Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 17

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Two

Chapter 10: The Lot (III)

Sections 8-13

Sunrise: 7:00 AM

Sunset: 6:15 PM

Corey Bryant gets caught in Bonnie Sawyer’s bed by her husband, Reggie. Corey is shown the door — and Reggie’s shotgun. As Corey walks back to his truck, he meets up with Barlow, who is beginning to look younger. Must be something in the Lot’s water, no?

Susan calls Ben with terrifying news. Floyd Tibbits has died, and Mike Ryerson’s body has gone missing from the morgue. Later, attendants will discover the bodies of Floyd Tibbits and Randy McDougall are also missing.

Later, Mark Petrie hears something…or someone…tap-tap-tapping on his bedroom window. His second-floor bedroom window. It is Danny Glick, who has finally shown up at Mark’s house to play. Better late than never.

Before we dive into today’s action, let’s take a moment to offer my favorite vampire novel a hearty and happy anniversary. It was on this date in 1975 that Doubleday published ‘Salem’s Lot. With its publication, in the words of writer Jeffery Deaver, Stephen King

“singlehandedly made popular fiction grow up. While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody since John D. MacDonald, brought reality to genre novels. He's often remarked that Salem's Lot was Peyton Place meets Dracula, and so it was. The rich characterization, the careful and caring social eye, the interplay of story line and character development announced that writers could take worn themes such as vampires and make them fresh again.”

‘Salem’s Lot may have changed the landscape of the popular novel in America, but it didn’t change him. Not one bit.

While the scene that is cemented in the minds of ‘Salem’s Lot fans is still to come, the scene of Reggie Sawyer finding someone else in his marital bed is one that always sticks in my mind. This is mainly due to it being featured in Tobe Hooper’s 1979 made-for-tv movie. Fred Willard (as Larry Crockett not Corey Bryant) in his red satin undies. Sweaty George Dzundza (as Cully Sawyer) holding a double-barreled shotgun to Fred’s face, cocking the hammers back, and then pulling the triggers…on empty barrels.

Whew! What a scene.

Here, the scene plays out in almost exactly the same way. Except Corey Bryant, with a load in his pants thanks to the scare he receives at the wrong end of Reggie’s empty gun, is told to leave the Lot and never come back. As he walks back to his truck, dejected, he is met by Barlow. As Barlow’s eyes go to work on Corey’s will, his words do much to explain why he chose to come to the “Land of the Free” in general and the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot in particular:

“They have never know hunger or want, the people of this country. It has been two generations since they knew anything close to it, and even then it was like a voice in a distant room. They think they have known sadness, but their sadness is that of a child who has spilled his ice cream on the grass at a birthday party… 

“The country is an amazing paradox. In other lands, when a man eats to his fullest day after day, that man becomes fat…sleepy…piggish. But in this land…it seems the more you have the more aggressive you become… 

“So I have come here, to a town which was first told of to me by a most brilliant man, a former townsman himself, now lamentably deceased. The folk here are still rich and full-blooded, folk who are stuffed with the aggression and darkness so necessary to…there is no English for it. Pokol; vurderlak; eyalik… 

“The people here have not cut off the vitality which flows from their mother, the earth, with a shell of concrete and cement. Their hands are plunged into the very waters of life. They have ripped the life from the earth, whole and beating!”

That last paragraph, with its focus on the connection between the blood of the people and the land, would not be out of place in some right-wing demagogue’s stump speech. It isn’t just the blood of the people that brought the wolf Barlow amongst the sheep of the Lot. All the ugliness we have been shown — the secrets the townsfolk keep buried in their hearts — this, too, is food for the vampire. The prejudices of Small Town, U.S.A., are easily manipulated and used — whether by a power-hungry politician or a bloodthirsty vampire.

I won’t dwell on it, but Susan is doing her Scully bit again on the phone with Ben. Dammit, Susan! Get with the program!

Don’t you roll your eyes at me!

Okay. Now let’s talk Mark Petrie and Danny Glick.

I’ve described this scene as the one that most people think of when they think of ‘Salem’s Lot. That’s not 100% accurate. (Sue me.) The scene that most people think of is one that doesn’t occur in the novel but is one helluva set-piece in the aforementioned Tobe Hooper made-for-tv movie. That scene is of Ralphie Glick’s visit to his brother Danny. We’ll talk more about that scene in one of our upcoming free days. This scene in Section 12 between Mark and Danny, however, covers much the same ground and gives off much the same uncanny vibe.

Danny’s appearance at Mark’s window is startling:

“…Danny Glick was staring in at him through the glass, his skin grave-pale, his eyes reddish and feral. Some dark substance was smeared about his lips and shin, and when he saw Mark looking at him, he smiled and showed teeth grown hideously long and sharp. 

“‘Let me in,’ the voice whispered, and Mark was not sure if the words had crossed dark air or were only in his mind… 

“There was nothing for that hideous entity outside the window to hold on to; his room was on the second floor and there was no ledge. Yet somehow it hung suspended in space…or perhaps it was clinging to the outside shingles like some dark insect.”

Luckily, as we’ve noted before, Mark Petrie is one of us; he is a Monster Kid. His love of all things horror — the movies, the magazines, the model kits — have prepared him for this moment. Still, it is almost not enough. Danny’s voice and eyes begin to break through Mark’s defenses. Luckily, Mark is a Stephen King hero, and not only is he armed with pop cultural references, but he also has a few tongue twisters and phonetic exercises at his disposal:

“Mark began to walk toward the window again. There was no help for it. There was no possible way to deny that voice. As he drew closer to the glass, the evil little boy’s face on the other side began to twitch and grimace with eagerness. Fingernails, black with earth, scratched at the windowpane. 

“Think of something. Quick! Quick! 

“‘The rain,’ he whispered hoarsely. “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. In vain he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.’ 

“Danny Glick hissed at him. 

“‘Mark! Open the window!’ 

“‘Betty Bitter bought some butter—’ 

“‘The window, Mark, he commands it!’ 

“‘—but, says Betty, this butter’s bitter.’”

This device is used by King in other books. Bill Denbrough is given the phrase “He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts” by his mother to help with his stutter, but he also uses it as protection from Pennywise. This is something that King borrows from one of his favorite novels, Donovan’s Brain by Curt Siodmak.

In this novel, the titular brain belongs to a megalomaniac who is trying to take over the mind of the doctor who saved its life. Donovan’s brain uses telepathy to control Dr. Cory. Cory’s only way of fighting against the brain’s power is to use the rhyme “Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.”

The best only steal from the best, baby!

Let’s call it a day there, Blog-o-weeners. Tomorrow, we will be talking Part 2, Chapter 11: Ben (IV), Sections 1-7. Our little troop of Fearless Vampire Killers is beginning to grow, and they are making plans to take the fight to Barlow and his growing legions.

If, as you drift off to sleep tonight, you happen to hear some tapping at your bedroom window, don’t be in such a rush to open it. But if you do, just…

Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 16

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Two

Chapter 10: The Lot (III)

Sections 4-7

Sunrise: 6:59 AM

Sunset: 6:16 PM

Susan visits Ben in his hospital room. They discuss everything that has happened in the town since Floyd Tibbits put Ben out of commission. Ben tries to convince Susan to put aside her “can’t” thoughts and attack the problem from the perspective that what he and Matt think is happening in the Lot is real. Susan has a hard time accepting that, but she tries.

At the jail, Nolly Gardner brings Floyd Tibbits his breakfast. Fortunately, Floyd doesn’t wake up, so Nolly eats it himself. Lunchtime rolls around, and Floyd is still out like a light. Nolly tries to walk him and discovers that he is dead.

At the dump, Franklin Boddin and Virgil Rathbun pull up with their week’s trash. Dud is not around. No one is. Not even the rats.

Didn’t I tell you that you’d end up wanting to strangle Susan for her rationalism? Or maybe that should be rationalization? Again, the cards are stacked against her. We know she is in a horror novel. We know that vampires are real. She does not. She is doing the best she can. And truth be told, if some out-of-towner who I’d been doing the horizontal mambo with suddenly started spouting off about bloodsuckers, I’d be like…

While Ben is doing his best to convince Susan that Matt is not a kookmeister, he asks her if the well-loved schoolteacher ever before manifested any weird, outré beliefs. For example: water fluoridation causes brain cancer.

This is one of big conspiracy theories of the 20th century. In much the same way that a tv show or movie will use the love for the music of Slim Whitman as a sign that a character is a bit of a dolt, having a character rail against fluoridation in the water supply will mark him or her as an extremist kook. Look no further than Brigadier General Jack T. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Ol’ Jack was convinced the Russians were trying to contaminate his precious bodily fluids. How? Through the fluoridation of the nation’s water supply, natch.

Fluoridation began in the United States in 1950 in Wisconsin. The conspiracy theories surrounding the decision arose quickly. Those who opposed the addition of fluoride to water did so for varied reasons: it was a way to protect the U.S. atomic bomb program from litigation, it was a plot by Communists or the New World Order (What ever happened to that super secretive organization from the 1990s?! Don’t hear much about them anymore.), it was to make the populous submissive, it was to protect polluters like Alcoa, and so on, and so on.

Other examples that Ben offers Susan regarding Matt’s sanity: support for the Sons of the American Patriots and the NLF.

I couldn’t find any such group called Sons of the American Patriots, but there is one that goes by Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). This group seems pretty innocuous, so I'm unsure of who Ben is on about.

The SAR is a hereditary organization made up of male descendants of those who served in the American Revolution. (Their patriarchal structure may be the only black mark against them.) According to their literature, the objectives of the SAR are “to maintain and extend the institutions of American freedom, an appreciation for true patriotism, a respect for our national symbols, the value of American citizenship, [and] the unifying force of ‘e pluribus unum’ that has created, from the people of many nations, one nation and one people.”

They seem pretty tame. I mean…The John Birch Society, they are not.

The NLF may be the National Liberation Front, which was a Vietnamese political organization dedicated to the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government. They were best known to Americans at the time by the name of their military arm: the Viet Cong. What a teacher in rural Maine would be doing supporting the Communists in Vietnam, I haven’t the foggiest, but I suppose that’s Ben’s point.

Later, talking about the reasons Matt would have for concocting such an elaborate story, Ben says,

“Even granting some motive we don’t suspect, why would he go to such Byzantine lengths, or invent such a wild cover story? I suppose Ellery Queen could explain it somehow, but life isn’t an Ellery Queen plot.”

Who now?

“Ellery Queen” was the creation and pseudonym of writers Frederic Danny and Manfred Bennington Lee. In 1928, Dannay and Lee entered a mystery novel writing contest. They used the name of their main character, a detective called Ellery Queen, as their pseudonym as well. During the 1940s, the mysteries of Ellery Queen were the most popular books in America. One of the reasons for this popularity may be that the books of Ellery Queen were known as “fair play” mysteries. The reader gained the clues to the mystery alongside the detective, and each mystery was a well-constructed, intellectually challenging puzzle. The name Ellery Queen was also given to a mystery magazine in 1941. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine is still in publication today.

Over at the dump, two of the town’s ne’er-do-wells are looking for Dud Rogers. As comedian Gary Gulman might say, “How often do Franklin Boddin and Virgil Rathbun do well? Ne’er. They ne’er do well.” What they find instead is an empty dump. Why, one could almost say that it’s…dead (Heh-heh-heh!).

They may not find Dud, but when they step inside the hunchback’s shack, they discover something else:

“The shack was empty but filled with a sickish-sweet odor that made them look at each other and grimace—and they were barroom veterans of a great many fungoid smells. It reminded Franklin fleetingly of pickles that had lain in a dark crock for many years, until the fluid seeping out of them had turned white. 

“‘Son of a whore,' Virgil said. ‘Worse than gangrene.’”

This is a nice, if disgusting, touch, and it serves to underline something that I've mentioned before and that I'll be returning to again as the novel progresses: the vampires of ‘Salem’s Lot are not sexy. They stink of death, of rot, of putrefaction. You become a vamp in the Lot, you ain’t gonna party ’til you puke. You’re gonna stink of the grave and make someone else puke.

One last thing: the rats. Where did the rats go? Hmmm…we’ll have to keep an eye peeled for the little buggers. They just don’t up and disappear overnight…do they?

You wouldn't do that to us, would ya, Stevie?

Yeesh! Fella like that is capable of anydamnthing!

Well, that’s all for today. For tomorrow, I’d like you to finish Chapter 10. That means reading Sections 8-13. Coming up, we’ve got the scene that most people imagine when they think of ‘Salem’s Lot. It’s a doozy!

In the meantime, as you rinse your mouth out after brushing your teeth, remember that when it comes to fluoride in your water, you have to…

Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 15

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Two

Chapter 10: The Lot (III)

Sections 1-3

Sunrise: 6:58 AM

Sunset: 6:18 PM

The town’s secrets rise to the surface. One by one, we get a view of some of the people we have come to know and see them in a new and darker light.

Sandy McDougall has overslept. Her son Randy did not wake her with his cries for breakfast. Randy is no longer hungry…for solid food.

The Glicks are not dealing at all well with the losses of their sons. Marjorie finds solace in housework; Tony finds his in sleep. He awakes and finds Marjorie collapsed on the living room floor. The sunlight seems to be sapping her strength. After he pulls her into the shade, she tells Tony that in her dreams their son Danny comes to her breast again, like a hungry newborn baby.

“The town knew about darkness…”

This chapter, like the others entitled “The Lot,” gives us a wider look at the town and its people in a series of vignettes. Section One begins with a passage that I find to be one of the saddest, most heart-wrenching I’ve ever read. It is a description of the farming life, but an especially hard one. It is a look at the last good days of the simple life of earning one’s keep from the land. It is a life lived in debt — not just to the bank, the store, the car dealership, but to one’s kids and wife and the town and the land itself. It is a description of the meanness of small town life, the paucity of dreams, of hopes, of optimism. There is no way to get outside of the town. You are in it, and it is in you, and never the twain shall be separated. And it is this bitter symbiosis that allows the vampire to enter:

“Being in the town is prosaic, sensuous, alcoholic. And in the dark, the town is yours and you are the town’s and together you sleep like the dead, like the very stones in your north field. There is no life here but the slow death of days, and so when the evil falls on the town, its coming seems almost preordained, sweet and morphic. It is almost as though the town knows the evil was coming and the shape it would take.”

Then, we get a series of brief character sketches. We see the lives the townsfolk live when they pull their shades down at night. We come to learn of the sexual desires of some and of the crimes of others. We learn that the Great Fire of 1951 was deliberately set. We learn that Hubert Marsten’s wife begged for death on that last, dark day. We also learn that Hubert Marsden burnt a stack of letters from an Austrian nobleman named Breichen before hanging himself. Then, we learn what Floyd Tibbits was thinking as he stumbled around town in the sunlight before beating up Ben.

We also learn that something terrible has happened in the McDougall trailer. I know, I know…something terrible always happens in the McDougall home, but this is especially terrible. As any parent will tell you, having a baby in the house means getting up in the middle of every night and very early every day. You soon internalize this schedule. When something happens that upsets this schedule — such as the baby not crying at the top of its lungs for its morning feeding — the panic that grips your heart is terrifying. Sandy Mcdougall feels that terror when she realizes that the light in her bedroom is all wrong. It’s a nice touch on King’s part to make it the morning sunlight that brings horror to the McDougall house. It is too high on the wall.

Sandy’s discovery is heartbreaking, as is her reaction. That anger over being robbed of her youth and dreams by her son and husband is always bubbling just beneath the surface. It is ugly to see — so too is the violence that usually follows it. All of that pales in comparison to the demented scene that plays out in the kitchen. Sandy shoveling chocolate custard (yecch!) into her dead child’s mouth is darkly comic, worthy of a Tales from the Crypt story that may have been sent back to “Ghastly” Graham Ingels or Jack Davis’s desk for heavy editing. You can just see the word “plop” drawn across the image of the custard falling out of Randy’s mouth and landing on the tray.

And then we have a glimpse into the Glicks’ life. Hoo-boy.

 

Is there anything more terrible than the death of a child? I don’t want to get into a whole “top ten list” of pain and loss, but what the Glicks are going through is awful. It’s only been a week since Danny’s funeral. If Mr. Glick’s breakdown at the feet of Father Callahan was stage two and three of grief — anger and bargaining — then this section shows him fully in stage four — depression. He is sleeping around the clock. The food that well-meaning friends bring to the house remains uneaten as both he and his wife have no appetite. Of course, Marjorie Glick’s lack of appetite might be a little different than her husband’s. In fact, it looks a lot like Mike Ryerson’s, does it not?

Tony Glick finds his wife lying on the floor in a patch of sunlight. She seems unable to move or breathe. She recovers when he pulls her into the shade. Her slow-motion responses could be attributed to grief, but we know better, don’t we Blog-o-weeners? She describes what she sees when looking into a mirror:

“I look awful,” she said. “I know. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror before I went to bed last night, and I hardly seemed to be there. For a minute I…” A smile touched her lips. “I thought I could see the tub behind me. Like there was only a little of myself left and it was…oh, so pale…”

Uh-oh!

And when she tells of beautiful dreams of her son come back to her? I suppose they could be simply written off as the hopes of a heartbroken mother:

“I’ve had the most lovely dream the last three or four nights, Tony. So real. Danny comes to me in my dream. He says, ‘Mommy, Mommy, I’m so glad to be home!!’ And he says…says…” 

“What does he say?” he asked her gently. 

“He says…that he’s my baby again. My own son, at my breast again. And I give him to suck and…and then a feeling of sweetness with an undertone of bitterness, so much like it was before he was weaned but after he was beginning to get teeth and he would nip…”

To paraphrase Mission of Burma: “That’s when I reach for my stake and hammer…”

I think it’s best if we leave off here for today, kiddies. Maybe Marjorie Glick will feel better tomorrow? Sure. I'm sure she'll feel better in the morning. She just needs a good night’s rest.

And so do you! We've got a lot to talk about tomorrow. I want you to read Part 2, Chapter 10: The Lot (III), Sections 4-7. Until then, remember that even at night…in your dreams…it is best to…

Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 14

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Two

Chapter 9: Susan (II)

Sunrise: 6:57 AM

Sunset: 6:19 PM

Susan arrives home after selling some of her artwork (you go, girl!), and she finds her mother laying in wait. Ann Norton confronts Susan with the story of the motorcycle accident that killed Ben’s wife, Miranda. Their argument heats up until a phone call from Eva Miller comes to inform Susan that Ben is in the hospital thanks to his violent run-in with Floyd Tibbits.

Susan rushes off to the hospital and finds Ben in bed under heavy sedation. He awakes long enough to tell Susan to speak to Matt Burke…and to make sure the windows are locked.

At Matt’s house, the teacher tells Susan everything that happened the night that he invited Mike Ryerson into his home. While he tells his tale, Matt hears noises on the second floor of his house. He goes upstairs armed with a five-and-dime store crucifix. In the spare bedroom, laying in the bed in which he died, is Mike Ryerson. The vampire gets up and begins to hypnotize Matt with his undead eyes, but Matt fights Mike’s advances off and forces him back with his crucifix. He revokes his invitation and Mike goes backwards out of the open window, disappearing in mid-air. Matt’s heart cannot take the excitement. He collapses, and Susan calls an ambulance.

The scene between Susan and her mom — like all the scenes that feature these two women — is hard to take. I’m sure Mrs. Norton means well, but the way she acts towards her daughter and her daughter’s feelings for Ben is painful to read. She is so smug, so proud of herself for having — and, worse, using — her little tidbit of gossip. It is, frankly, sad.

The nugget of information she flings in her daughter’s face was learned from Mabel Werts (natch):

“‘Mabel thought he looked familiar,’ Ann Norton said, ‘and so she went through the back issues of her newspapers box by box—’ 

“‘You mean the scandal sheets? The ones that specialize in astrology and pictures of car wrecks and starlets’ tits? Oh, what an informed source.’ [Susan] laughed harshly.”

The “newspapers” in question are never named, but enquiring minds already know.

The National Enquirer started publication in 1926. It was founded as The New York Evening Enquirer by William Griffin, a protégé of William Randolph Hearst. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Enquirer was strongly isolationist and pro-fascist. The paper was indicted in 1942 for sedition by a grand jury for subverting the morals of U.S. troops.

In 1952, the paper was bought by Generoso Pope, Jr., who turned the Enquirer into a sensationalist tabloid newspaper, shifting the focus of the paper to national stories of sex and scandal. Pope claimed he got the idea to focus on the more grotesque subjects from the way people will slow down to look at a car crash. Under Pope’s guidance, the Enquirer’s headlines were legendary for their bad taste.

By the time the 1970s and 1980s arrived, the Enquirer was doing boffo business. Its circulation had reached one million. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), in order to gain access to the nation’s supermarkets, the Enquirer had to tone down its front page fascination with gore. Thankfully, the Reagan years were the hey-day of the celebrity, and there was more than enough bad behavior to go around, so the transition was seamless and painless.

We’ve had a glimpse of the motorcycle accident that took Ben’s wife’s life already, so we can just imagine the headlines that the tabloids would run. We can also imagine the photographs. That Mrs. Norton would so gleefully share this with her daughter is pathetic and cruel.

Mrs. Norton likens the death of Miranda Mears and Ben’s “dodging” of jail time to “that Chappaquiddick business.” This incident would also have been tabloid newspaper fodder, and at the time of ‘Salem’s Lot’s publication, it was still a raw nerve for many in the nation.

In 1969, while driving home from a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, United States Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge. The vehicle landed upside down in Poucha Pond. He escaped the wreckage, but his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, a secretary and worker for Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign, remained trapped inside the car. Kennedy claimed he tried to save Kopechne, but was unable to. She asphyxiated underwaterr while Kennedy left the scene and failed to report the accident until the next day. He plead guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended jail sentence. The Chappaquiddick Incident became a national scandal that influenced Kennedy’s decision not to run for president in 1972 and 1976.

This chapter begins the reader’s frustrations with Susan. She is, in a word, the Scully to Ben and Matt’s Mulder. The thing is you certainly can’t blame her. Her rationality in the face of what she perceives to be Ben and Matt’s shared psychosis is to be applauded. She’s a grounded, down-to-earth woman. Hell, I’d consider her a source of sanity, if this were real life. Unfortunately, this is a horror novel, and we damn well know that what Ben and Matt are suggesting is the gods’ honest truth.

Honestly, gird yer loins, folks. It’s only gonna get worse from here on out. You’re gonna find yourself yelling more than once over the coming chapters “C’mon, Susan! Get with the program! Why won’t you believe what’s being said about vampires in the Lot?”

Damn it, Scully—don’t encourage her!

While Susan and Scully roll their eyes, let’s talk vampires in pop culture for a second. ‘Salem’s Lot is my favorite vampire novel, and my favorite example of the legend in general. Why do these vampires appeal to me while so many others do not?

King has said that when it came time to write ‘Salem’s Lot, he felt that the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s had made the sexual angle of the vampires passé. So, the vampires that come to inhabit the Lot are not sexy. Oh, they may appeal somehow to their victims on a subconscious level, but that sexuality and sensuality is an utter lie. It is a mask they wear until they can get within striking distance—

Not that Striking Distance!

The vampires we’ll meet in the Lot aren’t hip and young and sexy and cool and listening to Bauhaus and dancing at the club and wearing boat neck sweaters. They are parasites. They are simply leeches in human form.

Sadly, what they really are are addicts. They are driven by nothing but their need for blood. They feel nothing except hunger and emptiness.

(Side note: I’ve always thought of the vampire as the perfect metaphor for capitalism. What is Dracula but the robber baron capitalist who, after raping, pillaging, and strip-mining the life out of the countryside, decides to simply pull up stakes and find a new part of the planet to destroy? Transylvania is an empty, dead husk of a country? Time to hit the bright lights of London! Fresh meat, man! I imagine the people who remain in the area surrounding Castle Dracula to be kin and kith of the men who sat in Pittsburgh bars on a Wednesday afternoon in the 1980s trying to convince anyone who would listen that the mills would be opening again soon.)

Anyhoo…that all being said…the appearance of Mike Ryerson is a beauty of a scene. And it is because of the utter “otherness” of Mike. In the previous scenes we’ve spent with the character, Mike Ryerson seemed a pleasant, amiable chap. Here, however, he is…nothing…

“[Mike’s eyes] glittered for just a moment in the moonlight, silver rimmed with red. They were as blank as washed blackboards. There was no human thought or feeling in them. The eyes were the windows of the soul, Wordsworth has said. If so, these windows looked in on an empty room.”

Suffice to say, Mike isn’t hanging around Matt’s house for kicks and giggles, killing time before he heads down to the discotheque to boogie all night with Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve. Something tells me Mike wouldn’t be able to find the backbeat to save his life. The Mike that would have danced the night away with the ladies is gone, daddy, gone.

That’s enough for today, Blog-o-weeners. Tonight, read Part 2, Chapter 10: The Lot (III), Sections 1-3. It is only about ten pages. We’re heading back to the McDougall trailer, so I’ll issue a “content warning” now. It ain’t pretty, folks.

In the meantime, I’m gonna dig into the Internet Archive’s collection of The National Enquirer. I know it's a load of hogwash, but darn it, I love me some celebrity gossip. I just have to remember when reading about my fave celebs to…

Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 13

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Free Day #2

"Jerusalem's Lot" & "One for the Road"

Haven't we been here before?

Sunrise: 6:57 AM

Sunset: 6:20 PM

It’s Sunday, and we’ve made it through another week, Blog-o-weeners. You should be proud of yourselves! We are very nearly to the halfway point of Stephen King’s vampire yarn. We’ve seen a lot in the past six days, have we not? We misplaced one yow’un and had another one waste away in the hospital. We’ve heard all kinds of terrible things about the previous owner of the Marsten House. We’ve shot rats in the town dump. We’ve looked into the eyes of the undead and heard the high, sweet, evil sounds of laughter in the middle of the night. We’ve earned a break from the horrors, don’t ya think? It would be nice to get away from the Lot for a little while, wouldn’t it? Sure, it would. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be an easy thing to do. We may be taking a breather from the horrors of ‘Salem’s Lot the novel for this free day, but, unfortunately, that just means that we have a little time to look at a couple of Stephen King short stories that are also set in Jerusalem’s Lot.

Makes you feel like Michael Corleone, don’t it?

As I stated at the beginning of this Blog-o-ween, one of the editions of ‘Salem’s Lot that I am using is the illustrated edition put out by Doubleday in 2005. It’s a beautiful book with loads of lovely, creepy photographs by Jerry N. Uelsmann.

Weird, huh?

In addition to the full novel, the illustrated edition comes with an introduction and afterward by the author (Mr. King, natch!), and a section of “deleted scenes.” While many of these scenes are not nearly as exciting as you would hope they would be (there is a reason that they were deleted, after all), I find them to be an interesting look at the writer behind the curtain, so to speak. As a writer, I am always interested in the processes of other (more successful) writers. I like to know how much each draft is different from the one that came before it and why. With these deleted scenes, you gain a little lookie-loo into King’s mind. Like I said, many if not all of these scenes were cut or trimmed for good reason…except for one. That one should have stayed put. We’ll talk about that scene at length when the time comes. Consider this a teaser trailer!

Rounding out the illustrated edition are two short stories that also take place in that quaint little village just off Maine Route 12. One is a prequel of sorts, while the other is a sequel. I feel safe in discussing both of these stories (especially the second one), because I don’t think anything revealed in them takes away from our enjoyment of the novel. If some of you would rather not hear what happened to the little town of ‘salem’s Lot, then why not come back to this Blog-o-ween entry after everything is said and done. No biggie! For the rest of you…keep yer crucifixes handy. You just might need them!

The first story, “Jerusalem’s Lot,” was included in the author’s 1978 short story collection, Night Shift. (Which, for my money, is the scariest paperback book cover ever made. The eyes! The eyes!) It is an epistolary tale, made up of a series of letters and diary entries. King had his H.P. Lovecraft hat on when he wrote this one. It is very much a pastiche of Lovecraft’s tales, most notable “The Rats in the Walls.”

More rats!

“Jerusalem’s Lot” is set in Maine in the year 1850. It concerns a man named Charles Boone who has just taken control of an abandoned ancestral manse called Chapelwaite in the town of Preacher’s Corners. In a series of letters written to his friend “Bones”—

Not that Bones!

Anywho…in a series of letters written to his friend, Charles tells of moving into the house with his manservant, of being looked at askance by the townsfolk, of the sounds of rats in the walls, and of hearing Chapelwaite referred to as a “bad house.”

Hmmm…kinda sounds familiar, no?

Charles finds a map hidden in the library (never a good thing) that shows him how to get to a village called Jerusalem’s Lot. He and Calvin McCann, his manservant, follow the map and find an abandoned Puritan settlement. In the local church, they discover an obscene parody of the Madonna and Child and an inverted cross. They also find an old book called De Vermis Mysteriis, or The Mysteries of the Worm.

Upon returning from Jerusalem’s Lot, Charles is shunned by the Preacher’s Corners townsfolk. Later, while in the cellar searching for the source of the mysterious noises in the walls, Charles and Calvin discover two corpses that Charles immediately recognizes as “nosferatu.”

Uh-oh!

Who are the corpses in the cellar? Why do the townsfolk fear Charles and his family? How and why did the residents of Jerusalem’s Lot disappear? Who or what is “The Worm”?

“One for the Road” is also a part of Night Shift (…the eyes!…), but it was first published in the March/April 1977 issue of Maine.

This story takes place two years after the end of ‘Salem’s Lot. The Lot is a burned out shell. It is abandoned, and no one in the neighboring towns will have anything to do with it. Many wear religious symbols for protection.

Hmmm…I wonder why…

Booth, the narrator, is at a bar owned by his friend Tookey while a blizzard rages outside. Into the bar stumbles a man named Gerard Lumley. Lumley tells the men that his car broke down. He left his wife and daughter in the car while he went out for help. Booth and Tookey slowly realize that Lumley has left his family in Jerusalem’s Lot. The three men jump into action to find Lumley’s Mercedes. It is heated and still running…but empty.

What happened to Gerard Lumley’s wife and child? Do the men reach them in time?

These short stories make a nice pair of bookends to the novel we are currently reading. Although “Jerusalem’s Lot” is not a perfect prequel, it still works as a kind of alternate history to the Lot. Do the events leading up to the murder-suicide of Hubie Marsten and his wife Birdie have anything to do with “The Worm”? Is that who Straker offers Ralphie Glick to?

“One for the Road,” on the other hand, is a great sequel. I love me a good snowy horror setting. Although, if you think about it…

…the fact that there are still vamps running around the Lot…does that mean our Fearless Vampire Hunters ultimately failed? Or are they still out there wandering Brock Street and Schoolyard Hill with an athletic bag filled with wooden stakes? Could they have saved the Lumleys?

That’s it for today, kiddies. Tomorrow, I want you to have read Part 2, Chapter 9: Susan (II), Sections 1-8. Is Ben all right? Who is the visitor who comes to see Matt at night? Read and you will find out! Until tomorrow, Blog-o-weeners.

And remember if you are going to go traipsing through the woods following a map you found hidden away in the family library, then you’ve got to…