Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatcher is a 2001 science fiction horror novel by American writer Stephen King, featuring elements of body horror, suspense and alien invasion. King wrote the book in longhand while recovering from a 1999 car crash and completed it in half a year; the working title was Cancer, and his wife Tabitha King persuaded him to change it. A film adaptation was released in 2003.

The four central characters are Gary Jones, Pete Moore, Joe Clarendon and Henry Devlin, who as teenagers rescued Douglas Cavell, an older boy with Down syndrome, from a group of sadistic bullies. Their friendship with him gave them their unusual abilities, which are described in terms of telepathy, shared dreaming and seeing the line, the psychic trace movement leaves behind. The novel is set near the fictional town of Derry, Maine.

At the lodge, two of the friends encounter a disoriented stranger wandering in a blizzard talking about lights in the sky, and the stranger is a victim of abduction who becomes ill and dies, after which an extraterrestrial parasite emerges from his body and attacks them. The plot therefore joins a reunion story to an invasion story, and the military's response is part of the threat rather than a remedy. King has since said publicly that he dislikes the book and that he wrote it while taking Oxycontin for pain after the crash.