by Rocky Wood
The next strange thing to occur is Evers’ old buddy Kaz ringing to complain that Evers hadn’t invited him to sit with him in prime seats at that night’s baseball game. Evers plays along, even turning up his TV to provide covering sound effects. ‘There was only one way to put an end to this cosmic joke. On a Sunday night, downtown St Pete would be deserted. If he took a taxi, he could be at the Trop by the end of the second inning.’ The game is a sellout but on a hunch Evers asks for a ticket left in his name at the Will Call window and, sure enough, there’s a ticket waiting for him – and one of the best seats in the house at that.
Shortly after being seated Kaz calls again, to tell Evers a cop has reported Evers dead – even though Kaz can see him right there on the television. The cop claimed Evers had been lying dead in his apartment for some time. And now the JumboTron at Tropicana Field shows Evers stone cold dead in his bedroom. Evers turns his eyes back to the crowd but now the stadium is empty, save for the players and officials continuing the game. After hanging up his call with Kaz, Evers sees ushers bringing in his dead relatives, former employees, girlfriends and acquaintances. ‘He couldn’t see who’d come to spend eternity with him in peanut heaven or the far reaches of the outfield, but the premium seats were going fast.’
Although clearly an elegiac piece, Evers is portrayed as far from a nice man, indeed one with anger and denial issues, which lends more reality to the tale.
Because the story is collaborative and published as a stand-alone eBook/audio book it is unclear whether King will include A Face in the Crowd in a future collection.
Afterlife
Afterlife is a relatively short story, at around 4500 words. It was first published in Tin House magazine for Summer 2013 (#56), which can easily be purchased online either direct from the magazine or retailers such as Amazon. We can expect it to appear in King’s next short fiction collection.
This story first came to public attention when King read it at ‘A Conversation with Stephen King’ held at the Tsongas Center of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, Massachusetts on the evening of 7 December 2012. However, King had mentioned the story title (without any details) as early as 2010. If the YouTube link is still operating you can see King read it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j--hDgtmQIw&feature=share.
In this New Worlds tale story a man dies and finds himself in a very unusual place and faced with a choice. William Andrews, an investment banker, dies of cancer in 2012. As he passes he sees a white light and then finds himself in a hallway, fit and well, though wearing his pajamas and barefoot. There are only two doors – one is posted as ‘Locked’ and the other ‘Isaac Harris Manager’. He sees a fire extinguisher and a bulletin board with old-style photographs pinned below a sign reading, ‘Company Picnic 1956. What Fun We Had!’ On examining the photographs a growing sense of unease falls over him as he sees many people from his life but out of context with their ages and careers. He does not recognize most others.
Andrews enters Harris’ office where he finds a slightly harried, cynical man who explains that Andrews has visited many times before and always asks the same questions. Initially, Andrews thinks he is to be reincarnated but Harris claims Andrews has entered the manager’s own ‘afterlife’. Harris and a partner had owned a garment manufacturing operation ‘at the turn of the century’ and the room represented his own office from 1911. Due to theft and their female workers sneaking out to smoke they had been locked in during their shifts. A fire broke out and, although Harris and his partner escaped, 146 women died, burning to death, falling from a collapsing fire escape, or being killed jumping from ninth and tenth floor windows (‘Like 9/11 with fewer casualties,’ Andrews commented, to which Harris replied, ‘So you always say.’) In the subsequent trial the owners were exonerated of blame and Harris still won’t accept responsibility when Andrews puts it to him the women died because of his decisions.
Harris’ seemingly endless job is to process an ever growing number of souls as they came to his office and offer them the choice of two doors – if they went through one they lived again, through the other they simply vanished into nothingness – an end to their existence. Andrews, like all Harris’ pilgrims, initially thinks he can correct some of the mistakes he has made – accidentally injuring his brother, shoplifting on impulse and, worse, the night he took advantage of his drunken date and stood by as two other men also had sex with her. Harris knows of these indiscretions and claims none of his charges can change even one minor aspect of their lives if they return. If they choose the door to oblivion, which he seems to recommend, this actually results in more souls being directed to Harris to process.
Bill Andrews makes his choice, determined to hold on to ‘just one thing’ he can remember and change. In 1956, Mary Andrews is delivered of a baby boy in Hemingford County Hospital in Nebraska. ‘They will name him William, after her paternal grandfather.’
William Andrews was born at Hemingford County Hospital in Nebraska in 1956. One would think that is the county in which Hemingford Home, Nebraska is situated but we are told in The Stand that is Polk County. It seems King was intentionally linking this tale to Hemingford Home, which appears in The Stand, The Last Rung on the Ladder and It.
Bad Little Kid
On March 14, 2014 King published an original story exclusively in French and German, as a thank you to fans who had been so supportive during his tour of those two countries in November the previous year. King confirmed the English title is Bad Little Kid[xli]. A direct translation of the French title, Sale Gosse appears to be Brat; and a direct translation of the German title, Böser kleiner Junge appears to be Angry Little Boy. These French and German editions were e-books only.
One synopsis read, ‘George Hallas is in prison. In one week, he is to be executed. He has remained silent for a long time, but now he opens up to his public defender, Leonard Bradley. He tells him how his dreadful deed came to pass. For Bradley, the confession will eventually have spooky consequences.’
The tale is classic King – the antagonist is not only bad but nasty; and the consequences for those who come across him dire. Bradley may regret taking Hallas’ confession, which he initially dismisses as implausible, no matter how sane the murderer appears.
We won’t go in to a full description here as that would destroy the fun readers will have encountering this tale for the first time. There is no current indication when this 14,800 word story will be published in English but we can be confident that it will be at some stage.
Batman and Robin Have an Altercation
Batman and Robin Have an Altercation is a 4800 word story, which appeared in the prestigious Harper’s Magazine for September 2012. Copies are held in many libraries and can be sourced from online sellers such as the Overlook Connection and eBay. Set in Texas, this is an America Under Siege tale and we can expect it to appear in the next King short fiction collection.
The story opens with Sanderson visiting his father at the Harvest Hills Special Care Unit (colloquially known as ‘Crackerjack Manor’), where he lives after suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. In a few paragraphs King establishes the damage the Disease has done to his father’s memory and behavior, as well as sketching the elder Sanderson’s adult life – first as a ‘roughneck in the Texas oilfields’; then, ‘civilized’ by his new wife, as ‘a successful jewelry merchant in San Antonio’, a business the younger man has taken over.
Apart from suffering from incontinence and diabetes, Sanderson senior would sometimes erupt into foul language and had developed into a kleptomaniac. Every Sunday the two go out for lunch at a local Applebee’s restaurant, where the father always has the same order of chopped steak, and disparagingly compares the dessert to his wife’s much superior version. On this particular Sunday ‘Pop’ confuses his son Dougie with his other son Reggie, run down by a sixteen year old drunk driver forty-five years earlier.
The father remembers he and Dougie had used to love playing Batman and Robin. Dougie recalls the
two of them going out for Halloween dressed as ‘The Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder’ and tells his father he was ‘drunk on your ass and Mom was mad, but I had fun’. This memory pierces the senior’s fog and he is able to recall specifics of that night as they drive back to Crackerjack Manor – including that Dougie was 8, so it must have been 1959.
As they roll along the road Dougie is momentarily distracted as his father reminisces. And it is in those few seconds that an accident happens: ‘One of those built-up pickup trucks with the oversized tires and the roof-lights on the cab swerves into his lane’ and they collide. ‘Then he makes a mistake. He pushes the button that unrolls his window, sticks out his arm, and wags his middle finger at the truck.’ The other driver gets out and advances – ‘he’s a south Texas staple. He’s wearing jeans and a tee shirt with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulders. Not cut, ripped, so that errant strings dangle against the slabs of muscle on his upper arms. The jeans are hanging off his hipbones so the top two inches of his underwear shows. A chain runs from one beltless loop of his jeans to his back pocket, where there will no doubt be a big leather wallet, possibly embossed with the logo of a heavy metal band. He’s got tats on his arms … They are crude, straggling things: chains around the biceps, thorns around the forearms, a dagger on one wrist with a drop of blood hanging from the tip of the blade. No tattoo parlor did those. That’s jailhouse ink. Tat Man is at least six-two in his boots, and at least two hundred pounds. Maybe two-twenty. Sanderson is five-nine and weighs a hundred and sixty.’
Sanderson tries to back down but the other driver is very aggressive, striking the insurance card and registration from his hand; saying he doesn’t have insurance, he’s leaving and they can both pay for their own damage. Sanderson demands he stay and produce his registration and driver’s license. The man immediately punches him: ‘There’s my registration’ and says he doesn’t have a license before completely losing it, delivering first a two-handed punch and then kicking Sanderson twice in the side as he lies beside his Subaru. Shocked, Sanderson is unable even to call the man off and is crawling along the blacktop when he notices blood on the road. At first he thinks it’s his but then the blood begins to fall on him.
He looks up to find a piece of wood sprouting from ‘Tat Man’s’ neck and his father standing beside the assailant, who is suddenly doubled over. At first Dougie doesn’t know what he’s looking at but it quickly comes to him – his father has stolen the steak knife from Applebee’s and buried it in ‘Tat Man’s’ neck. As the wounded man wanders off and drops to his knees the elder man says he was beating on his son and keeps asking who he is. As the sirens begin to wail Dougie helps ‘the eighty-three-year-old Caped Crusader into the car’. ‘The sixty-one-year-old Boy Wonder’ shuffles off to pick up his documents, which the cops will surely want to see.
11/22/63 – Final Dispatch (2012)
King originally wrote a different ending to 11/22/63 but, after a suggestion from his son Joe Hill, wrote the conclusion published in the novel. The moderator of King’s official site had this to say about the matter on 20 December 2011:
I've read both of them and have been meaning to ask him if he would consider putting the first version on the site so people could compare. He told me he'd changed it because Joe had seen some problems with the way the first one was written but I don't know with 100% certainty whether Joe gave him specific ideas for the rewrite.
Later:
I was able to ask Steve about this, so here's his answer. Joe only told him that Jake had to meet Sadie again when she was an old lady but how that happened was completely Steve's idea so what we've read in the book was all Steve's writing based on Joe's suggestion to have Jake see Sadie one more time. He also told me it would be okay to put up the original version of the ending but I need to wait at least a month before doing so to give more people the chance to read it as published.
In January 2012 that original chapter, Final Dispatch was published at www.stephenking.com. A short piece, it reprints a Jodie’s Doin’s column from the Kileen Weekly Gazette of November 22, 2013 (the fiftieth anniversary of John F Kennedy’s assassination), and reports on the 50th wedding anniversary celebrations of Sadie Anderson, and her millionaire husband Trevor. A ‘man’ had found the piece during one of his many Internet searches.
In the Tall Grass
In the Tall Grass is a novella by King and his son, Joe Hill, author of the novels Heart-Shaped Box, Horns, and NOS4A2; a prize-winning collection of stories, 20th Century Ghosts; and the comics/graphic novels Locke & Key and Wraith.
The story was first published in two parts, in Esquire magazine for June/July and August 2012[xlii]; and first appeared in a mass market version as an eBook[xliii] and audio book in October that same year.
Cal and Becky DeMuth are siblings, born only nineteen months apart, and in synch with each other all their lives. Becky has fallen pregnant, the father is not in the picture, so the two decided to leave New Hampshire and live with their Uncle and Aunt on the West Coast until the baby is born. They are driving through Kansas on an isolated rural road with the windows down and radio off when they hear a kid crying out for help. They immediately pull over – on their side of Route 400 are a few houses, a boarded up church ‘called the Black Rock of the Redeemer (which Becky thought a queer name for a church, but this was Kansas)’ and a rotting, closed bowling alley. On the far side of the blacktop ‘there was nothing but high green grass.’
Listening intently now, they hear faint music from one of the houses, a dog barking and someone hammering on a board. Then, again, the voice crying for help and “I’m lost!” Looking at the expanse of six foot high grass they are alarmed, it seems like a little kid (‘he sounded about eight’) had wandered in and become disoriented. The fact that the grass was incredibly high for April was ‘an anomaly that wouldn’t occur to them until later.’ They decide to help and while Becky waits Cal drives their car into the church’s dirt parking lot, which held a scattering of ‘dust-filmed cars’ – ‘that all these cars appeared to have been there for days - even weeks - was an another anomaly that would not strike them until later.’
The kid now claims he has been in the grass for days. To Becky he doesn’t sound very far in and she is just about to enter the grass when a woman’s voice intervenes, “Don’t! Please! Stay away,” and asking ‘Tobin’ to stop calling out – “He’ll hear you!” Confused, Becky asks what’s going on – the boy claims his mother is hurt, the mother tells him again to stop but he persists. Becky suspects if this isn’t a prank ‘there’s something very wrong here’ and looks for Cal, seeing him peer into a dust-filmed Prius and flinch at something he sees. Becky climbs down the embankment from the road and notices the grass is even taller than she thought – about seven feet. The boy continues to call her, the mother countermanding him and urging Becky not to look for them. Cal joins her and she explains the situation. The kid sounds close so Cal steps into the grass and is almost immediately lost to Becky’s view. She takes out her cell phone, sees she has five bars, dials 9-1-1 and follows Cal in.
The operator answers and Becky tries to explain their location but the operator says it’s a bad connection and is then disconnected – the screen is now showing ‘NO SERVICE’ although she’s only a few feet into the grass. The kid starts screaming and there are sounds of a struggle – Cal rushes toward the sound but falls in the wet grass and lands face first in the mud. Cal asks the kid to call out – he again pleads for help but from a different direction than before – how could that be? He looks for his sister but there is nothing but grass – not even the trail of broken down grass where he had walked. Where he had fallen the grass was already springing back. Cal and Becky can talk but not see each other; when Cal jumps he can see the church and road, which seems further away than he expects, but no trace of his sister. Now the kid sounds quite distant - Cal demands he stand still, to allow them to come to come to him.
Cal decides to find Becky first and gets her to keep tal
king but their voices constantly seem to be coming from different directions. They agree ‘something’s wrong here.’ And there is – when Becky jumps to glimpse over the grass she sees the road is 140 or so yards away, although she had only walked twenty or thirty steps in. Worse, Cal had jumped at the same time and she briefly glimpsed him ten feet away, although they had to shout to hear each other. And then giddy nervous laughter erupts from a new male voice in the grass. Cal loses it for a few minutes, as his sensory observations and logic clash.
The kid chimes back in, now asking if they’d seen his father, a new player in the mix. Cal tries staying in the same place and jumping thirty seconds later and, sure enough, his location in relation to a sign by the road has undergone a significant change. The strange situation escalates – when Cal falls into the muddy water at the base of the grass the water is hot, as ‘hot as bathwater.’ Full panic takes hold as he stumbles on a dead dog – flyblown and with maggots boiling in its collapsed stomach cavity, much like the maggots he’d seen on the half-eaten hamburgers on the Prius’ passenger seat, back in the church parking lot - someone had left them – and never returned. Calming, he calls Becky and tells her they should try again to find each other by following their voices. And the kid? “Fuck the kid, Becky! This is about us now!” And there Part One ends.
Part Two opens with Cal and Becky blundering about trying to find one another, for what seems like hours on end – when Cal checks his watch it has stopped; he thinks the grass has stopped it. Once, Cal thinks the kid is close, and leaping to catch him finds only a dead crow with its head and one wing torn off.