The Crate

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The Crate is a short story by Stephen King.

[edit] Plot introduction

It concerns the discovery of an old wooden crate, marked from an 1834 arctic expedition, beneath the basement stairs at the fictional Horlicks University by a janitor. Dexter Stanley, the school's biology professor, has a look at it and they open it up to discover it contains an ancient monster. The creature kills and eats the janitor as well as Stanley's grad student Charlie Gereson, and Dexter flees to the home of his friend, English professor Henry Northrup. He tells Henry the whole story, and Henry believes him, and sees the crate-dwelling monster as an excellent way to rid himself of his verbally abusive, alcoholic wife, Wilma.

[edit] Plot summary

There is something alive after 134 years in The Crate from an Arctic expedition. It's really a monster of such ferocity that it's just like a cartoon... A cartoon with a deadly appetite! Well it's widely known that "Tasmanian devils" can not take a joke, especially when they were captured and locked away since June 19, 1834. Mike Latimer, and Charlie Gereson both found out the hard way and were killed and eaten by the creature.

Henry Northrup decides to use the creature to get rid of his meddling wife, so leaves a note asking for her to come to the University, then leads her to the crate where she is devoured by the creature. Henry cleans up and disposes of the crate and creature into Ryder's Quarry.

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The story was adapted into movie form, as a segment in the film Creepshow. Although there are numerous changes, the film version remains remarkably faithful to the written source material. The changes include the appearance of the monster, which is describe as being small and wolverine-like in the story but is clearly ape-like in the movie, and the janitor, unnamed in the story, is called Mike Latimer. Also, the story ends with Henry disposing of the crate in a 50 foot deep lake, with the monster chained up inside assuring its death once and for all, leaving no open ending, but the movie does things differently, ending the segment with the beast destroying the crate, ending with the beast escaping.