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

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