Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (33 page)

In Chapter Eight hero and heroine ran back to the lab. Gerad/Gerard alone kept running into the garage and has “…ever since have been glad that Vicki stayed in the lab and was spared the sight that has wakened me from a thousand awful nightmares.” This is what
he
saw:  

A huge, white maggot twisted on the garage floor, holding Weinbaum with its long suckers, raising him towards its dripping, pink mouth from which horrid mewing sounds came. Veins, red and pulsing, showed under its slimy flesh and millions of squirming tiny maggots in the blood vessels, in the skin, even forming a huge eye that stared out at me … In a half-world of terror I fired the revolver again and again.  

In his desperation Weinbaum yelled for Gerad/Gerard to set the creature on fire and, using a box of matches, he set the green liquid aflame, “…just as Weinbaum screamed his last. I saw his body through the translucent skin of the creature, still twitching as thousands of maggots leached onto it.” Grabbing his girl, Gerad/Gerard ran for the car as the whole house went up in flames. 

In Chapter Nine Gerad/Gerard says, “There isn’t too much left to say.” The fire swept into the woods, destroying fifteen square miles of forest and residential homes. “I couldn’t feel too badly about that fire; I realize that hundreds might have been killed by the gigantic maggot-things …” He drove out to the house after the fire and, with some unlikely good fortune, found Weinbaum’s diary in a metal cabinet. This revealed that he had been exposing the dead flesh to “gamma rays” (that great staple of science fiction) and these had caused the maggots to group. “Perhaps the radioactive bomb had speeded up the revolution.”  

The story ends:  

In a way, I suppose, I assisted in Rankin’s death; the flesh of the body whose grave I had robbed had fed perhaps the very creature that had killed him. I live with that thought. But I believe there can be forgiveness. I’m working for it. Or, rather,
we’re
working for it. Vicki and I. Together. 

We know the story is set in 1962 (the date of Wheatherby’s death) and Weinbaum’s lab was in the Belwood District in California. The Crestwood Cemetery, from which Wheatherby was disinterred, is the first cemetery mentioned in King fiction, but certainly not the last! There are no links to King’s other fiction. 

As King rightly considers the story to be juvenilia it is very unlikely it will ever be republished in any form. Photocopies of
In a Half-World of Terror
circulate within the King community and these would represent the best opportunity for readers to access this America Under Siege tale.  

A single complete set of “Comics Review” material is held in The Murray Collection at Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. To the author’s knowledge this is one of only two sets of the three issues that exist (another is held by a comics collector). It seems Duke holds the only extant copy of the concluding material that was to have appeared in Issue #4. The Murray Collection is a huge archive of comics and fanzines collected over 40 years by Edwin and Terry Murray and donated to the Library in 2003. 

Not surprisingly, the story is derivative of 1950s B-Grade science fiction/horror movies and has both structural and internal logic problems. However, Spignesi
⁶⁹
says of it, “…it is an important step forward for the teenaged King. In retrospect, it illustrates just how developed King’s storytelling abilities were by the age of eighteen …” 

⁶⁴
Bob Jackson, a King collector, owns both Issue 3 of
Comics Review
and the
Stories of Suspense
version.
Comics Review
was small in size, measuring only 8.5” by 5.5”.  

⁶⁵
The Stephen King Illustrated Companion
by Bev Vincent. It was reproduced from Bob Jackson’s personal copy 

⁶⁶
From personal correspondence between Rocky Wood and Marv Wolfman 

⁶⁷
The Stephen King Story
, George Beahm, p.41 

⁶⁸
Personal correspondence with Rocky Wood 19 July 2008 

⁶⁹
The Lost Work of Stephen King
, Stephen J. Spignesi, p.23-25
 

Jhonathan and the Witchs (1993)
 

King wrote this story in 1956 or 1957, at the age of nine. It was first published over three and a half decades later in
First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors
, edited by Paul Mandelbaum and published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. In the editor’s introduction King states he wrote the story for his Aunt Gert, who paid him a quarter for every story he wrote. Unfortunately, there are no other known examples of these stories. Reading this, the earliest of King’s writings to come to light, is tremendously interesting (the first page of the manuscript, in King’s handwriting, is also reproduced). 

The best way to access this story is to purchase
First Words
on the second hand market. Copies sometimes appear at specialist King booksellers or at other on line sellers. Among other authors whose “First Words” are included in the book are Isaac Asimov and Joyce Carol Oates. It seems very unlikely that King will re-publish it in one of his short story collections. 

Due to the fantasy content,
Jhonathan and the Witchs
is a New Worlds story. In it
the King sets a young man the task of killing three witches (correctly spelled in the manuscript but not in the title), with the penalty for failure to be death. Jhonathan, a cobbler’s son, had been sent out into the world by his father to seek his fortune and he intended to start by asking the King for work. But on the way to see the King he met “…a rabbit who was a fairy in disguise” and was being chased by hunters. After Jhonathan saved the rabbit/fairy it granted Jhonathan three wishes. When he could not think of anything the fairy agreed to give him the wishes when he needed them. 

When Jhonathan reached the kingdom, “…as luck would have it, the king was in a very bad mood that day. So he vented his mood on Jhonathan.” The King set Jhonathan a reward of 5,000 crowns for killing three witches who lived on “…yonder Mountain…” but the alternative was dire – “If you cannot do it I will have your head!” 

As Jhonathan approached the first witch intending to kill her with a knife, he heard a voice in his ear. This voice explained that each witch could not be killed by certain methods. 

The first witch could not be pierced, so he used his first wish, “She was in a cave near the foot of the mountain, and was a mean looking hag … before the witch could do anything but give him an ugly look, he wished she should be smothered. And Lo! It was done.” The second witch could not be pierced or smothered, so he wished her crushed, “And before the witch could do anything but give him an ugly look, he had wished her crushed. And Lo! It was done.” 

The final witch could not be pierced or smothered and was invisible, yet he still had to kill her to receive his reward so  

…he was plagued with thoughts of how? Then he hit upon a wonderful plan … He waited outside the entrance until he heard the witches (
sic
) footsteps. He picked up a couple of big rocks and wished the witch a normal woman and ‘Lo! She became visible and then Jhonathan struck her head with the rocks he had.  

Jhonathan collected his 5,000 crowns and he and his father lived happily ever after.
 

The kingdom remained unnamed, the timeline is not given and there are no links to other King works, although the fantasy aspects of Kingdoms and witches make appearances in such later King works as
Eyes of the Dragon, The King Family and the Wicked Witch
and
The Dark Tower
cycle.  

Basically
Jhonathan and the Witchs
is a Grimm-like fairy tale, of the sort read and loved by young children. In his development as a writer, we see King attempting his own fairy tale at the tender age of nine, even using the time honored opening, “Once upon a time…” While simplistic, clearly written by a juvenile and short at just over 500 words, there are signs of a sophisticated vocabulary and the ability to organize a fairly consistent story. One last interesting aspect is King’s spelling of Jhonathan, one wonders if it was a spelling mistake at the time or an intentional device? 

Keyholes (c.1984) 

A spiral bound notebook donated by King was auctioned on 1 May 1988 to benefit the American Repertory Theater. The notebook contained the fragmentary story that has become known as
Keyholes
, as well as notes by King to himself and Tabitha King, a handwritten revision of
Silver Bullet
and a series of algebraic equations solved in King’s handwriting! 

Keyholes
appears only as a story fragment in the notebook, handwritten by King over 2 ½ pages and totalling only 768 words. Copies of the pages circulate in the King community. The story was apparently written in early 1984, prior to the release of
Silver Bullet
in 1985. 

According to Spignesi
⁷⁰
the notebook has since changed hands “several times” on the secondary market for large sums of money. 

From only two and one half pages of notebook manuscript there is little to be said about this America Under Siege tale. In it a man visits a psychiatrist. Michael Briggs, a construction worker, was seeing Dr. Conklin about his 7-year-old son, Jeremy at Conklin’s New York City office. Jeremy’s mother, Briggs’ wife, is dead.  

Briggs, apart from being the widowed father of at least the one child, was a 45 year old construction worker and lived in Lovinger, New York, 40 miles from New York City.  

(Conklin’s first, snap, judgement was that this man … was not the sort of fellow who usually sought psychiatric help. He was dressed in dark courderoy (
sic
) 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.) 

Conklin had suggested Briggs consider seeing another psychiatrist, Milton Abrams, in Albany but his nurse, Nancy Adrian had convinced the doctor to see the new patient. Saying he had sounded “distraught” and that he was “a man who had control … but by inches” she had replied to the idea of a referral with, “Can I suggest you see him once before your (
sic
) decide that?” and he had agreed after some prompting, even though child psychology was not his specialty and his schedule was full.  

Briggs had told the nurse, “I just want to know what’s going on with my kid – if it’s me or what.” She told Conklin, “He sounded aggressive about it, but he also sounded very, very scared.” And, “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,” she repeated. 

The nurse finally convinced her doctor by telling him that Briggs had worked on  

…a pool addition at Abrams’ country house two years ago. He says he would go to him if you still recommend it after hearing what he has to say, but that he wanted to tell a stranger first and get an opinion. He said, “I’d tell a priest if I was a Catholic.” 

Conklin himself has one interesting habit to do with his cigarette case. “Each morning he filled it with exactly ten Winston 100s – when they were gone, he was done with 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.” 

In this handwritten and unedited version Nancy Adrian, the 45-year-old receptionist and nurse, is twice referred to as “Nurse Abrams” (a confusion with the doctor in Albany) in error. Conklin had a strong attachment to his employee. He thought “…when she grinned she looked twenty … In his way he loved Nancy Abrams (
sic
) – once, over drinks, he had called her the Della Street of psychiatry, and she almost hit him.” Della Street was Perry Mason’s secretary, more of a Girl Friday, in Erle Stanley Gardner’s novels and the TV series
Perry Mason
,
starring Raymond Burr as the defense attorney cum sleuth and Barbara Hale as Della. 

Keyholes
is at least tangentially reminiscent of King’s short story
The Boogeyman
, originally published in
Cavalier
for March 1973 and slightly revised for its appearance in the
Night Shift
collection. 

There is little else to say about this fragmentary story. Readers are given so little of the plot that many questions come to mind. Is the real reason Briggs wants to see a psychiatrist really a problem with his son, as he has claimed? Is there something of a sexual or sinful nature to what Briggs has to say, after all he said he would tell a priest if he was Catholic (sound like a confession to you?) Is the problem of the boy’s or the father’s mind or is it physical, as nurse Abrams speculated? Why was Briggs scared? How did Mrs. Briggs die? 

The likelihood is that we shall never know the answer to these questions. The fragment was probably written nearly twenty years ago and there is no indication King has ever returned to it, or ever will. 

⁷⁰
The Lost Work of Stephen King
, Stephen J. Spignesi, p.177-179