Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

Plot

On a cross-country red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Boston, ten passengers awaken to find that the crew and most of their fellow passengers have disappeared, leaving the airliner under the control of the autopilot. They realise that only those who were sleeping are now left on the plane. Off-duty airline pilot Brian Engle takes control from the autopilot and lands the plane in Bangor, Maine despite protests from the irritable Craig Toomy, who is obsessed with going to Boston.

Upon arrival, they find the airport abandoned with no signs of life. Hearing an approaching sound like radio static, the group agrees to leave before it arrives. Based on the belief that they have flown through a "time rip" into the past and that flying back into the rip will return them to their own time, the passengers work together to refuel the plane as the noise gets louder. Having lost touch with reality, Craig believes the others to be manifestations of the Langoliers, monsters his now-deceased father described when Craig was a child, chasing and devouring those who are lazy and waste time. He stabs Dinah, a young blind girl with psychic powers, and kills Don Gaffey, before being subdued. Dinah insists that Craig must not be killed as the group needs him alive.

While the plane is in its final preparations to depart Bangor, Dinah telepathically communicates with Craig and persuades him that an important board meeting is being held on the runway. Craig hallucinates arriving at the meeting and even confronts his fear of disappointing his father. Then hundreds of monsters arrive, floating spheres with chainsaw-like teeth, which leave trails of black nothingness in their wake. They initially head for the plane, but Craig's presence on the runway (which also results in them erasing Craig) distracts them long enough to allow Engle to start the plane. As they turn to the west, the passengers watch the rest of the land below falling into a formless, black void.

Bob Jenkins, a mystery writer, proposes the idea that the Langoliers' purpose is to clean up what's left of the past by eating it. Dinah succumbs to her injuries and the other characters realise that the trip through the rip has allowed them to come to terms with their regrets. Because they need to be asleep to survive the rip again, another passenger, Nick Hopewell, volunteers to fly the plane through, knowing that this will cost him his life. The cabin pressure is decreased, and everyone falls into a deep sleep, except for Nick, who is wearing an emergency oxygen mask. He flies the plane through the rip and, seconds after restoring the cabin pressure to revive the others, he disappears.

The survivors awaken, unharmed except for nosebleeds caused by the drop in air pressure. Seemingly, nothing has changed: the world below shows no signs of life. The plane lands in a deserted Los Angeles. Concluding that now the time rift has brought them a short distance into the future, the group takes shelter against a wall to avoid the airport's human traffic and wait for the present to catch up to them. A wave of rising noise and motion hits them and they find themselves in the present again.