Stephen King

by Rocky Wood

  When Bill first leapt at Sundance his claws raked two ‘deep gores’ in his back but missed the killing stroke. When he pounced again, he came up short, ‘as Sundance’s spear struck deep in the pad of one claw.’ Bill attacked again, breaking the spear, and now relaxed and began to swing his clawed paw in the coup de grace.

  Chapter Three: Phil and Sundance. Phil is like most young boys – he has doubts but he generally likes himself. However, he is reminded of one of his not so good moments – when he came up in a Little League game with the scores tied, one on and one out and hit into a double play. Worse, the opponent was McCracken Ford and his nemesis Dell McCracken was at first base. And of other times he’d not come up to snuff – backing out of riding Space Mountain, still not being able to ride a bicycle and being afraid to ride in his father’s old Convertible Mustang – in case ‘the brakes failed on Kansas Street, or on Main Street – both hills were steep enough so that there would probably be just enough left of them to bury. / In cigar boxes.’ Overall, despite being overweight Phil ‘was cheerful most of the time.’ But, ‘When you got right down to it, the worst thing of all was Dell McCracken.’ Both Phil and his sister realized they could do nothing about Dell’s bullying, ‘because something might happen to their Dad’s job’ at McCracken Ford: ‘John Wentworth had worked his way up from just another of McCracken’s Mechanics to Department Head, and although he was making good money, he still called Mr. McCracken Simon Legree, which meant he still felt like a slave.’

  All Phil’s fears were swept aside as he saw the cat attacking something in the grass –something that looked like a little person. (Here, King foreshadows a part of the story we will never read: Phil ‘was afraid later, yeah, he spent three weeks in constant terror as one thing after another happened like a string of firecrackers going off …’) As Phil ran downstairs, Bill prepared the killing stroke of his claws but realized that he would take little man’s head off, which just wouldn’t do - ‘Bill was extremely fond of brains … Siamese cats and Hash Cats shared this one idea (and only this, other than their belief in the great Cat-God Anubis, which all cats share); the reason brains taste so good is because they are good for you. The smarter the brain you eat the smarter you become. And if this really was a miniature Hume, he would be doing his own mind a dreadful disservice to waste good brains …’ As a result Bill’s blow merely raked the Small’s face (‘they would heal to thin, grim lines of white scar that Sundance would wear to the end of his days.’) Sundance took the opportunity to dart forward and grab on to the cat’s lower chest, which made Bill furious: ‘You have to understand this … the reason other animals regard Humes and Siamese with more fear and caution than they do any others … is because … they are the only animals that sometimes go mad.’ When Phil yelled at the cat to stop, it entered that very state of temporary insanity – trying to shake off and kill the Teeny and then attacking Phil (‘Fill’ in Bill’s thoughts) when he made the mistake of grabbing the feline. Bill bit Phil’s palm and raked his arm with his claws, while Sundance was flung away into the grass. Sundance turned to help his erstwhile savior, his broken spear in hand, and called to both cat and boy. Phil brought his arm down to the Teeny’s level and Sundance stabbed the cat ‘where Bill’s tail joined his back’, forcing him to release claws and teeth as Phil swung his arm – the attacker landed twenty feet away but headed straight back to the fray. Phil picked Sundance up and kicked the oncoming cat ‘in the chest as hard as he could’.

  The kick had cleared Bill’s madness but he sent a thought to Phil: “Tell him … that I’m going to kill him. That’s a promise. It’s only a question of when …” But Sundance had passed out or, Phil feared when he looked at the bloody body in his hands, worse: ‘He looked dead.’ What would he, what could he, do now: ‘Phil realized he was on his own.’

  Chapter Four: Phil on His Own. Phil had taken the Teeny into the kitchen, where his loose pajama pants fell down - he absently stepped out of them, only the pain in his arm keeping him from totally zoning out. He remembered his father’s dictum about mechanics – ‘Step by Step’ and focused on the problem. How much time did he have until his mother came home – that was step one. It was 4.50pm, which probably left him no more than twenty five minutes. ‘Step Two: Find out if the tiny guy was still alive.’ Regarding the limp body Phil was pretty sure he wasn’t a leprechaun – they were ‘supposed to have pointed ears, green blood, and speak in Irish accents …’

  Phil remembered his Poppa’s funeral – when he thought he could see the dead man’s chest rising and falling. When he raised this with his mother she opined that was because he wanted his grandfather to be alive. Phil said that wasn’t it: ‘All of a sudden, Phil thought he knew why kids had to turn into grown-ups. It was because if you stayed a kid forever, the grown-ups would eventually drive you crazy with their stupid ideas and their deaf ears. He guessed that in the end you turned into a grown-up in simple self-defense.’ Phil’s Uncle Jerry, a teacher, intervened saying that he too had seen the shallow rise and fall of the dead man’s chest but also explaining that it was an hallucination (“Or maybe ‘optical illusion’ is the correct term”) caused by the brain, which never having seen a familiar person lifeless before, simply inserts the illusion of breathing into one’s brain.

  That lesson had Phil convinced that just ‘seeing’ shallow breathing from the Teeny did not mean it was alive – he’d need more proof. ‘He suddenly had an idea. A good one …’ and ran to get a mirror from his mother’s vanity case. When he held the mirror to the little man’s face it misted, just a little. Panicking as to what to do next, Phil flicked cold water on the Teeny and started to ask him what to do, dropping his voice to a whisper so as not to hurt him further. ‘The little man’s eyes fluttered open, and Phil stopped speaking. In truth, he wasn’t sure he could have spoken if his life depended on (sic). The small man’s eyes were dark … dark with shock, dark with pain. / Dark he was … and golden-eyed.’

  When the Teeny tried to talk Phil couldn’t hear him, so he rolled up a piece of sheet music to form a tube, through which he could faintly discern what was being said. Sundance managed to explain he had been pulling a sledge and he needed something orange from it before fainting. Phil ran for the door and was searching the sledge when the realized he had pulled off a ‘totally humungous screw-up … He had come running out so fast he had forgotten to put on his pajama bottoms again. Except for the bloody dish-towel wrapped around his right arm the kid was bucky-tailed naked.’ Worse, he heard the klaxon from Dell McCracken’s bike, Dell riding with his brother (‘that little scab Sonny’) on the handlebars – they hadn’t seen him yet but would soon enough. ‘Phil froze,’ and his mind now told him to run for it, little guy or not – ‘The kid booked it for the house, empty-handed.’

  ‘Except for good or ill, that wasn’t how it happened, except in the part of Phil’s mind that really was as yellow as the stripe up the main highway … He jerked convulsively, and then went on looking at the stuff in the little man’s sledge.’ He saw something bright orange and then heard the dreaded Dell McCracken call out, “Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, Nature Boy!” ‘He tried to yell something else, but couldn’t do it. He was laughing hysterically.’ Despite the distraction Phil gathered up shreds of an orange, carrot-like material.

  And there the chapter and manuscript ends.

  But not our investigation. Phil and Sundance is clearly another attempt at the story-line King was working on in The Leprechaun, which has been dated to around 1983, four years earlier. In that story (see The Leprechaun chapter in Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished) it is Owen King who interrupts his sister’s cat (this time named Springsteen) tormenting something on the lawn, a ‘…person, a tiny little man wearing a green hat made out of a leaf. The little man looked back over his shoulder, and Owen saw how scared the little guy was.’

  The struggle between a little man-like creature and a cat forms the basis of the screenplay General and a segment of the related movie script Cat’s Eye
, although the roles are reversed in that tale, with the cat being the hero. Those pieces were written around 1984, before King attempted and abandoned Phil and Sundance.

  There are a number of links in the manuscript to King’s other fiction. With a Derry setting this unpublished fragment is linked to other Derry tales. Derry also appears in Autopsy Room Four, Bag of Bones, The Bird and the Album, 11/22/63, Insomnia, It, The Road Virus Heads North (999), The Road Virus Heads North (Everything’s Eventual) and Secret Window, Secret Garden. It receives considerable mention in Dreamcatcher and The Tommyknockers. It is also mentioned in The Body, Comb Dump, The Dark Half, The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, 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, Uncle Otto’s Truck (Skeleton Crew) and Uncle Otto’s Truck (Yankee).

  In Chapter One we learn that ‘Dell McCracken is thirteen and would be going to high school when summer vacation is over.’ The high school is named in Chapter Two as ‘Derry High’, which appears in Dreamcatcher and Insomnia. ‘…the Mall’ is mentioned in Chapter One, the only other mentions of a Mall in Derry being in Bag of Bones; as well as the Derry Mall in The Tommyknockers and It. In Chapter Two Phil’s Song and Dance Interpretation Class went on a field trip to see Peter and the Wolf at ‘Bangor High’. In The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah we learn that Owen King graduated from Bangor High. The Wentworths and the McCrackens lived on Jackson Street, Derry, which also appears in Bag of Bones, Insomnia and It. Kansas Street, Derry is mentioned and also appears in Secret Window, Secret Garden, Dreamcatcher, Insomnia, It and both versions of The Road Virus Heads North. Main Street, Derry is mentioned and also appears in Insomnia, It and The Tommyknockers.

  Revival

  In an interview to support the Mark Twain House on 18 July 2013 King revealed some details about a book he was writing called Revival: “The main character is a kid who learns to play guitar, and I could relate to this guy because he’s not terribly good. But he’s just good enough to catch on with a couple of bands to play for a lot of years and the song he learns to play first is the song I learned to play first, Cherry, Cherry by Neal Diamond.’ This novel will be published on 11 November 2014.

  Untitled

  In October 2013 King sent me some holographic material in the form of two legal pads, each about half full of his writing and notes; and some loose sheets. One pad can be easily dated to 2002 as it contains first draft material from The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower and a box score from the Boston Red Sox – Cleveland Indians game on June 25 that year. The second pad appears to be from 2012 or 2013. The loose sheets include draft material and notes for 11/22/63, Cell and Doctor Sleep.

  Fascinating as all that material was the real treasure was two and a bit pages from an unknown story. When I asked King if he recalled anything about what looked like a busted tale he replied, ‘The story is mine, but I don't remember it. The "oral narrative" doesn't seem to work, so I guess that's why I ditched it.’[xxxix]

  The piece has a typically compelling opening: ‘Don’t tell me the dead don’t come back cause I know better. And that’s all I’m gonna say about it. The rest is what I seen and a very little I didn’t. But when I guess at a thing I will tell you.’ The narrator, whose first name we never learn (his surname is Donovan) relates that he and his mother had come to live with his dead father’s brother, ‘Uncle Son’ on a farm in Tennessee. Although his dying father had said the uncle was ‘bound to give her $500’ … ‘from the farm.’, when she rang he only offered to take them in and put them to work. ‘She didn’t mention the $500 then because we didn’t have nowhere else to go.’ The mother added: ‘I knowed there wasn’t no five hundred dollars just from the sound of his voice … but I couldn’t bear to hear him say it.’

  When the narrator left the house after kissing his father moments before he passed, ‘There I seen a redbird perched on the handle of the plow and it came to me that the hand of some other boy’s Pa would be on it before a week was out, because even in Georgia God’s season is short and everyone knows crops won’t wait.’

  The handwritten text includes an eerie echo of Dolan’s Cadillac. A hearse came for his father’s body: ‘That funeary was pretty fine, a Cadillac with whitewall tires, and so at least one Donovan got to ride in a Cadillac.’ Note: the spelling is ‘funeary’ not ‘funerary’.

  Neighbors gave them $5 to travel to Tennessee, but the money ran out 60 miles short of the town of Budd, where Uncle Son lived. A man they hitched a ride with gave his mother $5 more, but only after taking her behind some bushes at a picnic spot. ‘I ast her why he had to take her in the bushes to give her that money and she said it was because some people were ashamed of their own generosity. I didn’t understand her then, but now I’m two years older and know more than I did. More than I want to, at least about some things.’ And there the story fragment ends.

  Yet again we see the ease in which King establishes a tale, with interesting characters whose story appeals.

  Untitled – Under the Dome episode

  In February 2014 King confirmed to me[xl] that he had written the first episode of the TV series Under the Dome’s Season 2. It is extremely unlikely this will ever be published but readers will be able to view the episode on DVD.

  New Published but Uncollected Stories:

  A Face in the Crowd

  This story is a collaboration between King and Stuart O’Nan; they previously collaborated on the non-fiction volume, Faithful (2004). Both are baseball related. It was first published on 21 August 2012 in varying eBook formats and as an audio book, so is easily obtained.

  The focus of this lengthy story is a widower – a transplanted New Englander living on the Gulf Coast of Florida, a Red Sox fan who’d coached Little League and had ‘magnanimously adopted the Devil Rays … as his second team.’ Not unlike Stephen King himself (although he only winters in Florida). Dean Evers had been married for forty six years and understands that watching the Rays on TV most nights was ‘just a way of passing time’ after his wife’s death.

  One night Evers sees his old childhood dentist sitting in the Ray’s home crowd. The sight stuns Evers – he hasn’t seen the man in over fifty years but he doesn’t appear to have aged and is dressed in his ‘white sanitary smock’. He rationalizes the man must be a strikingly similar relative of the dentist. Later in the game, when Evers checks the seat behind home plate the man had been sitting in, it’s empty and remains that way. In bed, still awake at 3am, he worries that seeing Dr. Young might be a sign or an omen of some sort.

  The next night he tunes in again. Late in the game he spots ‘three rows deep, in the same pinstripe suit he was buried in, his old business partner Leonard Wheeler.’ Evers and Wheeler had created a successful truck rental business but the relationship had soured over the business’ direction and Wheeler’s overbearing manner. Evers keeps his eyes glued to the TV; when the camera returns to Wheeler’s seat it is just as empty as Dr. Young’s the night before.

  For the next game Evers sets his DVR ‘to capture whatever malevolent spirit his past might vomit up.’ This time it is a small boy – a schoolmate of Evers transferred in from Tennessee in the spring of 1954. Evers and his buddies mercilessly bullied Lester Embree for his accent, his lack of a live-in father and for his halting answers in class. Embree appears to point a finger directly at Evers and mouth, ‘Kill the ump.’ Evers recalls the quiet kid being pulled wrinkled and fingerless from Marsden’s Pond. That last appears to be a nod to two of the locations in King’s fiction – the Marsten House in ‘Salem’s Lot and One for the Road; and Runaround Pond from The Dead Zone. Both are based on locations in Durham, Maine, where King spent his later childhood.

  When Evers checks the recording of the game there Embree is – no older than when he’d died decades before, a time when Evers, in a position to stop the bullying of the new boy, had actually ensured its escalation. A week later Embree was fished from the Pon
d. Now he has returned – looking alive, but with his fingers ‘mostly gone’, along with some of his nose, as if he has been underwater again. On replay Evers thinks the boy is saying, ‘You murdered me.’ Evers shouts at the television, “Not true! You fell in Marsden’s! You fell in the pond! You fell in the pond and it was your own goddamned fault!” He wonders if he’s suffering from dementia or having a nervous breakdown.

  The next to appear at a game is Evers’ dead wife ‘wearing the same tennis whites she’d had on the day of her first stroke.’ Evers sees her dial her cell phone and his immediately buzzes. He doesn’t want to answer but when he does she’s on the line. She confirms she’s dead and then lays into Evers for an extramarital affair he’d had and thought she hadn’t known about; and for the time he’d spent away from her concentrating on his business. She blames him for their son’s selfishness, which she claims is learned behavior. As if proving her point, his attention wanders back to the game and, in frustration, Ellie hangs up.