Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 20

Part 2: Chapter 42

A winter storm blankets the Pittsburgh area. In Darnell’s garage (which has been closed down by order of the Pennsylvania State Police), Christine’s engine roars to life. Her stick shift drops into drive, and she begins to motorvate.

First stop: Don Vandenberg, one of Buddy Repperton’s gang, is working the late shift at his father’s gas station. A car stops at the pumps furthest from the station’s office. Don tramps across the lot, blinded by the wind and snow. He steps up to the car’s driver side window and freezes. The corpse of Roland D. LeBay tells him to fill ‘er up. From the back seat, Buddy Repperton leans forward and offer’s Don a swig of Texas Driver. Don screams and runs for his life… which isn’t very long.

Second stop: Will Darnell sits at home watching A Christmas Carol (the Alastair Sim version, natch). A series of blasts from a car horn bring Darnell to his front window. Christine seems to be talking to him. As Christine crashes through the snow embankment at the mouth of his driveway, Darnell tries to call Arnie to tell him to call off his dog. Nobody’s home at the Cunningham’s. Darnell attempts to call the police, but his call is cut short when Christine burst through his front window. Trying to get to the attic of his house, Darnell has a heart attack. Christine pounces.

Last stop: Darnell’s Do-It-Yourself Garage. Christine returns to her burrow to rest. It’s been a long and busy night…

Winters in Pittsburgh are usually mild. Sure, we get a major snowfall once a season, but it’s par for the course. The roads get icy, schools either delay their openings or close altogether for the day, and you stay in and watch the soaps in the afternoon. No biggie.

The storm that covers Libertyville in snow feels a little different, a little more ferocious. It sort of reminds me of the Blizzard of…

…no… lemme finish… the Blizzard of 1993.

Saturday, 13 March 1993, is a day many Pittsburghers won’t soon forget. Nearly twenty-four inches of snow fell on the city in a single day. All major roads — the Pennsylvania Turnpike and interstate highways were closed. People were urged to stay safe and stay home.

Me? I drove to work.

At that time, I was living on Mt. Washington. I did not have a phone. (What a time!) I worked at a restaurant in Robinson Township, which is on the way to the Pittsburgh Airport. With no way for me to learn that the restaurant was closed, I drove (slowly) through the maelstrom to work. When I arrived, the parking lot was empty save for several tons of untouched snow. I turned around and drove to a local Eat’n Park for dinner. As soon as my meal was served, a PA State trooper came in and announced that they were about to close I-376. I wolfed down my fish sandwich and got back into my car.

By the time I got to Mt. Washington, it was impossible to make it up the steep roads back to my apartment. (I think if I were riding in Christine, we would have made it home, no problem.) So, I carried on through the Liberty Tunnels and headed to a friend’s apartment in Shadyside. I had to force my car into a snowdrift on a side street. (And hope to God there wasn’t a car already there buried beneath the snow.) I walked through thigh-high snow banks and knocked at my friend’s door. We watched the shitshow on TV and watched people cross-country ski down Fifth Avenue from her front windows. It was a helluva good time!

Say what you want about pornography (now how’s that for a segue?!), but at least Don Vandenberg is reading, amirite?

Crazily enough, this isn’t the last time we will take a look at paperback sex books in Christine (specifically) and in King’s other work (generally). Believe it or not, I have more to say on the subject in a later post.

After disposing of Don Vandenberg like a used tissue (pun intended, I am sorry to say), Christine goes cruising through the unplowed streets of Libertyville. Her pleasure cruise begins with these words from our faithful Third-Person Narrator: “Like Gaul, all of Libertyville Heights was divided into three parts (363).

Say what now?

Commentarii de Bello Gallico (or, if aren’t up on your Classical Latin, Commentaries on the Gallic War) was written by Julius Caesar as a defense of his conquest of Gaul. Threatened with prosecution for the abuse of his authority, Caesar knew he faced the stripping of his wealth and citizenship (amongst other indignities) upon his return from the West. In order to defend himself, he knew he needed the people on his side. (The dumb, stupid, easily led by the nose people.) So, he wrote his Commentaries (in 3rd person, mind you) to show that his efforts in Gaul were totally necessary and for the further glory of Rome. His “objective” account of his time in Gaul portrayed him as a military hero and great leader. Think of it as the YouTube video of the Roman Empire.

Caesar’s Commentaries have long been a favorite of Latin classes because of their straightforward, simple prose. It begins with the frequently quoted phrase “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,” meaning “Gaul is a whole divided into three parts.”

Now, what Julius Caesar is doing in Libertyville is beyond me, but I don’t fault ol’ Stevie for having a bit of fun. Lord knows I’ve dropped all sorts of literary references and song lyrics in my own writing — everything from “Subdivisions” by Rush to James Joyce’s Ulysses. I say just roll with it. I mean, at least it isn’t another reference to the Phillies, amirite?

I like that A Christmas Carol is an invisible thread connecting Arnie and Darnell. I’d like to think that Leigh and Dennis have it on in the background, too, but King doesn’t say.

It’s fitting that the most famous Christmas Ghost Story of all-time is playing as “The Ghost of Christmas Past” comes a-calling at Darnell’s house. Sadly for Darnell, I think that singing Christmas carols at his front door is the last thing Christine wants to do. Playing “The Carol of the Bells” on his head seems more of what she has in mind.

Even though we’re only dealing with a single chapter today, I think we still need to call it a night and pull over. The snow is coming down steadily and the roads are getting pretty dicey. Before we get to the motor lodge, however, I want to bring up one last reference that King makes.

I know what you are thinking: jeez, the attack on Darnell in his home has the same quality as the shark’s attack on Quint in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). Hey, why not? Jaws was a MASSIVE blockbuster hit. If King is gonna borrow from Caesar, why wouldn’t he borrow from Spielberg, as well?

Me? I’d like to think that King had another “When Animals Attack” movie on his mind during this scene. Released two years after Jaws, Orca (1977, Michael Anderson) is pure Grade-A Italian cheese from the great Dino De Laurentiis.

After watching Jaws in 1975, de Laurentiis called his writer buddy Luciano Vincenzoni in the middle of the night and told him to “find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white.” Not knowing a darn thing about sea life, Vincenzoni’s brother Adriano (who dabbled in zoology) told him about killer whales, and a classic was born.

One of my favorite horror sub-genres is the “Jaws Rip-Off” movie. You got your classics like Orca and Barracuda (1978) and Piranha (1978). But the rip-off doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. Don’t like the ocean? Well, guess what? Filmmakers can take the basic structure of Jaws and apply it to any animal. Do you like spiders? How’s about Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)? Do you like bears? Here’s Grizzly (1976). Hell, we don’t even need a real animal. Do you dig Sasquatch? Have a Snowbeast (1977). How about a mutant-bear-thing that looks like it’s been turned inside-out? We got you covered with Prophecy (1979). They all essentially follow the Jaws story, and quite a few of them feature people in power assuring everyone that they will not close the beaches… or the ski slopes… or the lazy river… or the county fair… or…

Well, you get the idea.

Glad we finally made it to the motel. Man, I just want to crawl up on the couch with a hot toddy and watch the Penguins hockey game. While I’m relaxing and screaming at the TV, you need to read Part 3: Chapter 43. We are leaving the third-person narration behind and going back to the cozy, first-person environs of our old friend Dennis.

He’s out of the hospital now, Blog-o-weeners, though he’s still motorvating on a pair of crutches. Leigh pays him a visit at home while his parents are out. I wonder what they are going to talk about while sitting, oh, so close to one another on the couch? You don’t think Dennis would… nah… he wouldn’t do that, would he? Dennis and Leigh are about to learn a thing or two about Christine and Arnie, but I think it’s we the readers that are gonna learn a little lesson about what not to do with your best friend’s girl. Read closely, Blog-o-weeners, and pay close attention to Dennis’s actions, because…

Blog-O-Ween 2025: The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale: Day Seven — The Stone Tape

It is day seven of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale. Seven is considered to be a lucky number. Let’s hope that bit of folklore holds firm for us today. We’re gonna need it. Why? Well, because we are joining a group of engineers who are in search of brand new recording medium. Wouldn’t it be lucky for us if we were to get in on the ground floor of such a technological development? Sure, it would! And you know what that would mean...

On the other hand, Lady Luck can be a fickle mistress. We may discover that our brand new recording medium is not so brand new as we think it is. It may be something that’s been around for a long, long time, and it may have recorded some events that we wouldn’t want to revisit.

Intrigued? Well then it is time to hit “play” on...The Stone Tape.

The research team for Ryan Electric Products has moved into an old Victorian mansion in hopes that they can discover a new recording medium that will give the company an edge over their competitors. The real estate agent in charge of the house has told team lead Peter Brock (Michael Bryant) that everything at Taskerlands has been refurbished for his company’s needs — all except one room. This stone room is believed to be from the Saxon period. It is a remnant of the original building, with the rest of the house having been added to it over the centuries. Work was halted in this room because the builders refused to go inside. They claimed it was haunted.

Being curious at such a story, the research team investigates and in the midst of their explorations they hear the scream of a woman. Jill Greeley (Jane Asher), a computer programmer for the company, sees an image of a woman running up the stone stairs then falling to her death. Jill seems to be the most sensitive of the research team, as not everyone in the group witnessed the event.

After discovering records that tell of a maid falling to her death in the room in 1890, Brock thinks that the stone walls of the room acted as a sort of tape — the very thing the team is looking for. Jill, however, believes that whatever has been recorded in the stone of the room can only interact with  the nervous systems of certain, highly sensitive viewers. She believes that it is a form of telepathy.

Brock and his team try and try again to trigger the images in the stone, but to no avail. Jill believes that the stone tape has been erased. Having failed at developing the recording medium that Ryan Electric Products wanted, Brock is told to make room for a new team at Taskerlands — one that is coming up with a new washing machine.

Meanwhile, the local vicar has unearthed evidence of an exorcism that took place not in the 1890s when the maid died, but in the 1760s, before the house was constructed. Jill thinks that the stone walls of the room have been recording events much longer than just the 1890s. The stones act like magnetic tape — recording new events over older ones. The recording of the death of the maid, then, was masking a much, much older event — one even older than the 1760s. One that Jill believes may be thousands of years old.

What does Jill find when she returns to the stone room one last time? What is the recording beneath the maid’s death? What does Jill find recorded on. . .The Stone Tape?

The Stone Tape was originally broadcast on 25 December 1972 on BBC2 as their annual Christmas ghost story. Christopher Morahan (Head of Plays at BBC Television from 1972-1976) asked his old friend Kneale if he would be interested in doing a Christmas ghost story, but, “Only if we could do a ghost story which had an altogether different twist — such as going at a ghost with science.”

Could he have asked a more perfect person for such a story?

This was an assignment right up Kneale’s alley. As we’ve seen in the previous stories of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale, our hero seems to be most at home in the space where science fiction and horror overlap. (And we shall see even more examples of this coming up!) The Stone Tape is a perfect blend of these two genres, and it’s always fun to watch these two worlds collide.

The Stone Tape is on DVD, so perhaps your friendly neighborhood public library has a copy you can check out. It may even be on one of the streaming platforms that your local library is associated with (Hoopla or Kanopy, for instance). For those of who can’t wait to see what it is that Jill experiences in that ancient room, you can watch the film here:

BBC Radio 4 broadcast an audio drama version the The Stone Tape on 31 October 2015. Directed by Peter Strickland, it is quite different from the filmed version, but just as creepy. You can find it here at the Internet Archive.

Let’s hit the stop button for today, Blog-o-weeners. Remember to be kind and rewind. We only have two days left in this year’s celebration, but I think they may be the best yet. Tomorrow, for day eight of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale, we will be looking at Kneale’s most famous creation: Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group. Although the good professor’s adventures spawned four series over nearly thirty years, we will be looking at one in particular. Set in London, workers have unearthed something strange, something not of this world, something that carries with it the lost history of the human race. Come back tomorrow to find out what is buried in...Quatermass and the Pit.

As always, Blog-o-weeners, watch where you are going, watch the skies, and...