I wanted to, but I decided that would probably be a bad idea.
Except for two or three word-changes and the addition of a
paragraph break (which was probably a typographical error in the
first place), I've left the tale just as it was. If I really did start
making changes, the result would be an entirely new story.
"The Glass Floor" was written, to the best of my recollection, in
the summer of 1967, when I was about two months shy of my
twentieth birthday. I had been trying for about two years to sell a
story to Robert A.W. Lowndes, who edited two horror/fantasy
magazines for Health Knowledge (The Magazine of Horror and
Startling Mystery Stories) as well as a vastly more popular digest
called Sexology. He had rejected several submissions kindly (one
of them, marginally better than "The Glass Floor," was finally
published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under
the title "Night of the Tiger"), then accepted this one when I finally
got around to submitting it. That first check was for thirty-five
dollars. I've cashed many bigger ones since then, but none gave me
more satisfaction; someone had finally paid me some real money
for something I had found in my head!
The first few pages of the story are clumsy and badly written -
clearly the product of an unformed story-teller's mind - but the last
bit pays off better than I remembered; there is a genuine frisson in
what Mr. Wharton finds waiting for him in the East Room. I
suppose that's at least part of the reason I agreed to allow this
mostly unremarkable work to be reprinted after all these years.
And there is at least a token effort to create characters which are
more than paper-doll cutouts; Wharton and Reynard are
antagonists, but neither is "the good guy" or "the bad guy." The
real villain is behind that plastered-over door. And I also see an
odd echo of "The Glass Floor" in a very recent work called "The
Library Policeman." That work, a short novel, will be published as
part of a collection of short novels called Four Past Midnight this
fall, and if you read it, I think you'll see what I mean. It was
fascinating to see the same image coming around again after all
this time.
Mostly I'm allowing the story to be republished to send a message
to young writers who are out there right now, trying to be
published, and collecting rejection slips from such magazines as
F&SF Midnight Graffiti, and, of course, Weird Tales, which is the
granddaddy of them all. The message is simple: you can learn, you
can get better, and you can get published.
If that Little spark is there, someone will probably see it sooner
orlater, gleaming faintly in the dark. And, if you tend the spark
nestled in the kindling, it really can grow into a large, blazing fire.
It happened to me, and it started here.
I remember getting the idea for the story, and it just came as the
ideas come now - casually, with no flourish of trumpets. I was
walking down a dirt road to see a friend, and for no reason at all I
began to wonder what it would be like to stand in a room whose
floor was a mirror. The image was so intriguing that writing the
story became a necessity. It wasn't written for money; it was
written so I could see better. Of course I did not see it as well as I
had hoped; there is still that shortfall between what I hope I will
accomplish and what I actually manage. Still, I came away from it
with two valuable things: a salable story after five years of
rejection slips, and a bit of experience. So here it is, and as that
fellow Griner says in Dickey's novel, it ain't really as bad as I
thought.
- Stephen King
Wharton moved slowly up the wide steps, hat in hand, craning his
neck to get a better look at the Victorian monstrosity that his sister
had died in. It wasn't a house at all, he reflected, but a mausoleum -
a huge, sprawling mausoleum. It seemed to grow out of the top of
the hill like an outsized, perverted toadstool, all gambrels and
gables and jutting, blank-windowed cupolas. A brass weather-vane
surmounted the eighty degree slant of shake-shingled roof, the
tarnished effigy of a leering little boy with one hand shading eyes
Wharton was just as glad he could not see.
Then he was on the porch, and the house as a whole was cut off
from him. He twisted the old-fashioned bell, and listened to it echo
hollowly through the dim recesses within. There was a rose-tinted
fanlight over the door, and Wharton could barely make out the date
1770 chiseled into the glass. Tomb is right, he thought.
The door suddenly swung open. "Yes, sir?" The housekeeper
stared out at him. She was old, hideously old. Her face hung like
limp dough on her skull, and the hand on the door above the chain
was grotesquely twisted by arthritis.
"I've come to see Anthony Reynard," Wharton said. He fancied he
could even smell the sweetish odor of decay emanating from the
rumpled silk of the shapeless black dress she wore.
"Mr Reynard isn't seein' anyone. He's mournin'."
"He'll see me," Wharton said. "I'm Charles Wharton. Janine's
brother."
"Oh." Her eyes widened a little, and the loose bow of her mouth
worked around the empty ridges of her gums. "Just a minute." She
disappeared, leaving the door ajar.
Wharton stared into the dim mahogany shadows, making out high-
backed easy chairs, horse-hair upholstered divans, tall narrow-
shelved bookcases, curlicued, floridly carven wainscoting.
Janine, he thought. Janine, Janine, Janine. How could you live
here? How in hell could you stand it?
A tall figure materialized suddenly out of the gloom, slope-
shouldered, head thrust forward, eyes deeply sunken and downcast.
Anthony Reynard reached out and unhooked the door-chain.
"Come in, Mr. Wharton, " he said heavily.
Wharton stepped into the vague dimness of the house, looking up
curiously at the man who had married his sister. There were rings
beneath the hollows of his eyes, blue and bruised-looking. The suit
he wore was wrinkled and hung limp on him, as if he had lost a
great deal of weight. He looks tired, Wharton thought. Tired and
old.
"My sister has already been buried?" Wharton asked.
"Yes." He shut the door slowly, imprisoning Wharton in the
decaying gloom of the house. "My deepest sorrow, sir. Wharton. I
loved your sister dearly." He made a vague gesture. "I'm sorry."
He seemed about to add more, then shut his mouth with an abrupt
snap. When he spoke again, it was obvious he had bypassed
whatever had been on his lips. "Would you care to sit down? I'm
sure you have questions.
"I do. Somehow it came out more curtly than he had intended.
Reynard sighed and nodded slowly. He led the Way deeper into the
living room and gestured at a chair. Wharton sank deeply into it,
and it seemed to gobble him up rather than give beneath him.
Reynard sat next to the fireplace and dug for cigarettes. He offered
them wordlessly to Wharton, and he shook his head.
He waited until Reynard lit his cigarette, then asked, "Just how did
she die? Your letter didn't say much.
Reynard blew out the match and threw it into the fireplace. It
landed on one of the ebony iron fire-dogs, a carven gargoyle that
stared at Wharton with toad's eyes.
"She fell," he said. "She was dusting in one of the other rooms, up
along the eaves. We were planning to paint, and she said it would
have to be well-dusted before we could begin. She had the ladder.
It slipped. Her neck was broken." There was a clicking sound in