Uncollected Stories 2003

by Stephen King

  He got around to the front of the house and that was when he saw Springsteen in the grass. Springsteen was his big sister's new cat. Owen liked most cats, but he didn't like Springsteen much. He was big and black, with deep green eyes that seemed to see everything. Every day Owen had to make sure that Springsteen wasn't trying to eat Butler.

  Butler was Owen's guinea pig. When Springsteen thought no one was around, he would jump up on the shelf' where Butler's big glass cage was and stare in through the screen on top with his hungry green eyes.

  Springsteen would sit there, all crouched down, and hardly move at all.

  Springsteen's tail would wag back and forth a little, and sometimes one of his ears would flick a bit, but that was all. I'll get in there pretty soon, you cruddy little guinea pig, Springsteen seemed to say. And when I get you, I'll eat you! Better believe it! If guinea pigs say prayers, you better say yours! Whenever Owen saw Springsteen the cat up on Butler's shelf, 157

  he would make him get down. Sometimes Springsteen put his claws out (although he knew better than to try to put them in Owen) and Owen imagined the black cat saying, You caught me this time, but so what?

  Big deal! Someday you won't! And then, yum! yum! dinner is served!

  Owen tried to tell people that Springsteen wanted to eat Butler, but nobody believed him.

  "Don't worry, Owen," Daddy said, and went off to work on a novel –

  that's what he did for work.

  "Don't worry, Owen," Mommy said, and went off to work on a novel

  – because that was what she did for work, too.

  "Don't worry, Owen" Big Brother said, and went off to watch The Tomorrow People on TV.

  "You just hate my cat!" Big Sister said, and went off to play The Entertainer on the piano.

  But no matter what they said, Owen knew he'd better keep a good old eye on Springsteen, because Springsteen certainly did like to kill things.

  Worse, he liked to play with them before he killed them. Sometimes Owen would open the door in the morning and there would be a dead bird on the doorstep. Then he would look further, and there would be Springsteen crouched on the porch rail, the tip of his tail switching slightly and his big green eyes looking at Owen, as if to say: Ha! I got another one...and you couldn't stop me, could you? Then Owen would ask permission to bury the dead bird. Sometimes his mommy or daddy would help him. So when Owen saw Springsteen on the grass of the front lawn, all crouched down with his tail twitching, he thought right away that the cat might be playing with some poor, hurt little animal.

  Owen forgot about picking flowers for his mom and ran over to see what Springsteen had caught.

  At first he thought Springsteen didn't have anything at all. Then the cat leaped, and Owen heard a very tiny scream from the grass. He saw something green and blue Springsteen had was shrieking and trying to get away. And now Owen saw something else – little spots of blood on the grass.

  "No!" Owen shouted. "Get away, Springsteen!" The cat flattened his ears back and turned towards the sound of Owen's voice. His big green eyes glared. The green and blue thing between Springsteen’s paws squiggled and wiggled and got away. It started to run and Owen saw it was a person, a little tiny 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. He was no bigger than the mice Springsteen sometimes killed in their big dark cellar. The little man had a cut down one of his cheeks from one of Springsteen's claws.

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  Springsteen hissed at Owen and Owen could almost hear him say:

  "Leave me alone, he's mine and I'm going to have him!"

  Then Springsteen jumped for the little man again, just as quick as a cat can jump – and if you have a cat of your own, you'll know that is very fast. The little man in the grass tried to dodge away, but he didn't quite make it, Owen saw the back of the little man's shirt tear open as Springsteen's claws ripped it apart. And, I am sorry to say, he saw more blood and heard the little man cry out in pain. He went tumbling in the grass. His little leaf hat went flying.

  Springsteen got ready to jump again.

  "No, Springsteen, no!" Owen cried. "Bad cat!"

  He grabbed Springsteen. Springsteen hissed again, and his needle-sharp teeth sank into one of Owen's hands. It hurt worse than a doctor's shot. "Ow!" Owen yelled, tears coming to his eyes. But he didn't let go of Springsteen. Now Springsteen started clawing at Owen, but Owen would not let go. He ran all the way to the driveway with Springsteen in his hands. Then he put Springsteen down. "Leave him alone, Springsteen!" Owen said, and, trying to think of the very worst thing he could, he added: "Leave him alone or I'll put you in the oven and bake you like a pizza!"

  Springsteen hissed, showing his teeth. His tail switched back and forth

  – not just the tip now but the whole thing.

  "I don't care if you are mad!" Owen yelled at him. He was still crying a little, because his hands hurt as if he had put them in the fire. They were both bleeding, one from Springsteen biting him and one from Springsteen clawing him. "You can't kill people on our lawn even if they are little!"

  Springsteen hised again and backed away. Okay, his mean green eyes seemed to say. Okay for this time. Next time...we'll see! Then he turned and ran away. Owen hurried back to see it the little man was all right. At first he thought the little man was gone. Then he saw the blood on the grass, and the little leaf hat. The little man was nearby, lying on his side.

  The reason Owen hadn't been able to see him at first was the little man's shirt was the exact color of the grass. Owen touched him gently with his finger. He was terribly afraid the little man was dead. But when Owen touched him, the little man groaned and sat up.

  "Are you all right?" Owen asked.

  The fellow in the grass made a face and clapped his hands to his ears.

  For a moment Owen thought Springsteen must have hurt the little guy's head as well as his back, and then he realized that his voice must sound like thunder to such a small person. The little man in the grass was not much longer than Owen's thumb. This was Owen's first good look at the little fellow he had rescued, and he saw right away why the little man 159

  had been so hard to find again. His green shirt was not just the color of grass; it was grass. Carefully woven blades of green grass. Owen wondered how come they didn't turn brown.

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  KEYHOLES

  An unfinished short story – only one copy of these notes is known to exist in a spiral holographic notebook that was auctioned off.

  Conklin’s first, snap, judgement was that this man, Michael Briggs, was not the sort of fellow who usually sort psychiatric help. He was dressed in dark corduroy pants, a neat blue shirt, and a sport-coat that matched – sort of – both. His hair was long, almost shoulder-length.

  His face was sunburned. His large hands were chapped, scabbed in a number of places, and when he reached over the desk to shake, he felt the rasp of rough calluses.

  “Hello, Mr Briggs.”

  “Hello.” Briggs smiled – a small ill-at-ease smile. His eyes moved about the room and centered on the couch – it was an eye movement Conklin had seen before, but it was no one Conklin associated with people who had been in therapy before – they knew the couch would be there. This Briggs with this work-hardened hands and sunburned face was looking for the profession’s most well-known symbol – the one they saw in the movies and the magazine cartoons.

  “You’re a construction worker?” Conklin asked.

  “Yes.” Briggs sat down carefully across the desk.

  “You want to talk to me about your son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jeremy.”

  “Yes.”

  A little silence fell. Conklin, used to using silence as a tool, was less uncomfortable with it than Briggs obviously was. Mrs Adrian, his nurse and receptionist, had taken the call five days before, and had said Briggs sounded distraught – a man who had control, she said, but by inche
s.

  Conklin’s specialty was not child psychology and his schedule was full, but Nancy Adrian’s assessment of the man behind the bare facts typed onto the printed form in front of him had intrigued him. Michael Briggs was forty-five, a construction worker who lived in Lovinger, New York, a town forty miles north of New York City. He was a widower. He wanted to consult with Conklin about his son, Jeremy, who was seven.

  Nancy had promised him a call-back by the end of the day.

  “Tell him to try Milton Abrams in Albany,” Conklin had said, sliding the form back across the desk toward her.

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  “Can I suggest you see him once before you decide that?” Nancy Adrian asked.

  Conklin looked at her, then leaned back in his chair and took out his cigarette case. Each morning he filled it with exactly ten Winston 100s

  – when they were gone, he was done smoking until the next day. It was not as good as quitting; he knew that. It was just a truce he had been able to reach. Now it was the end of the day – no more patients, anyway – and he deserved a cigarette. And Nancy’s reaction to Briggs intrigued him. Such suggestions as this were not unheard of, but they were rare…and the woman’s intuitions were good.

  “Why?” he asked, lighting the cigarette.

  “Well, I suggested Milton Abrams – he’s close to where this man Briggs is and he likes kids – but Briggs knows him a little – he worked on a construction crew that built a pool addition at Abrams’ country house two years ago. He says he would go to him if you still recommended it after hearing what he has to say, but that he wanted to tell a total stranger first and get an opinion. He said ‘I’d tell a priest if I was Catholic’.”

  “Um.”

  “He said ‘I just want to know what’s going on with my kid – if it’s me or what.’ He sounded aggressive about it, but he also sounded very, very scared.”

  “The boy is – ”

  “Seven.”

  “Um. And you want me to see him.”

  She shrugged, then grinned. She was forty-five, but when she grinned she still looked twenty. “He sounded…concrete. As though he could tell a clear story with no shadows. Phenomena, not ephemera.”

  “Quote me all you want – I still won’t raise your salary.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, then grinned. In his way he loved Nancy Adrian – once, over drinks, he had called her the Della Street of psychiatry, and she had almost hit him. But he valued her insights, and here came one now, clear and simple:

  “He sounded like a man who thinks there’s something physically wrong with his son. Except he called the office of a New York psychiatrist. An expensive New York psychiatrist. And he sounded scared.”

  “All right. Enough.” He butted the cigarette – not without regret.

  “Book him next week – Tuesday or Wednesday – around four.”

  And here it was, Wednesday afternoon – not around four but 4:03 on the nose – and here was Mr Briggs sitting opposite him with his work-reddened hands folded in his lap and looking warily at Conklin.

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  FOR THE BIRDS

  From a 1986 anthology by various authors: King had to contribute a one-page story that ended with a pun; his punchline consequently became the title of the compilation.

  Okay, this is a science fiction joke.

  It seems like in 1995 or so the pollution in the atmosphere of London has started to kill off all the rooks. And the city government is very concerned because the rooks roosting on the cornices and the odd little crannies of the public buildings are a big attraction. The Yanks with their Kodaks, if you get it. So they say, "What are we going to do?"

  They get a lot of brochures from places with climates similar to London's so they can raise the rooks until the pollution problem is finally licked. One place with a similar climate, but low pollution count, turns to be Bangor, Maine. So they put an ad in the paper soliciting bird fanciers and talk to a bunch of guys in the trade. Finally, they engage this one guy at the rate of $50,000 a year to raise rooks. They send an ornithologist over on the concord with two cases of rook eggs packed in these shatterproof cases – they keep the shipping compartment constantly heated and all that stuff. So this guy has a new business –

  North American Rook Farms, Inc. He goes to work right off incubating new rooks so London will not become a rookless city. The only thing is, the London City Council is really impatient, and every day they send him a telegram that says: “Bred Any Good RooksLately? ”

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  THE REPLOIDS

  Appeared in Night Visions #5 , 1988

  No one knew exactly how long it had been going on. Not long. Two days, two weeks; it couldn't have been much longer than that, Cheyney reasoned. Not that it mattered. It was just that people got to watch a little more of the show with the added thrill of knowing the show was real. When the United States – the whole world – found out about the Reploids, it was pretty spectacular. Just as well, maybe. These days, unless it's spectacular, a thing can go on damned near forever. It is neither believed nor disbelieved. It is simply part of the weird Godhead mantra that made up the accelerating flow of events and experience as the century neared its end. It's harder to get peoples' attention. It takes machine-guns in a crowded airport or a live grenade rolled up the aisle of a bus load of nuns stopped at a roadblock in some Central American country overgrown with guns and greenery. The Reploids became national – and international – news on the morning of November 30, 1989, after what happened during the first two chaotic minutes of the Tonight Show taping in Beautiful Downtown Burbank, California, the night before. The floor manager watched intently as the red sweep secondhand moved upward toward the twelve. The studio audience clockwatched as intently as the floor manager. When the red sweep second-hand crossed the twelve, it would be five o'clock and taping of the umpty-umptieth Tonight Show would commence. As the red secondhand passed the eight, the audience stirred and muttered with its own peculiar sort of stage fright. After all, they represented America, didn't they? Yes!

  "Let's have it quiet, people, please," the floor manager said pleasantly, and the audience quieted like obedient children. Doc Severinsen's drummer ran off a fast little riff on his snare and then held his sticks easily between thumbs and fingers, wrists loose, watching the floor manager instead of the clock, as the show – people always did. For crew and performers, the floor manager was the clock. When the second-hand passed the ten, the floor manager counted down aloud to four, and then held up three fingers, two fingers, one finger...and then a clenched fist from which one finger pointed dramatically at the audience. An APPLAUSE sign lit up, but the studio audience was primed to whoop it up; it would have made no difference if it had been written in Sanskrit.

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  So things started off just as they were supposed to start off: dead on time. This was not so surprising; there were crewmembers on the Tonight Show who, had they been LAPD officers, could have retired with full benefits. The Doc Severinsen band, one of the best showbands in the world, launched into the familiar theme: Ta-da- da-Da-da ... and the large, rolling voice of Ed McMahon cried enthusiastically: "From Los Angeles, entertainment capital of the world, it's The Tonight Show, live, with Johnny Carson! Tonight, Johnny's guests are actress Cybill Shepherd of Moonlighting!" Excited applause from the audience.

  "Magician Doug Henning!" Even louder applause from the audience.

  "Pee Wee Herman!" A fresh wave of applause, this time including hoots of joy from Pee Wee's rooting section. "From Germany, the Flying Schnauzers, the world's only canine acrobats!" Increased applause, with a mixture of laughter from the audience. "Not to mention Doc Severinsen, the world's only Flying Bandleader, and his canine band!"

  The band members not playing horns obediently barked. The audience laughed harder, applauded harder.

  In the control room of Studio C, no one was laughing.

  A man in a loud sport-coat with a shock of curly black hair was standing in the wings, idly snapping
his fingers and looking across the stage at Ed, but that was all.

  The director signaled for Number Two Cam's medium shot on Ed for the umpty-umptieth time, and there was Ed on the ON SCREEN

  monitors. He barely heard someone mutter, "Where the hell is he?"

  before Ed's rolling tones announced, also for the umpty-umptieth time:

  "And now heeeere's JOHNNY!"

  Wild applause from the audience.

  "Camera Three," the director snapped.

  "But there's only that – "

  "Camera Three, goddammit!"

  Camera Three came up on the ON SCREEN monitor, showing every TV director's private nightmare, a dismally empty stage...and then someone, some stranger, was striding confidently into that empty space, just as if he had every right in the world to be there, filling it with unquestionable presence, charm, and authority. But, whoever he was, he was most definitely not Johnny Carson. Nor was it any of the other familiar faces TV and studio audiences had grown used to during Johnny's absences. This man was taller than Johnny, and instead of the familiar silver hair, there was a luxuriant cap of almost Pan-like black curls. The stranger's hair was so black that in places it seemed to glow almost blue, like Superman's hair in the comic-books. The sport-coat he wore was not quite loud enough to put him in the Pleesda-Meetcha-Is-165

  This- The-Missus? car salesman category, but Carson would not have touched it with a twelve-foot pole.

  The audience applause continued, but it first seemed to grow slightly bewildered, and then clearly began to thin.

  "What the fuck's going on?" someone in the control room asked. The director simply watched, mesmerized.