The Complete Stephen King Universe

by Stanley Wiater

  JOHNNY B. GOODE: The mysterious maintenance man of Kingdom Hospital, he doesn’t appear in the flesh until the last episode. Johnny is played by none other than Stephen King.

  KINGDOM HOSPITAL: TRIVIA

  • When Dr. Stegman makes a call to Maintenance, Johnny B. Goode’s fillin Hawk is reading the Stephen King book Bag of Bones.

  • Castle Rock is mentioned in episode 4.

  • The series includes a now seemingly de rigueur Hitchcock-style cameo from its creator, as King appears in the last episode as the elusive maintenance man, Johnny B. Goode. King also did voice work in episode 6.

  • While Rickman lays bleeding, a Nozz-A-La soda truck passes by the scene of the accident. Nozz-A-La is a brand of soda mentioned in several volumes of the Dark Tower series.

  • When jogging, Rickman is wearing a “Little Tall” T-shirt, referencing the island setting of Storm of the Century and Dolores Claiborne.

  • The Gates Falls Mill is in Lewiston, Maine … but King once wrote about another mill located in a town called Gates Falls—in the short story “Graveyard Shift.”

  • In the series finale, Peter Rickman, traveling back in time, uses a mysterious piece of chalk to draw a fire extinguisher that he uses to douse the flames that threaten to consume the Gates Falls Mill, exhibiting abilities similar to those displayed by Patrick Danville in The Dark Tower VII.

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  RELATED TALES

  “Jerusalem’s Lot” (from 1974’s Night Shift)

  A Lovecraftian-style tale that introduces a dark prehistory for the novel ’Salem’s Lot. Other than the southern Maine setting, the two stories seem to have nothing in common, but the story is still valuable for its fleshing out of a location vital to the Stephen King Universe. It concerns the resurgence of an old horror where it had been thought vanquished, and the connection that malignant presence seems to have to one family in particular.

  “JERUSALEM’S LOT”: PRIMARY SUBJECTS

  CHARLES BOONE: In 1850, Charles had inherited his family home, called Chapelwaite, which was located in or around Jerusalem’s Lot. He moved there with his companion, Calvin McCann, and later discovered a horrible evil dwelling beneath the town. Apparently it had initially been called there by a cult led by his ancestor, James Boon.

  JAMES BOON: An ancestor of Charles Boone’s. According to this tale, he founded Jerusalem’s Lot in 1710. However, this is in contradiction to another local belief among the townspeople, which sets forth that the town was founded by a farmer named Charles Belknap Tanner. James Boon was apparently a religious leader who worshipped old, dark powers, until those forces claimed him.

  JAMES ROBERT BOONE: The last survivor of the Boone family line. In 1971, he moves into Chapelwaite, and the horrors Charles Boone confronted twelve decades earlier begin to resurface. The fate of James Robert Boone is unknown.

  CALVIN MCCANN: Charles Boone’s friend and companion, who is killed by the worm.

  THE WORM: An ancient, demonic creature, it was apparently worshipped by James Boon and his followers in the eighteenth century. Later, when its existence is threatened by Charles Boone and Calvin McCann, it rises again to attack them, killing McCann in the process.

  DEMON DWELLINGS (by Degoudge): A book of horrid, arcane knowledge used by James Boon in the religious guidance offered to the cult that sprang up around him in Jerusalem’s Lot.

  MYSTERIES OF THE WORM: Another book of terrible magic and ritual, used in connection with worship of the demonic worm. Only five copies were known to exist as of 1850, and one of those was burned by Charles Boone.

  “Graveyard Shift” (from 1974’s Night Shift)

  A particularly gruesome narrative, “Graveyard Shift” concerns a drifter named Hall who has lately come to work at a mill in Gates Falls, Maine. Over the Fourth of July holiday, he agrees to help with a cleanup that is many years overdue. During the job, he and the cleanup crew encounter giant, mutated rat-creatures in a sub-subbasement.

  “GRAVEYARD SHIFT”: PRIMARY SUBJECTS

  HALL: A worker at the mill; it is Hall’s hatred of Warwick, the foreman, that causes him to insist—almost in the form of a challenge—that they descend into the sub-subbasement and clean the rats out. Hall is devoured by the monster rodents.

  WARWICK: The mill’s tyrannical foreman, he is consumed by the huge, blind queen of the rats.

  HARRY WISCONSKY: One of Hall’s coworkers, he has the misfortune to join Hall and Warwick on their descent into the hellish sub-subbasement, but turns and runs, saving his own life. Harry Wisconsky’s current whereabouts are unknown.

  “One for the Road” (from 1974’s Night Shift)

  While Night Shift’s initial offering, “Jerusalem’s Lot,” is a prequel to the novel ’Salem’s Lot (1975), “One for the Road” is the novel’s coda. The story establishes a long-term legend that will surround the town for generations. During a massive blizzard in Maine, a pair of old-timers try to save a family from the vampires that still haunt ’Salem’s Lot.

  “ONE FOR THE ROAD”: PRIMARY SUBJECTS

  BOOTH: During the blizzard, Booth is at Tookey’s, his favorite watering hole, when a tourist from New York stumbles in covered with frostbite. When Booth learns that the man had gotten his car stuck while trying to take the unplowed road through ’Salem’s Lot—and left his wife and daughter in the car while he went for help—Booth is a lot more concerned about marauding vampires than the idea that the tourist’s wife and daughter might freeze to death. He, Tookey, and the tourist head out to try to rescue them, only to find that they have already been turned into vampires. He is almost the victim of the little girl, now a vampire, but Tookey saves him. Booth’s current whereabouts are unknown.

  HERB TOOKLANDER: The owner of Tookey’s Bar, he closes for the night to try to save the tourist family. During the evening, he has a heart attack, but still manages to save Booth by throwing a bible at the little girl vampire. Tookey dies two years later, peacefully, during the night.

  GERARD LUMLEY: A tourist from New York who foolishly tries to drive on an unplowed stretch of highway in the middle of a blizzard. The car becomes snowbound, and while he goes for help, his family is turned into vampires. Later, when he returns with help, Lumley is either killed or turned into a vampire.

  FRANCIE LUMLEY: Lumley’s wife. She becomes a vampire.

  JANEY LUMLEY: Lumley’s daughter. She is also turned into a vampire, and would have fed off Booth if Tookey hadn’t stopped her.

  TOOKEY’S BAR: It’s still there, but is now owned by a couple from

  Waterville, Maine. They keep it pretty much the same.

  Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (from 1982’s Different Seasons)

  Though the novella is narrated in the second person by a convict named Red, this wonderful tale is the story of Andy Dufresne. Falsely accused and later convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover, Andy is a banker and lawyer who puts his education to work for him behind bars at Maine’s Shawshank Prison. But that education would be nothing without the single-mindedness with which he goes about arranging his escape—over the course of many, many years—digging a hole in the wall of his cell and hiding it behind a succession of posters, which begins with one featuring Rita Hayworth.

  Andy does successfully break out of the prison, and later, when Red is paroled, he sets off to join his friend.

  The first thing that comes to mind when reading this account is how convincing King’s representation of life inside a prison is. It does not feel like the typical genre story. There is a kind of monotony here against which the colorful story of Andy Dufresne is all the more fascinating. To anyone who had doubted that King had the ability to write mainstream fiction, this first novella in Different Seasons erased all such concerns. Of course, King would return to a prison setting much later with the incredibly successful serialized novel, The Green Mile (1996).

  One is tempted, upon examining this novella, to study King’s other nonhorror, nonfantasy work for parallels. Rita Hayworth
is, after all, a story about triumph over adversity. A man is wrongly imprisoned, and even those who know the truth conspire to keep him down. And yet he works tirelessly over an almost inhuman span of time, on a scale that would drive most people insane, until he finally achieves his freedom.

  With that as the story’s outline, however, it isn’t King’s mainstream work that most echoes this tale. Rather, it is The Eyes of the Dragon. Strangely enough, that fantasy novel, written for his daughter, rife with castles and wizards and dragons and kings, has a fundamental structure that is quite similar to Rita Hayworth. There, also, a person wrongly accused of murder spends years and years to achieve his escape, right in front of his captors.

  RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: PRIMARY SUBJECTS

  ANDY DUFRESNE: Wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his wife and her boyfriend, banker Andy Dufresne spends a large part of his life in prison, planning a way out. Though he finds a way to prove his innocence, his efforts are met with resistance. Not only does Andy manage to manipulate the prison system so that he has his own cell, but under the noses of his captors, he tunnels out of his confinement, and escapes.

  He now lives in Zihautanejo, Mexico, under the assumed name Peter Stevens.

  LINDA DUFRESNE: Andy’s late wife. She is murdered by a man named Elwood Blatch, and Andy is falsely imprisoned for the crime.

  GLENN QUENTIN: A golf pro who was Linda Dufresne’s lover, he is murdered by Elwood Blatch, and Andy is wrongly convicted of the homicide.

  RED: An inmate at Shawshank, Red has a life sentence for the murder of his wife, a neighbor woman, and the neighbor’s infant. He had only meant to do away with his spouse and he never denied that, though he grieves for the other deaths he caused. In prison, Red is the one who can get things for other inmates, making him a prime black marketeer. Red becomes friendly with Andy Dufresne in prison, and supplies Andy with the things he needs to escape—though Red never realizes it until after Andy breaks out.

  Red is paroled from Shawshank in 1976, and the next year, he breaks parole and follows Andy to Zihautanejo, Mexico. It is presumed that both are alive and well and still living there today.

  ELWOOD BLATCH: He kills Andy Dufresne’s wife and her boyfriend. Though he eventually goes to prison on other charges, Blatch is never charged with the murders that Andy went to prison for.

  RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: ADAPTATION

  The Shawshank Redemption, the screen adaptation of King’s longer-titled novella, was adapted and directed by Frank Darabont (who would later do the same for 1999’s The Green Mile). Made by Castle Rock Entertainment (no small irony there, as the company was formed by Rob Reiner and named after King’s fictional town of the same name) and released in 1994 by Columbia Pictures, the prison drama starred Morgan Freeman as Red and Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne. It received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Freeman), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

  While Shawshank is a slow-moving feature, reflecting the passage of time in prison, it is also a triumphant one. Though not a financial success in theaters, it has nevertheless gained in reputation over time, to the point where a certain contingent of the audience consider it among the best American movies ever made. Its popularity on video and DVD, as noted in magazines such as Entertainment Weekly and online at such Web sites as reel.com, is testament to that.

  RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: TRIVIA

  • Frank Darabont, writer/director of the film adaptations of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, had done an earlier King adaptation as well—a student film version of King’s short story “The Woman in the Room,” for which King gave him permission.

  • It seems quite possible that Peter Stevens, the assumed name Andy Dufresne uses in Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, is a combination of the names of the author and his good friend, novelist Peter Straub.

  “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” (from 1985’s Skeleton Crew)

  A trip through King’s version of Maine, this tale tells of a cosmic road trip that begins in Castle Rock, winds its way through towns like Haven and Derry, and ends in King’s own hometown of Bangor. In his Note on this story, King reveals that his wife, always seeking the shortest distance between two points in terms of her local treks, is the inspiration for Mrs. Todd.

  “MRS. TODD’S SHORTCUT”: PRIMARY SUBJECTS

  OPHELIA TODD: The first wife of Worth Todd, Ophelia was obsessed with finding the quickest route to her destination. Ophelia disappeared in 1973.

  HOMER BUCKLAND: Employed as a caretaker by the Todd family, he tells the story of Mrs. Todd’s shortcut to Dave Owens. Going to Bangor with Ophelia Todd in her Mercedes, he travels through a hole in reality (a thinny, perhaps?) and visits a surreal landscape.

  “The Reach” (from 1985’s Skeleton Crew)

  One of King’s most poignant tales, it was originally published as “Do the Dead Sing?” in Yankee magazine in 1981. Stella Flanders is the oldest resident of Goat Island. Well into her nineties, she has never been off island. When she begins seeing specters from her past, however, she knows it is time for her to leave. One cold January night, Stella rises from her sickbed and sets out to cross the Reach (the name the locals have given to the water between the island and the mainland), which is frozen for the first time in over forty years. Stella’s spirit is reunited with her husband and friends; her frozen corpse is found later on the mainland, seated in a natural chair of rock.

  Secret Window, Secret Garden (from 1990’s Four Past Midnight)

  Secret Window, Secret Garden is another of King’s metafictions, a disturbing morality play that can stand proudly next to other works of this nature, such as Misery (1987) and The Dark Half (1989). Written between drafts of The Dark Half, the narrative is King’s effort to convey the powerful hold fiction can achieve over a writer. King calls this his “last story about writers and writing and the strange no man’s land which exists between what’s real and what’s make believe.” If that is indeed the case, he goes out with a bang, delivering a roundhouse punch of a story about how the sins of the past can catch up with you when you least expect it.

  SECRET WINDOW, SECRET GARDEN: PRIMARY SUBJECTS

  MORT RAINEY: In Bag of Bones (1998), author Mike Noonan says, “A writer is a man who has taught his mind to misbehave.” Mort Rainey, author of The Delacourte Family, The Organ Grinder’s Boy, and the short story collection Everybody Drops the Dime, can attest to that—his mind misbehaves in a manner that ultimately proves fatal. One day, a stranger appears at his door, clutching a manuscript called “Secret Window, Secret Garden.” The man, who introduces himself as John Shooter, tells Rainey, “You stole my story. You stole my story and something’s got to be done about it.”

  At first skeptical of Shooter’s claim, Rainey later realizes the story is a dead ringer for one he published many years before called “Sowing Season.” The stories, each about a man who murders his wife and buries her in a garden, are eerily similar in terms of grammar and syntax.

  Shooter doesn’t go away, even when Rainey claims Shooter’s story was written after his own. Shooter wants tangible evidence, in the form of the magazine where the story was first published. Rainey promises to show him his file copy, which is stored at his ex-wife’s house in Derry. Before he can retrieve it, however, his house burns down under mysterious circumstances. An increasingly frantic Rainey requests a copy from the publisher, but the issue arrives sans his story—someone has removed it with a razor.

  Rainey tells his story to various people on the lake, but anyone who can confirm his encounters with Shooter is later found dead. Under extreme pressure, Rainey’s mental state deteriorates; he has a flashback to an incident in his past, a time when he, in a moment of desperation, claimed another writer’s story as his own, one he renamed “Sowing Season.” It turns out that Rainey has carried the guilt of this crime with him ever since. Wanting to punish himself, he convinces himself of Shooter’s existence when it was actuall
y he who burned his house down, mutilated the magazine, and murdered the people who threatened to expose his charade.

  Driven insane by this realization, Mort surrenders control to his John Shooter personality, allowing it to take over for good. He attacks his ex-wife, Carolyn. However, before he can seriously harm her, he is shot and killed.

  SECRET WINDOW, SECRET GARDEN: ADAPTATION

  In 2004, Johnny Depp starred as Mort Rainey in Secret Window; John Turturro essayed the role of his alter ego, John Shooter. Ever the “actor’s actor,” Depp manages to imbue Rainey with plenty of quirks and ticks. Writerdirector David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) does his best to flesh out King’s story, but the movie’s twist is telegraphed early on. The climactic scenes are particularly grisly, but a Philip Glass score makes the whole thing tolerable. Ultimately, though, Secret Window proved a disappointment for King fans.