I've read through most (but not all) of the comments and fail to find any acknowledgement of the Lovecraft inspiration. King was clearly inspired by the mythos character Nyarlathotep in the guise of The Dark Man, yet dropped the obvious candidate for the creatures appearance and moved on without further comment. The ending was Lovecraftian in its way, but you had to get through a rather awkward scene full of name-dropping filled with references to Mary Shelley. I still loved the story, but these were two aspects of the story that I was rather disappointed with.