Like “Drunken Fireworks,” “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” (in the 1985 collection Skeleton Crew) explores some of the tensions between summer people and Castle Rock’s year round residents, though Homer Buckland likes Ophelia (‘Phelia) Todd a lot better than the McCauslands like the Massimos across the lake. Homer is the caretaker for the Todds’ summer place, though he and Ophelia Todd have a friendly, bantering relationship, particularly when it comes to her obsession with finding shortcuts between her and her husband’s year-round home in Bangor and their place on Castle Lake. 

‘Phelia keeps a detailed list of the routes she has tried and the miles she’s logged, determined to shave as many miles and minutes as possible. She methodically lays these out for Homer one afternoon as he grouts the bathroom tile, running through a litany of highways and roads, telling him that her current best route is “across Speckled Bird Mountain on 219 to 202 beyond Lewiston. Then if you take Route 19, you can get around Augusta. Then you take the Old Derry Road. That way is just 129.2 [miles]” (213). He listens with interest (and a bit of incredulity) and finds his imagination snagged by ‘Phelia’s dedication to and appreciation of these back roads, thinking that: 

maybe there are lots of roads all over that are just going begging; roads with rock walls beside them, real roads with blackberry bushes growing alongside them but nobody to eat the berries but the birds and gravel pits with old rusted chains hanging down in low curves in front of their entryways, the pits themselves as forgotten as children’s old toys with scrumgrass growing up their deserted unremembered sides. (213)

The possibilities of these roads and journeys are endless. 

One night, Homer takes ‘Phelia Todd up on her offer to check out her latest shortcut and he gets more than he could have ever imagined. ‘Phelia’s route takes them off the beaten path and into another world, where trees reach out to grab them and monsters lurk in the shadows. She drives fast, looking beautiful, powerful, and free, getting them safely to their destination in impossibly fast time. While Homer takes the long way home after this, ‘Phelia is enamored with the shortcuts, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, looking younger and more beautiful with each trip, right up until she disappears. 

‘Phelia Todd’s shortcuts sure seem to be thinnys, places between worlds where reality is thin and it’s possible to slip between the worlds. Thinnys feature prominently in King’s epic Dark Tower series (1982-2004, 2012), serving as bridges between different universes, both spatially and temporally, reminding readers that Roland Deschain’s Midworld is right next door to ours, separated by only the thinnest of membranes. There is a similar breakdown of the barriers between worlds in King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman (1984) and Black House (2001), where the “real” world and the world of the Territories blur together. Lisey’s Story (2006), From a Buick 8 (2008), and the Hulu series Castle Rock (2018-2019) also feature these passages and slippages between worlds, though they are described in different ways and may go by different names. Wherever they appear and however they may differ, they are uniformly unsettling, powerful, and dangerous—the world encountered on the other side may be separated from the “real” but the dangers there can be deadly and it’s not always possible to find one’s way back. 

“Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” has an enigmatically happy ending: ‘Phelia comes back for Homer, looking even younger and more beautiful, and he leaves Castle Rock to set off on a grand adventure in her passenger seat. As ‘Phelia’s shortcuts and King’s thinnys remind readers, there are infinite possibilities, if we’re willing to venture off the beaten path and aren’t afraid to look deep into the shadows we find there. 

[Page numbers from Skeleton Crew are from the Signet/New American Library 1986 paperback edition]