10 Endings Stephen King Actually Got Right
4. Revival
Revival is King's take on the Frankenstein story, with Reverend Jacobs stepping in for the mad doctor and Jamie Morton being the Igor character. However, King (naturally) takes the dark twist on the story even further than Mary Shelley did all those years ago.
Jacobs's 'crime' is to use electricity to cure various people of illnesses. This is seen as a miracle cure by the recipients, yet for Jacobs it is all a means to an end. He travels from town to town, years after he loses his wife and child in a horrific car accident, experimenting with the power at his hands.
Jamie meets him as a child and then later again as a troubled adult. They are linked, as Jamie was the first person that Jacobs ever showed his powers too. Jacobs has however fallen so deep into his obsession that there is no kindness or warmth there.
He tricks Jamie into accompanying him on his ultimate experiment. He plans to revive a woman from the dead using his electricity. Though he suceeds, he is shown a portal into the next world - a Lovecraftian hellscape, full of misery and doom. The act kills Jacobs and costs every patient of his to suffer immediate and awful side effects, resulting in many, many murders.
Revival is King's take on playing God - offering a dark view into the mind of a madman.