waiting
for the furnace to kick on
Skybar
by Brian Hartz &
Stephen King
The following story was written from a contest with Doubleday
books to promote the 1982 'Do it Yourself Bestseller' book edited
by Tom Silberkleit and Jerry Biederman.
There were many authors featured in the book, including Belva
Plain and Isaac Asimov. Each writer provided the beginning and
ending to a story.
It was up to the reader to provide the middle, hence the name 'Do
It Yourself Bestseller.'
As part of the promotion, Doubleday books held a national contest
to see who could write the best middle portion.
Each winner was chosen by the individual writer - in this case,
Stephen King. Brian Hartz was 18 at the time it was written.
This story contains strong language and material that may be
unsuitable for younger readers.
There were twelve of us when we went in that night, but only two
of us came out - my friend Kirby and me. And Kirby was insane.
All of the things I'm going to tell you about happened twelve years
ago. I was eleven then, in the sixth grade. Kirby was ten and in the
fifth. In those days, before gas shot up to $1.40 a gallon or more
(as I recall the best deal in town was at Dewey's Sunoco, where
you could get hi-test for 31.9 cents, plus double S&H Green
stamps), Skybar Amusement Park was still a growing concern; its
great double Ferris wheel turned endlessly against a summer sky,
and you could hear the great, grinding mechanical laugh of the fun-
house clown even at my house, five miles inland, when the wind
was right
Yeah, Skybar was the place to go, all right - you could blast away
with the .22 of your choice at Pop Dupree's Dead Eye Shootin'
Gallery, you could ride the Whip until you puked, wander into the
Mirror Labyrinth, or look at the Adults Only freak tent and wonder
what was in there...you especially wondered when the people came
out, white-faced, some of the women crying, or hysterical. Brant
Callahan said it was all just a fake, whatever it was, but sometimes
I saw the doubt even in Brant's tough gray eyes.
Then, of course, the murders started, and eventually Skybar was
shut down. The double Ferris stood frozen against the sky, and the
only sound the mechanical clown's mouth produced was the lunatic
hooting of the sea breeze. We went in, the twelve of us, and. . .but
I'm getting ahead of myself. It began just after school let out that
June; it began when Randy Stayner, a seventh-grader from the
junior high school, was thrown from the highest point of the
SkyCoaster. I was there that day - Kirby was with me, in fact - and
we both heard his scream as he came down.
It was one of the strangest ways for a person to die - the shadowed
Ferris wheel turned in the sunlight, the bumper cars honked and
