Sep 1988
Vol. 4, #9, pp. 5, 8
Thicket From Hell
Instructions
Hidden within the following story are thirty different Stephen King titles. Sixteen of the thirty titles appear word-for-word as SK wrote them. For example, the title "IT" appears in the story written as "IT." The other fourteen titles are a little less obvious. These titles DO NOT appear word-for-word but appear as a word or series of words which SOUNDS LIKE the title when spoken out loud. For example, the SK title "Silver Bullet" might appear in the story as the line "To cook SEAL LIVER, BOIL IT." It doesn't, by the way, but you get the idea. See if you can find them all without peeking at the answers. Good luck.
SCORING
Give yourself ONE POINT for each word-for-word title you discover (16 points max) and TWO POINTS for each "sounds like" title you discover (28 points max). The highest possible score is 44 points. What's your rank?
ANSWERS ON PAGE 8 |
| 44 points: KINDRED SPIRIT. 40-43 points: FORNIT 1st class. 30-39 points: TOMMYKNOCKER. 20-29 points: CRAB-CATCHER. 10-19 points: GOOCHER. 01-09 points: COCKADOODIE DIRTY BIRD. |
Continuing Adventures of Kevin Sting
Part One: Thicket from Hell
by Ray Rexer
This is what happened. On the morning that my old beat up '57 Chrysler finally broke -- the morning of July 19. It chose an awful place to die, as you'll soon see. The Chrysler was a great car and usually reliable, although it didn't look the part; the body was a mess. I had planned, in the near future, to drive the crate over to Will Darnell's; he repairs damage on old Detroit honeys like mine.
But on this morning the kids and I were going for a drive to see gramma. Not over the river and through the woods exactly, but the jaunt would take us down a seldom used section of corduroy-laid roadwork I called the mangler, because that's exactly what it did to your car, mangle it. The road wound through a heavily wooded section of Devon Woods known to locals as The Thicket. Old timers spoke in muted tones when they spoke of The Thicket. If they spoke of it at all. Legend held that The Thicket was home to an ancient Micmac burial ground that had the mouths of the dead sewn shut. And that the moaning of the wind through the old and crooked trees was really the muffled cries of the long ago dead.
I started up the old Chrysler that fateful morn feelin' pretty good. I yelled toward the house, "children, I've the car on," hoping it'd hurry them up. It didn't. It was too early for miracles. I had just roused the twins Kay and Rose up on my way out to the car. Little Joe, my youngest, was already dressed and by my side, as usual. And Chris was in the bathroom, as usual. Chris is a teen and she takes forever in the bathroom. This usually throws the twins into a collective rage and they carry on like monsters, dealing copious amounts of misery to each other. Kids. They tie my knickers, so to speak.
When all were ensconced in the car -- Little Joe was balanced with care on the monstrous hump of the Chrysler's driveshaft -- I started slowly down Culver Street and then out along Balfour Avenue toward Crescent. Chris flipped on WZON and started to sing. The twins joined in. It was good to hear them on key for once. I lit up a cigarette -- it's a bad habit, I know, but I smoke Salems a lot -- and scrunched down comfortably into the well worn seat.
I'd been past The Thicket a few times before, mostly with Little Joe by my side. He loved how thick and lush the vegetation was and how the trees seemed to reach out for him through the open window of the Chrysler. Sometimes he couldn't avoid the reach and a thick woody finger would snatch off his hat or yank out some of his tawny hair and he'd yell "Ouch!" and then laugh and say "That's one for the road, dad" like he was keeping score. And I'd laugh back and say to him, "Now tell me what the tally is, man!"
The Thicket has character; it grows on you. At dusk, when the mist starts eddying around the gnarled roots of the ancient trees, you can almost see night shift itself into place, scrunching down its darkening haunches into the woods like me in the seat of my old Chrysler. Once Joe asked me why the woods seemed so alive and I said, "I haven't got a clue, Joe. " But I guess I did and I guess he found out soon enough.
I motored the Chrysler past the plant where I work building trucks, past the church where my mother Patsy met Terry her husband at a box social in 1927, and past the last house before Devon Woods, old Jud Crandall's place. Jud Crandall the carpenter, as he liked to be called lest he be mistaken for his toss-pot cousin Jud Grandall the chicken farmer. The man knew wood, not chickens, and he wanted to make sure people knew the difference.
The Chrysler went into a grand mal seizure twenty minutes later. I thought at first that I could pull it out -- I fluttered the gas pedal like mad and said a silent prayer. The engine smoothed a bit then suddenly shuddered like a wet dog and shot a thickening wad of black smoke into the air before dying in a series of barking backfires. I cranked the engine but only succeeded in killing the diehard. All was quiet. Even the kids. The Chrysler's engine ticked slowly as it cooled. The air seemed suddenly thick and malevolent, the woods dark and full of moving shadows. We had entered The Thicket.
... to be continued.
THICKET FROM HELL
Answer Sheet
From Page 5
The following are the Stephen King titles in the order that they appear in the story:
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