drop to death before him. Even after seeing that smiling, rotting
freak clambering from behind the safety bar of the coaster car that
had rolled over Brant and the others, he stuck with me at the
bottom and didn't run. The only ones who acted as bravely as
Kirby were the drunk Dragons who jumped at the first sight of the
coaster car coming toward them. Maybe it was bravery, maybe it
was the liquor, but it doesn't matter because the 100 foot dive to
the pond was a mistake either way. Brant and the rest may have
tried to slide, but they never made it to safety and the authorities
still haven't pulled their bodies from the murky pond waters to this
day.
And still, in my dreams, I feel Kirby taking my hand and telling
me it was okay; we were safe, we were home free. And then I
heard the thud-thud-thud of a single SkyCoaster car rolling toward
us. I want to tell Kirby not to look -'Don't look, man!' I scream,
but the words won't come out. He does look. And as the car rolls
up to the deserted station, we see Randy Stayner lolling behind the
safety bar, his head driven almost into his chest. The fun-house
clown begins to scream laughter somewhere behind us, and Kirby
begins to scream with it. I try to run, but my feet tangle in each
other and I fall, sprawling. Behind me I can see Randy's corpse
pushing the safety bar back and he begins to stumble toward me,
his dead, shredded fingers hooked into seeking claws. I see these
things in my dreams, and in the moments before I wake,
screaming, in my wife's arms, I know what the grown-ups must
have seen that summer in the freak tent that was for Adults Only. I
see these things in my dreams, yes, but when I visit Kirby in that
place where he still lives, that place where all the windows are
cross-hatched with heavy mesh, I see them in his eyes. I take his
hand and his hand is cold, but I sit with him and sometimes I think:
These things happened to me when I was young.
SLADE
Stephen King
'Slade.' The Maine Campus June-August 1970. 'Slade' is in some
ways the most exciting of King1s uncollected juvenalia, an
engaging explosion of off the wall humor, literary pastiche, and
cultural criticism, all masquerading as a Western - the adventures
of Slade and his quest for Miss Polly Peachtree of Paduka.
Published in several installments in the UMO college newspaper
during the summer following King's graduation, the story is most
important in showing King reveling in the joy of writing.
-excerpt from 'The Annotated Guide to Stephen King, p.45.
It was almost dark when Slade rode into Dead Steer Springs. He
was tall in the saddle, a grim faced man dressed all in black. Even
the handles of his two sinister .45s, which rode low on his hips,
were black. Ever since the early 1870s, when the name of Slade
had begun to strike fear into the stoutest of Western hearts, there
had been many whispered legends about his dress. One story had it
that he wore black as a perpetual emblem of mourning for his