The Stand

I don’t know what you think, but for me, that version’s a loser. The story is there, but it’s not elegant. It’s like a Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal. It goes somewhere, but it ain’t, you know, boss.

I haven’t restored all four hundred of the missing pages; there is a difference between doing it up right and just being downright vulgar. Some of what was left on the cutting room floor when I turned in the truncated version deserved to be left there, and there it remains. Other things, such as Fra

I suspect nothing added here is as good as Hansel’s trail of breadcrumbs, but I have always regretted the fact that no one but me and a few in-house readers at Doubleday ever met that maniac who simply calls himself The Kid… or witnessed what happens to him outside a tu

So here is The Stand, Constant Reader, as its author originally intended for it to roll out of the showroom. All its chrome is now intact, for better or for worse. And the final reason for presenting this version is the simplest. Although it has never been my favorite novel, it is the one people who like my books seem to like the most. When I speak (which is as rarely as possible), people always speak to me about The Stand. They discuss the characters as though they were living people, and ask frequently, “What happened to so-and-so,”… as if I got letters from them every now and again.

I am inevitably asked if it is ever going to be a movie. The answer, by the way, is probably yes. Will it be a good one? I don’t know. Bad or good, movies nearly always have a strange, diminishing effect on works of fantasy (of course there are exceptions; The Wizard of Oz is an example which springs immediately to mind). In discussions, people are willing to cast various parts endlessly. I’ve always thought Robert Duval would make a splendid Randall Flagg, but I’ve heard people suggest such people as Clint Eastwood, Bruce Dern, and Christopher Walken. They all sound good, just as Bruce Springsteen would seem to make an interesting Larry Underwood, if he ever chose to try acting (and, based on his videos, I think he would do very well… although my personal choice would be Marshall Crenshaw). But in the end, I think it’s perhaps best for Stu, Larry, Glen, Fra

Finally, I write for only two reasons: to please myself and to please others. In returning to this long tale of dark Christianity, I hope I have done both.

Stephen King

October 24, 1989

THE CIRCLE OPENS

We need help, the Poet reckoned .

“Sally.”

A mutter.

“Wake up now, Sally.”

A louder mutter: leeme lone.

He shook her harder.

“Wake up. You got to wake up!”

Charlie.

Charlie’s voice. Calling her. For how long?

Sally swam up out of sleep.

First she glanced at the clock on the night table and saw it was quarter past two in the morning. Charlie shouldn’t even be here; he should be on shift. Then she got her first good look at him and something leaped up inside her, some deadly intuition.

Her husband was deathly pale. His eyes started and bulged from their sockets. The car keys were in one hand. He was still using the other to shake her, although her eyes were open. It was as if he hadn’t been able to register the fact that she was awake.

“Charlie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t seem to know what to say. His Adam’s apple bobbed futilely but there was no sound in the small service bungalow but the ticking of the clock.

“Is it a fire?” she asked stupidly. It was the only thing she could think of which might have put him in such a state. She knew his parents had perished in a housefire.

“In a way,” he said. “In a way it’s worse. You got to get dressed, honey. Get Baby LaVon. We got to get out of here.”

“Why?” she asked, getting out of bed. Dark fear had seized her. Nothing seemed right. This was like a dream. “Where? You mean the back yard?” But she knew it wasn’t the back yard. She had never seen Charlie look afraid like this. She drew a deep breath and could smell no smoke or burning.