There was a time when I was far more obsessed with material things than I am now. When I was a teenager – when every bit of my income (pocket money) was essentially expendable, and when I had the time to do nothing with my weekends and evenings other than indulge in the stuff I loved – I was able to read every book I wanted from the library, listen to every album that my friends copied for me, and rent those terrible films from the video shop that were, frankly, a waste of everybody's time. And a lot of the King novels that I took out of the library I then wanted to buy, because I thought I'd read them again and again, to soak them in.

I wanted to buy Cycle of the Werewolf, but it was just so expensive. So I saved. I bought it over Misery. That's not a choice I'm necessarily proud of, now. Now, I realise, it's almost the very definition of a book that would have been better off staying in the library. Not because it's bad or anything, but because it's just so slight. (In the comments of the last Rereading, somebody wished me luck writing about this for an article. I get their point: I'd forgotten what a slip of a book this actually was.)

So: 1983, King, wrote what really only amounts to a short story but was sold as a novella about a werewolf. It's structured really neatly, actually: there are 12 chapters, one for each month of a year, and each chapter features a single incident during the lunar cycle where the titular werewolf attacks somebody. So it's a countdown – and we know that King loves his countdowns – as we go from January to December. Each month brings with it a new victim, a new (very) short story about them, and so the body count and the threat of the werewolf rises. And it's also nearly a puzzle, as the characters that are killed interact with the werewolf. In some circumstances, characters see the werewolf change, and they know who it is before we do. When Alfie Knopfler, the owner of the local diner (The Chat'n'Chew) sees the werewolf first, his narrative refers to the character who changes as "the customer". So it's a puzzle, but irritatingly, not one that we can solve: the narrative just outs the werewolf as being Reverend Lester Lowe, the town's priest. From then on, it's a matter of following him towards his death at the hands of 10-year-old paraplegic Marty, the closest thing this story has to a protagonist.

It's a conventional, well-told tale that would have made a perfectly fine short story in one of the many collections King would ultimately put out. So why was it published by itself? Well, it's illustrated. There's are some pieces of art by Bernie Wrightson in the book, one for each month of the cycle, and they show key moments of action – almost all involving the werewolf about to dig into that month's victim, and all in a style that's part fine art, part comic book. But they're still essentially markers, and the bulk of the text – if that's the right word – is the story itself.

So, the content is fine, the package is nice, it was expensive for what it was: so why did I buy it? I think the answer lies in the question, why does this exist in the first place? King fans wanted more. We wanted everything. I was into comics, and it felt like King had somehow found a way to slip between the worlds of the things that I liked. And I was indicative of a larger audience that King had: those who wanted the traditional horror, who wanted to be scared or chilled. It made sense that this man who wrote Salem's Lot and Cujo would one day write a werewolf story. King, for his part, was in his furious writing phase – addictions and all – and churning the stories out. It makes sense he would want to get them onto shelves. He puts them out, we buy them. It's how publishing works.

What's most interesting to me is this, however: I didn't begrudge it. At the time, I didn't question the value of this. The art, the story – and I do really like it – they were a package I enjoyed. It's mid-tier King, clearly, and it's hard to find in a lot of bookshops, so maybe my initial reading experience was the right one: that this is something to take from a library to read in the 20 minutes it'll take you, to admire the art and how closely it mirrors the world King has created, and how evocative it can be when mixed with your own imagination. For Collectors Only sometimes gets used as a slur, but it shouldn't be. This is a book collectors and King superfans will love. Everybody else might just wonder what the fuss is about.

One last thing. I don't want to harp on about King's addictions, but it's hard not to, when you know they were there during the writing. This was mid-addiction, and there's something basic and obvious about it when you know that: a mild-mannered man, turned into a monster by forces out of his control. And what hits hardest is the Reverend Lowe's explanation of why this happens. It's not that he was bitten, he explains: he simply picked some flowers. He picked some flowers to put into a vase, and they died far too quickly – as soon as he had them in his hands. After that, he lost all control. Marty begins sending him notes that suggest he would be better off killing himself. "Why don't you end it all?" one note reads, because that way, he would be protecting others from himself. And he doesn't consider it, because he's selfish. He didn't ask for the problem: it just found him.

It's one of the frankest depictions of King's addictions you'll find in his books. It's blunt, painful, and quite devastatingly sad.

Next time: King writes a parallel world post-apocalypse with his horror novel chum Peter Straub: The Talisman.