Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (38 page)

The Night of the Tiger (1978) 

The lack of inclusion of
The Night of the Tiger
in a King collection is passing strange. The tale was first published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
for February 1978 and appeared in various anthologies but has not been republished in English since 1992. Perhaps King is unhappy with the tale. If this is the case, fans would benefit from a rewrite to correct any inadequacies. In fact, King expert Tyson Blue says,
⁷⁷
“It may be that the ultimately unsatisfying nature of the story, with its plethora of unresolved loose ends and plot inconsistencies, are among the reasons why it has yet to be collected in a King anthology.” 

Readers seeking the story should be able to find one of the anthologies at an online King bookseller or second hand bookseller of the traditional or Internet type.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
is collectable in its own right and copies may be available from specialist sources. These are the anthologies in which the story has appeared:
More Tales of Unknown Horror
edited by Peter Haining (New English Library, 1979);
The Year’s Best Horror Stories
edited by Gerald Page (DAW Books, 1979);
The Third Book of Unknown Tales of Horror
edited by Peter Haining (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980);
Chamber of Horrors
(Octopus Books, 1984);
The Best Horror Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
edited by Edward Ferman and Anne Jordan (St Martin’s Press, 1988 and Viking, 1989 as
The Best of Modern Horror
);
Horrorstory, Volume Three
edited by Gerald Page and Karl Edward Wagner (Underwood-Miller, 1992); and
Tails of Wonder and Imagination
edited by Ellen Datlow (Night Shade Books, 2010). 

King relates a little of the story’s history in
On Writing
:  

By the time I was sixteen I’d begun to get rejection slips with hand-written notes a little more encouraging than the advice to stop using staples and start using paperclips. The first of these hopeful notes was from Algis Budrys, then the editor of
Fantasy and Science Fiction,
who read a story of mine called “The Night of the Tiger” (the inspiration was, I think, an episode of
The Fugitive
in which Dr. Richard Kimble worked as an attendant cleaning out cages in a zoo or a circus) and wrote: “This is good. Not for us, but good. You have talent. Submit again.”  

Those four brief sentences, scribbled by a fountain pen that left big ragged blotches in its wake, brightened the dismal winter of my sixteenth year. Ten years or so later, after I’d sold a couple of novels, I discovered “The Night of the Tiger” in a box of old manuscripts and thought it was still a perfectly respectable tale, albeit one obviously written by a guy who had only begun to learn his chops. I rewrote it and on a whim resubmitted it to
F&SF.
This time they bought it. One thing I’ve noticed is that when you’ve had a little success, magazines are a lot less apt to use that phrase, “Not for us.”
 

The reference to King’s sixteenth year suggests the story was originally written about 1963. 

In this America Under Siege tale two tigers fight during a storm. The story begins:  

I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Stuebenville, but I’d only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been making his irregular visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to talk about Mr. Legere, not even the last night when it seemed that the world was coming to an end – the night Mr. Indrasil disappeared. 

The narrator is Eddie Johnston, who had joined Farnum & William’s All American 3-Ring Circus and Sideshow after becoming bored with small town life in Sauk City. As the circus toured Illinois and Indiana that hot summer the crowds were good and everyone was happy, “Everyone except Mr. Indrasil. Mr. Indrasil was never happy. He was the lion-tamer, and he looked like old pictures I’ve seen of Rudolph Valentino.” Indrasil had a reputation, sullen and silent, it was said he had once nearly killed a roustabout for the crime of spilling coffee on his hands. “And the only two things he was afraid of were Mr. Legere and the circus’s one tiger, a huge beast called Green Terror.” Indrasil had once used Green Terror in his act but had stopped after the cat “almost ripped his head from his shoulders before he could get out of the cage. I noticed that Mr. Indrasil always wore his hair long down the back of his neck.” 

On that day in Steubenville Indrasil was about to assault Johnston for an imagined infraction when Legere intervened. From the exchange of words and body language between the two men Johnston realized:  

I was a pawn in what must have been a long combat between the two of them. I had been captured by Mr. Legere rather than Mr. Indrasil. He had stopped the lion-tamer not because he felt for me, but because it gained him an advantage, however slight, in their private war.  

When Johnston asked Legere if he was with the circus he said, with a slight smile, “No. You might call me a policeman,” before disappearing into the surging crowd. 

As the Circus moved between towns Johnston saw Legere from time to time and finally asked the barker, Chips Baily, and the red-headed wire walker, Sally O’Hara, whether Legere and Indrasil knew each other. They told him that Legere had followed the circus in the Midwest almost every year of the twenty or so since Indrasil had joined the troupe from Ringling Brothers. When Johnston tried to probe further they suddenly changed the subject and remembered tasks that needed immediate attention. 

As the hot spell went on accidents began to happen, including O’Hara fracturing her shoulder falling from the wire; and tension built in all the circus performers, human and animal, most particularly in Indrasil. And, almost all the time, Legere was by Green Terror’s cage, watching the tiger. One evening Johnston saw Indrasil, under “a swollen Kansas moon,” baiting Green Terror with a long, pointed pike. The cat refused to cry out in pain or anger no matter how hard Indrasil poked it. “Then I saw something odd. It seemed a shadow moved in the darkness under one of the far wagons, and the moonlight seemed to glint on staring eyes
–
green eyes.” After Indrasil suddenly left and Johnston looked again at the far wagon, the shadow was gone. The roustabout formed this view, “He was a rogue. That was the only way I can put it. Mr. Indrasil was not only a human tiger, but a rogue tiger as well. The thought jelled inside me, disquieting and a little scary.” 

The heat wave continued, “Everyone was reaching the point of explosion.” Legere was now at every performance, “always dressed in his nattily creased brown suit, despite the killing temperatures. He stood silently by Green Terror’s cage, seeming to commune deeply with the tiger, who was always quiet when he was around.”  

Finally, in the town of Wildwood Green, Oklahoma a storm began to brew on the horizon. That afternoon a lion tried to attack Indrasil, seemingly spooked by a timely ear-splitting roar from Green Terror. After Indrasil escaped the cage, “Green Terror let out another roar – but this was one monstrously like a huge, disdainful chuckle.” A tornado warning was issued and the circus cancelled its evening performance, battening down in preparation for the storm. Green Terror refused to move into a larger cage and Indrasil was sent for but initially could not be found. As the storm rose Johnston finally found Indrasil, drunk and raving about Legere, “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 … Turned the cat against me, back in ’58.” 

Green Terror roared through the noise of the storm and Indrasil realized the cat was still outside, exposed in his cage, and headed there. Johnston followed:  

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. 

Legere challenged Indrasil, “It’s time Jason,” and opened the cat’s cage! The tiger seemed to be caught between the will of the two men and stopped briefly. “I think, in the end, it was Green Terror’s own will – his hate of Mr. Indrasil that tipped the scales.” Then:  

something strange happened to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to be folding in on himself, shrivelling, 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.  

Johnston saw no more, as he was thrown to the ground, catching “one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the darkness descended.” 

When Johnston awoke he asked where Indrasil and Legere were and, reluctantly, Chips Baily began to tell him the rest of the story
–
not exactly what “we told the cops … Anyhow, Indrasil’s gone. I didn’t even know that Legere guy was around.” When asked about Green Terror Baily replied:  

“He and the other tiger fought to death.” “
Other
tiger? There’s no other …” “Yeah, but we found two of ‘em, lying in each other’s blood. Hell of a mess. Ripped each other’s throats out...” 

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 mould.
”
The other thing is what keeps me awake at 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. 

The story has the immediate feeling of King’s response to Bradbury’s classic circus visits small town horror novel,
Something Wicked This Way Comes
. King wrote a screenplay of that tale, which is the subject of another chapter in this book. King academic Michael Collings finds
The Night of the Tiger
lacking
⁷⁸
:  

…Johnston does not even succeed as a narrator. The difficulty is that the story is too allusive (if not illusive) … too much is missing. Who is Legere and why does Indrasil hate and fear him? Legere says he is a kind of policeman; if so, where is his authority? Why does Green Terror destroy Indrasil? If one is willing to work hard, there may be answers – but the story does not seem sufficiently strong to warrant much work. 

In a mark of how unique this story is there are no links from it to King’s other fiction. No timeline is given for the story, the only date provided being 1958, when Legere allegedly turned Green Terror against Jason Indrasil. 

In the end this story is unsatisfying and inconclusive, yet it provides the casual reader and the student with another signpost in the development of Stephen King, the writer. 

⁷⁷
The Unseen King
, Tyson Blue, p.49-50 

⁷⁸
The Shorter Works of Stephen King
, Michael Collings and David Engebretson, p.35-36
 

Night Shift – Unproduced Screenplay (Late 1970s)
 

The material in this chapter was compiled with the assistance of the 88-page typewritten screenplay held in Box 1010 of the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono. The script is marked “First Draft” in Stephen King’s handwriting. Written permission from King is required for access to this screenplay so most readers will never be able read it.  

In
Danse Macabre
King says that NBC:  

…optioned three stories from my 1978 collection,
Night Shift
, and invited me to do the screen-play. One of these stories was a piece called “Strawberry Spring,” about a psychopathic Jack-the-Ripper-type killer … About a month after turning the script in, I got a call from an NBC munchkin at Standards and Practices (read: The Department of Censorship). The knife my killer used … had to go … Knives were too phallic. I suggested we turn the killer into a strangler. The munchkin evinced great enthusiasm … The script was finally coughed out of the network’s large and voracious gullet by Standards and Practices, however, strangler and all. Too gruesome and intense was the final verdict. 

It seems likely it was written in 1978, 1979 or 1980, considering that King’s
Danse Macabre
was published in 1981. 

King’s screenplay has never been produced and includes adaptations of
Strawberry Spring
,
I Know What You Need
and
Battleground
, along with an original wrap-around tale set in the previously unknown town of Weathersfield, Maine. As a result this screenplay is part of the Maine Street Horror Reality.  

Readers of the script are told that Weathersfield is but eight miles from Jerusalem’s Lot and forty miles from the sea. Indeed, the far end of Main Street leads to Jerusalem’s Lot. Richard Davis mentioned the “Boogies” in that town and Harold Davis thought it “a strange place.” Of course, Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine is a very important town in the Maine Street Horror Reality (
see the feature panel
). An invasion by vampires occurred in the town, which is better known as ‘Salem’s Lot, in 1975. In October 1976 Mark Petrie and Ben Mears set a fire intended to burn the town flat but, in 1977 (see
One for the Road
), vampires from the town were still preying on passers-by. So, in 1978, the year in which this screenplay is set, the Davis’ comments would make sense. 

Weathersfield was the only town that far north in the Massachusetts Colony to put supposed witches to death and this fact plays an important role in the storyline. A feature is the Town Common. Not only were the supposed witches burned there but the apartment building in which two major characters, Ed Hamner, Jr. and John Renshaw lived, was opposite it. 

In the script two men observe the town of Weathersfield, Maine and discuss its past. Richard Davis was the grandson of Harold Davis and the editor of the town newspaper. We are taken back to 1968, when there had been a series of murders on the campus of the Weathersfield Community College. “Springheel Jack,” who left no tracks, killed four female students. At the time Richard was a student and roomed with Lonnie Rennaker. A fellow student, Carl Amalera was arrested but released after the killings continued while he was in custody. We also learn Harold Davis’ grandfather had called a late winter thaw a “strawberry spring.” 

John Renshaw, a hired killer was living in an apartment building overlooking the Weathersfield Town Common at the time he was killed by an explosion in his apartment. “Toy soldiers,” made by the company whose owner was one of his victims, were activated by the victim’s mother, a witch. She had achieved this feat after raising a Demon that told her the name of her son’s killer. After Renshaw died during an attack by the soldiers the witch walked into the Demon and disappeared. 

Edward Hamner, Jr. had begun dating a Weathersfield student, Liz Neely, following her boyfriend’s tragic death in a road accident. Investigating Hamner’s past Neely discovered he was using voodoo to influence her and was probably responsible for the deaths of his parents and her boyfriend. When she confronted him with this information Hamner killed himself. 

In 1978 the Springheel Jack murders began again. Cindy Rennaker found a girl’s body in her husband Lonnie’s car. Lonnie then strangled his wife. 

Finally, Richard Davis saw Renshaw, Lonnie Rennaker and Hamner in a vision over the graves of three supposed witches who had been burned at the stake in Weathersfield in 1717. This would indicate that Lonnie, too, was dead. 

Although this screenplay has not been produced
Strawberry Spring
itself was adapted as a “dollar baby” film in 2001 by Doveed Linder. 

There are in fact two other versions of this tale. It was originally published in the University of Maine literary magazine,
Ubris
for Fall 1968. King substantially revised the story for its publication in
Cavalier
for November 1975 and
Gent
for February 1977. That version was collected in
Night Shift
in 1978. The two
Strawberry Spring
stories are versions of the same story but the setting is completely different, moving from Wiscasset College in Maine in the
Ubris
version to the New Sharon Teachers’ College in an unnamed but probably New England state in the
Night Shift
version. It probably does not matter if King was adapting the earlier or latter version for this unproduced screenplay as he
again
moved the location, this time to Weathersfield Community College, back in Maine. 

In the original
Ubris
version readers never discover who the “Springheel Jack” killer really is but are left suspecting it may be the unnamed narrator, who does not appear to be married. In the
Night Shift
version the killer is clearly the narrator. During his second set of killings his wife suspected no more than that he was seeing another woman. In the screenplay the killer is clearly Lonnie Rennaker.  

In another change in
Ubris
the murders occurred in 1968, with no subsequent killings. By
Cavalier/Night Shift
King had added the 1976 murder. In the screenplay King extended the rampage by having Rennaker kill another student and his own wife in 1978. Readers may be pleased to know that the original 1968 victims – Cerman, Bray, Parkins and Curran almost remain the victims in all three versions of this tale (Parkins becomes Perkins in the screenplay). The 1978 victim in the screenplay was Cynthia Baker, while the 1976 victim in
Cavalier/Night Shift
is never named. Finally, King loses the second student to be falsely accused of the 1968 murders, Hanson Gray, from the screenplay version. 

All these changes effectively mean that there are three distinct versions of
Strawberry Spring
, with each extending the killing spree and providing more detail as to the killer’s and victims’ identities. 

King sold the “dollar baby” rights to
I Know What You Need
and that film was first shown at the 2nd Annual Stephen King Dollar Baby Film Festival in Bangor on 1 October 2005. Frankly, it is a very poor adaptation. The short story was first published in
Cosmopolitan
magazine for September 1976 and was republished with minor changes and the correction of an error in
Night Shift
. 

The original
I Know What You Need
was also set in Maine but neither the town nor the college Elizabeth Rogan attended are named. While in the screenplay Ed Hamner, Jr. killed himself after Elizabeth Neely (one wonders why King changed her surname?) confronted him, in the short story Elizabeth Rogan simply took his voodoo items and threw them away, breaking Ed’s power and influence over her. There is no indication that Ed reacted in any other way in the short story than simply leaving. King also changed the name of Liz’s unfortunate boyfriend Tony Lombard in the original story to Tony Lester in the screenplay. Unfortunately for the character, regardless of his surname, he dies in both versions. In the original story the timeline was 1971. 

It is a little known fact that
Battleground
has been adapted as an animated feature. Titled
Srajenie
(this Russian title translates as “The Battle”) it was made in the Soviet Union in 1986 and is almost entirely without dialogue. The screenplay is by V. Goryachev and Mikhail Titov directed the ten-minute film. Denis Gatiatullin brought this adaptation, previously unknown in the King community, to our attention. 

It was also adapted as the first episode of the
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
TV series (2006), with a teleplay by Richard Christian Matheson and tremendous acting by John Hurt playing Renshaw.
 

Battleground
was originally published in
Cavalier
for September 1972. For its publication in
Night Shift
in 1978 there were very minor wording revisions. In the original story it was Hans Morris’ wife who set the soldiers upon Renshaw but in the screenplay King uses a powerful device in having Morris’ mother, a witch aged about 80, arrange Renshaw’s death. This fits nicely with the closing twist of the script, at the witches’ graves. No dates were given for the events in the original story. 

The entirely original wrap-around story features Harold Davis, and his grandson, Richard, editor of the town newspaper. They discuss recent and past events in Weathersfield and these recollections form the three stories. This storyline is set in 1978, the same year as the second “Springheel Jack” murders. Harold had lived in Weathersfield all his life. He’d joined the Weathersfield Community College security department in 1930 and retired in 1973. About 70 in 1978, he had raised Richard. Harold suspected that Lonnie Rennaker was Springheel Jack. Richard Davis was about 28 in 1978 and had roomed with Rennaker at Weathersfield Community College. After graduating he single-handedly ran the town’s newspaper, the
Independent
. 

At the end of the script Richard Davis saw three old crones who were almost certainly the three alleged witches (Abigail, Tamson and one unnamed) who had been burned at the stake in 1717 and buried on the Town Common. They appeared where their gravestones had been, had toothless mouths, heads giving off a green glow and white pupil-less eyes. They disappeared and were replaced by Lonnie Rennaker, Ed Hamner Jr and John Renshaw. A hand from the earth then grabbed Davis’ ankle. He ran, the three men faded and the gravestones reappeared. Of course, King used the device from Brian de Palma’s film of his own work
Carrie
with the hand suddenly shooting up from the ground. 

This screenplay contains a significant link to King’s other fiction with the mention of the nearby town of Jerusalem’s Lot, the setting for King’s American vampire novel
‘Salem’s Lot
, its sequel short story
One for the Road
and the Lovecraftian short story
Jerusalem’s Lot
. The town is also mentioned in
The Body
,
The Dead Zone
,
Dreamcatcher
, the
Prime Evil
version of
The Night Flier
(in that vampire story it is said to be “mostly deserted”) and
Pet Sematary
. Most importantly, King reintroduced the town in Pere Callahan’s back-story in
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
. 

We also read in the screenplay that Mrs. Carmody was an old woman who ran an antique shop on Carbine Street, Weathersfield. Interestingly, and knowing King this can be no coincidence, in
The Mist
a Mrs. Carmody ran an antique shop in Bridgton. In that story she became the leader of a religious group inside the supermarket and tried to have her people kill Billy Drayton and Amanda Dumfries.