1922 (novella)
| "1922" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Stephen King |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Published in | Full Dark, No Stars |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Publication date | 2010 |
1922 is a novella by Stephen King, published in his collection Full Dark, No Stars (2010).
Wilfred James, a farmer in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, owns eighty acres of farmland that have been in his family for generations. His wife Arlette owns an adjoining one-hundred acres willed to her by her father. Wilfred scorns the thought of living in a city, but Arlette is discontented with farm life and wants to move to Omaha. She seeks to sell her land to a livestock company for use as a pig farm and slaughterhouse. If she does so, Wilfred's property will no longer be farmable and he will be forced to sell as well. Wilfred resorts to manipulating his teenaged son, Henry, into helping him murder his own mother.
As part of their plot, Wilfred and a reluctant Henry get Arlette drunk. Arlette proceeds to make crude remarks about Henry's girlfriend, Shannon Cotterie, which angers the boy enough to commit to Wilfred's plot. After taking Arlette to bed, Wilfred brutally slashes her throat with a butcher knife. Wilfred and Henry then dump the body in a well behind the barn. Later, as Wilfred dumps his blood-soaked mattress into the well with Arlette, he notices that her body has become infested with rats.
Wilfred decides to fill in the well to hide the body, but knows that doing so will arouse suspicion. He purposefully has one of his aged cows fall in the well to provide a cover story for filling it in. Right afterwards, the local sheriff—acting on behalf of the livestock company—searches the farmhouse to look for Arlette, finding nothing. Wilfred and Henry fill the well, but a rat crawls out of the soil. Henry kills it, believing that Arlette is now haunting them. Wilfred later encounters a rat when it attacks one of his other cows, severing one of her teats.
A few months later, Henry—who has become emotionally troubled since the murder—impregnates Shannon. The pregnancy sours the friendship between Wilfred and Shannon's father, Harlan, a neighboring farmer. Shannon is sent to a Catholic school for pregnant girls in Omaha, but Henry helps her escape. They begin a highly publicized career as a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-style bank robbers, becoming wanted in several states.
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