Skeleton Crew Stephen King

The Monkey

In flashbacks, Hal remembers finding the monkey among his father's belongings in a storage closet. As a child, Hal noticed a disturbing pattern: whenever the monkey clapped its cymbals, a death or calamity followed. These events included the fatal fall of Hal's childhood friend Johnny McCabe from a treehouse and the death of Aunt Ida's cat, which was run over by a car. Believing the monkey was cursed, young Hal threw it into a dry well near his home.