Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (32 page)

I Was a Teenage Grave Robber (1965) / In a Half-World of Terror (1966) 

I Was a Teenage Grave Robber
was the first of King’s stories to be independently published. It initially appeared in partial form in a mimeographed “fanzine,”
Comics Review
, serialized over three issues in 1965
⁶⁴
. The fourth and concluding issue never appeared but the remaining text of King’s story was posted to at least some subscribers as printed pages and not as part of a magazine. The material that appeared in the third issue (Chapters 5 & 6) was reproduced in
The Stephen King Illustrated Companion
in 2009
⁶⁵
.  

The following year the entire story was published in another fanzine,
Stories of Suspense
, as
In a Half-World of Terror
. However, the text was so different as to have almost certainly been printed from a different manuscript. In one major change the lead character’s surname is Gerard in the original version and Gerad in the
Stories of Suspense
form. Of course this could simply be an initial error by Wolfman when typing the second version that he had to continue throughout the tale, considering its form as a mimeograph. Both versions of the tale were credited to “Steve King.”  

King tells something of the story’s background in
On Writing
:  

The first story I did actually publish was in a horror fanzine issued by Mike Garrett of Birmingham, Alabama (Mike is still around and still in the biz). He published this novella under the title, “In a Half-World of Terror,” but I still like my title much better. Mine was “I was a Teen-Age Grave-robber.” Super Duper! Pow!  

In fact, King has it wrong. The reprint, in Marvin Wolfman’s fanzine, was retitled to
In a Half-World of Terror
. Garrett had actually published the story as
I Was a Teenage Grave Robber
. 

Wolfman recalled receiving the manuscript from Jeff Gelb, later Garrett’s partner in the
Hot Blood
erotic horror
series.
⁶⁶
In his editorial for that issue of the fanzine Wolfman wrote:  

The next tale of fright, written by Steven King (
sic
), is the third end to this issue. “In a Half-World of Terror” was originally published by Mike Garrett in his fangzine (possible
sic
, probable pun) “Comics Review” under a different title. The title: (gasp, I cringe when I hear this) “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber” certainly didn’t do anything for the story, so when (eeech) Wolfman got permission to print the thing, the title was changed … The story has an atmosphere of the horror movies you see on TV so we tried it.’ 

King is also quoted in Collings’
The Shorter Works of Stephen King
as having said of this story, “One of the things I think has been good for me – really, really good – is that I stayed out, mostly by luck, of that circle of fanzines and fans that club together.” To this point Beahm
⁶⁷
writes:  

Unlike H.P. Lovecraft whose life and writing career were handicapped by his involvement with fanzines – amateur publications done for fun and not profit – the young Stephen King, early in his career, wisely avoided organized fandom … As King said “I was never part of a fan network. I never had that kind of a support system.” 

In fact, it seems it was indeed luck that kept King out of fanzines. In material sent with the concluding part of
I Was a Teenage Grave Robber
Garrett told subscribers: 

Steve King and I are going ahead with a new fanzine,
Teen-Zine
. It will feature a variety of things and should be of interest to everyone. So, for further details write either to me or Steve at this address: Steve King / R.F.D. #1, Pownal Maine / Thank you very much for your cooperation.  

Having checked with Garrett it can be confirmed this project never proceeded
⁶⁸
. 

In Chapter One of the tale the narrator, later revealed as Danny Gerad/Gerard, is in a graveyard with a man called Rankin, digging up the freshly buried body of Daniel Wheatherby (“1899-1962 / He has joined his beloved wife in a better land” – all quotes are from
In a Half-World of Terror
version unless noted). The story starts ominously, “It was like a nightmare, like some unreal dream that you wake up from the next morning. Only this nightmare was happening.” Danny had been asked to leave school, as he could no longer cover his fees. He and Rankin drove to Steffan Weinbaum’s combined home/laboratory with the body. In a flash toward many of King’s future scenes of horror, such as the Marsten House (
‘Salem’s Lot
), and in the great traditions of horror movies, we read, “And then we came out into the open and I could see it, the huge rambling Victorian mansion that sat on the summit of the steep grade.” Weinbaum himself was in the mould of the archetypal mad scientist, “tall, rigid… face much like a skull; his eyes were deep-set and the skin was stretched so taughtly over the cheekbones that his flesh was almost transparent.” 

In Chapter Two readers learn Gerad/Gerard’s parents died in a car crash when he was thirteen:  

It left me an orphan and should have landed me in an orphan’s home. But my father’s will disclosed the fact that he had left me a substantial some (
sic
) of money and I was self-reliant … I was left in the somewhat bizarre role as the sole tenant of my own house. I paid the mortgage … and tried to stretch a dollar as far as possible.  

By the age of eighteen there was little money left, and wanting to attend college, Gerad/Gerard sold the house for $10,000. He was then defrauded of all he had and, after bluffing his way through the first four months of college, was asked to leave for failing to pay his fees. That very day he met Rankin in a bar. “It was my first experience in a tavern. I had a forged driver’s license and I bought enough whiskys (
sic
) to get drunk.” Rankin took him to a secluded booth to discuss an employment proposal. After he offered Gerad/Gerard “five hundred a job,” suspicions were aroused. Against his better judgement, Gerad/Gerard agreed to meet Weinbaum. 

In Chapter Three Weinbaum took Gerad/Gerard on a tour of “…the house, including the laboratory.” Weinbaum stared at the boy  

…with fixed eyes and once again I felt a blast of icy coldness sweep over me. “I’ll put it to you bluntly,” he said, “my experiments are too complicated to explain in any detail, but they concern human flesh. Dead human flesh.” … He looked like a spider ready to engulf a fly, and this whole house was his web. The sun was striking fire to the west and deep pools of shadows were spreading across the room, hiding his face, but leaving the glittering eyes as they shifted in the creeping darkness.  

(Not a bad piece of writing for a teenager). After threatening to leave, Gerad/Gerard found that Weinbaum somehow knew of his college fee problem and finally agreed to working on a “trial basis … I got the eerie feeling I was talking to the devil himself and I had been tricked into selling my soul.” 

Reverting to the night of Wheatherby’s disinterment Rankin and “professor” Weinbaum began to work on the body. Gerad/Gerard left, driving past the cemetery, realizing the “nightmare” was real.  

In Chapter Four as Gerad/Gerard drove on, he came upon a startling scene, “a panel truck crazily parked” in the middle of the road, “a girl of about eighteen running toward my car, an older man running after her.” Slamming on the brakes, Gerad/Gerard rolled his car but immediately jumped out of it and ran to the girl, who was being yanked into the truck by the other man. In an awkward piece of dialogue he said to Gerad/Gerard, “You stay out of this, buddy. I’m her legal guardian.” He then punched Gerad/Gerard and started to drive off, but not before the boy threw himself onto the van’s roof (!) and “clawed through about five layers of paint to hang on.” Reaching through the driver’s window, Gerad/Gerard then caused the truck to crash over a cliff. “I landed hard, but the rock I landed on was harder.” The driver was dead, but the girl miraculously untouched. After being interviewed by the police, Gerad/Gerard and the girl were taken away in an ambulance. She introduced herself as Vicki Pickford, and told Gerad/Gerard that her guardian was “… a drunkard and all-around crumb … I hated him and I’m glad he’s dead.” They agreed to meet for a movie the following day, “...at 7.30.” 

In Chapter Five Weinbaum, having read of the crash in the afternoon paper’s, rang Gerad/Gerard to check that he had not revealed anything of his nocturnal work to the police, and booked his services again for two nights later. “The next morning, at 7.30 sharp,” Gerad/Gerard collected Pickford at her motel. This certainly seems like a strange time to go to a movie! They kissed once or twice. “All in all, a pleasant evening.” (It seems the young King and his “publishers” could have done with some editorial assistance at this point). The plot takes an even less likely twist when an usher approached them and asked if he was “Mr. Gerad. Daniel Gerad” and stated he had a life or death phone call to take. It was Rankin (who presumably had some form of ESP) demanding Gerad/Gerard come to the Weinbaum house immediately. “There were sounds of a scuffle, a muffled scream, then a click and the empty dial tone.” Grabbing Pickford, Gerad/Gerard headed immediately for the danger. As they arrived, “Grim and gaunt against the overcast sky, I could see the house.” Telling his girl to wait in the car, Gerad/Gerard found the laboratory “empty but ransacked” with bloodstains trailing into the “darkened garage.” He also noted that several sheeted tanks had been broken and that a “green liquid” flowed over the floor “in sticky rivulets.” 

Entering the garage:  

…the light from the lab threw a golden shaft along the garage floor, but it was next to nothing in the Styngan (
sic
) blackness of the garage. All my childish fears of the dark returned. Once again I entered the realm of terror that only a child can know. I realized that the shadow that leered at me from out of the dark might not be dispelled by bright light.  

This passage foreshadows the
Monster in the Closet
section of
Cujo
,
The Boogeyman
and any number of scenes in King’s fiction. Realizing he was standing at the top of a stairway Gerad/Gerard retreats to his car. 

In Chapter Six Pickford revealed that she had been to the house once before, and told Gerad/Gerard that “Uncle David” had become her guardian after her parents were killed in a train-wreck four years earlier. He had worked for Weinbaum and she’d brought him his lunch, at midnight. At the time he was appointed guardian David was a kind man, but after losing his job as a night-watchman, he got the job with Weinbaum and became mean, regularly got drunk and she “watched him decay before my very eyes.” One night he returned home and beat her, causing her to run away, leading to the truck crash, and David’s death. 

As Pickford told her tale Gerad/Gerard nearly determined to drive away, “but then a faraway, thin scream…” reached them. After failing to convince Gerad/Gerard not to re-enter the house, Pickford demanded to go with him, a demand Gerad/Gerard rejected. He then went back into the house, down the stairway, and into a short passage. “Suddenly, a scream, terrible and thick with fear sounded in the darkness ahead of me. It was the sound of terror, the sound of a man confronted with something out of the deepest pits of horror.” Gerad/Gerard stumbled over Rankin’s body, “his eyes staring in glazed horror at the ceiling.” Finding an armed Weinbaum, he and Gerad/Gerard began to argue about the length of time it had taken the boy to arrive. They were cut off “…by a sound that has hounded me through nightmares ever since, a hideous mewling sound, that of some gigantic rat in pain.” (This line reminds the reader of
Graveyard Shift
.) While craning to see what horror was making this sound from within a pit, they both heard a “wail of terror” and Weinbaum realized Gerad/Gerard had brought a companion. 

At the beginning of Chapter Seven the two men returned through the lab, “the place now swimming in green liquid” as the remaining cases had been broken and were now empty. Gerad/Gerard found the girl’s tracks outside and those of something else, “it was more as if something huge had dragged itself into the woods.” Taking Weinbaum’s gun, Gerad/Gerard headed out to rescue the girl, who escaped the shambling creature following her, which seemed to be able to climb down a gully, but not back up it, much as Weinbaum had trapped the other creature in the pit. Still, Gerad/Gerard knew a third thing was still on the loose and now heard “…a scream from the lab. And … mewing.”