Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 28

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Three

Chapter 14: The Lot (IV)

Sections 33-40

Sunrise: 7:09 AM

Sunset: 6:03 PM

It’s morning in ‘salem’s Lot.

Ben, Jimmy, and Mark leave Matt’s room at the hospital and drive into town. The smell of decay and death is palpable. While Ben makes stakes in Henry Petrie’s workroom, Jimmy and Mark go out to discover where the vampires are hiding and to mark their hideyholes. While they are out and about, Jimmy suddenly flashes on what the blue chalk that Mark saw on Barlow’s cuff means—a pool table. Jimmy then recalls that Eva Miller keeps her husband’s pool table in good order in the basement of her boarding house. Barlow is at Eva’s! Jimmy and Mark rush off to Eva’s (without contacting Ben) to see if Jimmy is right…

Oh, boy, Blog-o-weeners…we are coming down to it, are we not? After today, we only have three days until Halloween and only thirty-four pages (or so…depending on which edition you are reading) left in ‘Salem’s Lot. Can you believe it? What a long, strange trip it’s been. (RIP Phil Lesh.) We can’t slow down now and look at where we’ve been, however. There’s too much to still cover in the few days remaining to us.

As our three Fearless Vampire Killers drive into town, the spread of the vampires’ control can be felt even in the light of day.

“As they drew closer to the Lot, an almost palpable sense of dread formed in Jimmy’s Buick, and conversation lagged. When Jimmy pulled off the turnpike at the large green reflectorized sign that read ROUTE 12  JERUSALEM’S LOT  CUMBERLAND  CUMBERLAND CTR, Ben thought that this was the way he and Susan had come home after their first date—she had wanted to see something with a car chase in it. 

‘It’s gone bad,’ Jimmy said. His boyish face looked pale and frightened and angry. ‘Christ, you can almost smell it.’ 

And you could, Ben thought, although the smell was mental rather than physical: a psychic whiff of tombs.”

Their drive into the Lot brings them past Win Purinton’s milk truck — abandoned on the side of the road and idling with the keys still in the ignition. Although there are signs of life in the town, that life is of a strained and tenuous quality. Milt Crossen may be putting out the morning newspapers, and the diner may be open and serving breakfast, but these life signs are weak and getting weaker, like the heartbeat of a dying patient hooked up to an ECG. Foreman’s Mortuary is closed, the hardware store is closed, even the town’s latest shop, Barlow and Straker—Fine Furnishings, is closed. And I don’t think it will be reopening anytime soon. Mr. Barlow doesn’t seem as business-minded as his partner.

Once our FVKs are set up at Mark’s house, they make their plans for the day. While Ben operates Henry Petrie’s lathe and begins the arduous task of turn the family woodpile into stakes, Jimmy and Mark decide — once again, mind you! — to do what every game of D&D has ever taught us not to do: they split the party.

Granted, this isn’t like the splitting of the party that happened before. It was nighttime when Father Callahan and Mark visited the Petries as Ben and Mark and Jimmy went back to the hospital. It is daylight and the vamps will be in their beds as Jimmy and Mark stalk their way through the Lot. But have they not considered that Barlow probably has a few Straker wannabes floating around looking for them?

We get one last visit to the McDougall home. Every previous visit has been nightmare, and this one is no different. However, it does seem that tensions within the family have finally been resolved. It’s like they say: the family that sleeps the sleep of the undead in the crawl space under their trailer home together, stays together. Mark, ever the good Monster Kid, wants to test a theory out before they go:

“‘Wait,’ Mark said. ‘Let me pull one of them out.’

‘Pull…? Why?’ 

‘Maybe the daylight will kill them,’ Mark said. ‘Maybe we won’t have to do that with the stakes.’ 

Jimmy felt hope. ‘Yeah, okay. Which one?’ 

‘Not the baby,’ Mark said instantly. ‘The man. You catch one foot.’ 

‘All right,’ Jimmy said. His mouth had gone cotton-dry, and when he swallowed there was a click in his throat. 

Mark wriggled in on his stomach, the dead leaves that had drifted in crackling under his weight. He seized one of Roy McDougall’s work boots and pulled. Jimmy squirmed in beside him, scraping his back on the low overhang, fighting claustrophobia. He got hold of the there boot and together they pulled him out into the lessening drizzle and white light. 

What followed was almost unbearable. Roy McDougall began to writhe as soon as the light struck him full, like a Mann who has been disturbed in sleep. Steam and moisture came from his pores, and the skin underwent a slight sagging and yellowing. Eyeballs rolled behind the thin skin of his closed lids. His feet kicked slowly and dreamily in the wet leaves. His upper lip curled back, showing upper incisors like those of a large dog—a German shepherd of a collie. His arms thrashed slowly, the hands clenching an unclenching, and when one of them brushed Mark’s shirt, he jerked back with a disgusted cry. 

Roy turned over and began to hunch slowly back into the crawl space, arms and knees and face digging grooves in the rain-softened humus. Jimmy noted that a hitching Cheyne-Stokes type of respiration had begun as soon as the light struck the body; it stopped as soon as McDougall was wholly in shadow again. So did the moisture extrusion. 

When he had reached his previous resting place, McDougall turned over and lay still.”

Well, Mark, looks like stakes are still in play.

Afterwards, Mark and Jimmy go next door to the Evans’ trailer. The smell of death is strong, and the Evans family is found quickly. It is inside the trailer, as Mark uses the bathroom to wash off the horridness of his encounter with Roy McDougall, that Jimmy realizes what the blue chalk stains that Mark saw on Barlow’s clothing mean. Furthermore, knowing that there are no pool halls in the Lot, he quickly remembers that Eva Miller’s husband Ralph owned a pool table. In fact, Eva keeps it nice and clean…in her basement.

Next comes the second boneheaded move of the afternoon: Jimmy decides that he and Mark should head straight to Eva’s boardinghouse without telling Ben what they are doing. This is one of those moments in books, films, and tv made in the halcyon days before cellphones that make younger readers and viewers shake their heads. It is also one of those scenes that drives home just how on your own you were without a computer in your pocket. Without a cellphone, you had to know where you were going. You had to be prepared to be disappointed when you discovered that the store you were driving to was closed. You had to make plans hours in advance and hope that the person you were meeting showed up. You had to make your own fun in order to pass the time. As Count Floyd would say…

Before we call it a day, we should also address the sad and abrupt ending of the FVKs’ Van Helsing. This is a strange scene. Honestly, if King decided to cut it, it wouldn’t have really mattered — except to those pedants in the audience.

Matt’s death from a heart attack is not out of the blue. Jimmy himself said to Ben that while the attack Matt had in his house was minor, his next one would not be. This is the one moment that I feel the 2004 adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot gets right. Matt should have been killed by one of Barlow’s minions. He could have been given more of a heroes death, you know? I’m not sure who could have done the business—one of his students? Del, the barkeep? Loretta Starcher, the town librarian?

Say!…that would have been pretty juicy! It is noted that ol’ Loretta is an old maid and a virgin, and Matt never married. They could have had a little fun before Matt’s ticker gave out.

Well, that’s it for today, kiddies. Read Part 3, Chapter 14: The Lot (IV), Sections 41-47 for tomorrow. We will learn if Jimmy was right about Barlow being at Eva’s. We will also learn what happened to all those rats from the dump…or will we? Let’s hope that no matter what our FVKs find in the basement of Eva’s boardinghouse, that Jimmy and Mark remember to…

Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 25

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Three

Chapter 14: The Lot (IV)

Sections 16-20

Sunrise: 7:07 AM

Sunset: 6:06 PM

The Lot settles in for another night. This one arrives with the flapping of bat’s wings.

Ben and Jimmy go the hospital to fill Matt in on what happened at the Marsten House. While the three of them make their plans, Father Callahan and Mark go to the Petries’ house to let them know that Barlow has threatened their lives. Mr. Petrie is incredulous. While Callahan and Mark try to break through to Mark’s parents, the lights go out. Barlow kills Mark’s parents and faces off against Father Callahan. Mark escapes, leaving Father Callahan alone with Barlow…and his waning faith…

Section 16 is one of those wider views of the Lot that we get from time to time. The sun is setting, people are settling in for their suppers and, whether they know it or not, are preparing for a long, hard night.

Mentioned in passing are Dr. Dentons: “Young children are packed into Dr Dentons and sent into the other room to watch game shows on TV until bedtime.”

What now?

Dr. Dentons Sleeping Garment Mills produced footie pajamas that were designed to keep children warm at night if their covers were ever kicked off. Whitley Denton was an Englishman born in 1845 who moved to the United States at the age of three. He fought in the American Civil War and worked in cotton mills afterwards. His first forays into footed pajamas were for his own children. Denton worked to perfect his designs, working long, hard hours. He died at the age of 51. Two years later, his footed pajamas were awarded a patent and went into mass production in Centerville, Michigan. Denton was never a doctor. The “Dr.” was added to the name as a marketing gimmick. Pajamas were manufactured by the company until the late 1970s, when they switched the focus of their business to sweaters.

We now come to that moment in ‘Salem’s Lot that should have every RPG veteran screaming at the top of their lungs…

What on earth were they thinking?

While Matt does his best to cheer Ben up (“C’mon, buddy, you’ll get over staking your girlfriend and being covered in her blood from head-to-toe. Time heals all wounds, right?”), Father Callahan and Mark butt heads with Henry Petrie. If you thought Susan Norton’s hardheadedness was aneurysm-inducing, wait until you get a load of Henry Petrie! We know we are in trouble when we are told Henry Petrie, a registered Democrat, voted for Nixon in the 1972 elections.

Time to cut your parents loose, Mark! Cut ‘em loose!

Barlow’s appearance is almost welcome after listening to Henry Petrie well-actually-ing all over the place. It’s a finely painted scene: Barlow, with Mark in his grasp, on one side of the kitchen, Callahan, his mother’s cross held high and glowing in his hand, on the other. It is the symbolic battle of good vs. evil writ in broad strokes, but it works like gangbusters.

Can we give another shout-out to the greatest Monster Kid of all time for spitting in monster’s face?

“‘Soon, little brother,’ Barlow said, almost benignly. ‘Very soon now you and I will—’ 

Mark spit in his face. 

Barlow’s breath stopped. His brow darkened with a depth of fury that made his previous expressions seem like what they might have been: mere play-acting. For a moment Callahan saw a madness in his eyes blacker than the soul of murder. 

‘You spit on me,’ Barlow whispered. His body was trembling, nearly rocking with his rage. He took a shuddering step forward like some awful blind man. 

‘Get back!’ Callahan screamed, and thrust the cross forward. 

Barlow cried out and threw his hands in front of his face. The cross flared with preternatural, dazzling brilliance, and it was at that moment that Callahan might have banished him if he had dared to press forward. 

‘I’m going to kill you,’ Mark said. 

He was gone, like a dark eddy of water.”

Mark is, in the words of The Beastie Boys, as cool as a cucumber in a bowl hot sauce. Barlow, on the other hand, seems to be losing his grip. Or, maybe, he wasn’t as in control as he’d have us believe? As Matt tells Ben and Jimmy,

“I’m beginning to know him, I think. I lie in this hospital bed and play Mycroft Holmes, trying to outguess him by putting myself in his place. He has lived for centuries, and he is brilliant. But he is also egocentric, as his letter shows. Why not? His ego has grown the way a pearl does, layer by layer, until it is huge and poisonous. He’s filled with pride. It must be vaunting indeed. And his thirst for revenge must be overmastering, a thing to be trembled at, but perhaps also a thing to be used.”

In other words—

Sadly, in the end, Father Callahan cracks first. We mentioned previously, in the scene where Ben fashions a cross out of two tongue depressors, that what was at stake was faith. What would prove to be more powerful: the homegrown, punk rock faith of Ben fighting off Mrs. Glick at the morgue or the more “corporatized” faith of Father Callahan and the Catholic Church. Here, then, we seem to have the answer. As Callahan’s faith in the symbols of his religion strengthen, his actual faith wanes. The light goes out — figuratively and literally. The bright, flashing light of the cross weakens until it is only a material thing in his hand. Barlow plucks the cross from the priest’s hands and tosses it aside.

“You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross…the bread and wine…the confessional…only symbols. Without faith, the cross is not wood, the baked bread wheat, the wine sour grapes. If you had cast the cross away, you should have beaten me another night. In a way, I hoped it might be so. It has been long since I have met an opponent of any real worth. The boy makes ten of you, false priest.”

Barlow then enacts a scene from Bram Stoker’s Dracula: he forces Callahan to drink his blood in the same way Dracula forces his blood into Mina’s mouth. He isn’t turned into a vampire. Instead, as we shall see, Callahan is set free to wander the earth with the Mark of Cain upon him.

I said Mark of Cain!

With that, let us bring today’s class to an end. Tomorrow, why don’t you read Part 3, Chapter 14: The Lot (IV), Sections 21-32. There is a lot going on in those twenty-odd pages. Say what you want about the vampires of 'salem's Lot, but they are a neighborly bunch: Ann Norton shows up at the hospital (granted she isn't exactly carrying a "get well" fruit basket), the kids who ride Charlie Rhodes's school bus are up early to make sure they are ready to go (whether it's to school or to hell, we will find out), and even Corey Bryant shows up to prove that he isn't mad at Reggie Sawyer. Life really is nicer in a small town.

Meanwhile, as you leave class and head home — don’t dawdle! Get yourselves behind your own locked doors and into some Dr. Dentons. (Your own or someone else's.) You don’t want to be out and about come nightfall. If you do find yourselves out-of-doors…well…you’ll just have to...