The Monkey

Stephen King: The Monkey

     ELECTRONIC VERSION 1.0 (Apr 04 00). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.

    

     When Hal Shelburn saw it, when his son Dennis pulled it out of a moulderlng Ralston-Purina carton that had been pushed far back under one attic eave, such a feeling of horror and dismay rose in him that for one moment he thought he would scream. He put one fist to his mouth, as if to cram it back ... and then merely coughed into his fist. Neither Terry nor Dennis noticed, but Petey looked around, momentarily curious.

     'Hey, neat,' Dennis said respectfully. It was a tone Hal rarely got from the boy anymore himself. Dennis was twelve.

     'What is it'?' Peter asked. He glanced at his father again before his eyes were dragged back to the thing his big brother had found. 'What is it, Daddy?'

     'It's a monkey, fartbrains,' Dennis said. 'Haven't you ever seen a monkey before'?'

     'Don't call your brother fartbrains,' Terry said automatically, and began to examine a box of curtains. The curtains were slimy with mildew and she dropped them quickly. 'Uck.'

     'Can I have it, Daddy'?' Petey asked. He was nine.

     'What do you mean?' Dennis cried. 'I found it!'

     'Boys, please,' Terry said. 'I'm getting a headache.'

     Hal barely heard them. The monkey glimmered up at him from his older son's hands, gnnning its old familiar grin. The same grin that had haunted his nightmares as a kid, haunted them until he had--

     Outside a cold gust of wind rose, and for a moment lips with no flesh blew a long note through the old. rusty gutter outside. Petey stepped closer to his father, eyes moving uneasily to the rough attic roof through which nailheads poked.

     'What was that, Daddy'?' he asked as the whistle died to a guttural buzz.

     'Just the wind,' Hal said, still looking at the monkey. Its cymbals, crescents of brass rather than full circles in the weak light of the one naked bulb, were moveless, perhaps a foot apart, and he added automatically, 'Wind can whistle, but it can't carry a tune.' Then he realized that was a saying of Uncle Will's, and a goose ran over his grave.

     The note came again, the wind coming off Crystal Lake in a long, droning swoop and then wavering in the gutter. Half a dozen small drafts puffed cold October air into Hal's face--God. this place was so much tike the back closet of the house in Hartford that they might all have been transported thirty years back in time.

     I won't think about that.

     But now of course it was all he could think about.

     In the back closet where I found that goddammed monkey in that same box.

     Terry. had moved away to examine a wooden crate filled with knickknacks, duck-walking because the pitch of the eaves was so sharp.

     'I don't like it,' Petey said, and felt for Hal's hand. 'Dennis can have it if he wants. Can we go, Daddy?'