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    'Salem's Lot
    'Salem's Lot
    'Salem's Lot
    Ebook588 pages14 hours

    'Salem's Lot

    By Stephen King

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    NOW A NEW FILM STREAMING ON MAX • #1 BESTSELLER • Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book.

    "A master storyteller." —The Los Angeles Times

    When two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Mears begins to realize that something sinister is at work. In fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small New England town.

    With this, his second novel, Stephen King established himself as an indisputable master of American horror, able to transform the old conceits of the genre into something fresh and all the more frightening for taking place in a familiar, idyllic locale.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateMay 6, 2008
    ISBN9780385528221
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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    Reviews for 'Salem's Lot

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      My revisit of Salem’s Lot a couple of years ago reminded me of what a great writer King has always been, even if this one also has that ‘I wrote this mostly as a student feel’ to it. I'd read this originally in the 80s when I was either in middle or high school. I devoured so many of his books and then in the mid 90s just stopped.

      This one is a perfect vampire tale. Like many of his books, it uses childhood fears mixed with modern problems of adults to build tension. It also use epistolary tricks to heighten the verisimilitude leaving the reader unsure of what they think about the things that go bump.

      Don't skip this book but leave a light on for yourself.
    • 4/5
      My #stephenking #readathon with @ame9022 and @wendysallison continues with ‘SALEM’S LOT. Here, SK tackles what would happen if a vampire lord took up residence in a small New England town.

      While I would call this a more typical SK book as opposed to CARRIE, this is still clearly early on in King’s writing career. His attempt to juggle multiple characters and narrative threads through the last third of the book is a little clumsy and confusing. Knowing what his writing is like now, it’s easy to see where he was trying to go with the plot, but he wasn’t the polished writer he is today.

      There are plenty of creeptastic scenes in the book, and the main characters are all fleshed out for the most part. It was definitely an ambitious book for such a young writer, and part of me wonders what it would be like for him to revisit the book now and polish it up a little, knowing what he knows now as a writer.

      #stephenking #horror #salemslot #vampire #vampires #horrorbooks #horrorbookstagram #bookstagram #book #bookworm #booksbooksbooks #bookreview #frommybookshelf #frommybookshelfblog
    • 5/5
      4.5 stars
      The only thing that knocked this down a peg was that there were so many characters and a lot of them had similar names! Like why do we need a Matt, Mike and Mark? Sheesh!
      I loved Mark though, he was awesome when I could remember he was 12 and trying to help as much as he could. The story was engaging and well paced. A top contender for my favorite King!
    • 4/5
      A classic (for me) that I probably read, near to when it first came out, at least when it came out on paperback. And the copy I read was probably 40 years old, a delicate balance of comfortably holding the book and not have it completely fall apart. Vampires come to a small town in Maine. Horror ensues. But, to be honest, not as much as I remember. Maybe I'm jaded. Its an early work for him, so he's working out his style, starting in the middle and going back, lots of characters (maybe too many in this case) and really great visual imagery in the world building. Good, but not great. Definitely worth the time for any King fan, if you've never read it.

      They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bead, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual satisfaction of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood.
    • 5/5
      this book is kick ass. yet another top favorite King book for me. its also considered a classic among many and i have to agree.

      this book does great at creating a small town and showing all these different characters, who they are and what they do before things get dark. it also creates some great atmosphere wish makes many scenes chilling. its a great and different take on a vampire story for the time it came out.

      i love pretty much everything about this book but if there is one thing i have to point out and its very minor. is that the romance between Ben and Susan seems rushed and happens way too quickly. now i get that this is a horror book about vampires so i understand that when someone reads this book they dont want to read 50 pages of sappy romance crap. i was just surprised that the romance happen so fast. but like i said its a very minor complaint that wont get too much in the way of things. it just took me by surprise as all but overall this book is great and is yet another top favorite
    • 3/5
      My first true King novel although I have read two or three of the Bachman books and some King short stories.

      The pacing and plotting are great, but King’s vampires are so conventional as to be kind of dull. In fact the scariest character in the book, for me, is the Big Vamp’s human helper/familiar who transacts daytime business on his behalf.

      Also got a bit distracting that all the characters had the purest 70’s white bread names imaginable. Jimmy, Matt, Ben, Ann, Mark, Susan…

      Still a ripper of a novel, but I’m going to try and find a more interesting baddie for my next King.
    • 3/5
      The first King novel I wasn't really enthralled by. Alternately tedious and exciting. It felt like 3/4 of the book was set up, and then the final parts weren't even that great. Pretty verbose descriptions that began to wear, too.

      Certainly not bad, however.
    • 2/5
      I've been a fan of King's work for over thirty years, and I finally got to read this recently, as I am currently going through some of his back titles that I've missed. This one was quite disappointing for me. It hums along nicely for the first 530 pages, slowly building suspense and introducing some well-drawn characters. I was enjoying it thoroughly. However, at the 530-page mark, there seems to be a continuity error of epic proportions, something which goes against the story's rules as established up until that point. Normally, a thing like that wouldn't bother me overmuch, but here, this error occurs in a very crucial scene, a scene which shouldn't have happened at all if King had been following his own rules. Because of this, I lost all trust in the narrative, and with it any suspense that may have been generated. It became a slog for me to finish the book, but I managed. There are also, in those remaining pages, some serious flaws, especially an incident where a major character does something very much out-of-character, again at a crucial moment, which further destroyed the tale's credibility for me. So, this is easily the weakest King novel I've read to date. A real surprise, as he is, in general, a consummate storyteller. I rate it two stars, just because of the strength of the earlier sections
    • 4/5
      I'm pretty sure that the first Stephen King book I read was The Shining when it first came out in 1977. I love King, but I somehow never got around to reading his prior book which was 'Salem's Lot, until now. While it was nowhere even close to being as suspenseful as The Shining, it was still a very solid book with great atmosphere and characterization. But it really had no scenes that I will remember 20 years from now like the Lincoln tunnel scene in The Stand or several scenes in The Shining. The creepy factor was as creepy. The good news is that I should have no issues sleeping tonight. Still a really solid read, just not heart pounding like so many other of his works.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good book set about some classic Stoker style vampire action. I read it as a bit of a palette cleanser to all of the common modern vampires with feelings type stories in pop culture at the moment, and wasn't disappointed. If I had to complain it would just be that this book is a bit too close to Dracula for thinking of this as anything special or extraordinary.

      The other reason I read it is because it plays a large role in the dark tower books, so I looked at it almost as an extra story added into the series. I'm not sure if that improved or detracted from my reading, but as far as I know it's impossible to unread something.
    • 4/5
      A Masterwork of Horror

      Ever wonder what Bram Stoker would make of the industry that has sprung from his groundbreaking 1897 Dracula? Though not the first vampire novel, it proved to be the one that launched hundreds of sharp-fanged anti-heroes. It’s an industry and a character writers, film studios, and television have worked practically to death. Yet, we never seem to tire of the Count and his brethren.

      Which brings us to Stephen King, the writer most will acknowledge as the modern master among masters of horror and the macabre. For his second outing, he chose vampires in a small Maine town, and readers, even now, are the luckier for it. You can say this about most of King’s early works, Carrie, The Shining, and The Stand (first half): it’s a masterwork of terror.

      What makes ‘Salem’s Lot, as well as these others so appealing, appealing enough to read a second time years after your first reading? It boils down to small town life, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, clear writing, terrific pacing (at least in these early novels), and powerful, literal descriptions. King puts you in the situation and the action and because his characters are much like his readers, you can easily project yourself onto the pages. In short, he’s completely relatable.

      You’ll find no better work among his pile of writing illustrating King’s strengths. Could there be a more representative American small town than the Lot? Don’t many small towns have a sinister house occupied, or once home to, the town curmudgeon (not a killer, for sure, but scary, especially in the eyes of children). The Lot has a rhythm to it, a way of living that stretches back years, a dull sameness that locals like and set their emotional clock by. Like any town, though, it’s not perfect bliss, or even close to blissful. It’s relatively poor. It’s filled with its share of misfits. It even has a town dump that many who grew up in small towns will recognize. Above all, everybody knows everybody else, maybe a virtue but which contributes to its succumbing to evil.

      Even Ben Mears is a small town boy. He’s published a couple of books, true, but hasn’t achieved any kind of fame and no fortune. He returns to his roots to face a fear that has haunted him, and to get a really good book out of the experience. That fear resides in the old, abandoned Marsten House stilling atop a hill overlooking the Lot. Horrible things happened there long ago, long before when Ben was a boy.

      Ben gets more than he bargained for. He gets his greatest fear multiplied a hundredfold in the form of Barlow, an ancient vampire come to establish residence in the Lot coincidental with Ben’s arrival. Poor Ben loses so much: a new love in the form of tragic Susan, new friends in the forms of Matt the high school teacher and Jim the doctor, the new novel he’s written deeply into, and most of all, any comfort and joy in living. Yet, with young Mark at his side, he does gain a new and pretty meaningful purpose in life as one who now can see behind the curtain of quotidian life, like that that the Lot enjoyed before Barlow’s arrival.

      There’s one other characteristic of King’s writing that unfortunately ‘Salem’s Lot doesn’t have: stunningly memorable characters, among them religious lunatic Margaret White, rabbi fan Annie Wilkes, pyromaniac “Trashcan Man,” the list is long. Vampire master Barlow could have been such a character, ancient, big, nasty, egotistical, and above all, wonderfully bombastic. It isn’t often said about novels, but ‘Salem’s Lot would have benefited immensely from deep background on Barlow. Nonetheless, ‘Salem’s Lot is still a heck of a powerful horror yarn.
    • 5/5
      I though this was a very good horror novel. This is the second King book I've read with the other being Carrie. I'm trying to go through his work in chronological order so I will be reading The Shining next. I liked Carrie a lot but I think I liked this book more. With how popular vampire books were for a while it seems a lot of people feel like they've read to many vampire books but actually haven't read too many and most of the ones I read were young adult books. Even if I had read a ton of vampire books I still think this would have stood out. I loved the main group of characters and was worried about them and sad when bad things happened to them. Of all the characters in this book I liked Mark Petrie the most. I can't tell you exactly why I liked this character the most he just really spoke to me. This book also scared me more than any other book I had read. Usually horror books don't scare me as much as horror movies do but I found this to be very scary. I was reading parts of this before I went to bed and every little noise would scare me. I've been on a real horror book bender recently and I definitely want to keep reading scary books in the near future.
    • 5/5
      This is my second read through of this classic. It's funny, because I found out that in King's first novel, my personal connection was that I was the same age as Carrie White. This time around, the personal connection is that the town of 'Salem's Lot died on my 13th birthday.

      I'd forgotten how much I loved this book. I mean, I knew I loved it, but I forgot the depths of my love. Yes, there's the odd clunky line in the novel, but overall, my God, King's descriptive powers were something to behold. Unbelievable.

      And, for a novel about vampires, I think the thing that originally blew my mind was that the book didn't specifically mention vampires anywhere on the cover, and I didn't quite catch the reference of the girl with the drop of blood at the corner of her mouth. So, when I read it the first time, and I found out for sure it was vampires at a point that was well over a third of the way into the novel...well, it was mind-boggling.

      Reading it again, it's a wonderful concept that no publisher would allow today. Today, the vampires would be spoiled in the cover copy, and the author would have to bring them in quick. That's one of the many things that make this just a brilliant and gripping story.

      For a couple of days, I was a fifteen-year-old kid again, experiencing this for the first time in the living room of our old house.

      Thank you, Stephen King.
    • 4/5
      I’m a fan of Stephen King, both his flat-out horror (IT and The Shining come to mind) and his “the real world is scary enough” sort of books (Misery and The Stand). It’s hard for me to think of many other writers who have such a conversational style that draws me immediately into the narrative, as if we were sitting around a campfire together.

      I read ’Salem’s Lot (1975) many years ago and remembered being thoroughly creeped out. So when I came across it as I was rearranging my bookshelves, I decided to take it for another spin and see if my reaction has changed over the decades.

      Um, no. Still thoroughly creeped out, still pleasurably horrified by this tale of a small Maine town colonized by a vampire. This was only King’s second published novel, but many of the touches that would later become hallmarks of his work were present: Ordinary people behaving in extraordinary ways, the reader having just enough of an edge to get scared before the people in the book do, and of course, the heroics of a child. It seems clear that King sees children as the real heroes in this world, as in this passage:

      Before drifting away entirely, he found himself reflecting—not for the first time—on the peculiarity of adults. They took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. … The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood.

      If reading about vampires and the terrible things people do under pressure isn’t your bag, that’s totally understandable, and you should give this one a pass. But if you’re nostalgic for some good old-fashioned horror, you could do much worse than make a visit to ‘Salem’s Lot, Maine. Just make sure you leave before the sun goes down.
    • 4/5
      Vintage Stephen King. Written fortunately before vampires became respectable.
    • 5/5
      A modern day Dracula. I haven't read The Dracula yet, but still I really enjoyed this one. The monologues, tangents & little scenes were each fulfilling, concise & well thought out.
    • 5/5
      I'd thought I had read this novel in high school, and had forgotten some of it. I started glancing through the Ebook version of it, from my local library, and realized that none of it seemed familiar at all. Thinking that maybe I had read so many books in the interim, and this is what kept me from remembering it, I checked it out and set about refreshing my memory. Who doesn't love and older-version, younger Stephen King novel?
      It turns out I had skipped this novel entirely, for some strange reason. Maybe I was too far gone into the novels of Raymond E. Feist, Piers Anthony, Ursula Le Guin, Mercedes Lackey, and David Eddings at the time, who knows. But I am glad I read it now. It seems to have helped me enjoy it that much more. What a gloriously tense couple of nights I have spent, immersed in the darkly shadowed pits of King's early imagination...! What fun! I sincerely love old-style King. I am quite happy, now.

      5 full stars. If you haven't read this novel yet, why don't you give it a try? It might just knock your socks off. ;)
    • 5/5
      It is very easy to see the influence of Dracula on this book, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable, or original.
    • 4/5
      When I read a book that a good chunk of people agree is one of the scariest they’ve ever read, I expect it to be scary. And ‘Salem’s Lot got a lot of people’s votes for being King’s scariest novel, with a good chunk of people admitting to it being one of the scariest books they’ve ever read.

      Two notes: First, I admittedly cannot compare the scariness of this book to any of King’s other works because this is the first book of his I’ve ever read. Second, I read a lot of this during the day time, and everyone knows that horror is best read at night when everyone else is asleep, but what can I say? I’m a morning and day reader. Evening and night are for video games or Netflix.

      ‘Salem’s Lot is a book about vampires, and an old creepy house, but more than that it’s about a town. ‘Salem’s Lot or just The Lot is how the locals refer to Jersalem’s Lot, Maine.

      Writer Ben Mears returns to The Lot as an adult, after having spent a short part of his childhood there, at the same time that the Marsten House, the site of a murder-suicide and known to the town for being creepy as hell, gets bought by two men who plan to open an antiques shop in the town. Shortly after his arrival, things start getting weird. Two boys disappear in the woods, and only one returns home. From there, the story takes off.

      I really enjoyed this book, and it was a great read for the month of October, what with the main antagonist being a vampire. It did make me want to play the Sims and create some vampire sims or re-watch Castlevania.

      There are a couple of scenes here that are creepy, and after reading the prologue you know only two of the main cast likely survives the goings-on in town, and I did feel a lot of anticipation for what would happen to all the characters. I felt particularly attached to Matt Burke and Father Callahan, despite knowing they probably wouldn’t make it to the end.

      Otherwise, though, I didn’t feel as scared as I expected to after all the people who said this book was actually scary. It is scary, of course, but not in the way I was expecting, outside of a few dark scenes at the beginning of the book.

      The way vampirism spreads through the town reminds one of a disease. It’s like reading a story set during the black plague, not knowing who’s going to catch it next, but knowing that not everyone will make it out alive.

      It’s not scary in as gory of a way as others in the genre might be. Sure, there is some gore, but the bulk of that takes place in the last part of the book. I didn’t mind this, and the anticipation of what was going to happen to each of the characters kept me turning the pages- most days I read over 100 pages at a time.

      The characters are what really shine. There wasn’t a single member of the main cast that I disliked. Mark Petrie was probably my favorite of them, but I liked Ben, Matt, Susan, and Father Callahan. I didn’t feel like I had enough time with Jimmy to care about what happened to him all that much- and when it did happen I felt worse for Mark.

      As for the writing itself, there were scenes where the writing really shined- the scenes at the beginning that actually made me feel a little scared are the best example of this. But for most of the book the writing ranged from good to fine. There were some places that I ended up skimming because there was a little too much description of things that didn’t have anything to do with the plot.

      I really enjoyed this book, and I may end up changing my rating up to 5-stars, depending on how I feel about this book after I’ve a week or so to digest it. I would highly recommend this, and it’s the perfect time of year to read it, so if you haven’t I suggest picking it up.
    • 4/5
      My 3rd favourite King after It and Pet Sematary. Scared the whillikers out of me as a teenager, but as a mature reader the flaws that come from being King's second published work are obvious. Still, an exciting and well-written exercise in fear, with tropes that would become so familiar and polished in later King works make their first appearance here. Ditto for the characters. In Ben Mears and Mark Petrie we see early signs of Bill Denborough, the first hint of Pennywise makes a brief early appearance as Mr Flip, The Lot is an early draft for Castle Rock. Very enjoyable, although vampires have lost much of their cachet due to maudlin over-sentimentality and this deprives the book of a lot of its oomph.
    • 4/5
      Terrifying at times (e.g., don't read it alone in a house in an isolated location). Love the premise of small towns just disappearing and how easily this can occur.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book because the author did a good job of building the tension throughout the town. For a book with a ton of characters, you never feel overwhelmed or confused. Each interaction is very realistic to a small town and lays some ground work for later developments. The only relationship that seems out of place is the intensity of the romance between Ben and Susan. It just doesn’t quite feel right but in no way deters from the rest of the book.

      The group of “heroes” is very diverse and even though not necessarily connected in their everyday lives their interactions do not seem forced or unauthentic. The character of Mark Petrie is just so adorable you want to wrap him in your arms and protect him from the evil. Matt Burke is an interesting character when compared to Mark Petrie. Mark Petrie is a child and is immediately accepting of the reality surrounding them as is Matt Burke who is a 60-something school teacher. Matt’s lack of resistance to the idea of evil is very refreshing and gives his relationship with Mark Petrie a nice twist. Dr. Cody is a very logical and scientific person yet he also has enough respect for the intelligence of the others in the group. The main character in the book is Ben Mears and he is a nice normal guy caught up in something unexplainable. Mr. King takes this into consideration as he walks us through Ben’s emotions and actions which are very true to his character. The reader feels each part of Ben’s struggle in their own gut and is rooting for him as soon as he drives into Salem’s Lot.

      Ron McLarty did a fabulous job on the narration. His ability to convey the tension, the creepiness and the fear of the characters was phenomenal. I could really get into and root for the characters and I feel Mr. McLarty deserves as much of the praise as does Mr. King.

      The prologue by Stephen King was good but I found his elevating of the Ben Mears’ character to hero status over the other characters was not correct. It did not do the other strong heroic characters in the book enough justice.
    • 4/5
      I disagree with the simple "make them repulsive and yucky" argument. Vampires can be scariest when they deal in ambivalence and paranoia. Repulsiveness just turns them into straightforward monsters where you know where you stand and what you're supposed to run away from. Ok, monsters and running-away can be scary too. But I think the human/monster, desire/disgust, fear/curiosity type ambivalences are where the vampire figure really comes into its own. But you need to make those contrasts really bite, not like those drippy Twilight emos. The vampires in "True Blood" are agreeably scary. They can be nice, they can be refined, they can even be love-lorn -- but they are still powerful, unhuman, and capable of great harm. The vampires in "Being Human" are similarly portrayed, and so they work. Vampires go through phases. Before Stoker they were walking corpses driven by the need for blood, and Stoker humanised them and we all know what happened over the next 130 years. And it's not like Meyer was the first person to make cuddly vampires: “The Count from Sesame Street”, Count “Ducula” and the terrible 80s TV show The Littlest Vampire… do I need to say more? We don't need King to tell us how to make them scary again, it'll happen on their own, they're too much of a use trope not to. Besides, I don't mind vampires being nice to look at if they're also capable of murdering you and not really giving a shit. The vampires in “True Blood” are sufficiently violent and amoral, but unfortunately people often associate the series with Twilight because it's become popular at the same sort of time. The two couldn't really be much further apart. The literary (as opposed to folkloric) vampire has been fatally attractive since Polidori's Lord Ruthven (based on Byron), Gautier's Clarimonde, and Lefanu's Carmilla. At least Mitch in Being Human holds up the Byronic and dangerous tradition. While also being cute and funny, he's capable of picnicing on a train-carriage of commuters, when on a Bonnie-and-Clyde vengeance kick with the deliciously naughty Daisy. Vampires are inevitably sexy: they're all about oral fixation, eros-thanatos complexes, a neat twist on Transubstantiation, and often an effective Queer metaphor. Meyer's attempt to recruit them for her 'no sex before marriage' Mor(m)on family values is utterly misguided…Vampires also should be able to move around in daylight, but weaker. The disintegration in sunlight was invented to show off the special effects in Nosferatu. (They don't sparkle, either!)
      I suppose it would be nice to get back to really traditional vampires, but zombies have filled that niche so I think we're stuck with pretty vampires. I'm not going to complain about it though ;)

      I remember having read somewhere Sam Mendes was planning to do a movie based on the Garth Ennis epic, "Preacher". One of the main characters in it is the vampire Cassidy, and King would recognize him instantly as an Irish correlation of "The Walking Dude". He's charming and gleefully amoral, one of the best characters around. One of the most hilarious parts of Ennis' story is when Cassidy encounters some Anne Rice type vampires in New Orleans. Cassidy is unimpressed with pale, swooning poets who want to be vampires, and ends up giving them lessons in what vampirism is really all about. Not for the faint hearted.

      “‘Salem’s Lot” is one of the biggies for me. “'Salem's Lot”, “Revival”, and “The Stand” are the King novels that I have read over and over, for pure pleasure. I don’t much like other early ones, like “The Shining” and “The Dead Zone” and “Night Shift”; they just don't quite work for me in the same way. His later work is also spotty--I haven't even read all of it--but “Bag of Bones” was probably the best of the bunch. When I'm looking for a common denominator of my two favourites, what I see most clearly is that I love it when King assembles a team, a gang of friends, who work together to battle the forces of evil. I really enjoy the way that King depicts how friendships can form and grow and be solidified, and how different pairs of friends in a larger gang of pals typically have their own individual dynamics.

      “'Salem's Lot” has a central pivot point in Ben Mears, but part of the joy of “The Stand” and “IT” is that the gangs of friends are even more balanced. Yes, Stu is probably the central pivot of “The Stand”, just as Stuttering Bill is probably at the center of “IT”--but the rest of the friendship circles in each of those novels are given the texture and time to also be legitimate leading characters. I've always been a Haystack man, for example, when reading “IT”, in part since I never was a chubby kid. “'Salem's Lot” also establishes the King formula of the slow build, followed by a long and intense action phase; it works because the build-up gives the reader the time to know the characters and the setting, and to develop some relationships and fondness and context, which gives action sequences and scares weight and consequence. Also, the pay-off for King is long and involved--it isn't like a two hundred page build-up followed by forty pages of excitement--he rewards the readers' patience for the first half of a novel by making the entire second half action-packed, as he does in “'Salem's Lot” (and in “IT” and “The Stand” the action-packed segments are even heftier).
    • 2/5
      This King novel started well. There was good intrigue and the characters were established, the plot awaiting development, and the atmosphere dark and incipient. However, I found the novel did not take off adequately and I was disappointed with the turn of events and the way it played out. That is not to say that it is a bad novel, but it was simply not to my taste.

      2 stars.
    • 4/5
      This review is posted on Reading with AngelaRenea

      I read this book as part of my Stephen King project (AKA I am reading Stephen King). Before I started it I read Dracula because King says that it heavily influenced this book's writing. I'm really glad I did that, and I recommend that everyone read Dracula before they read this because the comparisons are amazing. This was the story that Dracula is hyped up to be! Where Dracula failed, King has managed to succeed spectacularly!

      I love the way that the town it's self is a major character in this book. King spends a lot of time, arguably even too much time, setting the tone of the book by taking you through the town, but I thought it was just right. I enjoyed the other characters as well, particularly Matt, although somehow I missed that he was older initially! Once I realized that he was, I loved him more because, well, I love old people that's why.

      I was told that this was one of Stephen King's scariest books, and I'm not sure where I stand on this. While I don't think that the actual plot scared me at all, King did a great job of setting a tone. The descriptions of how the characters themselves were feeling was so well written that it actually made me a little jumpy (...scared...) particularly walking in to work. In the dark. At night. At the full moon.

      I will say that one of the big reasons that I did not give this book a 5 star is that it stuck a little too close to the Dracula story. It was better written, more readable, more enjoyable, with a better pace and written in a more believable way, but it was essentially Dracula. Where it did stray was the parts about the house, and the fires.

      I think that the ending leaves it open for a sequel, or mentioning in another book (I'm told King likes to do that) so here's hoping! Basically if you're thinking about reading 'Salem's Lot do it and just skip Dracula!

      What book do you think is just a better version of something else? Happy reading!
    • 4/5
      Inte lika bra som jag minns den då jag läste den första gången i högstadiet, men ändå den bästa jag läst av Stephen King.
    • 5/5
      When an ancient vampire moves into the tiny Maine town of 'Salem's Lot, it's not long before the vampires take over in this homage to Dracula.

      This is classic Stephen King. There's a small town that is taken over gradually by something evil, an extremely creepy house, lots of scares and gore, and a small band of ordinary people trying to battle something extraordinarily evil. It may be a little long-winded but it will always hold a special place in my heart.

      Read because I like the author (1980s).
    • 3/5
      Really, I'd give this 3.5 stars. Although I have read all of King's recent books, I've read only a handful of his older books. I'm trying to remedy that now. If you don't know, Salem's Lot is a vampire story. King doesn't really bring anything new to the legend, but it is still a compelling and dark read. And, I will not be looking out of any windows at night for a very long time - so don't come knocking, scratching or calling out for me.
    • 2/5
      King's vampires ?
      Ben Mears is a writer that is returning to his hometown Jerusalem's lot after 25 years of being gone. He is coming home to write a book about the infamous Marsten House which has changed owners since he last graced the town with his presence. The new owner happens to be a vampire! Will Ben, his new friend Matt, and his new love interest Susan ever make it out of Salem's Lot alive?
      Ugh, King, King, King... sometimes you hit it and sometimes you miss it. This one was a miss for me which it's a little distressing because it happens to be Stephen King's favorite novel that he has written. Not to mention the subject matter is one of my favorites. However for some reason this book and I just did not click. I wanted so much to like this book and I gave it my best shot.
      The book is not badly written. It is written in the normal Stephen King style and is easy to follow the storyline. However also in the normal Stephen King style, there is tons of extra information that aren't really necessary for the story. This is what dragged me down with this book. The extra information just made it monotonous for me to read. I will say that I did however like the cliffhanger at the end. Very nicely done. If you like Stephen King and vampires you will probably like this book.
    • 4/5
      When different people in the friend and co-worker group bring up the same book in a short span of time and reference it as "the one that kept me up at night," I had to read it. It didn't keep me up at night. But if you've read Bram Stoker's Dracula, consider this a masterful 1970s retelling. I still thoroughly enjoyed it!

    Book preview

    'Salem's Lot - Stephen King

    PART ONE

    THE MARSTEN HOUSE

    No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

    shirley jackson

    The Haunting of Hill House

    CHAPTER ONE

    BEN (I)

    1

    By the time he had passed Portland going north on the turnpike, Ben Mears had begun to feel a not unpleasurable tingle of excitement in his belly. It was September 5, 1975, and summer was enjoying her final grand fling. The trees were bursting with green, the sky was a high, soft blue, and just over the Falmouth town line he saw two boys walking a road parallel to the expressway with fishing rods settled on their shoulders like carbines.

    He switched to the travel lane, slowed to the minimum turnpike speed, and began to look for anything that would jog his memory. There was nothing at first, and he tried to caution himself against almost sure disappointment. You were seven then. That’s twenty-five years of water under the bridge. Places change. Like people.

    In those days the four-lane 295 hadn’t existed. If you wanted to go to Portland from the Lot, you went out Route 12 to Falmouth and then got on Number 1. Time had marched on.

    Stop that shit.

    But it was hard to stop. It was hard to stop when—

    A big BSA cycle with jacked handlebars suddenly roared past him in the passing lane, a kid in a T-shirt driving, a girl in a red cloth jacket and huge mirror-lensed sunglasses riding pillion behind him. They cut in a little too quickly and he overreacted, jamming on his brakes and laying both hands on the horn. The BSA sped up, belching blue smoke from its exhaust, and the girl jabbed her middle finger back at him.

    He resumed speed, wishing for a cigarette. His hands were trembling slightly. The BSA was almost out of sight now, moving fast. The kids. The goddamned kids. Memories tried to crowd in on him, memories of a more recent vintage. He pushed them away. He hadn’t been on a motorcycle in two years. He planned never to ride on one again.

    A flash of red caught his eye off to the left, and when he glanced that way, he felt a burst of pleasure and recognition. A large red barn stood on a hill far across a rising field of timothy and clover, a barn with a cupola painted white—even at this distance he could see the sungleam on the weather vane atop that cupola. It had been there then and was still here now. It looked exactly the same. Maybe it was going to be all right after all. Then the trees blotted it out.

    As the turnpike entered Cumberland, more and more things began to seem familiar. He passed over the Royal River, where they had fished for steelies and pickerel as boys. Past a brief, flickering view of Cumberland Village through the trees. In the distance the Cumberland water tower with its huge slogan painted across the side: Keep Maine Green. Aunt Cindy had always said someone should print Bring Money underneath that.

    His original sense of excitement grew and he began to speed up, watching for the sign. It came twinkling up out of the distance in reflectorized green five miles later:

    ROUTE 12 JERUSALEM’S LOT CUMBERLAND CUMBERLAND CTR

    A sudden blackness came over him, dousing his good spirits like sand on fire. He had been subject to these since (his mind tried to speak Miranda’s name and he would not let it) the bad time and was used to fending them off, but this one swept over him with a savage power that was dismaying.

    What was he doing, coming back to a town where he had lived for four years as a boy, trying to recapture something that was irrevocably lost? What magic could he expect to recapture by walking roads that he had once walked as a boy and were probably asphalted and straightened and logged off and littered with tourist beer cans? The magic was gone, both white and black. It had all gone down the chutes on that night when the motorcycle had gone out of control and then there was the yellow moving van, growing and growing, his wife Miranda’s scream, cut off with sudden finality when—

    The exit came up on his right, and for a moment he considered driving right past it, continuing on to Chamberlain or Lewiston, stopping for lunch, and then turning around and going back. But back where? Home? That was a laugh. If there was a home, it had been here. Even if it had only been four years, it was his.

    He signaled, slowed the Citroën, and went up the ramp. Toward the top, where the turnpike ramp joined Route 12 (which became Jointner Avenue closer to town), he glanced up toward the horizon. What he saw there made him jam the brakes on with both feet. The Citroën shuddered to a stop and stalled.

    The trees, mostly pine and spruce, rose in gentle slopes toward the east, seeming to almost crowd against the sky at the limit of vision. From here the town was not visible. Only the trees, and in the distance, where those trees rose against the sky, the peaked, gabled roof of the Marsten House.

    He gazed at it, fascinated. Warring emotions crossed his face with kaleidoscopic swiftness.

    Still here, he murmured aloud. By God.

    He looked down at his arms. They had broken out in goose flesh.

    2

    He deliberately skirted town, crossing into Cumberland and then coming back into ’salem’s Lot from the west, taking the Burns Road. He was amazed by how little things had changed out here. There were a few new houses he didn’t remember, there was a tavern called Dell’s just over the town line, and a pair of fresh gravel quarries. A good deal of the hardwood had been pulped over. But the old tin sign pointing the way to the town dump was still there, and the road itself was still unpaved, full of chuckholes and washboards, and he could see Schoolyard Hill through the slash in the trees where the Central Maine Power pylons ran on a northwest to southeast line. The Griffen farm was still there, although the barn had been enlarged. He wondered if they still bottled and sold their own milk. The logo had been a smiling cow under the name brand: Sunshine Milk from the Griffen Farms! He smiled. He had splashed a lot of that milk on his corn flakes at Aunt Cindy’s house.

    He turned left onto the Brooks Road, passed the wrought-iron gates and the low fieldstone wall surrounding Harmony Hill Cemetery, and then went down the steep grade and started up the far side—the side known as Marsten’s Hill.

    At the top, the trees fell away on both sides of the road. On the right, you could look right down into the town proper—Ben’s first view of it. On the left, the Marsten House. He pulled over and got out of the car.

    It was just the same. There was no difference, not at all. He might have last seen it yesterday.

    The witch grass grew wild and tall in the front yard, obscuring the old, frost-heaved flagstones that led to the porch. Chirring crickets sang in it, and he could see grasshoppers jumping in erratic parabolas.

    The house itself looked toward town. It was huge and rambling and sagging, its windows haphazardly boarded shut, giving it that sinister look of all old houses that have been empty for a long time. The paint had been weathered away, giving the house a uniform gray look. Windstorms had ripped many of the shingles off, and a heavy snowfall had punched in the west corner of the main roof, giving it a slumped, hunched look. A tattered no-trespassing sign was nailed to the right-hand newel post.

    He felt a strong urge to walk up that overgrown path, past the crickets and hoppers that would jump around his shoes, climb the porch, peek between the haphazard boards into the hallway or the front room. Perhaps try the front door. If it was unlocked, go in.

    He swallowed and stared up at the house, almost hypnotized. It stared back at him with idiot indifference.

    You walked down the hall, smelling wet plaster and rotting wallpaper, and mice would skitter in the walls. There would still be a lot of junk lying around, and you might pick something up, a paperweight maybe, and put it in your pocket. Then, at the end of the hall, instead of going through into the kitchen, you could turn left and go up the stairs, your feet gritting in the plaster dust which had sifted down from the ceiling over the years. There were fourteen steps, exactly fourteen. But the top one was smaller, out of proportion, as if it had been added to avoid the evil number. At the top of the stairs you stand on the landing, looking down the hall toward a closed door. And if you walk down the hall toward it, watching as if from outside yourself as the door gets closer and larger, you can reach out your hand and put it on the tarnished silver knob—

    He turned away from the house, a straw-dry whistle of air slipping from his mouth. Not yet. Later, perhaps, but not yet. For now it was enough to know that all of that was still here. It had waited for him. He put his hands on the hood of his car and looked out over the town. He could find out down there who was handling the Marsten House, and perhaps lease it. The kitchen would make an adequate writing room and he could bunk down in the front parlor. But he wouldn’t allow himself to go upstairs.

    Not unless it had to be done.

    He got in his car, started it, and drove down the hill to Jerusalem’s Lot.

    CHAPTER TWO

    SUSAN (I)

    1

    He was sitting on a bench in the park when he observed the girl watching him. She was a very pretty girl, and there was a silk scarf tied over her light blond hair. She was currently reading a book, but there was a sketch pad and what looked like a charcoal pencil beside her. It was Tuesday, September 16, the first day of school, and the park had magically emptied of the rowdier element. What was left was a scattering of mothers with infants, a few old men sitting by the war memorial, and this girl sitting in the dappled shade of a gnarled old elm.

    She looked up and saw him. An expression of startlement crossed her face. She looked down at her book; looked up at him again and started to rise; almost thought better of it; did rise; sat down again.

    He got up and walked over, holding his own book, which was a paperback Western. Hello, he said agreeably. Do we know each other?

    No, she said. That is…you’re Benjaman Mears, right?

    Right. He raised his eyebrows.

    She laughed nervously, not looking in his eyes except in a quick flash, to try to read the barometer of his intentions. She was quite obviously a girl not accustomed to speaking to strange men in the park.

    I thought I was seeing a ghost. She held up the book in her lap. He saw fleetingly that Jerusalem’s Lot Public Library was stamped on the thickness of pages between covers. The book was Air Dance, his second novel. She showed him the photograph of himself on the back jacket, a photo that was four years old now. The face looked boyish and frighteningly serious—the eyes were black diamonds.

    Of such inconsequential beginnings dynasties are begun, he said, and although it was a joking throwaway remark, it hung oddly in the air, like prophecy spoken in jest. Behind them, a number of toddlers were splashing happily in the wading pool and a mother was telling Roddy not to push his sister so high. The sister went soaring up on her swing regardless, dress flying, trying for the sky. It was a moment he remembered for years after, as though a special small slice had been cut from the cake of time. If nothing fires between two people, such an instant simply falls back into the general wrack of memory.

    Then she laughed and offered him the book. Will you autograph it?

    A library book?

    I’ll buy it from them and replace it.

    He found a mechanical pencil in his sweater pocket, opened the book to the flyleaf, and asked, What’s your name?

    Susan Norton.

    He wrote quickly, without thinking: For Susan Norton, the prettiest girl in the park. Warm regards, Ben Mears. He added the date below his signature in slashed notation.

    Now you’ll have to steal it, he said, handing it back. "Air Dance is out of print, alas."

    I’ll get a copy from one of those book finders in New York. She hesitated, and this time her glance at his eyes was a little longer. It’s an awfully good book.

    Thanks. When I take it down and look at it, I wonder how it ever got published.

    Do you take it down often?

    Yeah, but I’m trying to quit.

    She grinned at him and they both laughed and that made things more natural. Later he would have a chance to think how easily this had happened, how smoothly. The thought was never a comfortable one. It conjured up an image of fate, not blind at all but equipped with sentient 20/20 vision and intent on grinding helpless mortals between the great millstones of the universe to make some unknown bread.

    "I read Conway’s Daughter, too. I loved that. I suppose you hear that all the time."

    Remarkably little, he said honestly. Miranda had also loved Conway’s Daughter, but most of his coffeehouse friends had been noncommittal and most of the critics had clobbered it. Well, that was critics for you. Plot was out, masturbation in.

    Well, I did.

    Have you read the new one?

    "Billy Said Keep Going? Not yet. Miss Coogan at the drugstore says it’s pretty racy."

    Hell, it’s almost puritanical, Ben said. The language is rough, but when you’re writing about uneducated country boys, you can’t…look, can I buy you an ice-cream soda or something? I was just getting a hanker on for one.

    She checked his eyes a third time. Then smiled, warmly. Sure. I’d love one. They’re great in Spencer’s.

    That was the beginning of it.

    2

    Is that Miss Coogan?

    Ben asked it, low-voiced. He was looking at a tall, spare woman who was wearing a red nylon duster over her white uniform. Her blue-rinsed hair was done in a steplike succession of finger waves.

    That’s her. She’s got a little cart she takes to the library every Thursday night. She fills out reserve cards by the ton and drives Miss Starcher crazy.

    They were seated on red leather stools at the soda fountain. He was drinking a chocolate soda; hers was strawberry. Spencer’s also served as the local bus depot and from where they sat they could look through an old-fashioned scrolled arch and into the waiting room, where a solitary young man in Air Force blues sat glumly with his feet planted around his suitcase.

    Doesn’t look happy to be going wherever he’s going, does he? she said, following his glance.

    Leave’s over, I imagine, Ben said. Now, he thought, she’ll ask if I’ve ever been in the service.

    But instead: I’ll be on that ten-thirty bus one of these days. Good-by, ’salem’s Lot. Probably I’ll be looking just as glum as that boy.

    Where?

    New York, I guess. To see if I can’t finally become self-supporting.

    What’s wrong with right here?

    The Lot? I love it. But my folks, you know. They’d always be sort of looking over my shoulder. That’s a bummer. And the Lot doesn’t really have that much to offer the young career girl. She shrugged and dipped her head to suck at her straw. Her neck was tanned, beautifully muscled. She was wearing a colorful print shift that hinted at a good figure.

    What kind of job are you looking for?

    She shrugged. I’ve got a B.A. from Boston University…not worth the paper it’s printed on, really. Art major, English minor. The original dipso duo. Strictly eligible for the educated idiot category. I’m not even trained to decorate an office. Some of the girls I went to high school with are holding down plump secretarial jobs now. I never got beyond Personal Typing I, myself.

    So what does that leave?

    Oh…maybe a publishing house, she said vaguely. Or some magazine…advertising, maybe. Places like that can always use someone who can draw on command. I can do that. I have a portfolio.

    Do you have offers? he asked gently.

    No…no. But…

    You don’t go to New York without offers, he said. Believe me. You’ll wear out the heels on your shoes.

    She smiled uneasily. I guess you should know.

    Have you sold stuff locally?

    Oh yes. She laughed abruptly. My biggest sale to date was to the Cinex Corporation. They opened a new triple cinema in Portland and bought twelve paintings at a crack to hang in their lobby. Paid seven hundred dollars. I made a down payment on my little car.

    You ought to take a hotel room for a week or so in New York, he said, and hit every magazine and publishing house you can find with your portfolio. Make your appointments six months in advance so the editors and personnel guys don’t have anything on their calendars. But for God’s sake, don’t just haul stakes for the big city.

    What about you? she asked, leaving off the straw and spooning ice cream. What are you doing in the thriving community of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, population thirteen hundred?

    He shrugged. Trying to write a novel.

    She was instantly alight with excitement. In the Lot? What’s it about? Why here? Are you—

    He looked at her gravely. You’re dripping.

    I’m—? Oh, I am. Sorry. She mopped the base of her glass with a napkin. Say, I didn’t mean to pry. I’m really not gushy as a rule.

    No apology needed, he said. "All writers like to talk about their books. Sometimes when I’m lying in bed at night I make up a Playboy interview about me. Waste of time. They only do authors if their books are big on campus."

    The Air Force youngster stood up. A Greyhound was pulling up to the curb out front, air brakes chuffing.

    I lived in ’salem’s Lot for four years as a kid. Out on the Burns Road.

    The Burns Road? There’s nothing out there now but the Marshes and a little graveyard. Harmony Hill, they call it.

    I lived with my Aunt Cindy. Cynthia Stowens. My dad died, see, and my mom went through a…well, kind of a nervous breakdown. So she farmed me out to Aunt Cindy while she got her act back together. Aunt Cindy put me on a bus back to Long Island and my mom just about a month after the big fire. He looked at his face in the mirror behind the soda fountain. I cried on the bus going away from Mom, and I cried on the bus going away from Aunt Cindy and Jerusalem’s Lot.

    I was born the year of the fire, Susan said. The biggest damn thing that ever happened to this town and I slept through it.

    Ben laughed. That makes you about seven years older than I thought in the park.

    Really? She looked pleased. Thank you…I think. Your aunt’s house must have burned down.

    Yes, he said. That night is one of my clearest memories. Some men with Indian pumps on their backs came to the door and said we’d have to leave. It was very exciting. Aunt Cindy dithered around, picking things up and loading them into her Hudson. Christ, what a night.

    Was she insured?

    No, but the house was rented and we got just about everything valuable into the car, except for the TV. We tried to lift it and couldn’t even budge it off the floor. It was a Video King with a seven-inch screen and a magnifying glass over the picture tube. Hell on the eyes. We only got one channel anyway—lots of country music, farm reports, and Kitty the Klown.

    And you came back here to write a book, she marveled.

    Ben didn’t reply at once. Miss Coogan was opening cartons of cigarettes and filling the display rack by the cash register. The pharmacist, Mr. Labree, was puttering around behind the high drug counter like a frosty ghost. The Air Force kid was standing by the door to the bus, waiting for the driver to come back from the bathroom.

    Yes, Ben said. He turned and looked at her, full in the face, for the first time. She had a very pretty face, with candid blue eyes and a high, clear, tanned forehead. Is this town your childhood? he asked.

    Yes.

    He nodded. Then you know. I was a kid in ’salem’s Lot and it’s haunted for me. When I came back, I almost drove right by because I was afraid it would be different.

    Things don’t change here, she said. Not very much.

    I used to play war with the Gardener kids down in the Marshes. Pirates out by Royal’s Pond. Capture-the-flag and hide-and-go-seek in the park. My mom and I knocked around some pretty hard places after I left Aunt Cindy. She killed herself when I was fourteen, but most of the magic dust had rubbed off me long before that. What there was of it was here. And it’s still here. The town hasn’t changed that much. Looking out on Jointner Avenue is like looking through a thin pane of ice—like the one you can pick off the top of the town cistern in November if you knock it around the edges first—looking through that at your childhood. It’s wavy and misty and in some places it trails off into nothing, but most of it is still all there.

    He stopped, amazed. He had made a speech.

    You talk just like your books, she said, awed.

    He laughed. I never said anything like that before. Not out loud.

    What did you do after your mother…after she died?

    Knocked around, he said briefly. Eat your ice cream.

    She did.

    Some things have changed, she said after a while. Mr. Spencer died. Do you remember him?

    Sure. Every Thursday night Aunt Cindy came into town to do her shopping at Crossen’s store and she’d send me in here to have a root beer. That was when it was on draft, real Rochester root beer. She’d give me a handkerchief with a nickel wrapped up in it.

    They were a dime when I came along. Do you remember what he always used to say?

    Ben hunched forward, twisted one hand into an arthritic claw, and turned one corner of his mouth down in a paralytic twist. Your bladder, he whispered. Those rut beers will destroy your bladder, bucko.

    Her laughter pealed upward toward the slowly rotating fan over their heads. Miss Coogan looked up suspiciously. "That’s perfect! Except he used to call me lassie."

    They looked at each other, delighted.

    Say, would you like to go to a movie tonight? he asked.

    I’d love to.

    What’s closest?

    She giggled. The Cinex in Portland, actually. Where the lobby is decorated with the deathless paintings of Susan Norton.

    Where else? What kind of movies do you like?

    Something exciting with a car chase in it.

    Okay. Do you remember the Nordica? That was right here in town.

    Sure. It closed in 1968. I used to go on double dates there when I was in high school. We threw popcorn boxes at the screen when the movies were bad. She giggled. They usually were.

    They used to have those old Republic serials, he said. Rocket Man. The Return of Rocket Man. Crash Callahan and the Voodoo Death God.

    That was before my time.

    Whatever happened to it?

    That’s Larry Crockett’s real estate office now, she said. The drive-in over in Cumberland killed it, I guess. That and TV.

    They were silent for a moment, thinking their own thoughts. The Greyhound clock showed 10:45 a.m.

    They said in chorus: Say, do you remember—

    They looked at each other, and this time Miss Coogan looked up at both of them when the laughter rang out. Even Mr. Labree looked over.

    They talked for another fifteen minutes, until Susan told him reluctantly that she had errands to run but yes, she could be ready at seven-thirty. When they went different ways, they both marveled over the easy, natural, coincidental impingement of their lives.

    Ben strolled back down Jointner Avenue, pausing at the corner of Brock Street to look casually up at the Marsten House. He remembered that the great forest fire of 1951 had burned almost to its very yard before the wind had changed.

    He thought: Maybe it should have burned. Maybe that would have been better.

    3

    Nolly Gardener came out of the Municipal Building and sat down on the steps next to Parkins Gillespie just in time to see Ben and Susan walk into Spencer’s together. Parkins was smoking a Pall Mall and cleaning his yellowed fingernails with a pocket knife.

    That’s that writer fella, ain’t it? Nolly asked.

    Yep.

    Was that Susie Norton with him?

    Yep.

    Well, that’s interesting, Nolly said, and hitched his garrison belt. His deputy star glittered importantly on his chest. He had sent away to a detective magazine to get it; the town did not provide its deputy constables with badges. Parkins had one, but he carried it in his wallet, something Nolly had never been able to understand. Of course everybody in the Lot knew he was the constable, but there was such a thing as tradition. There was such a thing as responsibility. When you were an officer of the law, you had to think about both. Nolly thought about them both often, although he could only afford to deputy part-time.

    Parkins’s knife slipped and slit the cuticle of his thumb. Shit, he said mildly.

    You think he’s a real writer, Park?

    Sure he is. He’s got three books right in this library.

    True or made up?

    Made up. Parkins put his knife away and sighed.

    Floyd Tibbets ain’t going to like some guy makin’ time with his woman.

    They ain’t married, Parkins said. And she’s over eighteen.

    Floyd ain’t going to like it.

    Floyd can crap in his hat and wear it backward for all of me, Parkins said. He crushed his smoke on the step, took a Sucrets box out of his pocket, put the dead butt inside, and put the box back in his pocket.

    Where’s that writer fella livin’?

    Down to Eva’s, Parkins said. He examined his wounded cuticle closely. He was up lookin’ at the Marsten House the other day. Funny expression on his face.

    Funny? What do you mean?

    Funny, that’s all. Parkins took his cigarettes out. The sun felt warm and good on his face. Then he went to see Larry Crockett. Wanted to lease the place.

    "The Marsten place?"

    Yep.

    What is he, crazy?

    Could be. Parkins brushed a fly from the left knee of his pants and watched it buzz away into the bright morning. Ole Larry Crockett’s been a busy one lately. I hear he’s gone and sold the Village Washtub. Sold it awhile back, as a matter of fact.

    What, that old laundrymat?

    Yep.

    What would anyone want to put in there?

    Dunno.

    Well. Nolly stood up and gave his belt another hitch. Think I’ll take a turn around town.

    You do that, Parkins said, and lit another cigarette.

    Want to come?

    No, I believe I’ll sit right here for a while.

    Okay. See you.

    Nolly went down the steps, wondering (not for the first time) when Parkins would decide to retire so that he, Nolly, could have the job full-time. How in God’s name could you ferret out crime sitting on the Municipal Building steps?

    Parkins watched him go with a mild feeling of relief. Nolly was a good boy, but he was awfully eager. He took out his pocket knife, opened it, and began paring his nails again.

    4

    Jerusalem’s Lot was incorporated in 1765 (two hundred years later it had celebrated its bicentennial with fireworks and a pageant in the park; little Debbie Forester’s Indian princess costume was set on fire by a thrown sparkler and Parkins Gillespie had to throw six fellows in the local cooler for public intoxication), a full fifty-five years before Maine became a state as the result of the Missouri Compromise.

    The town took its peculiar name from a fairly prosaic occurrence. One of the area’s earliest residents was a dour, gangling farmer named Charles Belknap Tanner. He kept pigs, and one of the large sows was named Jerusalem. Jerusalem broke out of her pen one day at feeding time, escaped into the nearby woods, and went wild and mean. Tanner warned small children off his property for years afterward by leaning over his gate and croaking at them in ominous, gore-crow tones: Keep ’ee out o’ Jerusalem’s wood lot, if ’ee want to keep ’ee guts in ’ee belly! The warning took hold, and so did the name. It proves little, except that perhaps in America even a pig can aspire to immortality.

    The main street, known originally as the Portland Post Road, had been named after Elias Jointner in 1896. Jointner, a member of the House of Representatives for six years (up until his death, which was caused by syphilis, at the age of fifty-eight), was the closest thing to a personage that the Lot could boast—with the exception of Jerusalem the pig and Pearl Ann Butts, who ran off to New York City in 1907 to become a Ziegfeld girl.

    Brock Street crossed Jointner Avenue dead center and at right angles, and the township itself was nearly circular (although a little flat on the east, where the boundary was the meandering Royal River). On a map, the two main roads gave the town an appearance very much like a telescopic sight.

    The northwest quadrant of the sight was north Jerusalem, the most heavily wooded section of town. It was the high ground, although it would not have appeared very high to anyone except perhaps a Midwesterner. The tired old hills, which were honeycombed with old logging roads, sloped down gently toward the town itself, and the Marsten House stood on the last of these.

    Much of the northeast quadrant was open land—hay, timothy, and alfalfa. The Royal River ran here, an old river that had cut its banks almost to the base level. It flowed under the small wooden Brock Street Bridge and wandered north in flat, shining arcs until it entered the land near the northern limits of the town, where solid granite lay close under the thin soil. Here it had cut fifty-foot stone cliffs over the course of a million years. The kids called it Drunk’s Leap, because a few years back Tommy Rathbun, Virge Rathbun’s tosspot brother, staggered over the edge while looking for a place to take a leak. The Royal fed the mill-polluted Androscoggin but had never been polluted itself; the only industry the Lot had ever boasted was a sawmill, long since closed. In the summer months, fishermen casting from the Brock Street Bridge were a common sight. A day when you couldn’t take your limit out of the Royal was a rare day.

    The southeast quadrant was the prettiest. The land rose again, but there was no ugly blight of fire or any of the topsoil ruin that is a fire’s legacy. The land on both sides of the Griffen Road was owned by Charles Griffen, who was the biggest dairy farmer south of Mechanic Falls, and from Schoolyard Hill you could see Griffen’s huge barn with its aluminum roof glittering in the sun like a monstrous heliograph. There were other farms in the area, and a good many houses that had been bought by the white-collar workers who commuted to either Portland or Lewiston. Sometimes, in autumn, you could stand on top of Schoolyard Hill and smell the fragrant odor of the field burnings and see the toylike ’salem’s Lot Volunteer Fire Department truck, waiting to step in if anything got out of hand. The lesson of 1951 had remained with these people.

    It was in the southwest area that the trailers had begun to move in, and everything that goes with them, like an exurban asteroid belt: junked-out cars up on blocks, tire swings hanging on frayed rope, glittering beer cans lying beside the roads, ragged wash hung on lines between makeshift poles, the ripe smell of sewage from hastily laid septic tanks. The houses in the Bend were kissing cousins to woodsheds, but a gleaming TV aerial sprouted from nearly every one, and most of the TVs inside were color, bought on credit from Grant’s or Sears. The yards of the shacks and trailers were usually full of kids, toys, pickup trucks, snowmobiles, and motorbikes. In some cases the trailers were well kept, but in most cases it seemed to be too much trouble. Dandelions and witch grass grew ankle-deep. Out near the town line, where Brock Street became Brock Road, there was Dell’s, where a rock ’n’ roll band played on Fridays and a c/w combo played on Saturdays. It had burned down once in 1971 and was rebuilt. For most of the down-home cowboys and their girl friends, it was the place to go and have a beer or a fight.

    Most of the telephone lines were two-, four-, or six-party connections, and so folks always had someone to talk about. In all small towns, scandal is always simmering on the back burner, like your Aunt Cindy’s baked beans. The Bend produced most of the scandal, but every now and then someone with a little more status added something to the communal pot.

    Town government was by town meeting, and while there had been talk ever since 1965 of changing to the town council form with biannual public budget hearings, the idea gained no way. The town was not growing fast enough to make the old way actively painful, although its stodgy, one-for-one democracy made some of the newcomers roll their eyes in exasperation. There were three selectmen, the town constable, an overseer of the poor, a town clerk (to register your car you have to go far out on the Taggart Stream Road and brave two mean dogs who ran loose in the yard), and the school commissioner. The volunteer Fire Department got a token appropriation of three hundred dollars each year, but it was mostly a social club for old fellows on pensions. They saw a fair amount of excitement during grass fire season and sat around the Reliable tall-taling each other the rest of the year. There was no Public Works Department because there were no public water lines, gas mains, sewage, or light-and-power. The CMP electricity pylons marched across town on a diagonal from northwest to southeast, cutting a huge gash through the timberland 150 feet wide. One of these stood close to the Marsten House, looming over it like an alien sentinel.

    What ’salem’s Lot knew of wars and burnings and crises in government it got mostly from Walter Cronkite on TV. Oh, the Potter boy got killed in Vietnam and Claude Bowie’s son came back with a mechanical foot—stepped on a land mine—but he got a job with the post office helping Kenny Danles and so that was all right. The kids were wearing their hair longer and not combing it neatly like their fathers, but nobody really noticed anymore. When they threw the dress code out at the Consolidated High School, Aggie Corliss wrote a letter to the Cumberland Ledger, but Aggie had been writing to the Ledger every week for years, mostly about the evils of liquor and the wonder of accepting Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal savior.

    Some of the kids took dope. Horace Kilby’s boy Frank went up before Judge Hooker in August and got fined fifty dollars (the judge agreed to let him pay the fine with profits from his paper route), but alcohol was a bigger problem. Lots of kids hung out at Dell’s since the liquor age went down to eighteen. They went rip-assing home as if they wanted to resurface the road with rubber, and every now and then someone would get killed. Like when Billy Smith ran into a tree on the Deep Cut Road at ninety and killed both himself and his girl friend, LaVerne Dube.

    But except for these things, the Lot’s knowledge of the country’s torment was academic. Time went on a different schedule there. Nothing too nasty could happen in such a nice little town. Not there.

    5

    Ann Norton was ironing when her daughter burst in with a bag of groceries, thrust a book with a rather thin-faced young man on the back jacket in her face, and began to babble.

    Slow down, she said. Turn down the TV and tell me.

    Susan choked off Peter Marshall, who was giving away thousands of dollars on The Hollywood Squares, and told her mother about meeting Ben Mears. Mrs. Norton made herself nod with calm and sympathetic understanding as the story spilled out, despite the yellow warning lights that always flashed when Susan mentioned a new boy—men now, she supposed, although it was hard to think Susie could be old enough for men. But the lights were a little brighter today.

    Sounds exciting, she said, and put another one of her husband’s shirts on the ironing board.

    He was really nice, Susan said. Very natural.

    Hoo, my feet, Mrs. Norton said. She set the iron on its fanny, making it hiss balefully, and eased into the Boston rocker by the picture window. She reached a Parliament out of the pack on the coffee table and lit it. Are you sure he’s all right Susie?

    Susan smiled a little defensively. Sure, I’m sure. He looks like…oh, I don’t know—a college instructor or something.

    They say the Mad Bomber looked like a gardener, Mrs. Norton said reflectively.

    Moose shit, Susan said cheerfully. It was an epithet that never failed to irritate her mother.

    Let me see the book. She held a hand out for it.

    Susan gave it to her, suddenly remembering the homosexual rape scene in the prison section.

    Air Dance, Ann Norton said meditatively, and began to thumb pages at random. Susan waited, resigned. Her mother would birddog it. She always did.

    The windows were up, and a lazy forenoon breeze ruffled the yellow curtains in the kitchen—which Mom insisted on calling the pantry, as if they lived in the lap of class. It was a nice house, solid brick, a little hard to heat in the winter but cool as a grotto in the summer. They were on a gentle rise of land on outer Brock Street, and from the picture window where Mrs. Norton sat you could see all the way into town. The view was a pleasant one, and in the winter it could be spectacular with long, twinkling vistas of unbroken snow and distance-dwindled buildings casting yellow oblongs of light on the snow fields.

    Seems I read a review of this in the Portland paper. It wasn’t very good.

    I like it, Susan said steadily. And I like him.

    Perhaps Floyd would like him, too, Mrs. Norton said idly. You ought to introduce them.

    Susan felt a real stab of anger and was dismayed by it. She thought that she and her mother had weathered the last of the adolescent storms and even the aftersqualls, but here it all was. They took up the ancient arguments of her identity versus her mother’s experience and beliefs like an old piece of knitting.

    We’ve talked about Floyd, Mom. You know there’s nothing firm there.

    The paper said there were some pretty lurid prison scenes, too. Boys getting together with boys.

    Oh, Mother, for Christ’s sake. She helped herself to one of her mother’s cigarettes.

    No need to curse, Mrs. Norton said, unperturbed. She handed the book back and tapped the long ash on her cigarette into a ceramic ash tray in the shape of a fish. It had been given to her by one of her Ladies’ Auxiliary friends, and it had always irritated Susan in a formless sort of way. There was something obscene about tapping your ashes into a perch’s mouth.

    I’ll put the groceries away, Susan said, getting up.

    Mrs. Norton said quietly, I only meant that if you and Floyd Tibbits are going to be married—

    The irritation boiled over into the old, goaded anger. "What in the name of God ever gave you that idea? Have I ever told you that?"

    I assumed—

    You assumed wrong, she said hotly and not entirely truthfully. But she had been cooling toward Floyd by slow degrees over a period of weeks.

    I assumed that when you date the same boy for a year and a half, her mother continued softly and implacably, that it must mean things have gone beyond the hand-holding stage.

    Floyd and I are more than friends, Susan agreed evenly. Let her make something of that.

    An unspoken conversation hung suspended between them.

    Have you been sleeping with Floyd?

    None of your business.

    What does this Ben Mears mean to you?

    None of your business.

    Are you going to fall for him and do something foolish?

    None of your business.

    I love you, Susie. Your dad and I both love you.

    And to that no answer. And no answer. And no answer. And that was why New York—or someplace—was imperative. In the end you always crashed against the unspoken barricades of their love, like the walls of a padded cell. The truth of their love rendered further meaningful discussion impossible and made what had gone before empty of meaning.

    Well, Mrs. Norton said softly. She stubbed her cigarette out on the perch’s lip and dropped it into his belly.

    I’m going upstairs, Susan said.

    Sure. Can I read the book when you’re finished?

    If you want to.

    I’d like to meet him, she said.

    Susan spread her hands and shrugged.

    Will you be late tonight?

    I don’t know.

    What shall I tell Floyd Tibbits if he calls?

    The anger flashed over her again. Tell him what you want. She paused. You will anyway.

    Susan!

    She went upstairs without looking back.

    Mrs. Norton remained where she was, staring out the window and at the town without seeing it. Overhead she could hear Susan’s footsteps and then the clatter of her easel being pulled out.

    She got up and began to iron again. When she thought Susan might be fully immersed in her work (although she didn’t allow that idea to do more than flitter through a corner of her conscious mind), she went to the telephone in the pantry and called up Mabel Werts. In the course of the conversation she happened to mention that Susie had told her there was a famous author in their midst and Mabel sniffed and said well you must mean that man who wrote Conway’s Daughter and Mrs. Norton said yes and Mabel said that wasn’t writing but just a sexbook, pure and simple. Mrs. Norton asked if he was staying at a motel or—

    As a matter of fact, he was staying downtown at Eva’s Rooms, the town’s only boardinghouse. Mrs. Norton felt a surge of relief. Eva Miller was a decent widow who would put up with no hankypanky. Her rules on women in the rooms were brief and to the point. If she’s your mother or your sister, all right. If she’s not, you can sit in the kitchen. No negotiation on the rule was entertained.

    Mrs. Norton hung up fifteen minutes later, after artfully camouflaging her main objective with small talk.

    Susan, she thought, going back to the ironing board. Oh, Susan, I only want what’s best for you. Can’t you see that?

    6

    They were driving back from Portland along 295, and it was not late at all—only a little after eleven. The speed limit on the expressway after it got out of Portland’s suburbs was fifty-five, and he drove well. The Citroën’s headlights cut the dark smoothly.

    They had both enjoyed the movie, but cautiously, the way people do when they are feeling for each other’s boundaries. Now her mother’s question occurred to her and she said, Where are you staying? Are you renting a place?

    I’ve got a third-floor cubbyhole at Eva’s Rooms, on Railroad Street.

    But that’s awful! It must be a hundred degrees up there!

    I like the heat, he said. "I work well in it. Strip to the waist, turn up the radio, and drink a gallon of beer. I’ve been putting out ten pages a day, fresh copy. There’s some interesting old codgers there, too.

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