Prepare for King Sorrow’s Arrival: Read Joe Hill’s Exclusive Excerpt

By Joe Hill / July 20, 2025 at 12:01 am

Known for books like Horns and NOS4A2 that blend eerie scenarios with dark humor, Joe Hill returns with another genre-bending horror tale that’s expected to hit stores on October 21, 2025 — just in time for Halloween. Read on for an exclusive excerpt of his brand-new novel, King Sorrow.

Hardcover $30.00 ~~$40.00~~

King Sorrow: A Novel

By Joe Hill

In Stock Online

Hardcover $30.00 ~~$40.00~~

Unearthing the depths of Hill’s imagination, this fantastical tale delivers with a villainous dragon steering the ship. It’s a satisfying horror that plays out the pitfalls of the human condition — with a side of romance.

Twenty-three

At some point they made their way to the study and fell into their usual stools around the card table. Arthur wasn’t sure when. He remembered telling Gwen he did want to see a real live dragon . . . and then nothing until they were all sitting around the study, underneath that wall of bright butterflies in their shadow boxes. They were all stoned and determined to stay that way. Later, he believed they stayed high to give themselves moral cover, so they could say they were baked and being silly, and never thought it would work.

Of course they thought it would work.

“King Sorrow was sired by Father Ruin, the oldest of all the dragons to visit Midgard, land of men,” Colin told them, while he poured whiskeys. “He was the only one of his brood not eaten by his mother, Old Char. Sorrow persuaded her that he was too scrawny to eat, that she would choke on his bones. Instead, he said, ‘Eat father while he’s sleeping,’ and handed Old Char her own plump tail, and she devoured herself.”

“The old ouroboros trick,” Arthur said, which got him some looks.

“Dragons usually only come to Midgard to lay eggs—like a migratory bird—but they live in the Long Dark, where they feed on nightmares for most of their long lives. They dream of our world and we dream of theirs. That’s a bit of an ouroboros right there, Arthur,” Colin said.

“Why do you keep talking about the Northern Lights?” Allie asked.

“Not the aurora borealis,” Arthur said. “An ouroboros is the ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail.”

“What’s that a symbol of?”

“I think it means what comes around goes around,” Gwen said.

“Oh,” Allie said. “Well, I’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights. I think they’re romantic. Take me somewhere I can see the Northern Lights sometime, Van?”

“Okay,” Van said. “It’s a plan.”

“King Sorrow has often visited Earth to serve the wicked ends of men,” Colin continued. “His bargains entail having someone to slay or he claims his right to slay you. He may even have served Herod, who died after he drank a goblet of King Sorrow’s tears, a swift poison.”

“You mean Herod from Jesus Christ Superstar?” Donna said.

“And other notable Christian texts,” Arthur said.

“Before that he was with Mithridates,” Colin said. “And afterward with Genghis Khan.”

“Sounds like if your aspiration is to be one of the world’s great mass murderers, King Sorrow is your guy,” Van said.

“Or if you want to be one of the world’s winners,” Donna said.

Colin went on: “Dragons like riddles and wordplay, and King Sorrow is no exception. They enjoy games but have been known to throw terrible tantrums when they lose. Beating a dragon in checkers is a great way to end up with a flattened barn and a whole mess of charred sheep. But they eat pain, not flesh. Oh, they’ll inhale a cow or a family of four, but it’s not really satisfying. The pain and the fear of their prey is the feast.”

“Pretty sure Jayne Nighswander is on the same meal plan,” Gwen said.

Van drummed on the edge of the card table. “Come on. How do we get this clown show started?”

“We’ve already started,” Colin said, looking at each of them in turn, his eyes brilliant with pleasure and purpose. “We needed a story to believe and now we’ve got one. Some of what I just told you is from the journal and some I made up . . . but I knew it was true when I said it.”

“So what now?” Arthur asked.

“There’s a radio dish in Puerto Rico, the Arecibo Observatory, as big as a lake. They use it for radio astronomy. It can detect the faintest signals from hundreds of millions of miles away and transmit as far. That’s what we want to be now. We’re a circle, like that radio dish, and we’re transmitting a signal into the Long Dark. Put the fingers of both hands on the table. Don’t lift them. Then we start asking King Sorrow to make himself available to us. Like when my grandfather and his friends invited Elwood Hondo to say hello.”

“Yo, King Sorrow,” Van said, setting his fingers on the table. “Where you at, bitch?”

“King Sorrow? Can you give us a rap and let us know you’re here?”

“Hello! Calling Radio Dragon, do you copy?”

“Hey! Hey! King Sorrow! Give us a knock!”

So they began, talking over one another, jeering and pleading and requesting his presence with mock formality. At first it felt stupid and Arthur didn’t participate. Donna was roaring, “Come on, you cold-blooded fuck, we’re waiting—give your scales a shake and come on down!” and he stared at the green felt tabletop, fingertips pressed to the surface, and the half-full tumbler of whiskey next to his left hand. His throat was hoarse from all the weed, and he was wondering if anyone would care if he lifted his hand for a sip. He was looking into the tumbler and a reflection of his left eye stared back from the surface of his eighteen-year Talisker . . . then closed in a slow, sly wink.

A tingle of shock spread through his chest and for a moment he was struggling to breathe.

“Water,” he croaked.

“What’s that?” Gwen asked.

“We need a bowl of water,” he said. “To see the Other Face. It worked for Enoch Crane and it will work for us.”

Colin crossed the room to the Cabinet of Curiosities and returned a moment later with the olive-colored helmet that had once belonged to the Russian seer, Wolf Messing. He carried it into the bathroom, and when he returned it was sloshing with water. “If we’re going to attempt lecanomancy, we should use a basin with some power in it.”

“Lecanomancy,” Van said. “I thought we were trying to raise a dragon, not turn someone into a werewolf.”

“Lecanomancy is the art of contacting other worlds through water, usually collected in a sacred dish. The helmet of a Jewish psychic ought to do.” Colin set it in front of Arthur, who looked into the water: a jade darkness. “Let’s try again. Hands on the table.”

This time Arthur was the first to speak. “King Sorrow, will you speak to us? Will you tell us how we may bring you closer?”

“Paging King Sorrow!” Allie cried. “Paging King Sorrow, cleanup on aisle six.”

“C’mon, King Sorrow,” Gwen said. “We have snacks.”

Arthur stared hard at his own reflection, waiting to see the face in the water come to life on its own. The air felt dry, charged. Arthur thought if he touched Gwen, sitting on his left, he would give her the mother of all static electricity zaps.

After a few minutes he shook his head in frustration. “Nothing. This isn’t working.”

“Let me try,” Allie said. He handed her the great, spiny, bleached conch shell (conch shell? Wasn’t it supposed to be a Russian helmet?) and she held it to the side of her face and began to speak into it as if it were a telephone receiver. “King Sorrow? Hello? Operator, can you put me through to King Sorrow?”

“C’mon, you fuckin’ snake,” Donna said. “Slither out of your hole already. The door’s wide open, so come the fuck—”

The door to the hallway slammed shut as if someone had kicked it. Donna screamed and jerked her hands off the table. Arthur almost fell off his stool.

“Fuck my! . . . Fuckin’! . . . Ass!” Donna stammered. “Who did that?”

“I think we know who,” Colin said. Arthur wondered how he could sound so calm. Arthur’s own heart was on a rampage, slugging furiously in his chest.

“Put your fingers back, girl,” Gwen said. “You don’t do something like this halfway.”

Donna gave Gwen a startled, unhappy stare, but put her fingers back on the table.

“I thought twins had identical reactions to things,” Arthur said. “How come you didn’t jump up, Van?”

“Couldn’t,” Van said, his face a rigid blank. “Shit my pants.”

The doorknob turned. The sight gripped Arthur with a dreadful fascination: he could not have been more horrified if he had been watching someone approach him with an ax. He didn’t think he could bear to find out who was on the other side, but when at last the door eased open, it showed only the dimly lit hallway beyond.

“This isn’t funny,” Donna said.

“Never was,” Gwen said.

The door slammed shut again. Donna flinched. Colin didn’t react, his gaze fixed on Allie. She didn’t react either, was listening intently to the great conch shell—yes, she was definitely holding a conch, Arthur didn’t know what had happened to Wolf Messing’s helmet—her eyes remote and far away.

Across the room the doorknob began to turn again.

“No no no!” Donna said. “Don’t come in.”

“Yes!” Arthur shouted over her. “Yes, do. King Sorrow, we invite you in.”

The house groaned and creaked as if it had been struck by a great blast of wind, although outside the night was still. Arthur was briefly gripped with the queerest sensation, a feeling like some giant hand had reached down and given the whole house a sudden sharp twist, as if The Briars itself was a doorknob rotating in a great claw. His stomach turned with it. The others felt it too. He saw Van and Gwen grab the edge of the card table as if they might be flung from their seats. Colin wobbled for balance on his dealer’s stool. The door on the far side of the room sailed gently open . . . only the lights had gone out in the hall and now there was nothing on the other side except (the Long Dark) impenetrable blackness.

Allie passed the hand mirror across the table to Donna (Hand mirror? Wasn’t it a conch shell? What happened to the conch? Arthur wondered. What happened to the helmet?) and stood. Her face was tranquil and empty, her eyes unfocused. She crossed to the player piano, arranged herself on the bench, and began to play. Arthur recognized the theme straight away: “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

The door slammed once more. Donna jumped, almost fell off her stool.

“This is fucked,” she said.

“Look in the mirror,” Van told her. “See what you see.”

“I don’t want to,” Donna said. “I don’t like where this is going.”

“You aren’t Cady Lewis, sis,” Van said, a name Arthur had never heard before. “We’re here. I’m here. I’m with you no matter what happens. All of us.”

Donna lifted the mirror—it had a jagged Y-shaped crack running up the middle that split her face into three misaligned segments—and stared raptly at her own wan reflection.

Behind her, the doorknob began to turn once more. Arthur’s skin crawled and he thought Make it stop but he did nothing to make it stop, not even when the house groaned and shifted again, seemed to rotate beneath them once more. A few books fell off the shelf behind him. Donna came jerkily to her feet, shoving the mirror across the table toward Colin. Van rose a moment later, using the table to push himself unsteadily up. When Arthur looked at him, Van had a pair of white sand dollars placed over his eyes, like coins on the eyes of a corpse. But then he walked around the table, passed behind Colin, and when he came out on the other side his eyes were just his eyes.

The door threw itself open and there was a featureless darkness where the hallway belonged and then an eye the size of a headlight opened sleepily in the darkness. It was a golden eye, stained an infected red, and Arthur found himself choking back a scream—Oh God! He sees us! He sees us all the way from the Long Dark!—and the eye closed again and the darkness was absolute and the door closed very gently once more.

Only Colin and Gwen and Arthur remained at the table now and Arthur’s brow pricked with a rotten sweat and Colin was staring into the helmet filled with water, no sign of the mirror now (or the conch—wasn’t there a conch?). The house lurched. The doorknob was turning again. He didn’t want to see what was in the hall now. Instead, he looked out the French windows . . . and saw himself walk past in the snow out beyond the patio. The sight gave him a jarring sense of dislocation. He began to pant and he shook his head to clear it. I’m not there, I’m here, I’m here, dammit, he told himself, but it didn’t feel true. Later, the others told him he had been the first to leave the table, and he thought probably they were right and he had left some ghost of himself behind to observe the proceedings. A terrible, sickening notion. A terrifying one, to think the soul could so casually be spilled from the body, knocked out of it like whiskey from an overturned tumbler.

The sight of himself was the worst thing yet, and so he turned his gaze away from the window and was immediately sorry. The door yawned wide and the eye all but filled it, was as big as the tire on a tractor. The golden iris was stitched with crimson threads, slit up the middle by the long black line of the pupil. Arthur shut his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see it.

When he opened them again, the door was closed. Colin had placed the helmet brimming with water in front of him. Arthur looked down at his reflection and his reflection gazed blankly back. When the face in the water began to speak—lips moving, although only Arthur heard the voice in his mind, a voice that was not his own—the tongue that flickered out was black and forked.

Arthur stared fixedly into the water and learned what was expected of him.