It was Green Terror, and he had begun to roar ear-splittingly.
"Haven't you got that damned tiger in?" he screamed, almost falsetto.
He shook me like a rag doll.
"He won't go!" I found myself yelling back. "You've got to – "
But he flung me away. I stumbled over the fold-up steps in front of his trailer and crashed into a bone-shaking heap at the bottom. With something between a sob and a curse, Mr. Indrasil strode past me, face mottled with anger and fear.
I got up, drawn after him as if hypnotized. Some intuitive part of me realized I was about to see the last act played out.
Once clear of the shelter of Mr. Indrasil's trailer, the power of the wind was appalling. It screamed like a runaway freight train. I was an ant, a speck, an unprotected molecule before that thundering, cosmic force.
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.
"It's time, Jason," Mr. Legere said, his words flayed across the clearing by the wind.
Mr. Indrasil's wildly whipping hair lifted around the livid scar across the back of his neck. His fists clenched, but he said nothing. I could almost feel him gathering his will, his life force, his id. It gathered around him like an unholy nimbus.
And, then, I saw with sudden horror that Mr. Legere was unhooking Green Terror's breezeway – and the back of the cage was open!
I cried out, but the wind ripped my words away.
The great tiger leaped out and almost flowed past Mr. Legere. Mr.
Indrasil swayed, but did not run. He bent his head and stared down at the tiger.
And Green Terror stopped.
He swung his huge head back to Mr. Legere, almost turned, and then slowly turned back to Mr. Indrasil again. There was a terrifyingly palpable sensation of directed force in the air, a mesh of conflicting wills centered around the tiger. And the wills were evenly matched. I think, in the end, it was Green Terror's own will – his hate of Mr.
Indrasil – that tipped the scales.
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The cat began to advance, his eyes hellish, flaring beacons. And something strange began to happen to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to be folding in on himself, shriveling, 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.
I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on my back, and the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I caught one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the darkness descended.
When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the granary bins in the all-purpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had been beaten with padded Indian clubs.
Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes were open and grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever gonna wake up. How you feel?"
"Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"
"We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado almost carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."
At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came flooding back. "Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"
His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an evasive answer.
"Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know, Chips. I have to."
Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't exactly what we told the cops – in fact we hardly told the cops any of it.
No sense havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's gone. I didn't even know that Legere guy was around."
"And Green Tiger?"
Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought to death."
"Other tiger? There's no other – "
"Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell of a mess. Ripped each other's throats out."
"What – where – "
"Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler that way." And before I could say another word, he was gone.
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 mold!"
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The other thing is what keeps me awake 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.
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BEFORE THE PLAY
First published in Whispers, Vol. 5, No. 1-2, August 1982. ‘Before the Play’ was a prologue cut from the final draft of The Shining, detailing events that took place before the Torrance family moved into the Overlook Hotel. King also wrote an unused epilogue titled ‘After the Play’ which is now lost.
A BEDROOM IN THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING
Coming here had been a mistake, and Lottie Kilgallon didn't like to admit her mistakes.
And I won't admit this one, she thought with determination as she stared up at the ceiling that glimmered overhead.
Her husband of 10 days slumbered beside her. Sleeping the sleep of the just was how some might have put it. Others, more honest, might have called it the sleep of the monumentally stupid. He was William Pillsbury of the Westchester Pillsburys, only son and heir of Harold M.
Pillsbury, old and comfortable money. Publishing was what they liked to talk about because publishing was a gentleman's profession, but there was also a chain of New England textile mills, a foundry in Ohio, and extensive agricultural holdings in the South – cotton and citrus and fruit.
Old money was always better than nouveau riche, but either way they had money falling out of their assholes. If she ever said that aloud to Bill, he would undoubtedly go pale and might even faint dead away No fear, Bill. Profanation of the Pillsbury family shall never cross my lips.
It had been her idea to honeymoon at the Overlook in Colorado, and there had been two reasons for this. First, although it was tremendously expensive (as the best resorts were), it was not a "hep" place to go, and Lottie did not like to go to the hep places. Where did you go on your honeymoon. Lottie? Oh, this perfectly, wonderful resort hotel in Colorado – the Overlook. Lovely place. Quite out of the way but so romantic. And her friends – whose stupidity was exceeded in most cases only by that of William Pillsbury himself – would look at her in dumb
– literally! – wonder. Lottie had done it again.
Her second reason had been of more personal importance. She had wanted to honeymoon at the Overlook because Bill wanted to go to Rome. It was imperative to find out certain things as soon as possible.
Would she be able to have her own way immediately? And if not, how long would it take to grind him down? He was stupid, and he had followed her around like a dog with its tongue hanging out since her 123
debutante ball, but would he be as malleable after the ring was slipped on as he had been before?
Lottie smiled a little in the dark despite her lack of sleep and the bad dreams she had had since they arrived here. Arrived here, that was the key phrase. "Here" was not the American Hotel in Rome but the Overlook in Colorado. She was going to be able to manage him just fine, and that was the important thing. She would only make him stay another four days (she had originally planned on three weeks, but the bad dreams had changed that), and then they could go back to New York. After all, that was where the action was in this August of 1929.