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…