'Salem's Lot (1)

by Stephen King

Onward with the large project of rereading Stephen King's books in the order they were published in. I have often professed my adoration for the man and to those not giving him his due credit, I offer this (and it is not even scary):

The telephone wires make an odd humming on clear, cool days, almost as if vibrating with the gossip that is transmitted through them, and it is a sound like no other - the lonely sounds of voices flying over space. The telephone poles are gray and splintery, and the freezes and thaws of winter have heaved them into leaning postures that are casual. They are not businesslike and military, like phone poles anchored in concrete. Their bases are black with tar if they are beside paved roads, and floured with dust if beside the back roads. Old weathered cleat marks show on their surfaces where linemen have climbed to fix something in 1946 or 1953 or 1969. Birds - crows, sparrows, robins, starlings - roost on the humming wires and sit in hunched silence, and perhaps they hear the foreign human sounds through their taloned feet. If so, their beady eyes give no sign. The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep in the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.

If you say that what you just read there is not beautiful writing, then you are wrong.

Now, about the book at hand:

Part I of 'Salem's Lot is called The Marsten House and sets the stage, if you will, for the horrors to come. We are introduced to the small town folk of Jerusalem's Lot, the kind of place where everyone knows their neighbor and people watch out for each other. There is, however, this dark spot in the town's history. Years before, when the Marsten House was occupied, four children disappeared (some of their bodies turned up later giving a perfectly reasonable explanation as to their destinies).

Now, the Marsten House has been bought by two business associates that are about to open an exclusive antique shop. Only one of the men, a Mr Straker, is ever seen in public while the other, Mr Barlow is away 'on business'.

Also new in town is Ben Mears, a writer with one successful book under his belt. He spent some time in town with his aunt when he was a boy and is back now to about the town and the house. We meet a host of characters, like local law enforcement, the man Straker bought the property from, Susan Norton, who Ben starts up a relationship with and some of the kids of the town.

Then one night, little Ralphie Glick disappears while out with his brother Danny. Danny told Ralphie about ghost in the forest to scare him but when Ralphie claims to see something that might be a ghost, he becomes just as scared as his little brother. Back home he cannot remember what happened to Ralphie and shortly after gets sick and - just when he appears to be getting better - drops dead.

And by the end of the chapter school teacher Matt Burke gets the first sense and hears the sounds of what may be a vampire sucking blood right on the other side of the door.