2019. On September 20, 2019, Wreak Havoc Productions, LLC released the premiere of their adaptation of ''Uncle Otto's Truck'' as part of Stephen King's Dollar Baby Program. This version was written and directed by Dan Sellers, and starring Michael Burke as Otto Schenck and Jennie Stencel as the Narrator.

References

External links

"Uncle Otto's Truck" at StephenKing.com
* 1983 short stories Short stories adapted into films Short stories by Stephen King Short stories set in Maine Horror short stories Works originally published in Yankee (magazine) {{1980s-horror-story-stub

Plot summary

Adaptations

See also

References

External links