by Rocky Wood
Freemantle had been secretly planning to commit suicide but his physical therapist, Kathi Green and his hugely fat psychologist, Xander Kamen were able to see the warning signs. Dr. Kamen asked him to wait a year before killing himself, so as not to lay guilt upon his soon-to-be ex-wife and daughters.
The tale is told from a distance of four or so years from the accident and with initial publication seemed unfinished (this was clarified with the announcement of the novel). It is rather obvious to even a casual King fan that at least this part of the tale is another working out of King’s own accident and recovery. He writes specifically of the pain of physical rehabilitation but we also observe some possible emotional scars.
A powerful stand-alone piece, the short description of the accident from Freemantle’s viewpoint as he found himself trapped in his pick-up cabin with a crane slowly crushing it, inexorably moving toward him and then slowly crushing his body from the right, is a tour-de-force of prose. For dog-lovers the short scene in which the dying Gandalf’s “eyes turned up to me and in them I saw a horrible expression of hope,” is harrowing and deeply truthful.
Copies of the magazine are generally available from such sources as eBay and specialist King resellers.
The Monster in the Closet (1981)
An “excerpt” from King’s novel Cujo appeared as a stand-alone story, The Monster in the Closet, in the Ladies Home Journal for October 1981. The story is not in fact a direct excerpt, and spans a number of sections of Cujo. There are some minor changes to the novel’s text and even some material added.
Although Maine is not mentioned, we know Cujo is a Castle Rock story and it is therefore classified as a Maine Street Horror tale.
In the story a young boy sees a monster in his closet. Four year old Tad Trenton awakened his parents with his screams. As Vic and Donna Trenton thought the monster was just a pile of blankets they moved them to the rear of the closet and closed the door. The following morning the blankets had returned to their previous position and Tad claimed that the monster had moved them back.
Vic was due to leave on a business trip two weeks later and created “Monster Words” for Tad, which they could recite together each night to frighten the monster away. The “Monster Words” were:
Monsters, stay out of this room!
You have no business here.
No Monsters under Tad’s bed!
You can’t fit under there.
No monsters hiding in Tad’s closet!
It’s too small in there.
No monsters outside of Tad’s window!
You can’t hold on out there.
No vampires, no werewolves, no things that bite.
You have no business here.
Nothing will touch Tad, or hurt Tad, all this night.
You have no business here.
Despite these brave words it seems the monster never left and, before the summer was over, it really did come out of the closet.
Readers will find it difficult to secure a copy of this issue of the Ladies Home Journal, the best source will be online King booksellers.
The Pulse (2005)
On 7 July 2005 the web site, www.amazon.com released The Pulse, boosting it as “the chilling first chapter of a work in progress,” as part of their 10th Anniversary “Hall of Fame Exclusive Content.” With revisions, the piece became part of Cell, published in 2006. As the novel is about zombies, at this point it can be classified as both an America Under Siege and a New Worlds story.
There are two sub-sections. In the first readers discover “the event which came to be known as The Pulse occurred in the Eastern time zone of the United States at 3:03pm on the afternoon of October 1st.” By the second sentence King has the story racing, “The term was a misnomer, of course, but within ten hours of the event, most of the scientists capable of pointing this out were either dead or insane.” Readers then meet Clayton Riddell, a young man “of no particular importance to history” walking near the Boston Common.
The second sub-section features the typical King scene of normality suddenly being torn apart. Riddell was in a great mood, having “just sold his first graphic novel – and its sequel, both for an amazing, totally unexpected amount of money …” Observing people buying ice cream from a Mr. Softee truck Clay starts to hear some unsettling screams, sees a businessman suddenly attack a dog (“… surely I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing, Clay thought not man bites dog”) and notices that a woman who had just hung up her cell phone attack the ice-cream vendor. The piece ends at this point.
The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson (1984)
The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson was first published in Rolling Stone magazine for 19 July and 2 August 1984. The story was substantially revised for inclusion as part of the novel The Tommyknockers in 1987. It also appeared in the Limited Edition of Skeleton Crew, published in 1985, but none of the mass-market editions. The last time it appeared in print in this form was in the 1991 anthology, I Shudder at Your Touch, edited by Michele Slung and published by New American Library.
Readers wishing to obtain a copy should start with online King booksellers and second hand bookshops. As Rolling Stone is quite collectable copies of the magazine can also be sourced from specialist traders. For those who cannot find a text copy Penguin Highbridge Books issued an audio book of I Shudder at Your Touch in 1992, which included this version of the story.
In this Maine Street Horror tale strange events follow a gunshot wound. While spring-cleaning, Rebecca (“Becka”) Paulson found her husband’s .22 calibre target pistol. Falling while holding the gun, Becka accidentally shot herself in the head, just above the left eye. When she awoke she was shocked to find a hole in her head that turned out to be five inches deep when she measured it with an eyebrow pencil inserted into the wound. By that night she could not remember anything that had happened to her earlier in the day, including the shooting.
A few days later a picture of Jesus atop her television began “telling” Becka secret things. These included that her husband Joe was cheating on her with Nancy Voss, a fellow postal worker. Also that Moss Harlingen had murdered his father in revenge for being raped as a child but had successfully passed it off as a hunting accident; that Alice Kimball was a lesbian; that 17 year old Darla Gaines took drugs and made love to her boyfriend while her parents were out; and that Hank Buck had placed Ex-Lax in his boss’ milkshake!
The picture of “Jesus” then helped Becka make a modification to the television set that would kill her husband when he turned it on. As Joe turned the TV on Becka realized that it was she, and not “Jesus,” who had been responsible for the modification. When she tried to save Joe she was also killed by the electrical shock.
In this original version of the tale the events occurred in July of 1973, with Rebecca suffering the gunshot wound about 3pm on the 7th and the couple dying on the 10th. When included in The Tommyknockers the story had migrated to the 1988 timeline of that tale, with the picture of Jesus beginning to speak to Rebecca on July 7 and the two dying of electrocution on the July 10.
Even at the time this stand-alone incarnation was published the story linked to other King works of fiction. Among these links are the mention of the town of Derry being near Haven (by 1984 Derry had already appeared in The Bird and the Album, The Body, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, Pet Sematary, The Running Man and the Yankee version of Uncle Otto’s Truck); and Haven itself being mentioned in Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, published the same year. Apart from The Tommyknockers Rebecca and Joe Paulson and Haven would later be mentioned in It; and Derry would, of course, appear in many King stories, becoming the second most featured fictional town in Maine outside of Castle Rock.
The story was adapted for television as a series episode for the revival of The Outer Limits, with the title The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson. It was first screened on 6 June 1997. Brad Wright wrote the Teleplay and Steven Weber, who only weeks earlier had appeared as Jack Torrance in the mini-series of The Shining132, both dire
cted and played the Guy in the Photo (a normal Joe had replaced Jesus in this version, presumably to avoid offending certain viewers’ sensibilities). Catherine O’Hara played Becka Paulson and John Diehl appeared as Joe Paulson.
The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan (1975)
The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan was originally published in Maine Review magazine for July 1975. King updated the story and included it in his novella The Body, published in 1982. The scenario was so irresistible that Rob Reiner retained it in the widely loved movie version of the novella, Stand By Me. It is very likely that the scene was adapted from The Body, rather than this version of the story.
As an aside, while most experts regard The Body as a novella, King described it in his Entertainment Weekly column for 22/29 August 2003 as “my short novel.”
In this Maine Street Horror tale a fat boy plots a spectacular revenge on his tormentors. David “Lardass” Hogan had a glandular problem and was picked on for his size by children and adults alike. Ace Carmody, Eyeball Chambers and Billy Norcross chased him down and forced him to enter the annual pie-eating contest in Gates Falls. But Hogan developed a plan.
On the day of the contest he climbed the stage after drinking three-quarters of a bottle of castor oil. Pitted against the previous year’s champion, Bill Travis and three other contestants, Hogan ate like a madman. On his third pie he intentionally began to tell himself he was not actually eating pie but in fact other, disgusting, things.
During his fifth pie, he raised his head and vomited on Bill Travis, causing a chain reaction of vomiting from the contestants and spectators. This, of course, had been his plan all along.
Among the changes King made for The Body was the conversion of the character “Ace” Carmody into the infamous John “Ace” Merrill (played by Kiefer Sutherland in the movie). Ace would later appear in the Skeleton Crew version of Nona and The Sun Dog before meeting an inglorious end in Needful Things. The origin of Ace’s nickname is revealed by this change. We know from King’s fiction that pretty much the whole Merrill clan were trouble. Ace’s uncle Reginald (“Pop”), a moneylender and a conman, died as a result of his greed in The Sun Dog; Royce Merrill was one of the old farts who ganged up on Mike Noonan and Mattie Devore in Bag of Bones; and Roy Merrill was turned out by a town meeting from his job as Road Commissioner in The Huffman Story, an unpublished partial manuscript. Roy had employed his wife as secretary and three brothers, four nephews and two cousins on the road crew!
One of Ace Carmody’s friends in the short story, Billy Norcross becomes Billy Tessio, Vern’s brother in the novella. This version of the story is set in late August of 1960. When Gordie Lachance tells the story as his own in The Body he does not give it a particular timeline.
In The Body Gordie Lachance set the contest in the “fictional” town of Gretna, Maine rather than Gates Mills. King also cut out characters for the novella, including the entire balance of the Hogan family. In the short story Lardass’ parents, Robert and Sheila and his sister Bobbi all threw up. There were also references to the mass murderer with whom King had a fascination in his youth, Charles Starkweather and that killer’s girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate (David Hogan was infatuated with her) but these also disappeared from the novella. Considering King’s interest in Starkweather his appearance in this story is an important historical footnote to King’s body of work.
The principal of David Hogan’s school has a number of different incarnations. In the original short story he appears as Hubert Hansen, principal of Gates Falls High School. In the novella Gordie Lachance names the principal as Hubert Gretna III in the oral version but by the time Gordie had the story “published” he was now John Wiggins, principal of Gretna Elementary School!
We are told in the novella that Gordon Lachance’s story, The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan (note the subtle difference from Lardass in King’s version to Lard Ass in Lachance’s) was published in Cavalier magazine for March 1975. This is another little in-joke from King, who published many stories in the 1970s in Cavalier, a men’s magazine. The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan by Stephen King was published in 1975, but as mentioned earlier, in Maine Review – perhaps Cavalier rejected it? It is also something of a shame that there was no actual story by Stephen King in the March 1975 edition of Cavalier!
Even at this early date in King’s publishing history the story linked to other King fiction through its setting in the town of Gates Falls, Maine. The town had already appeared in Graveyard Shift (first published in Cavalier for October 1970); It Grows on You (first published in Marshroots for Fall, 1973) and that same year was mentioned in ‘Salem’s Lot. It would go on to appear in The Body, The Dark Half, The Dead Zone, Gramma, Hearts in Atlantis, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, Needful Things, The Plant (but only the electronic version), Rage, Riding the Bullet and also appeared in the unpublished works Blaze, Movie Show and Sword in the Darkness.
The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan is one of the more difficult King stories to find. The particular edition of Maine Review rarely appears for sale and then almost exclusively through specialist online King booksellers. However, for serious King fans the search is well worth the effort. This is a tremendously entertaining story in King’s gross-out mode and will remain a signpost for those who wish to study the development of King’s career.
Stud City (1969)
In addition to The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan King converted another short story from earlier in his career to a Gordie Lachance story appearing in The Body. Stud City was one of King’s earliest published stories, appearing in the University of Maine literary magazine Ubris for Fall, 1969. King (or perhaps it was actually Lachance?) heavily revised it for its appearance in The Body. In that novella we are told that the story was first published in a college literary magazine (sound familiar?), Greenspun Quarterly.
In this Maine Street Horror tale a boy begins his journey toward manhood. Edward “Chico” May made love to his 16 year old girlfriend Jane for the first time and then drove her home to Auburn. Later, he infuriated his father Sam by telling him he intended to join the Marines. Chico then told Sam of the intense dislike he had for his stepmother, Virginia, whom he believed had “broken” his father’s spirit.
Later, Virginia confronted Chico and asked if he’d had his girlfriend around while they were out. He told her he had and that the sheets on his bed needed changing. He then left the house and drove off, remembering his real mother and the birth of his brother Billy, which had taken her life. He also recalled having once had sex with Virginia! Chico drove on toward his friend Danny Carter’s home, where he would stay for the night. He would decide his future in the morning.
This story, not at all in the classic King horror mold of much of his early published stories, is in fact more in line with The New Yorker stories of his later career. This piece goes to prove that King had the ability to write powerful mainstream fiction from an early age (he was only 22 when it was published).
When rewriting the story for The Body King made numerous changes. For instance, in the short story Chico’s older brother Johnny had joined the Marines but in the novella he had been killed when a runaway car hit him while he was changing a tire at the Oxford Plains Speedway. He could have worked at the Gates Mills, but chose the speedway so he wouldn’t have to be at home with his stepmother while his father was at work! In other changes the sexual encounter between Chico and his stepmother, Virginia is deleted; and Chico’s natural mother Cathy is no longer mentioned, nor is her death in childbirth.
Another character deleted from the novella is Duane Conant, a friend of Chico’s who was killed when his Mustang hit a pole on Stackpole Road (no town name is given). There are a number of Stackpole Roads in King’s fiction, including the one in Blainesville, Maine where Nona lead “the prisoner” to a cemetery in the Shadows version of Nona; the same road in Castle Rock in the Skeleton Crew version of Nona; in The Dark Half, where the Castle Rock cemetery is named as the Stackpole Cemetery on the road of the same name; another in Harlow, Maine in Ra
ge and three of the four versions of It Grows on You (the Newall house is on it); and in Ludlow, Maine in Pet Sematary. The “real” Stackpole Road is in Durham, Maine. Even today anyone visiting the location will see how King, growing up in this isolated rural township, would have found the Stackpole Road, close to the real Runaround Pond, so capable of tragedy.
Copies of Ubris are almost impossible to find, although the story can be photocopied from an original copy of the magazine held at the Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono. For those seeking an original copy of their own we can only recommend the normal online King booksellers but one should expect a long wait and a hefty price tag!
The Tale of Gray Dick (2003)
The Tale of Gray Dick is a version of the chapter of the same name in The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, published in November 2003. The stand-alone short story was first published in the magazine, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #10 on 25 February 2003; and in anthology, McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, published by Vintage Books in a large paperback format the following month. King fiction would again appear in a McSweeney’s anthology, with Lisey and the Madman, in McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, released in November 2004.