Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (62 page)

There is one error in the story. We are told that Tian’s last name is Jaffords, but when Andy is standing in Tian’s Son of a Bitch field, he thinks of, “…that thankless tract of Jaffrey land…” The error was corrected when the novel was released. 

The story no longer appears on King’s website and, as it was never published in a paper form, readers wishing to access a copy will need to contact a King collector or fan who has retained it in electronic format and may wish to provide a copy. It should be noted that the story is King’s copyright and should not be purchased or sold. 

King’s serious fan base was delighted and intrigued by both the story and Callahan’s appearance. Perhaps as a result of this positive reaction King also allowed another section of the novel,
The Tale of Gray Dick
, to appear in an altered version ahead of the novel’s release (covered later in this chapter). 

Lisey and the Madman (2004) 

A chapter of the
Lisey’s Story
was first published in an anthology,
McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories
, edited by Michael Chabon and released in November 2004, as
Lisey and the Madman
. This section was heavily revised for the final novel.
This was the second time King had been published in a Chabon edited anthology from the
McSweeney
series. The earlier story was the previous year’s
The Tale of Gray Dick
in
McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
.
 

The co-author of
The Talisman
and
Black House
, Peter Straub also has a story in the anthology,
Mr. Aickman’s Air Rifle
. King’s contribution is dedicated to Nan Graham. The “About the Contributors” section notes of King, “He has promised to retire, but ‘Lisey and the Madman’ is from what may eventually be a novel called
Lisey’s Story
. In his own defense, King points out that all novelists lie – sometimes to others, almost constantly to themselves.” Of course, the novel was published, in October 2006. 

The story was also reprinted in an anthology,
New Beginnings: A Tsunami Benefit Book
, released by Bloomsbury on World Book Day, 3 March 2005. Among other authors to contribute to this book, intended to raise funds to benefit victims of the 26 December 2004 Asian Tsunami, were Maeve Binchy, Margaret Atwood, Paulo Coelho, Scott Turow and Vikram Seth. 

This America Under Siege story begins with Lisey Landon, wife of a famous novelist, recalling events eighteen years earlier. She is reminded of them by a now famous photograph, in which she appears, although no one else is aware of that fact. The photo shows a young man holding a small silver shovel, looking somewhat dazed, while a cop shakes his hand. Lisey’s contribution to the photo is half a brown loafer in the far right-hand side of the photo as she had left the scene for something much more important. 

It had been a hot, muggy day at the University of Tennessee in August of 1986, when Scott Landon (Pulitzer and National Book Award winning novelist) was due to turn the first earth at the commencement ceremonies for the Shipman Library. From the first thing that morning, back at their Maine home, Lisey Landon had been suffering from a sense of foreboding. She had accidentally smashed a tooth glass in their bathroom and had not felt right since. After the accident Lisey cursed and remembered her grandmother, “that old Irish highpockets,” who had quite a store of sayings and curses and who had most certainly believed in omens, even if Lisey did not. 

A large crowd had turned out to see the famous author say a few words. This, combined with the heat, only added to Lisey’s concerns as she recalled the “deep-space” fans that come with fame – one had hitchhiked from Texas to Maine to discuss Bigfoot with Scott (of course, this type of individual is a regular problem for both the King family and his office). She even noted one of the breed (“Blondie”) standing in the crowd but, strangely, was not concerned by him, despite her foreboding. 

Attended by the reluctant and pompous representative of the University, a student reporter and local newspaper photographer, the official party proceeded to a point behind velvet-rope barriers where Scott Landon was presented with a small silver shovel. Landon proceeded to give a quick speech for the crowd and a small showy display for the photographer. In his speech he spoke briefly of current events, concluding, “The world grows dark. Discordia rises.” Turning the sod he called the names of favored authors and asked the crowd to check out both their books and those of their own personal favorites when the Library opened.  

But if every book is a little light in that darkness – and so I believe, so I believe, so I must believe, for I write the goddamn things, don’t I? – then every library is a grand bonfire around which ten thousand people come to stand and warm themselves each cold day and night. 

After turning the last sod Scott handed the ceremonial shovel to his wife and the crowd began to break up, the official party heading for the air-conditioned haven of the English department, Nelson Hall. Lisey again noticed “Blondie,” walking against the flow of the crowd and muttering inanely; and
then
the gun tucked into the belt below his untucked shirt. 

Lisey became entrenched in that dream-like quality of a crisis, unable to move quickly enough or draw attention to the danger only she could she. Before anyone could react, “Blondie,” actually Gerd Allen Cole, a grad student, shot Scott in the right chest. As Cole prepared the coup-de-grace shot to Scott’s heart Lisey swung the silver shovel, striking his gun hand and causing the shot to fly harmlessly skyward. The swing continued, smashing into Cole’s face and bringing the attack to an end. 

Concerned about her wounded husband, who was walking off in shock, Lisey handed the shovel to the student reporter, Tony Eddington. As the campus security chief came up he mistakenly thought Eddington had been the hero (something the young man would never correct) and shook him by the hand. At that very moment the photographer, Stefan Queensland (UTenn class of ’83) took the award-winning photograph that would, with time, become nearly as famous as that of the mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald clutching his stomach. 

As Scott collapsed on the hot blacktop Lisey reached and began to comfort him. Seriously wounded, with blood flowing from his chest and mouth, Scott reverted to an apparently natural depressive mode, “It’s very close, honey. I can’t see it but I … I hear it taking its meal and grunting.” Although Lisey denied knowing what he was talking about Scott insisted she did.  

Yes, she knows.
It
. The long boy, he calls it. Or just the thing. Or sometimes the thing with the endless piebald side … And actually, it’s more than just a few times he’s spoken of that thing. Especially just lately. He says you can see it if you look through dirty water glasses. If you look through them just the right way, and in the hours after midnight. 

Landon then made the sound he claimed the monster makes “when it looks around.” Turning to Lisey he said:  

“I … could … call it that way … It would come. You’d … be … rid of me.” She understands he means it, and for a moment … she believes it’s true. He will make the sound again, only a little louder this time, and somewhere the long boy – that lord of sleepless nights – will turn its unspeakable hungry head. A moment later, in this world, Scott Landon will simply shiver on the pavement and die. The death certificate will show something sane, but she will know. His dark thing finally saw him and came for him and ate him alive. 

…So now come the things they will never speak of later, not to others nor between themselves. Too awful. Each long marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark. This is the dark heart of theirs, the one mad true secret.  

Scott asked Lisey again if he should call but she insisted he be quiet, “
Leave that fucking thing alone and it will go away
.” Just before the paramedics took him away Scott insisted the monster may have seen Lisey and said the first thing she must do when she checked into a motel was deal with the water glasses. And, when she did check into the Greenview Motel and found the bathroom glasses to be actual glass and not the usual plastic, she “puts both of them in her purse, careful not to look at either one as she does so” and then smashed them in the gutter outside. “The sound of them breaking comforts her even more than the sound of that little shovel’s scoop, connecting first with the pistol and then with Blondie’s face.” 

Once again King introduces us to a famous writer based in Maine although the story, both here and in the novel, is from the point of view of the spouse. Among other prominent Maine writers in King’s canon are Mike Noonan (
Bag of Bones
), Bill Denbrough (
It
), Jim Gardener (
The Tommyknockers
), Gordie Lachance (
The Body
), Thad Beaumont (
The Dark Half
), Ben Mears
(‘Salem’s Lot
), Richard Kinnell (
The Road Virus Heads North
), Morton Rainey (
Secret Window, Secret Garden
) and, of course, the Stephen King of the latter Dark Tower novels. King has used such characters since at least 1971, starting with Gerald Nately of
The Blue Air Compressor
. 

There is one particularly interesting link into King’s other fiction. In his speech at the groundbreaking ceremony, Scott Landon reviews 1986’s current events; including the “Challenger” shuttle explosion, chaos in the Philippines, the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl and the AIDS epidemic. He then says, “The world grows dark. Discordia rises.” Discordia is crucial in the last two Dark Tower novels,
Song of Susannah
and
The Dark Tower
. Dark Tower expert Bev Vincent defines the term as, “The great chaos. All that will remain if the Tower falls.”
¹³¹
 

In both the latter Dark Tower novels the great castle near Fedic is known as Castle Discordia or the Castle on the Abyss. At one point the Crimson King is described as the Lord of Discordia. King even had himself use the term in his fictional journals to indicate the day of his accident. There can be little doubt that, as King wrote
Lisey and the Madman
in 2004, he deliberately dropped the term “Discordia” into the story.  

Typically of King, what appears initially to be the simple description of crazed fan attacking famous artist (Mark David Chapman and John Lennon are referenced), or the great American tradition of gun wielded by crazy man (Bremmer and George Wallace is King’s way of reminding us of this) turns into something much deeper and more sinister. The subtle ways in which King works in both Scott Landon’s “long boy” and the foreshadowing of events yet to be described show once again the depth of King’s mastery of both the novel and short story forms. 

Again King provides a number of memorable lines. One, “No one loves a clown at midnight” is attributed to Lon Chaney and is said to be the epigram of Landon’s third novel,
Empty Devils
, a sort of a riff on Romero’s
Living Dead
movies. George Romero was, of course, the director of
The Dark Half
and
Creepshow
, as well as adapting
The Cat from Hell
for
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
and writing the screenplays for
The Dark Half
and
Creepshow 2
. 

As always with King even the minor characters are painted whole. The University’s representative, Roger Dashmiel is made wholly unlikeable in just a few sentences. Gerd Allen Cole, “the madman,” is totally believable, fitting the profile of so many “deep space” fans and muttering his inanities, “If it closes the lips of the bells, it will have done the job. I’m sorry, Papa.” The campus cop, Heffernan, realized “he may just get out of this mess with his skin on and his job intact” and will always doubt that Tony Eddington “laid the gun-toting nutjob low” but will never voice those doubts. Eddington himself, thrust into the role of hero, is quickly caught up by events and never declares the truth.