by Rocky Wood
Looking into the cell we see Molly’s clothes. “Surrounding them is a vaguely humanoid shape made of gray fluff … looks like the stuff that comes out of a vacuum cleaner bag. At the end of one dusty ‘arm’ is Chinga, lying on her back and peering up into the shadows.”
The final scene takes us to DeMeara Heights, Chapel Hill, North Carolina where Polly is having tea with her new doll. Polly is now Sally and Melissa is “Mrs. Drake.” Polly/Sally holds the doll up, smiles radiantly at it and says, “Chinga!”
It is clear that Molly is very different to Chinga. Using the same characters and with the full participation of Mulder, it takes a totally different tack as to the basic storyline, with a nasty doppelganger/extrusion rather than a possessed doll.
Of the two, Molly is much the better and more interesting story. Carter, as Master of the X-Files Universe, of course had every right to seek a storyline more in tune with the “reality” he created and the flow of his series. However, it is a shame that the imaginative, interesting and fast-paced story created by King in Molly was, as a result, lost to King fans and students alike. Investigation has confirmed that there is no possibility of King ever allowing publication or circulation of Molly.
King, as quoted in Cinescape Presents The X-Files Yearbook (1998), “would happily repeat the experience,” and had “already concocted an idea for a future plot.” In an amusing aside he noted he would not do an X-Files novel, excepting one in which “Mulder and Scully go to bed together.”
47 Cinescape Presents The X-Files Yearbook (ISSN: 1077-3363, 1998), p.15
Comb Dump (Undated)
Rocky Wood “rediscovered” this story in Box 1012 at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono during a research trip in December 2002. As the box is unrestricted readers who attend the Library may read this partial story.
The 41 page double-spaced undated manuscript, headed “by Stephen King,” is incomplete and there is no indication that King ever continued writing it past the point at which it ends. It can be presumed he lost interest in the story, intriguing though the developments in it are.
In this story fragment a young cocaine addict decides to attend a rehabilitation clinic. Tommy Brigham, only twenty-one years old, had watched one of his young addict friends, Roy Duchien, suffer a stroke after taking cocaine. Brigham became the sole remaining of Duchien’s so-called friends still helping him shortly after the stroke. As a result of observing the damage, and a conversation with a young doctor at Augusta General, Tommy decided to kick his habit.
Brigham then worked for seven months on a construction job and for a short time became a drug dealer to accrue half the money he needed to check in to the Cold Strap Psychiatric Hospital. The remaining half of the $18,000 fee for the 28 day course at Cold Strap was to be paid by Blue Cross. The Hospital, a stand-alone complex, set in the countryside, was 16 miles north of Augusta, Maine. The hospital was in a Y shape with the adult and juvenile dependency units in the left arm, administration in the downstroke and the psychiatric ward in the right arm. The adult dependency ward had 26 beds. Violent inmates were sent to the Quiet Room.
Brigham had an old black comb in his pocket when he checked into Cold Strap. It had three broken teeth in the middle and a little broken jagged bit at one end. He couldn’t find it when he was leaving his apartment until he conducted a lengthy search. This gave the comb talismanic qualities in Brigham’s mind. The comb started to replicate a week after he checked in, with absolutely exact replicas mysteriously continuing to appear until there were six in total.
Concerned for his sanity, Tommy approached George, an orderly. George confirmed the combs were real and exact duplicates. As a teenager and for most of his 20s George had also been a heroin addict but he’d been clean for nine years when Brigham came to the Hospital, and he was doing post-graduate work in substance abuse counselling. At this point the story fragment ends.
No timeline is given but the story is certainly set after 1984, as that was the year the Hospital began treating junkies, and probably in the mid to late 1980s. Due to the tale’s setting at The Cold Strap Psychiatric Hospital, sixteen miles north of Augusta, Maine it is naturally enough classified as a Maine Street Horror story.
There are strong links with other King fictional tales through the fact the same corporation that owns the Cold Strap Psychiatric Hospital also owns the Juniper Hill Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Juniper Hill is also mentioned in Bag of Bones, Cell, The Dark Half, Gerald’s Game, Insomnia, Needful Things, the Nightmares & Dreamscapes version of Suffer the Little Children, The Tommyknockers, Cell and It (see feature panel).
An even stronger link is the fact that the town of Derry is said to be upstate from Augusta. Derry is second only to Castle Rock as King’s best-known fictional town. It is a key location in Autopsy Room Four, Bag of Bones, The Bird and the Album, Insomnia, It, The Road Virus Heads North and Secret Window, Secret Garden. It receives considerable mention in both Dreamcatcher and The Tommyknockers and is also mentioned in The Body, The Dark Half, Dolores Claiborne, Gerald’s Game, Hearts in Atlantis, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, Pet Sematary, The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson, The Running Man, Storm of the Century, Under the Dome and Uncle Otto’s Truck.
As always, King had already introduced some other interesting characters by the point at which this manuscript ends. For instance, another patient who was probably called “Ray” was an ancient drunk with thick bowed-glasses and hearing aids. He died the first night.
The wonderfully named Billy Boggs was Tommy Brigham’s original roommate at Cold Strap. Employed by a private trash collection company in Derry he would take old medicines from the garbage. He’d checked in to kick the habit. One wonders if he had collected trash from the homes of any other King characters?
One other character with a spectacular name is Bongo Bill Bongarsarian, who ran the Bongarsarian Billiard Hall in Augusta. It was located between a barbershop and a dirty bookshop. When Bongo Bill sold Brigham cocaine to deal on the streets he advised him to get out of the game as soon as possible.
This is an unusual King story in that the early part is set in Augusta, the state capital of Maine, a city rarely visited in depth in King’s fiction. A number of businesses are mentioned, including a drug store at which a young employee had developed a taste for his own product; the Augusta High School, to whose students Brigham sold cocaine; The Oven, a pizza place at which he also sold his drugs, but only for one day; and the University of Maine at Augusta (he sold his product there next to the cannons).
All in all, this story is hard to assess, as it is just getting interesting at the point where the manuscript ends. What was causing Brigham’s comb to replicate perfectly? After the reader, along with Brigham, wonders about his sanity, George the orderly seems to close off that option. Why did King tentatively title the story Comb Dump? We can only presume the story moves to a psychiatric hospital for a very good reason, but what is it? Atmosphere? The reaction of other inmates/patients?
The answers to these questions will probably remain unrevealed; as it is most unlikely King will ever return to this tale.
The Juniper Hill Asylum for the Criminally Insane
Probably King’s most famous mental asylum, and as well-known as Shawshank Prison to his Constant Readers, it is revealed in Comb Dump that Juniper Hill is owned by the same corporation as The Cold Strap Psychiatric Hospital. Importantly, the corporation bought Juniper Hill from the State in August 1983.
In The Dark Half Dolly Arsenault claims Juniper Hill is not far from Castle Rock and from It we know that it is near the Sidney town line. In Cell we are told it is in Augusta. We also know from Bag of Bones and It that the asylum has a Blue Ward Wing and from It that it has a Red Ward. Comb Dump reveals that violent inmates were sent to the Rubber Room.
Its residents over the years include the following characters. (Note: Cass Knowles was sent to “a place” in Augusta after she killed her son in 1939 in Sword i
n the Darkness, and it is quite possible that place was either Juniper Hill or Cold Strap).
Name Story Crime; Dates of Incarceration
Benny Beaulieu It Pyromania; 1985
Henry Bowers It Murder; 1979 - 30 May 1985
Nettie Cobb Needful Things Murder; 1977 - 1982
Franklin D’Cruz It Rape
George de Ville It Murder; 1962 - ?
Jimmy Donlin It Murder/Cannibalism; 1965 - ?
Raymond Joubert Gerald’s Game Sex Crimes 1979 - 1984
Bill Keeton Needful Things Unknown; c. 1977 - 1982
Charles Pickering Insomnia Arson; 1982 - 1983
Emily Sidley Suffer the Little Children Murder
Arlen Weston It Unknown
Among the known guards were Adler, Fogarty and the amusingly named John Koontz (It).
The Crate (1979)
The Crate is one of King’s quirky horror tales in the tradition of EC Comics. It was first published in a men’s magazine, Gallery for July 1979. Within months King had included a revised version of the story in his 1st Draft Screenplay of Creepshow and the story also appeared, again revised, in the graphic collection of the same name released in 1982. A separate chapter of this book reviews the Creepshow screenplay.
This chapter concentrates on the text version, to which too few King fans have had access. We presume that, after using the story for the Creepshow “comic” book and film, King saw no need to allow its reproduction in one of his prose collections, as it had already “appeared.”
Some faint hope remains that King will one day allow stories such as this and Weeds to appear in one of his short story collections. In the meantime readers will need to acquire Gallery, which resells for over $100 per copy, or one of the anthologies that included the story. They are: Fantasy Annual III, edited by Terry Carr (Timescape Books, 1981); Arbor House Treasury of Horror & The Supernatural, edited by Bill Pronzini, Barry Malzberg and Martin Greenberg (Arbor House, 1981); Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, (Galahad Books, 1985); Classic Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (William Morrow/Avon Books, 1991); The Giant Book of Horror Stories (Magpie Books, 1991); and Shivers VI edited by Richard Chizmar (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2010). All these anthologies with the exception of Fantasy Annual III and Shivers VI were edited by Pronzini, Malzberg and Greenberg and are basically the same volume published under different titles.
In this America Under Siege tale a dropped quarter leads to tragedy and release. When a janitor flipped a quarter but failed to catch it the coin rolled under the basement stairs of Amberson Hall, the Zoology Department building at Horlicks University. Looking for the quarter, he discovered an unusual crate carrying the date June 19, 1834 and bearing the inscription “Arctic Expedition.” He contacted Dexter Stanley, who noted from the stencils on the box it had first come from Paella. He later told his friend Northrup:
Paella is a very small island south of Tierra del Fuego … Perhaps the smallest island ever inhabited by the race of man. A number of Easter Island monoliths were found there just after World War II. Not very interesting compared to their bigger brothers, but every bit as mysterious.
When Northrup later pointed out that Tierra del Fuego is near the Antarctic, not the Arctic, Stanley replied that in those days the terms sub-arctic, Antarctic and Antarctica had not been invented. “In those days there was only the north arctic and the south arctic.”
Together, Stanley and the janitor opened the crate, Stanley telling Northrup later, “We opened the crate … God help us, Henry, we opened the crate.” As the boards were removed a strange whistle began to emanate from within, “…no cheerful whistle this, but something like an ugly, hysterical shriek by a tantrumy child. And this suddenly dropped and thickened into a low, hoarse growling sound. It was not loud, but it had a primitive, savage sound that stood Dex Stanley’s hair up on the slant.” A strange creature then grabbed and killed the janitor, “...something with huge claws. It tore at the janitor’s straining, knotted throat and severed his jugular vein.” Stanley froze, watching the body being slowly dragged into the crate before finally running for help, right into graduate student Charlie Gereson who, when told what had happened, was clearly disbelieving. Gereson insisted on investigating and was also killed. As it savaged Gereson “…the thing raised its head and those small green-gold eyes stared balefully into Dex’s own. He had never seen or dreamed such savagery.”
Stanley ran again, this time to confide in his good friend Henry Northrup. Henry, conceiving a plan, drugged Dexter and left a note tricking his own shrewish wife Wilma into coming to Amberson Hall later that night. He then pushed Wilma to the creature and her death (“Just tell it to call you Billie, you bitch”). Northrup cleaned up and disposed of the crate, creature and victims intact, into the depths of Ryder’s Quarry. Henry received some small payback for his deed when he peered into the crate, “I saw Wilma’s face, Dex. Her face … I saw her eyes, looking up at me from that box. Her glazed eyes.”
The next morning Northrup calmly told Stanley what he’d done, “I’ve killed Wilma. Ding-dong the wicked bitch is dead … I’ve killed my wife, and now I’ve put myself into your hands.” After again considering Wilma’s nature (“He thought of his friend, at last free of that other species of Tasmanian devil that killed more slowly but just as surely – by heart attack, by stroke, by ulcer, by high blood pressure, yammering and whistling in the ear all the while”). Stanley agreed to keep their secret, “Dex smiled slowly, ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘After all, what are friends for?’”
Of course the story was adapted in King’s own screenplay for a segment in the 1982 George Romero directed movie, Creepshow. In The Crate segment Hal Holbrook played Henry Northrup, Adrienne Barbeau appeared as Wilma Northrup and Fritz Weaver as Dexter Stanley.
Beahm states:48
The original inspiration came from a real-life incident at the University of Maine at Orono, where an old crate dating back to the previous century had been discovered in the basement of one of the buildings on campus. What, King thought, could have been in that crate?
This story is set in August of 1974, while the Creepshow segment (the only one given a timeline) is set in August of 1980.
In the Introduction to the anthologies listed above edited by Pronzini, Malzberg and Greenberg, King acknowledges “ripping off” a device from Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart when a cackling Henry Northrup pushes his wife to the creature, and death:
In the Poe classic, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the murdering narrator tells his story in a kind of cackling frenzy, laughing as he explains how cleverly he got rid of the old man’s body … (and I quite consciously ripped the device off in my own story, “The Crate,” where the narrator laughs uncontrollably as he pushes his bitch of a wife under the stairs where she is awaited by a monster of such ferocity that it is really a cartoon).
There are a couple of very interesting links from this story to other King fiction. Stanley and Northrup teach at Horlicks University (although no town and state is given). This university also appears in The Raft, also first published in Gallery. The unfortunate victims of the creature in the lake in that tale were students. There is no timeline for that story, but we know it occurred after 1981, which also means after the events covered by The Crate.
In the clearest of links King toys with hard-core fans in his 1983 novel, Christine. There Jimmy Sykes’ uncle said there was an opening for a janitor at the unnamed college where he worked, because the other janitor had disappeared! Regina and Michael Cunningham, the parents of Christine’s owner Arnie, taught at Horlicks before their deaths at the hands of the demonic car on the same day as their son, 19 January 1979.
In From a Buick 8, Curtis Wilcox wanted to take some science courses at Horlicks and even wore one of their t-shirts. This was the first mention of Horlicks in a King story since Christine was published, nineteen years earlier. Of the various tales The Crate tells us the most about Horlicks, which was founded in 1672. Female students were firs
t allowed to attend in 1888. Amberson Hall was also known as the “Old Zoology” building and was being replaced by the new Cather Hall.
Ryder’s Quarry, into which the Crate was dumped, has a tragic history. Twelve miles from Horlicks University some said it was over 400 feet deep. A dozen people had drowned there between 1944 and 1974. It is only in The Raft that readers discover Horlicks is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania connection remains in Christine and From a Buick 8, despite the location of Horlicks not being clearly identified in those novels.
There is one apparent error in the tale. The early part of the story, describing the creature’s seizing of the janitor, reads: “Something as dry and brown and scaly as a desert reptile came out of the crate – something with huge claws.” Later, when the creature caught Gereson, Stanley “…caught a glimpse of a furry, writhing shape spread-eagled on the young man’s chest…” And, later again, when Northrup described what he saw of the creature to Stanley, “‘I saw something else, too. Something white. A bone, I think. And a black something. Furry. Curled up. Whistling, too. A very low whistle. I think it was sleeping.’” It seems unlikely the creature could be scaly and furry.
