Cat's Musings

Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Content Warning: Child death, child abuse, sexual assault, domestic abuse

I’m not going to pretend I’m not super late to the party with this. So, rather than avoid it, my commentary on this book is going to have spoilers about certain scenes and plot elements. I won’t do a blow-by-blow re-telling of the story, but I will reveal some potentially big developments if you haven’t read, or somehow are unaware of, Stephen King’s 1975 horror novel 'Salem’s Lot. The spoilers will be below the picture of wooden aliens below.

I read The Dark Tower series in high school. I started it my freshman year, and then Stephen King wrapped up his last three books in the series when I was going through high school. My mom was a lover of horror, but she preferred reading monster romance books. My father liked Stephen King, but I always struggled to get into the writing as I thought the pacing was too slow. So, I was not familiar with his horror books.

As an adult, this is the second book from Stephen King’s horror catalog that I’ve read.

Salem’s Lot follows Ben Mears, Susan Norton, and several other point of view characters in the fictional village of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. Through these many POVs, King explores the small town corruption of the Lot, both mortal and supernatural. Through powerful descriptions of primal fear and escalating terror as evil befalls the small town.

TL:DR: It’s a good book, and worth a read, but definitely check out the Content Warnings on Storygraph before reading as it can be disturbing, even fifty years later.

Welcome Earthlings! Spoilers ahead!

Rooting for the Devil

One of the major strengths of the book is the variety of POVs. Some of the most disturbing evil is, bizarrely, not vampire Barlow. Rather, much of the horror comes from perfectly normal humans. To list a few, there is child abuse and child endangerment, grooming, sexual assault, rape, and attempted forced impregnation across the minor characters. There are also many homophobic slurs, but these are directed toward less traditionally masculine male characters (who are counted among the heroes) from the more antagonistic humans.

Early on, Randy McDougall (a baby) is struck full in the face by his mother, who is also a victim of grooming and spousal abuse by her drunkard husband. This scene still gives me chills even as I recall it because of how viscerally and vividly mortal it is in its cruelty. Randy is one of the earlier vampires and when he contributes to the death of his parents, you can’t help but feel cathartic. Randy may be a baby, but becoming a vampire feels like an improvement for the boy.

Not every character is repugnant, of course. Susan Norton is unambiguously a good person, and her death hangs heavy over the narrative. While Barlow’s terror affects everyone, good, bad, or simply trying to survive, the way King frames their deaths changes. Susan’s death is heard, but not seen, by Mark Petrie despite Susan being a POV character. Contrast this death scene with more cruel characters. Reggie Sawyer (the aforementioned rapist) is the POV to his own death, and the narration focuses on the fear and powerlessness he experiences at the hand of an undead Cory Bryant (his wife's affair partner). After reading about Reggie’s sexual abuse of his wife, it’s hard not to pump your fist in the air when he dies. His last moments are seeing his wife die happily as she chooses Cory, at least in part due to his vampiric compulsion.

I don’t know if causing the reader to look inward at their own bloodlust was the intention, but that's what I did.

Primal Fear

One of King’s greatest skills is translating into words the sensation of fear. My mother was a witch - literally. She once told me a story about how her friend summoned a demon for her to see once, and was only protected by a ring of salt and the Lord’s Prayer, among many other stories of her hunting ghosts, and engaging in magical warfare alongside other Catholic witches in New Orleans. I still ponder what exactly my mom experienced. However, whenever I would encounter something I thought may have been from the paranormal, I felt a fear so powerful, fueled by a child’s imagination. I don’t think any of the monsters I was sure were encroaching on me as a child were real, but the fear certainly was.

"The basis of all human fears, he thought. A closed door, slightly ajar.” -Stephen King, ‘Salem’s Lot

King’s descriptions from the POVs of humans as they stand against Barlow captures exactly that same fear. It’s the fear of being prey.

Another place where the story shines is how the horror tension steadily rises throughout the entire story. Barlow is, on his own, not a scary villain. The introduction of him is terrifying because of when it happens.

The first quarter or so of the story is all normal small town life, with the entire community reeling from the death of a child. Believable for a small town like Jerusalem’s Lot. Our first real brush with primal horror comes from the POV of Mike Ryerson, the local grave digger. He is covering up the grave of Danny Glick when some strange compulsion causes him to begin digging as he seems to go into some manic state. We know Mike by this point, and have no indication that this is normal behavior for him. Cut that with a sense of urgency in the narration as the sun sets, and the Marsten House looms ominously over the graveyard. The tension and horror slowly ratcheted up to a point that had me unable to stop reading by the time Susan takes her fateful journey up to the Marsten House, and the world rapidly falls into hell.

Conclusion

This book was really good, and old enough to where I could really bite into it analytically (heh) and veer into spoiler territory.

Hope you had fun; Thanks for reading.

#rambling #reading