Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 25

Baked Scribe Flashback : In The Box

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Trevor leaned against the wall and pulled the ragged tatters of his jacket around himself, as tightly as he could manage. The power to this section of the city had been set to recirculate mode, so most of the lights were starting to flicker, on and off. He could hear the sound of electricity, humming as the cold rain pelted against the street level transformers.

A police cruiser screamed by overhead, but he barely noticed it. Most of the less savory elements in the neighborhood knew that, despite the display of force and their presence, no cop would actually stop here if he didn’t have to to. Short of seeing an actual murder in progress, no one from the department of public ordinance would be making an appearance.

All the better for the task at hand. He winced at the sound of his jacket tearing again. The time was near that he would need to come up with something to barter for in exchange for a newer one. Maybe he would find something in the house that he could use to trade.

He knelt down, and inserted the pick into the lock, straining to hear the sounds of the tumblers against the thunder and wind. The layer of grime on the street caused his knees to slip as he knelt. Street cleaning in sector four only happened once a week, and sometimes not at all. This week had proven to be one of the latter.

From the other end of the block, he could hear the sound of a small group, laughing and chattering as they stumbled their way towards him. Trevor returned to his task, not wanting the confrontation.

Just as he was about to give up and start scampering towards the alley, he felt the lock align, and click into place. He pushed his way through the door, slamming it behind him before the people passing by could find him here.

The greeting room of the apartment had a high arched ceiling with one simple light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was unlit and he shivered as a cold draft washed over him.

Through the darkness of the room, he could see a keypad entry panel for an alarm code. He didn’t even bother with it. Anyone who would be able to afford that kind of a system wouldn’t live in a house like this. Chances were, the owner just stole, or salvaged the keypad and bolted it to the wall. Besides, he could would be long gone before any cops could make their way over here.

Trevor had spent the last two weeks watching the residence here, their comings and goings. They didn’t lead a luxurious life, but what would they did have should be sufficient for him.

The first thing he spotted in the closet off the main greeting room was a large parka, which he quickly grabbed, and pulled it on, over his poor excuse for a coat. He would hold on to it and try to trade it later for something else. He looked around to see if there was anything else, as shadows thrown in from the street cast great dancing forms on the walls. There were some random personal items strewn about the room, but nothing that he could sell. Nothing worth anything to him either.

He spotted the glint of something on the floor and bent down to pick it up. It was a small picture frame, the photo inside starting to yellow with age. It was a woman, her face almost entirely filling the frame. Behind her, he could just make out the glittering blue of the ocean.

He reached down to run his fingers along the surface of the glass, when someone came bursting into the room, screaming as they dove into him, taking the both of them to the floor. Trevor rolled to his right, trying to push his attacker away from him as the stranger started to rain blows down on him. Nothing was spoken, but it wasn’t long before Trevor heard the sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath.

This was not the man who lived here. The owner was a man in his 70s and his attacker was much younger than that. He was emaciated, and Trevor can only imagine how long it’d been since he last eaten.

“Please,.”it was all he could think to say but even that wasn’t enough. The man hefted a piece of scrap metal that had been cut down to resemble a blade of sorts. Trevor dodged to his left, feeling the whistle in the air as the metal flew past him.

His attacker was panting heavily now, either from overexertion or from the extreme mania that had to be raging in there.

“Please stop, I’m not trying to rob you.” It was strange to hear himself trying to soothe the man as he had likely killed the resident here.

The man lifted his weapon and charged, screaming as he did so, a sound only capable for those who for whom each mouthful of food was maybe the difference between living and starving to death. As he charged, Trevor ducked to his right and instinctively raised his arm, deflecting the blow but earning a deep cut through the layers of his jackets.

Before he could fully acknowledge the pain or even apply pressure to the wound, lights popped on as a hoverpod dropped down, illuminating the entire room from the outside. Trevor marveled at how important the residents here must be in order to warrant such a speedy response. He watched the flashes from the hull-mounted guns as they started to fire, and his head swooned as the shells began ripping through flesh and bone.

In the computer room, the supervisor leaned over the technicians shoulder and pointed at the screen.

“Is this the one?”

“Yes sir,” the technician replied. “He’s lasted much longer in the simulation and shown a great deal of resilience. Ninety five percent of other subjects had expired from cardiac arrhythmia by now.”

The supervisor frowned, watching the solid light indicating test subject 4G. It was useful to see how much people like this could take, but only marginally so.

“Schedule this one for extermination tomorrow,” he said as he turned to leave. “In the meantime, run the simulation again but this time have three men attack him instead of one.”

He started through the door, and with a sudden thought, turned back. “If that doesn’t work, run the simulation again, but break one of his legs.”

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The ABC’s Of Stephen King : Ace Merrill

Ace was one of the first Stephen King villains I was introduced to. And the interesting thing is that he is likely known mostly for the portrayal of him by Kiefer Sutherland in the film adaptation. As for the novella, The Body, he actually has very few appearances as the book is told in the first person. In a movie, you can take certain luxuries with that device and go outside the narrator’s perspective every now and then but as for the book, the only way we were going to see Ace is if Gordie was also there. As it stands though, he still manages to make an impression, even when he only appears in the imaginings of the other characters.

Ace is also one of the more enduring characters in the King universe. There are at least two other stories where he pops up, in one of King’s later novels, Needful Things. He is also referred to in the short story, Nona, which can be found in the collection, Skeleton Crew. I actually stumbled across some sites centered around Ace Merrill fan fic recently. Not going to go into to much detail there, other than to say that it made me feel a little dirty.

I see Ace as kind of an early version of Henry Bowers, the smug, self-obsessed bully who dominates his peers with fear and intimidation, someone who lives and dies off of his reputation and how he is perceived by others. Like John Coffey, this is another example of a character for whom I will only ever be able to see one face. Kiefer Sutherland may be forever associated with Jack Bauer but for me, he’s always going to be Ace Merrill.

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The ABC’s Of Stephen King : Larry Underwood

Baby, can you dig your…

I said, Baaaby, can you diiiiig your maaaaa…

Sorry.

I can’t do it. I tried.

Don’t take me too seriously, I actually love Larry Underwood as a character, I just can’t stand the song. And the funny thing is that the song has only ever really existed as text on the page. But for some reason whenever I read it, imagine it being a song that I would kind of hate. And interestingly enough, despite my annoyance, I also think that it totally works for the character and who he is when the book begins. The Stand is a great view of different character types, how the world falls apart around them and how they individually deal with the new reality of their lives.

I thought that Larry had one of the more interesting narrative arcs of the book. He starts out as a man who has been broken, damaged by the excesses of his meager success. He reminds me of a classic one-hit wonder, an artist who hits it big with a song or two and proceeds to go crazy, buying an extravagant lifestyle with the assumption that the fame and fortune will continue to be there, indefinitely. Larry is in the middle of learning a hard lesson when the book begins, realizing exactly how selfish he is and how much he needs to change.

The events of the book go a long way in bringing about even more change in him as it slowly ramps up to his ultimate moment where he puts everyone else ahead of himself and the courage of his character shines through. It’s easy to like Nick or Stu or Frannie or Glen. Larry is a bit more of a challenge for the reader. He’s one that I think, had things happened a little differently, he could have also ended up in Vegas, instead of Boulder. Because of that, I think that he is more complex and interesting as a character.

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The ABC’s Of Stephen King : Ka

Okay, I know. Technically, Ka isn’t a real character. I know, I’m kind of cheating a little bit but hey, it’s my theme so maybe you should just back off a little, kay?

Too much?

Anyway, as I have suggested in more than a few places throughout this blog, I’m a pretty big Dark Tower fan. I have been for a long time and for me, it sits like the bright, shining gem at the center of the Stephen King universe. And Ka is one of the central forces behind this entire series, so much that I think you could almost start thinking of it as a character unto itself. There are times that I feel like the timing and the tragedy of the Dark Tower is nearly Shakespearean in nature. Think of all the events which had to transpire in order for Roland to end up on the path he does and the same goes for all of the other characters who are drawn to him or are a part of the story in some other way.

So much fate and chance that was required in order for the events of the series to fall in line the way they did. Was there a higher force at work, pulling the strings and gently guiding all of these heroes towards each other? How is it possible that so much could have happened to allow this greater narrative to be possible? How is it that King ended up being exactly the right writer to tell this kind of a story and how many events in his life had to happen in order for these books to happen?

Is it fate?

Ka.

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Issue #148 : The Other Place

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Rory sat up and grabbed the mirror from his bedside table, staring into it and waiting for the change. 

As he waited, listening to the clock thunking heavily from the corner, he saw his image in the mirror start to ripple, like water after dropping in a stone. It started in the center of his face and radiated out to the edges, repeating itself for several minutes before the color started to ooze out of the reflection, as if someone was turning down a dial, manually changing the picture to black-and-white.

Despite having seen this for over a week, the image in the mirror still made him feel like he was going to be sick. The top portion of the reflection detached, and began falling backwards like a window pane that had been blown over in the wind. Below his feet, the floor began to tremor, as if a heavy train was passing by the house. He could detect the smell of sulfur in the air, as if something somewhere was burning, a sound of crackling like a nearby radio that had suddenly lost its signal.

The image in the mirror vanished completely and went black, as if an unknown power source had been shut off. Then, after several minutes, the picture slowly resolved again. It started as a pinpoint of light at the center of the mirror and expanded out until he was looking in an image, completely different than what had been there before.

Rory looked out onto a barren desert.

The mirror had somehow become a window, looking out on a landscape that he had never seen before. The sky was a light yellow color, with strips of bright purples, shooting off into the horizon. Something flashed out of frame like lightning, giving a strobe effect to everything. After a week of observing this phenomenon every night, there was only one conclusion he could come to.

Somehow, he was looking out onto an alien world.

His mirror had become a gateway, a lookout point onto a place that no human had ever seen before. There was never sign of any life, just the bizarre desert, a still image of someone’s abstract imaginings of a world. It looked cold there, beyond the surface of his mirror.

It looked dead.

But it couldn’t be. There had to be life, had to be something. If he were to set up a window that looked out over a desert on Earth, you likely wouldn’t see much life there either. All he would see was sand, rocks and the expanse of ever changing sky.

The air seemed to pulse from an unseen light source and the sky above began to transition in color, first with spots of green that appeared and began to tendril outward, as if an egg had been cracked and dropped down from far above.

Up until this night, he had always been the observer. There was one threshold yet to cross. 

Rory’s fingers trembled as he reached for the glass of the mirror.

It wasn’t as if the notion had never occurred to him, he thought about it every day. He just never had the courage to go through with it. Finally, it seemed that if he wasn’t going to go through with it, there was no point in just sitting here and staring, night after night.

He reached out, wincing as his fingers found air where the glass should have been. They brushed up, and passed into frigid cold air, behind the surface of the mirror. He winced at what felt like tiny daggers lancing into his fingers, but didn’t draw back. He leaned forward and extended his hand further. Clenching his teeth, he stretched his arm forward, until his entire hand and half of his arm was inside the picture frame.

In an instant, the uncomfortable cold became a raging heat, so intense that it was as if he had plunged his hand into a pot of boiling water.

He clenched his eyes shut, trying to stay calm and to keep himself together as the room began to spin. It was like everything that had tethered him to his sanity had slipped away and he was falling, the bedroom around him replaced by a dark mass of cyclonic fury.

He felt a hard impact as he landed, the feel of sand underneath him and all around, there was blazing hot wind. Opening his eyes he looked, agape at the desert that stretched away from him in all directions.

It was the desert from his picture frame.

Somehow, he had been transported to this place, plucked from his very existence and brought here, against his will or understanding. He cried out in pain at the feel of the wind in his skin, like probes of open flame assaulting him. Standing up, he felt the uncertainty of the ground underneath him as it threatened to slide out completely.

He needed to get back home, to right this error in judgment. Turning back, he moved to step back through the gateway he had just emerged from. From this side, it looked just as the mirror had from his bedroom, but larger in size. He looked through it, to his bedroom and stopped, mid-stride.

Rory was looking in at himself, peering in at him, through the mirror.

It was a near perfect replica of himself but enlarged, distorted and somehow fundamentally wrong. He looked into those eyes, his own eyes and saw an underlying malice, the likes of which he had never seen. 

Whatever it was that had flipped over there, whatever he had traded places with, it was now impersonating him in his own world. It would turn away and carry about its intentions, wearing Rory’s likeness as a perfect disguise.

He had to get back. Had to stop this thing.

Rory lunged forward, but before he could take a step, he felt himself being pulled back.  The wind swirled around his feet until he was stuck up to his ankles in wet sand that was inflexible and impossible to manipulate.

“Somebody help me!” he yelled out, knowing full well how pointless it was. The thing over there that had stolen his body was gone from this place and there was no one here that was going to help him. He looked down and saw that the sand was already surging up above his waist. He tried pushing himself out but nothing had any effect and suddenly, from beneath the ground, he felt two hands take hold of his legs.

In the waning moments, before he was pulled down into the sand and he began to feel his mouth filling with those dry, bitter grains, Rory saw the twisted version of himself, looking down at him from the gateway. There was fire and hatred in those eyes and one of the last things he saw before darkness flooded in was the glint of razor sharp teeth in the mouth that had once been his. A thin, claw-like hand reached out to take hold of the mirror and bring it down to smash the glass and trap him forever.

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The ABC’s Of Stephen King : John Coffey

Like the drink, but not spelled the same.

John Coffey is the centerpiece of The Green Mile, one example of a King story where I actually fell in love with the movie before I had even read the book. John Coffey is probably one of my all time favorite King characters. It’s funny because for as much as he is known for the horror, the doom and gloom, he also has the ability to create these amazingly bright characters. On one hand, they are so optimistic and perfect but on the other, so tragic.

Michael Clarke Duncan will always be John Coffey for me. I don’t think there is an actor on the planet who could have done this, in terms of both capturing the sheer physical presence of John Coffey but at the same time, portraying the child-like simplicity and innocence. I often find myself disappointed with the way King’s books translate to film but this casting decision was a master stroke of genius.

Coffey’s journey through everyone’s lives is so touching, funny and tragic, it’s one of the best I’ve seen, both in film and in print. He is the kind of character that many would immediately dismiss as absurd or childish, but once you spend some time around them you can’t help but admire and respect them. As I said at the start, it is hard to believe such a character could have come from such a dark and twisted imagination but there he is, confounding all your expectations and prejudices.

If you’ve seen the Green Mile, I would highly suggest the book as well. Not just a carbon copy, it actually provides quite a bit more depth to the narrative and makes an already great story even better.

And right there at the center, is John Coffey.

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Counting Down To 150….

And yet another story in our countdown to the 150th issue on the Baked Scribe. This one was a great installment for me. I love supernatural themed horror, probably my favorite iteration of the genre. And I love it even more when it’s dark. To me, movies and books often come off as less legit if the hero is somehow able to win out in the end. I’ve never really understood the notion, how do you kill something that’s already dead?
So this story represents all of what I want to see in my horror. It’s dark, powerful supernatural forces which can’t be reckoned or reasoned with. There is no reason for doing what it does, it just kills. It’s the stuff horror should be made of.
Enjoy. And don’t forget to tune in next week for my numero uno, all time favorite story that I have ever written for the blog. Until then…..

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The car was parked along the side of the road. Jessie leaned forward, trying to see better through the windshield, and unconsciously eased off of the gas pedal to slow as he passed. The windows of the other car were so fogged up that it was impossible to see inside. But how could there really be anyone in there? It was 2:30 in the morning and, if someone was just hanging out, chances were good that whatever was going on in there, it was something that he probably didn’t want to walk in on. In the mirror, before the car dwindled into the horizon, he caught a flash from the corner of his eye as the dome light inside the car came on. He craned his neck around to see, sure that he must have caught a reflection off the moon. His second look verified what he had seen though, as the light was indeed on.

It wasn’t important. Just a car, nothing that he hadn’t seen before. Still, something tugged at the back of his mind, a need to make sure that the person back there didn’t need help. How would he feel if the next day he turned on the news to find out that some guy had died from a heart attack there on the side of the road, watching cars pass him by until it was too late?

Jessie pulled off onto a side street, and headed back to where the car had been parked. He pulled up behind it, gingerly stepping out, as if someone was about to jump out of the other car and reprimand him. His head filled with the sound of gravel crunching under his feet as he approached the vehicle.

The car was some kind of generic sedan, reminding his of the cars his grandparents would drive them around in when they were kids. The motor wasn’t running and there was no indication of movement inside. Save for the fogged windows, he saw no sign of life.

“Hello?” His call was quickly absorbed into the increasingly brittle wind and he received no answer. He stepped closer to the car, moving carefully towards the driver’s door. It was as if invisible fingers were reaching out from the darkness and brushing against his neck. his skin felt electric, as if his hands and feet were falling asleep.

“Hello?” he called out again, leaning in closer to the window and with one hand reaching out to rap a knuckle on the glass. The sound was dull to his ears, carrying no weight in the cold air, and there was no answer from within.

Jessie reached out and placed a hand on the door handle, fingers trembling against the cool, moist surface. His breath was starting to come in ragged hitches, fully expecting something to jump out at him, to burn his hand for the offense of intruding where he shouldn’t have been.

He yanked his hand free at the sound of an air horn, blasting behind him. A semi blew past with a rush of air and sound that pushed him up against the car. He turned to glare, long enough to catch a glimpse in the darkness of a giant yellow smiley face on the backside of the rig. In the wake of the truck’s passing and in the newly found silence, he thought for a moment that he had heard someone moving around inside, an exhalation of breath followed by the car shifting slightly.

“Is anyone in there?”

Another sound, again almost too quick to hear but, even in that split second, he had an image of overnight parties as kids, shushing each other before the parents came in to shut down the fun.

Don’t open the door!

The voice was his own, spoken from the deepest bridge where the unconscious crossed over into conscious thought. He wanted to listen, to take heed, but it was the other part of his brain, the one that reminded him that it was important to put others before yourself, that voice was the one that ultimately won out and made it impossible to move away from the car.

Don’t open the door!

His hand made its way back down to the handle, was sliding on the moisture as it pulled up, hesitating at the resistance from the bolt inside, the scintilla of added applied force that would be needed to open the door.

Don’t…

The voice was pleading now, but also sounding resigned to whatever path he was determined to set himself onto. Another voice of responsibility was lecturing him now, on the importance of people’s privacy. You couldn’t just go around, letting yourself into whatever car you felt like.

He had to do this.

What if he was the one trapped inside the car, slowly bleeding to death, or worse? Maybe a broken leg, or having just had a stroke, the door just out of reach and unable to respond to the other person’s calls. If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t he be mentally admonishing the person for taking so long to just open the damn door?

This was stupid. Why had he pulled over in the first place if it wasn’t to try and help this person? If he happened to interrupt some random person in the middle of sticking it to the nanny, he would just have to live with that embarrassment. He had a momentary flash of possibility, as it occurred to him to simply call the police. But what would they say, really? What would happen if he filed a report on what ended up being a parked car?

Don’t open the door.

He grabbed the handle and lifted, pulling the door open and peeking inside. The door stuck at first, and made a wet sound as it opened. From the inside, the car began to chime softly, indicating that the keys were still in the ignition. No one was sitting in either of the front. When he looked at the passenger seat, however, he could see the moisture left behind on the leather, as if someone had been sitting there for a long time and had just stood up.

“Hello?” he called out again, but nobody answered. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement. He also heard breathing, labored as if whoever it was back there was in a great deal of pain. Jessie kept his hands braced against the roof of the car, ready to shove off and start sprinting if he had to, and stuck his head through the door. The backseat was also empty. He felt like smacking himself on the head for his idiocy. He didn’t understand why he allowed himself to get so worked up. Somebody had car trouble and had gone off for help, or had called a cab. Harmless. The dome-light must have come on somehow, by accident.

Something brushed past him from behind.

Jessie screamed so loudly, that he actually startled himself. There was no one there, but he felt the distinct sensation of bodies brushing past him. He heard footsteps. His panic spiked, and in that moment, of needing to act, to be anywhere but here, he sat down in the driver’s seat, behind the wheel, and slammed the door behind him.

The inside of the car wasn’t merely quiet. What he felt was the complete absence of sound, a vacuum in which even his breathing was amplified several times louder than it should have been. It was a cold feeling that he associated with funeral homes, places where you caught glimpses into things that you weren’t supposed to see in this life.

This was like being in the presence of death.

Still, footsteps sounded outside, circling at a slow, shambling pace, the car occasionally shifting as if someone was bumping into it as they passed. He had to repress the urge to slap his hand against the door lock, knowing somehow that it would do no good.

His breathing was starting to echo in his head until he began to realize that it wasn’t just his own breaths that he was hearing. They could be heard beside him and from behind. He could feel the sobs, already catching in his throat, crying out at himself for not choosing to drive on, screaming as he reached for the door release, to try and escape even though it was likely too late. He heard what sounded like metal scraping across a sharp edge.

Outside, a dark colored bird fluttered down out of the night sky, and alighted on the roof of the parked car. It stood there for a moment, preening in the moonlight until a shrieking cry ripped out from the inside, startling it back into flight.

Inside the car, the dome light flipped back off into darkness.

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The ABC’s Of Stephen King : IT

So many names.

Pennywise. Robert Gray, the Eater of Worlds.

It’s unclear where exactly IT comes from, other than that it seems to be a being of incredible power that existed long before our world ever did. It manifests in any number of different forms, mostly driven by whatever the victim of choice happens to be afraid of. The most common form which it chooses to take is that of the clown, some kind of deranged mix between Bozo and Clarabell.

As the years have gone by, the television mini-series adaptation of the book has become more and more dated, slightly more cheesy as some of the not-so-great acting becomes more obvious. Still, even after all of this time, Tim Curry’s performance still stands as amazing and unforgettable. Once again, the face of the actor has become permanently etched onto the imaginations of the readers as being the true face of IT.

At the end of the Dark Tower series, we are introduced to a character that has a very familiar feel to him. Through the course of the book IT, we learn of the possibility that the creature could actually be female. Is it possible that one of IT’s offspring could have manged to escape, finding its way into the path of the fabled gunslingers? I don’t know for sure, but the possibility is intriguing. King certainly wrote that scene with enough overt references to IT to make us thinking about Pennywise.

If I had to choose one Stephen King book to keep, and trash all the rest, IT would be my choice, largely for the brilliance of this powerful, supernatural villain.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : In Depth

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“Seriously, it’s really interesting stuff,” Kimmy said

“I know, you keep telling me, I’m tired of hearing about it.” Rudy was frowning into his book, wanting just to be left alone. The expression had been on his face for much of the last 10 minutes. As soon as Kimmy started blathering on about her latest blog article.

“I always thought I knew so much about him, but some of the stuff just blows my—”

“I know.”

She was oblivious to the hints he was carpet-bombing her with.

“His last victim? Her throat was cut so deep that it went all the way to her spine.”

“Kimmy—”

“And he cut open her abdomen and removed all of her organs, even her heart was missing!”

“Kimmy! I’m trying to eat here for fuck’s sake.”

Her face immediately made the transition to pouting, and he dropped the sandwich onto his plate. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m glad you’re so into this article I just don’t need to hear all the details.”

“Okay,” she said the word, but deep down only felt frustration at his lack of interest. The work was so important. It was getting to the point where, even though the third shift at the factory was paying the bills, all she now saw it as was something that took time away from her work. Maybe the time would come when she could actually make enough money from just the blog to scrape by, but until then she would just have to hold to the course, hacking it out and working her ass off.

While Rudy was washing the dishes, she scratched out a quick note and slipped out the front door. If she stayed around the house, she would just spend the evening coming with reasons to be pissed at him. Better to just go to the library and spend the night being productive.

The bus dropped her off, six blocks up from the entrance and she trudged down the sidewalk, kicking up the slush and snow on the as she walked. Traffic was light, being too late for classes but still too early for the bar crowds to be starting.

As she passed the small parking lot for the bank, she heard something behind that made her stop. It took a few moments to fully register, but when it did, she snapped her head around.

She heard someone breathing.

Of course, there was no one behind her. Both sides of the street were empty for blocks. Had to have been the wind, some weird tunnel effect blowing through an alley or something. It had to be the wind.

Kimmy resumed her walk and was soon shaking off her coat and stomping boots at the front door of the library. There was no competition for the workstation she preferred, the lone computer terminal off in the far corner of the room where no one could see the gruesome articles she was reading.

As she sat down, she caught in the reflection of the briefly darkened screen, that someone had walked up behind her. The person was just standing there, staring, and as she looked up she felt her heart speed up at the sight of the top hat on their head. Was there a costume party going on somewhere? Maybe in elaborate prank on Rudy’s part? She turned around in the chair, mouth open and ready to chew out whoever was standing there.

There was no one.

She slammed her palm on the desk as she turned back. The noise brought the brief attention from several nearby students as well as a nearby librarian. She ignored them all.

The evening went on without any incident. The scratching of her pen on the paper sounded like something was clawing at the back of her notebook, punctuated by the hollow clicking sounds of the mouse.

She had lost track of time until the son of the church bells outside brought her back to reality. The screen of the computer showed that it was nearly midnight. By now, Rudy would be out for the rest the evening, or he would be barricaded into his room, not to be seen until morning.

Bus service would’ve ended an hour ago but the weather was mild enough, and she didn’t mind having a walk entire way home. It briefly occurred to her to call for a cab, but she quickly rejected it. Seven dollars plus tip wasn’t sunny she can afford to casually par with these days.

It was a clear night, and she looked up at the nearly bursting moon as she walked, choosing the path along the river. There would be more homeless people down this way, but anymore it was the drunk college students that posed more of a threat.

She looked up at the sound of bells ringing through the silence. It was a kind of sound she always imagined hearing an old sailing vessels, from a past long dead. She squinted through the gathering fog, thinking she could see a dark shape gliding down the river, water lapping up against a ship’s hull.

Her brain was starting to catch up with how strange it was to hear something like that on the river, especially this late. She looked up, out onto the river again when she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. The sound was loud and clipped, like that of heels, echoing off of walls that were nowhere near them.

The footsteps were getting loud enough to fill her head. The wind, the traffic from the nearby street, the other bars all become secondary to the sound of the person walking behind her. It didn’t seem like they were speeding up, but instead maintained a casual pace that more or less seemed to be gaining on her.

Just as the person seemed to be right behind her, she turned to face the person. The retort was already on her lips but was silenced in a moment at the sight before her. The person towering over looked to be nearly 7 feet tall. It wore a black cloak that billowed around it like a sail. On its head was a top hat that seemed to add another foot to its height, the brim hanging out far enough to completely obscure the face in shadows. Images from all the books and articles came rushing back to her, the vision of him, now standing before her.

The scream she let out was immediately cut off as a knife flashed out, cutting across her throat and severing her vocal cords. She fell forward, ending up held in his arms, her last vision being of the same blade plunging into flesh she only barely acknowledged as being her own.

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The ABC’s Of Stephen King : He Who Walks Behind The Rows

He who walks behind the rows is of course, the mysterious dark force to whom the cult of the Children of the Corn pay tribute to. It is the powerful antagonist which lives within the fields and drives the decisions and ethos of those who live there and the being to whom they pay sacrifice to. It is a device that I have always been a fan of, the faceless supernatural force that holds sway over a particular narrative universe.

One reason why I chose this character to bring up in this series of essays is to give me an excuse to discuss somewhat of a hotbed topic within the Constant Readers and that is the crossover between King’s books. He has made a long career out of making references to other books and having characters from one appear in another. I have always been attracted to this as sort of a reward for the readers who are more conversant in his body of work as well as the notion that so many of his books exist within a common narrative universe.

I do think though, that he made this quite a bit more complicated when he made the decision to insert himself as a character into the Dark Tower books, essentially setting himself up as a sort of creative force behind the whole universe. It seemed like after that, people started looking more actively for connections between all the books, where I tend to believe that often those Easter eggs were just a way of winking at the fans to some extent.

So what does that have to do with He Who Walks Behind The Rows, you might ask? Well, it has been suggested by quite a few that He Who Walks Behind The Rows is actually none other than our old friend, Randall Flagg. And while I get that this makes for an entertaining spin to the story and to King’s universe, my personal opinion is that it is a conclusion just not supported by the text itself. I think that there is a difference between books that have overt references to each other and books that can be made to look like they fit together. For me, this connection doesn’t exist and I see Children Of The Corn as it’s own entity.

And that isn’t to say that I’m pointing at others and telling them they are wrong. That’s the great thing about King’s books and his universe. It can be whatever you want, the only limits being that of your own imagination.

I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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