In their boat in the channel, the last two human residents of Crockett Island - both teenagers, its final generation - watch as the sunlight falls on the shore. The fires burning across the island are joined by more flames, scintillating and golden, that light up across the beach.

"I did some things tonight...bad things."

The dead consuming the living, an inverse of the natural process of decomposition. The old consuming the young, an inverse of the natural process of childbirth and parenting. They come out at night, when the sun is asleep, God isn't looking, and the natural order can be challenged. When children are found missing the next dawn, it's a victory of the night over the day, the past over the future, that which should be dead over that which should have gotten to live.

The old priest, Father Pruitt, is not in the hospital. He did not fall ill during his Israel trip, at least not precisely.

After watching the first episode, I was surprised to learn that this wasn't an actual Stephen King project.