In the Tall Grass

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After driving for three days, they stop at a field of grass over nine feet high after they hear a boy named Tobin calling for help. The twins also hear his mother Natalie yelling at him to stop making noise, warning "he will hear you". Cal thinks Tobin is just a few feet inside the field and walks into it to rescue the boy, Natalie's cries having mysteriously gone silent. Tobin sounds close so he dives for him, only to find no one there and realize that Tobin's voice now sounds far away. Nothing for a long time—long enough for his heart to abandon his chest and rise into his throat. Then, incredibly distant: “Here! Cal, what should we do? We’re lost!”

Shut up and listen. I’m going to count to three. On three, you put your hands over your head like a ref signaling the field goal’s good and jump just as high as you can. I’ll do the same. You won’t need to get much air for me to see your hands, ’kay? And I’ll come to you.” Now the kid was on Cal’s right, and he sounded quite a lot deeper in the grass than before. How could that be? He sounded close enough to grab. WHO SWALLOWED A BAG FULLA SEEDS!” the girl trilled, her voice vibrato with barely controlled laughter. A part of him—a part he had been trying with all his will to ignore—already knew what he was going to see. This part had been providing an almost jovial running commentary: Everything will have moved, Cal, good buddy. The grass flows and you flow too. Think of it as becoming one with nature, bro.When she next found herself awake, she was over Cal’s shoulder, and she was moving. Her head bobbed and her stomach heaved with each step. In The Tall Grass is the product of a collaboration between two members of the most talented family in horror, Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. The story was originally published in Esquire magazine earlier this year and is King’s second collaboration with Hill after their 2009 novella Throttle. He did not scream. He made a kind of doglike bark, a woofing grunt, and wrenched her hard to one side, trying to yank her off her feet. His forearms were sunburnt and peeling. Close up she could see his nose was peeling too, badly, the bridge of his nose sizzling with sunburn. He grimaced, showing teeth stained pink and green. What caused him to rise at last was the faraway sound of a car alarm going off. But not just any car alarm, no. This one didn’t go wah-wah-wah, like most of them; this one went WHEEK-honk, WHEEK-honk, WHEEK-honk. So far as he knew, only old Mazdas wheek-honked like that when they were violated, flashing their headlights in time. Ahora bien: tres cuartos del relato son atrapantes, con un gran poderío descriptivo, con situaciones y acontecimientos que te apabullan y mucha crudeza.

There were no volunteers. Everyone had the munchies, but none of them wanted to miss the mercy mission. In the end, all of them trooped across Route 400 and entered into the tall grass. We keep calling,” he said, moving toward where her voice had come from. “We keep calling until we’re together again.” He fell again, hard this time, sprawling chest first. By now his clothes were spattered with earth so rich, warm, and dark, it felt and even smelled like fecal matter.

Her vision cleared. She saw, right in front of her, on a flattened bit of grass, a woman’s straw purse, the contents dumped out, and amid the mess, a little pair of manicuring scissors—they almost looked more like pliers than scissors. The blades were gummy with blood. She didn’t want to think how Ross Humbolt of Poughkeepsie might have used that tool, or how she herself might now use it. This short story asks the question "What would you do if you heard a child calling for help?" Would you stop and help? Would you stop and call for help? What if a child is calling for help but his Mother is warning you against helping?