Different Seasons

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge ... the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award® nominee
The Shawshank Redemption.

 

Todd Bowden is one of the top students in his high school class and a typical American sixteen-year-old—until he becomes obsessed with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town. The inspiration for the film
Apt Pupil
from Phoenix Pictures.

 

Four rambunctious young boys plunge through the facade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. The film
Stand By Me
is based on this novella.

 

A disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death.

THE BACHMAN BOOKS
“Fascinating.”
—
Philadelphia Inquirer
CARRIE
“Horrifying.”
—
Chicago Tribune
CHRISTINE
“Riveting.”
—
Playboy
CUJO
“Gut-wrenching.”
—Newport News Daily Press
THE DARK HALF
“Scary.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
THE DARK TOWER: THE GUNSLINGER
“Brilliant.”
—
Booklist
THE DARK TOWER II: THE DRAWING OF THE THREE “Superb.”
—Chicago Herald-Wheaton
THE DARK TOWER III: THE WASTE LANDS
“Gripping.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
THE DEAD ZONE
“Frightening.”
—
Cosmopolitan
DIFFERENT SEASONS
“Hypnotic.”
—New York Times Book Review
DOLORES CLAIBORNE
“Unforgettable.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
THE EYES OF THE DRAGON
“Masterful
.”
—Cincinnati Post
FIRESTARTER
“Terrifying.”
—Miami Herald

FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT
“Chilling.”
—
Milwaukee Journal
GERALD’S GAME
“Terrific.”
—
USA Today
IT
“Mesmerizing.”
—
Washington Post Book World
MISERY
“Wonderful.”
—
Houston Chronicle
NEEDFUL THINGS
“Demonic.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
NIGHT SHIFT
“Macabre.”
—Dallas Times-Herald
PET SEMATARY
“Unrelenting.”
—
Pittsburgh Press
‘SALEM’S LOT
“Tremendous.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
THE SHINING
“Spellbinding.”
—
Pittsburgh Press
SKELETON CREW
“Diabolical.”
—
Associated Press
THE STAND
“Great.”
—
New York Times Book Review
THINNER
“Extraordinary.”
—
Booklist
THE TOMMYKNOCKERS
“Marvelous.”
—
Boston Globe

Carrie
’Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
The Dead Zone
Firestarter
Cujo
THE DARK TOWER I:
The Gunslinger
Christine
Pet Sematary
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Talisman
(with Peter Straub)
It
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
The Tommyknockers
THE DARK TOWER II:
The Drawing
of the Three

THE DARK TOWER III:
The Waste Lands
The Dark Half
Needful Things
Gerald’s Game
Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia
Rose Madder
Desperation
The Green Mile
THE DARK TOWER IV:
Wizard and Glass
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved Tom
Gordon
Dreamcatcher
Black House
(with Peter Straub)
From a Buick 8

 

 

 

 

AS RICHARD BACHMAN
Rage
The Long Walk
Roadwork
The Running Man
Thinner
The Regulators

COLLECTIONS
Night Shift
Different Seasons
Skeleton Crew
Four Past Midnight
Nightmares and
Dreamscapes
Hearts in Atlantis
Everything’s Eventual

NONFICTION
Danse Macabre
On Writing

SCREENPLAYS
Creepshow
Cat’s Eye
Silver Bullet
Maximum Overdrive
Pet Sematary
Golden Years
Sleepwalkers
The Stand
The Shining
Rose Red
Storm of the Century

SIGNET

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Albany, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Viking edition. First Signet Printing, August 1983 70

Copyright © Stephen King, 1982

All rights reserved

eISBN : 978-1-101-13808-3

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material.

 

Beechwood Music Corporation and Castle Music Pty. Limited:
Portions of lyrics from “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” by Rolf Harris. Copyright © Castle Music Pty. Limited, 1960. Assigned to and copyrighted © Beechwood Music Corp., 1961 for the United States and Canada. Copyright © Castle Music Pty. Limited for other territories. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Big Seven Music Corporation:
Portions of lyrics from “Party Doll,” by Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen. Copyright © Big Seven Music Corp., 1956. Portions of lyrics from “Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)” by Zwirn/Giosasi. Copyright © Big Seven Music Corp., 1959. All rights reserved.

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers; Jonathan Cape Ltd.; and the Estate of Robert Frost:
Two lines from “Mending Wall” from
The Poetry of Robert Frost,
edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright
©
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1930, 1939, 1969. Copyright © Robert Frost, 1958. Copyright © Lesley Frost Ballantine, 1967.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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“Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.”

—AC/DC

“I heard it through the grapevine.”

—Norman Whitfield

—Flaubert

There’s a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess—I’m the guy who can get it for you. Tailormade cigarettes, a bag of reefer if you’re partial to that, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your son or daughter’s high school graduation, or almost anything else ... within reason, that is. It wasn’t always that way.

I came to Shawshank when I was just twenty, and I am one of the few people in our happy little family willing to own up to what they did. I committed murder. I put a large insurance policy on my wife, who was three years older than I was, and then I fixed the brakes of the Chevrolet coupe her father had given us as a wedding present. It worked out exactly as I had planned, except I hadn’t planned on her stopping to pick up the neighbor woman and the neighbor woman’s infant son on their way down Castle Hill and into town. The brakes let go and the car crashed through the bushes at the edge of the town common, gathering speed. Bystanders said it must have been doing fifty or better when it hit the base of the Civil War statue and burst into flames.

I also hadn’t planned on getting caught, but caught I was. I got a season’s pass into this place. Maine has no death-penalty, but the District Attorney saw to it that I was tried for all three deaths and given three life sentences, to run one after the other. That fixed up any chance of parole I might have for a long, long time. The judge called what I had done “a hideous, heinous crime,” and it was, but it is also in the past now. You can look it up in the yellowing files of the Castle Rock Call, where the big headlines announcing my conviction look sort of funny and antique next to the news of Hitler and Mussolini and FDR’s alphabet soup agencies.

Have I rehabilitated myself, you ask? I don’t even know what that word means, at least as far as prisons and corrections go. I think it’s a politician’s word. It may have some other meaning, and it may be that I will have a chance to find out, but that is the future ... something cons teach themselves not to think about. I was young, good-looking, and from the poor side of town. I knocked up a pretty, sulky, headstrong girl who lived in one of the fine old houses on Carbine Street. Her father was agreeable to the marriage if I would take a job in the optical company he owned and “work my way up.” I found out that what he really had in mind was keeping me in his house and under his thumb, like a disagreeable pet that has not quite been housebroken and which may bite. Enough hate eventually piled up to cause me to do what I did. Given a second chance I would not do it again, but I’m not sure that means I am rehabilitated.