AUBURN — Only Stephen King could cause this kind of puzzle.

An Auburn bookstore manager is hoping to hear from the famed horror writer after stumbling upon what he believes may be an original King manuscript.

Walter Lantz, who runs Artios Books on Turner Street, recently came into possession of 106 typewritten pages he believes might represent King’s early attempts to write a book called “The Cannibals.”

“The Cannibals” would later morph into “Under the Dome,” a novel which is now being aired as a TV series.

It’s all very mysterious.

“It’s beyond beyond,” Lantz said Friday.

The book collector — Lantz has roughly 150,000 titles at his store — said he discovered the manuscript in a collection of King works from a local woman.

“She was trying to raise money for a funeral,” Lantz said, “so I bought it.”

The collection included more than 100 works.

The manuscript, slightly yellowed with age, has scribbles on each page as the author — King or not — edited the work. On the first page is written, “Cannibals parts 1 & 2 by S. King,” although that ink appears to be more recent than the edits.

Is it a King original?

“If it is, we’d like to get it back to him,” Lantz said.

The mystery is deepened by the fact that “The Cannibals” manuscript once went missing.

In an interview on stephenking.com, the author explained the creation of the book, which he described as his second attempt at the story that would become “Under the Dome.”

“That second try was mostly written in Pittsburgh, during the filming of ‘Creepshow,'” King wrote. “I spent two months in a depressing suburban apartment complex that became (with the usual fictional tweaks) the setting for the story. It was called ‘The Cannibals,’ and this time I got a lot further — almost five hundred pages — before hitting a wall. I assumed the manuscript was lost. Long story short, it turned up — battered, and with some pages missing, but mostly complete — in the summer of 2009.”

On the website, King offers up the first 60 pages of “The Cannibals” in PDF format. The text on those pages match up exactly with Lantz’s manuscript; same edits, same everything.

Very mysterious indeed.

Or not.

According to King’s spokeswoman, Marsha DeFilippo, there’s a chance that Lantz’s manuscript came from cyberspace rather than directly from King’s fingertips. It’s likely, she said, that someone simply printed those pages from the online PDF.

“I have the original right here,” DeFilippo said from her office Friday afternoon.

It should be the end of the puzzle but not quite. The King spokeswoman was at a loss to explain how Lantz has a 106-page manuscript when only 60 pages were made available online. She planned to look into it.

mlaflamme@sunjournal.com

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