Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition

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Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition Page 5

by Rocky Wood


  The America Under Siege rReality works are linked by their common location in our world’s version of the United States (or with US citizens as characters) and in our “normal” timeline. When a story deviates into a timeline in which the world as we know it fundamentally changes (for instance, The Stand or The End of the Whole Mess) it is classified in a more relevant Reality.

  Many America Under Siege Rreality stories are very much from the mainstream (All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, Rest Stop or That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French) and include many of King’s rare but powerful crime genre stories.

  New York, a large and often faceless city is cover for mayhem (The Ten O’Clock People, Lunch at the Gotham Café), mystery (The Breathing Method, The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands), murder (The Man Who Loved Flowers, The Plant, Sneakers), penance (Blind Willie) and, rarely, positive results (Dedication).

  Large cities such as Boston (Cell), Los Angeles (The Talisman), Las Vegas (Dolan’s Cadillac), Seattle (Rose Red) and even imaginary urban areas such as Harding (The Running Man and Sword in the Darkness) play host to King stories.

  But it is small-towns and semi-rural locations that most quickly come to mind when considering King’s assault on America through supernatural means (Children of the Corn) or the simple horrors of everyday life (All That You Love Will Be Carried Away). Isolated towns and residences such as Gatlin, deep in the cornfields of Nebraska and close to Hemingford Home; or Travis, Indiana (Sleepwalkers) serve as wonderful backdrops for the doings of supernatural creatures (Black House) or the very human horrors that occur at the Wilkes’ farm (Misery).

  It is not possible to sit easy while thinking of Junction City, Iowa (The Library Policeman and future home of Needful Things’ Leland Gaunt); or of Desperation, Nevada. Children should avoid Oatley, New York (The Talisman), although Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire might serve for a summer holiday. If seeking to attend a concert one should cross Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon (You Know They’ve Got a Hell of a Band) from any list; and the flashing lights from a particular shed in Statler, Pennsylvania should also be avoided (From a Buick 8).

  Thinking of a quiet retirement? Then avoid French Landing, Wisconsin (Black House). Wanting to live safe from The Shop? Forget Lakeland, Ohio (Firestarter) or Falco Plains, New York (Golden Years). Want to avoid killer cars? Then Libertyville, Pennsylvania (Christine) is not for you.

  One town, however, appears to have fewer dangers. King has claimed more than once, in response to the consistently inane question of where he gets his ideas that they come from a shop in Utica. Utica appears often and was the crossover point for Clyde Umney (Umney’s Last Case). Bobbi Anderson (The Tommyknockers) grew up there and Alan Pangborn, later Sheriff of Castle Rock, was once a policeman in the town.

  Sometimes it is not towns but other locations that are best avoided. For instance, Cold Mountain Penitentiary (The Green Mile) and the Overlook Hotel (The Shining) have ended many a life.

  The following is a full list of the works defined as part of the America Under Siege Reality. It includes unpublished works.

  1408

  1922

  All That You Love Will Be Carried Away

  American Vampire

  Apt Pupil

  The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet

  Battleground

  Before the Play

  Big Driver

  Big Wheels

  Black House

  Blind Willie

  Blockade Billy

  The Boogeyman

  The Breathing Method

  Brooklyn August

  Cain Rose Up

  The Cannibals

  The Cat from Hell

  Cat’s Eye

  Chattery Teeth

  Children of the Corn and its Unproduced Screenplay

  Christine

  Code Name: Mousetrap

  The Crate

  The Dark Man

  The Dead Zone and its Unproduced Screenplay

  The Death of Jack Hamilton

  Dedication (Both Versions)

  Desperation and its Unproduced Screenplay

  Dino

  Dolan’s Cadillac and its Unproduced Screenplay

  Donovan’s Brain

  The Evaluation

  Everything’s Eventual

  Fair Extension

  Father’s Day

  Firestarter

  From a Buick 8

  The Furnace

  General

  Ghost Brothers of Darkland County

  George D. X. McArdle

  The Glass Floor

  Golden Years

  A Good Marriage

  The Green Mile

  The Hardcase Speaks

  Harrison State Park ‘68

  Harvey’s Dream

  Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling

  Here There Be Tygers

  The Hotel at the End of the Road

  The House on Maple Street

  I Hate Mondays

  I Was a Teenage Grave-Robber (aka, In a Half-World of Terror)

  In the Deathroom

  Jumper

  Keyholes

  L.T.’s Theory of Pets

  The Last Rung on the Ladder

  The Lawnmower Man

  The Ledge

  The Library Policeman

  Lisey and the Madman

  Low Men in Yellow Coats

  Luckey Quarter

  Lunch at the Gotham Café

  The Man Who Loved Flowers

  The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands

  Man with a Belly

  The Mangler

  Memory

  Misery

  Mobius

  Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)

  Mostly Old Men

  The Moving Finger

  My Pretty Pony

  Never Look Behind You

  The New Lieutenant’s Rap

  The Night Flier

  The Night of the Tiger

  The Old Dude’s Ticker

  Paranoid: A Chant

  The Plant

  Popsy

  The Pulse

  Quitter’s, Inc.

  The Raft

  The Reaper’s Image

  The Regulators

  The Reploids

  Rest Stop

  Roadwork

  Rose Madder

  Rose Red

  The Running Man

  Rush Call

  The Shining (All Versions)

  The Shotgunners

  Silence

  Skybar

  Slade

  Sleepwalkers

  Sneakers

  Something to Tide You Over

  Something Wicked This Way Comes

  Sometimes They Come Back

  Sorry, Right Number

  Stationary Bike

  The Stranger

  Strawberry Spring (Night Shift version)

  Suffer the Little Children (Cavalier version)

  Survivor Type

  Sword in the Darkness

  The Ten O’Clock People

  That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French

  They Bite

  They’re Creeping Up On You

  The Thing at the Bottom of the Well

  The Things They Left Behind

  Thinner

  Trucks

  Umney’s Last Case

  Untitled (Chip Coombs)

  Untitled (She Has Gone to Sleep While …)

  The Wedding Gig

  Weeds

  Why We’re In Vietnam

  You Know They Got a Hell of a Band

  New Worlds

  From time to time King has taken readers on trips to New Worlds of Science Fiction or Fantasy. Sometimes these rides are ultimately uplifting, but some are terminal. As a result certain stories are classified as being part of the New Worlds Reality, in whole or part.

  Once these New Worlds are exposed there is often no return (for example Trooper Ennis Rafferty of From a Buick 8; or Norman Daniels, who got too close a look at
Rose Madder’s land). Sometimes characters return but with more than they bargained for (I Am the Doorway, Mobius or The Jaunt). Others are saved from a messy end (Beachworld) and others are not (Beachworld again, or Charlie).

  In some cases our world takes a permanent turn for the worse, through scientific arrogance (The End of the Whole Mess); or nuclear war (The Aftermath). If The Stand mythology did not have its own, separate Reality, those stories would qualify for the New Worlds Reality.

  In yet other cases parallel dimensions or realities impinge upon ours. We know from the Dark Tower Reality that there are places where the walls between realities are “thin,” and this is proven to be the case in a section of London (Crouch End) and on Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio (The Regulators). Kingdom Hospital is set in a reality close to but not, our own (in that reality the New England Robins, not the Boston Red Sox, lost a World Series on an error!)

  Some alternate worlds appear charming but danger can present itself. Eyes of the Dragon is set in Delain, interestingly the same town from which James and John Norman (The Little Sisters of Eluria) hailed. Flagg was rumored to come from Garlan (Eyes of the Dragon). In The Dark Tower cycle John Farson began his evil ways in that very same Mid-World kingdom. The Old Star can be seen from Delain as well as from Roland’s world. It remains uncertain as to whether these lands are fully part of The Dark Tower Reality, or are simply linked.

  The same uncertainty presents itself in relation to The Territories (The Talisman and Black House), an agrarian monarchy that uses magic as a replacement for science. Jack Sawyer discovered The Territories, a world achingly close to ours, when not yet a teenager and set out across it, and America, on a great quest. He returned there, near death, as a middle-aged man. It is to be hoped that King and Peter Straub will complete a trilogy of Sawyer stories as the last would likely be set, as Straub has indicated, in the Territories, with its twinners and wondrous creatures.

  The following is a full list of the works defined as part of the New Worlds Reality. The list includes unpublished material.

  The Aftermath

  An Evening at God’s

  Beachworld

  The Beggar and the Diamond

  Black House

  Blockade Billy

  Cell

  Charlie

  Crouch End

  The Cursed Expedition

  The End of the Whole Mess

  Eyes of the Dragon

  For Owen

  For the Birds

  The 43rd Dream

  Heroes for Hope: Starring the X-Men

  Home Delivery

  I Am the Doorway

  I’ve Got to Get Away

  The Jaunt

  Jerusalem’s Lot

  Jhonathan and the Witchs

  The Killer

  Kingdom Hospital

  Maximum Overdrive

  The Mist

  Mobius

  Muffe

  The Other Side of the Fog

  The Pulse

  The Star Invaders

  The Talisman

  The Word Processor

  Word Processor of the Gods

  You Know They Got a Hell of a Band

  Unclassified

  It is impossible to classify four works, two poems and two stories set in England (a sort of England Under Siege Reality). The English stories are The Doctor’s Case, in which Dr. Holmes solves a murder; and Wimsey, the beginning of an aborted detective novel (see the chapter later in this book).

  The two poems, In the Key-Chords of Dawn and Woman With Child also defy the classification system. They are also discussed in “The Poems” chapter.

  Conclusion

  Perhaps the most important conclusion to be had from this discussion is that it is possible to link all the Realities!

  For instance, The Stand is linked by Hemingford Home, Nebraska to Children of the Corn and It (America Under Siege stories); and through Flagg to both the Dark Tower and New Worlds. The Stand also has strong links to Maine towns that also feature in the Maine Street Horror tales.

  A number of geographical locations (both real and imaginary) stand astride a number of Realities, for instance Topeka in The Stand Reality appears in New Worlds via The Running Man and in The Dark Tower Reality via The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. Stovington, Vermont appears in America Under Siege’s The Shining, and in The Stand Reality. Indeed, there are hundreds of such links.

  Characters also cross Realities. A certain Randall Flagg is the primary candidate, appearing in the Dark Tower, New Worlds (Eyes of the Dragon) and The Stand Realities. Father/Pere Callahan has transited from Maine Street Horror to The Dark Tower; and Ted Brautigan has managed appearances in both the Dark Tower and America Under Siege Realities. Jack Sawyer, who once lived in the America Under Siege Reality and was but a visitor to the New World of the Territories, is now a permanent resident there.

  If it is possible that all Worlds are contained within an atom in a blade of purple grass, as has been posited in the Dark Tower Reality; then it is equally possible for all these Realities to be contained in the mind of a single writer.

  The wonders that remain are the as yet untold tales that will flow from the pen/keyboard of the White King.

  Appendix: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (1855)

  By Robert Browning (1812-1889)

  I

  My first thought was, he lied in every word,

  That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

  Askance to watch the workings of his lie

  On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford

  Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored

  Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

  II

  What else should he be set for, with his staff?

  What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare

  All travellers who might find him posted there,

  And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh

  Would break, what crutch ‘gin write my epitaph

  For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.

  III

  If at his counsel I should turn aside

  Into that ominous tract which, all agree,

  Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

  I did turn as he pointed, neither pride

  Now hope rekindling at the end descried,

  So much as gladness that some end might be.

  IV

  For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,

  What with my search drawn out through years, my hope

  Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope

  With that obstreperous joy success would bring,

  I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring

  My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

  V

  As when a sick man very near to death

  Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end

  The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,

  And hears one bit the other go, draw breath

  Freelier outside, (“since all is o’er,” he saith

  “And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;”)

  VI

  When some discuss if near the other graves

  be room enough for this, and when a day

  Suits best for carrying the corpse away,

  With care about the banners, scarves and staves

  And still the man hears all, and only craves

  He may not shame such tender love and stay.

  VII

  Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,

  Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

  So many times among “The Band” to wit,

  The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed

  Their steps – that just to fail as they, seemed best,

  And all the doubt was now – should I be fit?

  VIII

  So, quiet as despair I turned from him,

  That hateful cripple, out of his highway

  Into the path he po
inted. All the day

  Had been a dreary one at best, and dim

  Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim

  Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

  IX

  For mark! No sooner was I fairly found

  Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,

  Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view

  O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round;

  Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.

  I might go on, naught else remained to do.

  X

  So on I went. I think I never saw

  Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:

  For flowers – as well expect a cedar grove!

  But cockle, spurge, according to their law

  Might propagate their kind with none to awe,

  You’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.

  XI

  No! penury, inertness and grimace,

  In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See

  Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly,

  “It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:

  ‘Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place

  Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

  XII

  If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk

  Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents

  Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents

  In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk

  All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk

  Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

  XIII

  As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair

  In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud

  Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.

  One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

  Stood stupified, however he came there:

  Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

  XIV

  Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew,

  With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.

  And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

  Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

  I never saw a brute I hated so;

  He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

 

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