Read Uncollected Stories 2003 Online
Authors: Stephen King
We did the lions first, then Ebony Velvet, the docile black panther that
had set the circus back almost one season's receipts. It was a tricky
business coaxing them up and then back through the breezeways, but all
of us preferred it to calling Mr. Indrasil to help.
By the time we were ready for Green Terror, twilight had come – a
queer, yellow twilight that hung humidly around us. The sky above had
taken on a flat, shiny aspect that I had never seen and which I didn't like
in the least.
"Better hurry," Mr. Farnum said, as we laboriously trundled the
Demon Cat Cage back to where we could hook it to the back of Green
Terror's show cage. "Barometer's falling off fast." He shook his head
worriedly. "Looks bad, boys. Bad.'' He hurried on, still shaking his head.
We got Green Terror's breezeway hooked up and opened the back of
his cage. "In you go," I said encouragingly.
Green Terror looked at me menacingly and didn't move.
Thunder rumbled again, louder, closer, sharper. The sky had gone
jaundice, the ugliest color I have ever seen. Wind-devils began to pick
jerkily at our clothes and whirl away the flattened candy wrappers and
cotton-candy cones that littered the area.
"Come on, come on," I urged and poked him easily with the blunttipped rods we were given to herd them with.
Green Terror roared ear-splittingly, and one paw lashed out with
blinding speed. The hardwood pole was jerked from my hands and
splintered as if it had been a greenwood twig. The tiger was on his feet
now, and there was murder in his eyes.
"Look," I said shakily. "One of you will have to go get Mr. Indrasil,
that's all. We can't wait around."
As if to punctuate my words, thunder cracked louder, the clapping of
mammoth hands. Kelly Nixon and Mike McGregor flipped for it; I was
excluded because of my previous run-in with Mr. Indrasil. Kelly drew
the task, threw us a wordless glance that said he would prefer facing
the storm and then started off.
He was gone almost ten minutes. The wind was picking up velocity
now, and twilight was darkening into a weird six o'clock night. I was
scared, and am not afraid to admit it. That rushing, featureless sky, the
deserted circus grounds, the sharp, tugging wind-vortices all that makes
a memory that will stay with me always, undimmed.
And Green Terror would not budge into his breezeway.
Kelly Nixon came rushing back, his eyes wide. "I pounded on his door
for 'most five minutes!" He gasped. "Couldn't raise him!"
We looked at each other, at a loss. Green Terror was a big investment
for the circus. He couldn't just be left in the open. I turned bewilderedly,
looking for Chips, Mr. Farnum, or anybody who could tell me what to
do. But everyone was gone. The tiger was our responsibility. I
considered trying to load the cage bodily into the trailer, but I wasn't
going to get my fingers in that cage.
"Well, we've just got to go and get him," I said. "The three of us.
Come on." And we ran toward Mr. Indrasil's trailer through the gloom
of coming night.
We pounded on his door until he must have thought all the demons of
hell were after him. Thankfully, it finally jerked open. Mr. Indrasil
swayed and stared down at us, his mad eyes rimmed and oversheened
with drink. He smelled like a distillery.
"Damn you, leave me alone," he snarled.
"Mr. Indrasil – " I had to shout over the rising whine of the wind. It
was like no storm I had ever heard of or read about, out there. It was
like the end of the world .
"You," he gritted softly. He reached down and gathered my shirt up in
a knot. "I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget." He glared
at Kelly and Mike, cowering back in the moving storm shadows. "Get
out!"
They ran. I didn't blame them; I've told you – Mr. Indrasil was crazy.
And not just ordinary crazy – he was like a crazy animal, like one of his
own cats gone bad.
"All right," he muttered, staring down at me, his eyes like hurricane
lamps. "No juju to protect you now. No grisgris." His lips twitched in a
wild, horrible smile. "He isn't here now, is he? We're two of a kind, him
and me. Maybe the only two left. My nemesis – and I'm his." He was
rambling, and I didn't try to stop him. At least his mind was off me.
"Turned that cat against me, back in '58. Always had the power more'n
me. Fool could make a million – the two of us could make a million if
he wasn't so damned high and mighty...what's that?"
It was Green Terror, and he had begun to roar ear-splittingly.
"Haven't you got that damned tiger in?"
he screamed, almost falsetto.
He shook me like a rag doll.
"He won't go!" I found myself yelling back. "You've got to – "
But he flung me away. I stumbled over the fold-up steps in front of his
trailer and crashed into a bone-shaking heap at the bottom. With
something between a sob and a curse, Mr. Indrasil strode past me, face
mottled with anger and fear.
I got up, drawn after him as if hypnotized. Some intuitive part of me
realized I was about to see the last act played out.
Once clear of the shelter of Mr. Indrasil's trailer, the power of the
wind was appalling. It screamed like a runaway freight train. I was an
ant, a speck, an unprotected molecule before that thundering, cosmic
force.
And Mr. Legere was standing by Green Terror's cage.
It was like a tableau from Dante. The near-empty cage-clearing inside
the circle of trailers; the two men, facing each other silently, their
clothes and hair rippled by the shrieking gale; the boiling sky above; the
twisting wheatfields in the background, like damned souls bending to
the whip of Lucifer.
"It's time, Jason," Mr. Legere said, his words flayed across the
clearing by the wind.
Mr. Indrasil's wildly whipping hair lifted around the livid scar across
the back of his neck. His fists clenched, but he said nothing. I could
almost feel him gathering his will, his life force, his id. It gathered
around him like an unholy nimbus.
And, then, I saw with sudden horror that Mr. Legere was unhooking
Green Terror's breezeway – and the back of the cage was open!
I cried out, but the wind ripped my words away.
The great tiger leaped out and almost flowed past Mr. Legere. Mr.
Indrasil swayed, but did not run. He bent his head and stared down at
the tiger.
And Green Terror stopped.
He swung his huge head back to Mr. Legere, almost turned, and then
slowly turned back to Mr. Indrasil again. There was a terrifyingly
palpable sensation of directed force in the air, a mesh of conflicting
wills centered around the tiger. And the wills were evenly matched. I
think, in the end, it was Green Terror's own will – his hate of Mr.
Indrasil – that tipped the scales.
The cat began to advance, his eyes hellish, flaring beacons. And
something strange began to happen to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to be
folding in on himself, shriveling, accordioning. The silk-shirt lost shape,
the dark, whipping hair became a hideous toadstool around his collar.
Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously,
Green Terror leaped.
I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on my
back, and the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I caught one
crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the
darkness descended.
When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the granary bins in the
allpurpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had been
beaten with padded Indian clubs.
Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes were
open and grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever gonna
wake up. How you feel?"
"Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"
"We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado
almost carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."
At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came
flooding back. "Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"
His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an evasive
answer.
"Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know,
Chips. I have to."
Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't
exactly what we told the cops – in fact we hardly told the cops any of it.
No sense havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's gone. I
didn't even know that Legere guy was around."
"And Green Tiger?"
Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought to
death."
"Other tiger? There's no other – "
"Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell of
a mess. Ripped each other's throats out."
"What – where – "
"Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler that
way." And before I could say another word, he was gone.
And that's the end of my story – except for two little items. The words
Mr. Legere shouted just before the tornado hit: "When a man and an
animal live in the same shell, Indrasil, the instincts determine the mold!"
The other thing is what keeps me awake nights. Chips told me later,
offering it only for what it might be worth. What he told me was that the
strange tiger had a long scar on the back of its neck.
First published in
Whispers
, Vol. 5, No. 1-2, August 1982. ‘Before the Play’ was a
prologue cut from the final draft of
The Shining,
detailing events that took place
before the Torrance family moved into the Overlook Hotel. King also wrote an
unused epilogue titled ‘After the Play’ which is now lost.
And I won't admit this one
, she thought with determination as she
stared up at the ceiling that glimmered overhead.
Her husband of 10 days slumbered beside her. Sleeping the sleep of
the just was how some might have put it. Others, more honest, might
have called it the sleep of the monumentally stupid. He was William
Pillsbury of the Westchester Pillsburys, only son and heir of Harold M.
Pillsbury, old and comfortable money. Publishing was what they liked
to talk about because publishing was a gentleman's profession, but there
was also a chain of New England textile mills, a foundry in Ohio, and
extensive agricultural holdings in the South – cotton and citrus and fruit.
Old money was always better than nouveau riche, but either way they
had money falling out of their assholes. If she ever said that aloud to
Bill, he would undoubtedly go pale and might even faint dead away No
fear, Bill. Profanation of the Pillsbury family shall never cross my lips.
It had been her idea to honeymoon at the Overlook in Colorado, and
there had been two reasons for this. First, although it was tremendously
expensive (as the best resorts were), it was not a "hep" place to go, and
Lottie did not like to go to the hep places. Where did you go on your
honeymoon. Lottie? Oh, this perfectly, wonderful resort hotel in
Colorado – the Overlook. Lovely place. Quite out of the way but so
romantic. And her friends – whose stupidity was exceeded in most cases
only by that of William Pillsbury himself – would look at her in dumb
– literally! – wonder. Lottie had done it again.
Her second reason had been of more personal importance. She had
wanted to honeymoon at the Overlook because Bill wanted to go to
Rome. It was imperative to find out certain things as soon as possible.
Would she be able to have her own way immediately? And if not, how
long would it take to grind him down? He was stupid, and he had
followed her around like a dog with its tongue hanging out since her
debutante ball, but would he be as malleable after the ring was slipped
on as he had been before?
Lottie smiled a little in the dark despite her lack of sleep and the bad
dreams she had had since they arrived here. Arrived here, that was the
key phrase. "Here" was not the American Hotel in Rome but the
Overlook in Colorado. She was going to be able to manage him just
fine, and that was the important thing. She would only make him stay
another four days (she had originally planned on three weeks, but the
bad dreams had changed that), and then they could go back to New
York. After all, that was where the action was in this August of 1929.
The stock market was going crazy, the sky was the limit, and Lottie
expected to be an heiress to multimillions instead of just one or two
million by this time next year. Of course there were some weak sisters
who claimed the market was riding for a fall, but no one had ever called
Lottie Kilgallon a weak sister.
Lottie Kilgallon.
Pillsbury now; at least that's the way I'll have to sign
my checks, of course. But inside I'll always be Lottie Kilgallon. Because
he's never going to touch me. Not inside where it counts.
The most tiresome thing about this first contest of her marriage was
that Bill actually liked the Overlook. He was up even, day at two
minutes past the crack of dawn, disturbing what ragged bits of sleep she
had managed after the restless nights, staring eagerly out at the sunrise
like some sort of disgusting Greek nature boy. He had been hiking two
or three times, he had gone on several nature rides with other guests,
and bored her almost to the point of screaming with stories about the
horse he rode on these jaunts, a bay mare named Tessie. He had tried to
get her to go on these outings with him, but Lottie refused. Riding
meant slacks, and her posterior was just a trifle too-wide for slacks. The
idiot had also suggested that she go hiking with him and some of the
others – the caretaker's son doubled as a guide, Bill enthused, and he
knew a hundred trails. The amount of game you saw, Bill said, would
make you think it was 1829, instead of a hundred years later. Lottie had
dumped cold water on this idea too.
"I believe, darling, that all hikes should be one-way, you see."
"One-way?" His wide Anglo-Saxon brow crippled and croggled into
its usual expression of befuddlement. "How can you have a one-way
hike, Lottie?"
"By hailing a taxi to take you home when your feet begin to hurt," she
replied coldly,
The barb was wasted. He went without her, and came back glowing.
The stupid bastard was getting a tan.
She had not even enjoyed their evenings of bridge in the downstairs
recreation room, and that was most unlike her. She was something of a
barracuda at bridge, and if it had been ladylike to play for stakes in
mixed company, she could have brought a cash dowry to her marriage
(not that she would have, of course). Bill was a good bridge partner, too;
he had both qualifications: He understood the basic rules and he allowed
Lottie to dominate him. She thought it was poetic justice that her new
husband spent most of their bridge evenings as the dummy.
Their partners at the Overlook were the Compsons occasionally, the
Vereckers more frequently. Dr. Verecker was in his early 70s, a surgeon
who had retired after a near-fatal heart attack. His wife smiled a lot,
spoke softly, and had eyes like shiny nickels. They played only adequate
bridge, but they kept beating Lottie and Bill. On the occasions when the
men played against the women, the men ended up trouncing Lottie and
Malvina Verecker. When Lottie and Dr. Verecker played Bill and
Malvina, she and the doctor usually won, but there was no pleasure in it
because Bill was a dullard and Malvina, could not see the game of
bridge as anything but a social tool.
Two nights before, after the doctor and his wife had made a bid of
four clubs that, they had absolutely no right to make, Lottie had mussed
the cards in a sudden flash of pique that was very unlike her. She
usually kept her feelings under much better control.
"You could have led into my spades on that third trick!" she rattled at
Bill. "That would have put a stop to it right there!"
"But dear," said Bill, flustered , "I thought you were thin in spades."
“If I had been thin in spades, I shouldn't have bid two of them, should
I? Why I continue to play this game with you I don't know!"
The Vereckers blinked at them in mild surprise. Later that evening
Mrs. Verecker, she of the nickel-bright eyes, would tell her husband that
she had thought them such a nice couple, so loving, but when she
rumpled the cards like that she had looked just like a shrew.
Bill was staring at her with jaws agape.
"I'm very sorry," said Lottie, gathering up the reins of her control and
giving them an inward shake. "I'm off my feed a little, I suppose. I
haven't been sleeping well."
"That's a pity," said the doctor. "Usually this mountain air – we're
almost 12,000 feet above sea level, you know is very conducive to good
rest. Less oxygen, you know. The body doesn't – "
"I've had bad dreams," Lottie told him shortly.
And so she had. Not just bad dreams but nightmares. She had never
been much of one to dream (which said something disgusting and
Freudian about, her psyche, no doubt), even as a child. Oh, yes, there
had been some pretty humdrum affairs, mostly the only one she could
remember that, came even close to being a nightmare was one in which
she had been delivering a Good Citizenship speech at the school
assembly and had looked down to discover she had forgotten to put on
her dress. Later someone had told her almost everyone had a dream like
that at some point or another.
The dreams she had had at the Overlook were much worse. It was not
a case of one dream or two repeating themselves with variations; they
were all different. Only the setting of each was similar: In each one she
found herself in a different part of the Overlook Hotel. Each dream
would begin with an awareness on her part that she was dreaming and
that something terrible and frightening was going to happen to her in the
course of the dream. There was an inevitability about it that was
particularly awful.
In one of them she had been hurrying for the elevator because she was
late for dinner, so late that Bill had already gone down before her in a
temper.
She rang for the elevator, which came promptly and was empty except
for the operator. She thought too late that it was odd; at mealtimes you
could barely wedge yourself in. The stupid hotel was only half full, but
the elevator had a ridiculously small capacity. Her unease heightened as
the elevator descended and continued to descend...for far too long a
time. Surely they must have reached the lobby or even the basement by
now, and still the operator did not open the doors, and still the sensation
of downward motion continued. She tapped him on the shoulder with
mixed feelings of indignation and panic, aware too late of how spongy
he felt, how strange, like a scarecrow stuffed with rotten straw. And as
he turned his head and grinned at her she saw that the elevator was
being piloted by a dead man, his face a greenish-white corpselike hue,
Ms eyes sunken, his hair under his cap lifeless and sere. The fingers
wrapped around the switch were fallen away to bones.
Even as she filled her lungs to shriek, the corpse threw the switch over
and uttered, "Your floor, madam," in a husky, empty voice. The door
drew open to reveal flames and basalt plateaus and the stench of
brimstone. The elevator operator had taken her to hell.
In another dream it was near the end of the afternoon and she was on
the playground. The light was curiously golden, although the sky
overhead was black with thunderheads. Membranes of shower danced
between two of the saw-toothed peaks further west. It was like a
Brueghel, a moment of sunshine and low pressure. And she felt
something beside her. Moving. Something in the topiary. And she
turned to see with frozen horror that it was the topiary: The hedge
animals had left their places and were creeping toward her, the lions, the
buffalo, even the rabbit that usually looked so comic and friendly. Their
horrid hedge features were bent on her as they moved slowly toward the
playground on their hedge paws, green and silent and deadly under the
black thunderheads.
In the one she had just awakened from, the hotel had been on fire. She
had awakened in their room to find Bill gone and smoke. drifting slowly
through the apartment. She fled in her nightgown but lost her direction
in the narrow halls, which were obscured by smoke. All the numbers
seemed to be gone from the doors, and there was no way to tell if you
were running toward the stairwell and elevator or away from them. She
rounded a corner and saw Bill standing outside the window at the end,
motioning her forward. Somehow she had run all the way to the back of
the hotel; he was standing out there on the fire escape landing. Now
there was heat baking into her back through the thin, filmy stuff of her
nightgown. The place must be in flames behind her, she thought.
Perhaps it had been the boiler. You had to keep an. eye on the boiler,
because if you didn't, she would creep on you. Lottie started forward
and suddenly something wrapped around her arm like a python, holding
her back. It was one of the fire hoses she had seen along the corridor
walls, white canvas hose in a bright red frame. It had come alive
somehow, and it writhed and coiled around her, now securing a leg, now
her other arm. She was held fast and it was getting hotter, hotter. She
could hear the angry crackle of the flames now only feet behind her.
The wallpaper was peeling and blistering. Bill was gone from the fireescape landing.
And then she had been –
She had been awake in the big double bed, no smell of smoke, with
Bill Pillsbury sleeping the sleep of the justly stupid beside her. She was
running sweat, and if it, weren't so late she would get up to shower. It
was quarter past three in the morning. Dr. Verecker had offered to give
her a sleeping medicine, but Lottie had refused. She distrusted any
concoction you put in your body to knock out your mind. It was like
giving up command of your ship voluntarily, and she had sworn to
herself that she would never do that.
But what would she do for the next four clays? Well, Verecker played
shuffleboard in the mornings with his nickeleyed wife. Perhaps she
would look him up and get the prescription after all. Lottie looked up at
the white ceiling high above her, glimmering ghostlike, and admitted
again that the Overlook had been a very bad mistake. None of the ads
for the Overlook in the New Yorker or The American Mercury
mentioned that the place's real specialty seemed to be giving people the
whimwhams. Four more days, and that was plenty. It had been a
mistake, all right, but a mistake she would never admit, or have to
admit. In fact, she was sure she could.