Characters in Salem's Lot

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 …

The town has its secrets, and keeps them well. The people don’t know them all-they know old Albie Crane’s wife ran off with a traveling man from New York City or they think they know it.

… a month ago, are moving out because things keep going bump in the night, according to Charles and Amanda Pritchett, who moved here from Portland. The farm, a local landmark on Schoolyard Hill, was previously owned by Charles Griffen. Griffen’s father was …

… friends had tortured themselves deliciously with the stories they had gleaned from their elders; Amy Rawcliffe had a log playhouse in her back yard and they would lock themselves in and sit in the dark, scaring each other about the Marsten House, …

Then the bastard had called him to the office a week later. Rhodes, we suspended Andy Garvey today. Yeah? Not surprised. What was he up to? Bob Thomas caught him letting the air out of his bus tires.

Susan asked a little despairingly. ‘You never used to... to get this low-’ Ann Norton’s head jerked up. Her knitting slid off her lap as she stood up, clapped her hands to Susan’s shoulders, and gave her a smart shake.

‘What’s your mother’s maiden name?’ ‘Ashford,’ Ben said. They had asked him similar questions when he had first recovered consciousness. ‘First-grade teacher?’ ‘Mrs Perkins.

And his teeth - Charlie Rhodes looked down the aisle. Was that Mike Philbrook? Audie James? God Almighty, the Griffen boys were down there! Hal and Jack, sitting near the back with hay in their hair. But they don’t ride on my bus!

Half her head had been blown away by a close-range shot from a thirty-ought-six. . (‘Flies,’ Audrey Hersey always said at this point, speaking with calm authority. ‘Larry said the kitchen was full of em.

I should have done it a long time ago, Mom. For both of us. I was talking to Babs Griffen, and she says there’s a nice little four-room place on Sister’s Lane-’ ‘Oh, she’s offended!’ Mrs Norton remarked to the air.

… hill he could see the Norton house, the grass grown long and yellow in front and behind it, where Bill Norton’s brick barbecue had stood. Some of the windows were broken. Further up the street he pulled in to the curb and looked into the park. The …

Billy Royko dying in a Vietnam helicopter crash two months before the cease-fire; Sally Greer, one of the brightest and most vivacious girls he had …

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.

Larry tried the back door, found it unlocked, and stepped into the kitchen. Birdie Marsten was sprawled in a corner, legs splayed out, feet bare.

Two of them were standing open. He and Bob Greenberg left the new arrival and hurried down quickly. Buddy glanced at the tag on the first door he came to while Bob went down to the next.

Rhodes, we suspended Andy Garvey today. Yeah? Not surprised. What was he up to? Bob Thomas caught him letting the air out of his bus tires. And he had given Charlie Rhodes a long, cold, measuring look.

You eat ‘em or I’ll clout your ass backward, Derek says. He hates them himself. Reggie and Bonnie Sawyer are having a rib roast of beef, frozen corn, french-fried potatoes, and for dessert a chocolate bread pudding with hard sauce.

‘Not positive,’ Matt said. ‘But an ex-student of mine, Brad Campion, works in the Yarmouth liquor store and he says Callahan’s a regular customer. A Jim Beam man, Good taste.’ ‘Could he be talked to?’

… glanced into the wide overhead mirror and saw Mary Kate Griegson passing a note to her little chum Brent Tenney. Little chum, yeah, right. They were banging each other by the sixth grade these days. He pulled over, switching on his Stop flashers. Mary …

Matt was making coffee when Brenton Norbert, the assistant medical examiner, arrived in an elderly gray Dodge. He came in with another man who was carrying a large camera.

Buddy Bascomb was in the middle of a Frenchman joke that had to do with vaginal deodorant spray when he broke off in midsentence and stared down the line …

When Delbert Markey stepped out of his deserted tavern just after eight o’clock, Carl Foreman and a grinning Homer McCaslin stepped out of the shadows and said they had come for a drink.

… his eyes made out a more solid shadow, standing by the stone wall that ran between the road and Carl Smith’s back pasture. The shadow had a manlike form, but there was something... something... ‘Who are you?’ ‘A friend who sees much, Mr Bryant.’

‘No one went by me. I’d swear to it. It must have happened on Carty’s shift. What’s the name on that one?’ ‘McDougall, Randall Fratus. What does this abbreviation inf. mean?’ ‘Infant,’ Buddy said dully.

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.

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 …

The Lot’s former constable, Parkins Gillespie, is living with his sister in Kittery. Charles James, owner of a gas station across from the drugstore, is now running a repair shop in neighboring Cumberland.

… JERUSALEM’S LOT-The Charles V. Pritchett family, who bought a farm in the Cumberland County town of Jerusalem’s Lot only a month ago, are moving out because things keep going bump in the night, according to Charles and Amanda Pritchett, who moved here from Portland.

… grinned at them without meaning, shook his head, held out his hands to show them they were just ole Charlie Rhodes’s hands, blameless, and backed up until his back was jammed against the wide tinted glass of the windshield. ‘Don’t,’ he whispered. They …

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 Danies and so that was …

‘Good day, gentlemen,’ he said, and left. Joe Crane tamped a load of Planter’s into his corncob. Clyde Corliss hawked back and spat a mass of phlegm and chewing tobacco into the dented pale beside the stove.

‘And you shall yet have your vengeance on those who would fill themselves while others want.’ Corey Bryant sank into a great forgetful river, and that river was time, and its waters were red.

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.

May 29, 1976 (p. 1): JERUSALEM ‘S LOT-Possible foul play is suspected in the disappearance of the Daniel Holloway family, who had moved into a house on the Taggart Stream Road in this small Cumberland County township recently.

The man in charge of the SAD 21 motor pool, Dave Felsen, was an old buddy; they went all the way back to Korea together. They understood each other.

The name below the doorbell was Evans. Jimmy nodded. David Evans and family. He worked as a mechanic in the auto department of Sears in Gates Falls.

County Medical Examiner David Rice says Farrington apparently died of a massive hemorrhage, or perhaps internal bleeding... May 20, 1976 (p.

‘Yes.’ ‘I messed around with Davie Barclay, Charles James only all the kids used to call him Sonny Harold Rauberson, Floyd Tibbits-’ ‘Floyd?’ she asked, startled.

… 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 …

He has had damned little appetite since his wife died back in ‘68. Delbert Markey, proprietor of Dell’s, is working his way methodically through the five hamburgers which he has fried himself on the grill.

Franklin’s brother was Derek Boddin, father of Richie (lately deposed king of Stanley Street Elementary School), and Derek had nearly forgotten that Franklin was still alive …

His wife, a hateful old bitch named Elsie, had died in the fall of 1973 (predeceasing him was the one considerate thing she had done in twenty-seven years of marriage), and when his retirement finally came he was going to pack up his dog, a half-cocker mongrel named Doc, and …

… who had gone blind due to some mysterious optic nerve degeneration; Buddy Mayberry’s brother Doug, the only good kid in that whole half-bright clan, drowning at Old Orchard Beach; and drugs, the little death. Not all of them who waded …

… mother said Mrs Evans came over when she heard Sandra McDougall screaming, and Mrs Evans called old Dr Plowman. Plowman didn’t say anything, but Mrs Evans told my mother that she couldn’t see a thing wrong with the baby... except it was dead.’ ‘And …

Like there was only a little of myself left and it was... oh, so pale... ’ ‘I want Dr Reardon to look at you.’ But she seemed not to hear. ‘I’ve had the most lovely dream the last three or four nights, Tony. So real.

… paint was barn-red and had undoubtedly come out of the can of paint that rested inside the door of Dud Rogers’s caretaker shack. ‘Never was closed on Saturday,’ Virgil said. He swung his bottle of beer toward his face, missed his mouth, and poured a …

The main street, known originally as the Portland Post Road, had been named after Elias Jointner in 1896.

His wife, a hateful old bitch named Elsie, had died in the fall of 1973 (predeceasing him was the one considerate thing she had done in twenty-seven years of marriage), and when his …

He went into the rectory, picked up the telephone, and dialed Eva Miller’s boardinghouse. ‘Hello? Mrs Miller? May I speak with Mr Mears?... He’s not. Yes, I see... No, no message. I’ll call tomorrow.

Vickery said Farrington was lying face down outside a low haymow, a pitchfork near one hand.

There were always those who said he’d never be man enough to fill Father Bergeron’s shoes, but he filled ‘em. They were too small for him, as it turned out.’ She opened her eyes wide and looked at them.

The man said stiffly, ‘I am Jesús de la rey Muñoz. Father Gracon has asked me to interpret, as he has no English. Father Gracon has done my family a great service which I may not mention.

4): CUMBERLAND-Mrs Fiona Coggins, a widow who lived alone on the Smith Road in West Cumberland, was reported missing this morning to the Cumberland County sheriff’s office …

‘This will stop him, but it may not stop someone he can use, the way he used Floyd Tibbits. I think he may try to eliminate some of us tonight... some of us or all of us.’ He looked at Jimmy.

‘You have a lawyer in Boston, I believe. One Francis Walsh.’ ‘How do you know that?’ Larry barked. ‘It doesn’t matter. Take the papers to him. He will confirm their validity.

The latter was the story of Frank Buzzey, an escaped convict who begins a new life as a car mechanic in another state, and his eventual recapture.

… and lifelong Falmouth resident was found dead in his barn early this morning by his son-in-law, Frank Vickery. Vickery said Farrington was lying face down outside a low haymow, a pitchfork near one hand. County Medical Examiner David Rice says …

… It was midafternoon when Franklin Boddin and Virgil Rathbun drove up to the slatted wooden gate at the end of the Burns Road fork, two miles beyond Harmony Hill Cemetery.

During the long winters, they were a day-by-day fixture. When Straker drove up in that ‘39 Packard-or was it a ‘40?-it was just misting gently, and Milt and Pat Middler were having a desultory conversation about whether Freddy Overlock’s girl Judy run off in 1957 or ‘58.

… girls he had ever had, killed by her drunken boy friend when she told him she wanted to break up; Gary Coleman, who had gone blind due to some mysterious optic nerve degeneration; Buddy Mayberry’s brother Doug, the only good kid in that whole …

Some lay awake-George Boyer, who had just gotten home from the three-to-eleven shift at the Gates Mill, Win Purinton, sitting and playing solitaire and unable to sleep …

Jimmy said he had consulted with George Gorby on the case. The boy was anemic, all right.

That big fat one with the gimpy back leg was George Middler. Had something in his mouth that looked like a shredded piece of chicken liver. ‘Here you go, George. Here y’are,’ Dud said, and squeezed off.

… ‘You buy a powerful slug o’ shells, Dud,’ George Middler down at the hardware store would say in his fruity voice, pushing the boxes of Remingtons across. ‘Town pay for ‘em?’

… was reported missing this morning to the Cumberland County sheriff’s office by her niece, Mrs Gertrude Hersey. Mrs Hersey told police officers that her aunt was a shut-in and is in poor health. Sheriff’s deputies are investigating, but claim that at …

A good many of the older residents do, too. I wasn’t in the Lot then, but Mabel Werts and Glynis Mayberry and Milt Crossen were. Some of them have made the connection already.’ ‘What connection?’ ‘Come now, Ben.

Police say that the car was registered to Mr Gordon Phillips of Scarborough. According to a neighbor, Phillips and his family had been on their way to see relatives in Yarmouth.

… on the county and could barely walk down to the breakfast table with his arthritis; Vinnie Upshaw; Grover Verrill. They stepped over them and stood by the coffin. Ben glanced down at his watch; it was 6:40. ‘We’re going to take it out there,’ he said. ‘ …

… the setting of the sun, the gratitude and the anticipation of something great and good; or that Hal Griffen has six hot books hidden in the back of his closet which he masturbates over at every opportunity; or that George Middler has a suitcase …

… was getting ready to shut up shop and go home when there was a perfunctory tap on the door and Hank Peters stepped back in. He still looked scared. ‘Forget somethin’, Hank?’ Larry asked. When they had come back from the Marsten House, both …

He runs the gas station on Jointner Avenue. Harold Rauberson is dead. Leukemia.’ ‘They were all older than I, by a year or two. They had a club. Exclusive, you know.

She is worried about the Father, who is out someplace ramming the roads. Harriet Durham and her family are eating pork chops. Carl Smith, a widower since 1957, has one boiled potato and a bottle of Moxie.

And remember that from this point on, we’re criminals.’ Shortly after, he went to the phone and called Maury Green, then County Sheriff Homer McCaslin. Ben got back to Eva’s at about fifteen minutes past midnight and made himself a cup of coffee in the deserted downstairs kitchen.

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 …

He had spoken at some length with an elderly man named Horris from Schoolyard Hill who had been in the Maine Medical Center with advanced cancer of the lower intestine.

He looked up at the Marsten House and spoke slowly. ‘I think that house might be Hubert Marsten’s monument to evil, a kind of psychic sounding board. A supernatural beacon, if you like.

… identified them as Harriet Durham and Glynis Mayberry-were talking about the Ryerson boy finding Irwin Purinton’s dog. She sat quietly, breathing through her mouth, so as to give no sign of her presence on the line.

But they had not. Danny Glick had found and battened upon Jack Griffen and Jack had gone to his brother Hal’s room and had finally ended his worries of school and books and unyielding fathers forever.

I will meet you at the office, if that’s agreeable.’ ‘Fine. Do you-’ ‘Mr Burke?’ It was Jackie, she of the heavy biceps. ‘Weasel’s passed out in the men’s room. Do you suppose-’ ‘Oh? Goodness, yes. Ben, would you-’ ‘Sure.’

Jackson Hersey picked up a Saturday Evening Post, began to flip through it, and did a double-take. A dollar bill had been taped neatly to each page.

The boy Danny had heard discussed in the store was a ten-year-old named Jerry Kingfield. He might have gone down in the quicksand screaming and hollering, but if he had, no one had heard him.

… 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.

That’s just right. Listen-’ ‘I used to sell him number two fuel oil when I was driving for Jim Webber,’ Reggie said, smiling with gentle reminiscence. ‘That was four or five years before I met this high-box bitch here.

‘What’s odd about that? It’s unfortunate, of course-’ ‘My doctor is a young fellow named Jimmy Cody, Ben. I had him in school. He was a little heller then, a good doctor now. This is gossip, mind you. Hearsay.’ ‘Okay.’

… which runs a short distance from Jointner Avenue to a dead end behind the Municipal Building, Joe Crane is given a left-handed gift from the gods. He has finished a small bowl of Shredded Wheat and is sitting down to watch the TV when he feels …

She told her parents and friends that John Bannock had been coming to her in the night and she had been unfaithful with him.

Some of the other people that the state police would like to locate or at least hear from include John Groggins, pastor of the Jerusalem’s Lot Methodist Church; Father Donald Callahan, Parish priest of St Andrew’s; Mabel Werts, a local widow who was …

Larry looked up, his face pale and shaken. ‘This is a joke. Who put you up to it? John Kelly?’ ‘I know no John Kelly. I don’t joke.’

By John Lewis Press-Herald Features Editor JERUSALEM’S LOT-Jerusalem’s Lot is a small town east of Cumberland and twenty miles north of Portland.

… and Weasel Craig beside her; Mabe Mullican from the room at the end of the second-floor hall; John Snow, who had been on the county and could barely walk down to the breakfast table with his arthritis; Vinnie Upshaw; Grover Verrill. They …

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 …

… and Milt and Pat Middler were having a desultory conversation about whether Freddy Overlock’s girl Judy run off in 1957 or ‘58. They both agree that she had run off with that Saladmaster salesman from Yarmouth, and they both agreed that he …

… back with a mechanical foot-stepped on a land mine-but he got a job with the post office helping Kenny Danies 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 …

Some of the older women in town-Mabel Werts, Glynis Mayberry, Audrey Hersey- remember that Larry McLeod found some charred papers in the upstairs fireplace, but none of them know that the papers were the accumulation of twelve years’ …

… 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 …

… s some word, all right, he thought, and his eyes crawled over the front of his secretary’s blouse), Lawrence Crockett was, without doubt, the richest man in ‘salem’s Lot and one of the richest in Cumberland County, although there was nothing about his …

… talked with unceasing constancy about other funerals she had attended all the way back to 1930); Lester Durham and his wife, Harriet; Paul Mayberry and his wife, Glynis; Pat Middler, Joe Crane, Vinnie Upshaw, and Clyde Corliss, all riding in a car …

It was. Milt was out front, fussing a plastic drop cover over his rack of newspapers, and Lester Silvius was standing next to him, dressed in a yellow slicker. ‘Don’t see the rest of the crew, though,’ Ben said.

… and her friends hadn’t even been in for a soda at the fountain-not that she missed that crowd-and Loretta Starcher hadn’t stopped in for The New York Times. It was still under the counter, neatly folded. Loretta was the only person in Jerusalem’s Lot who …

By the way, the Lubert one is good-he came to the Lot and researched it himself in 1946-but the Snow chapter is speculative trash.’

… of the people Ben had lived with and broken bread with: Eva Miller, and Weasel Craig beside her; Mabe Mullican from the room at the end of the second-floor hall; John Snow, who had been on the county and could barely walk down to the breakfast table …

… of the Jerusalem’s Lot Methodist Church; Father Donald Callahan, Parish priest of St Andrew’s; Mabel Werts, a local widow who was prominent in ‘salem’s Lot church and social functions; Lester and Harriet Durham, a local couple who both worked at …

Is there any place where you can get one at this hour?’ ‘Well, there’s Marie Boddin. I could walk-’ ‘No. Stay off the streets. Stay in the house. Make one yourself, even if it only means gluing two sticks together.

On the darkened screen of his eyes he saw the mortician’s table, saw the sheet covering Marjorie Glick’s body start to tremble, saw her hand fall out and begin its delicate toe dance on the air- He opened his eyes.

… glanced into the wide overhead mirror and saw Mary Kate Griegson passing a note to her little chum Brent Tenney. Little chum, yeah, right. They were banging each other by the sixth grade these days. He pulled over, switching on his Stop flashers. Mary Kate and Brent looked up, dismayed.

‘You and him should have a lot to talk about.’ ‘I remember a girl named Maureen Talbot,’ Ben said. ‘She came and got my aunt’s wash and brought it back all folded in a wicker basket. The basket only had one handle.’

The top banged up and McCaslin shot a brown stream of tobacco juice into it. Maury Green jumped. ‘Would either of you like to sort of revise your story?’ he asked quietly, and the back-country twang was gone from his voice.

Just like that fella at Topsham Fair... what was his name? Mr Mephisto.

‘First-grade teacher?’ ‘Mrs Perkins. She rinsed her hair.’ ‘Father’s middle name?’ ‘Merton.’ ‘Any dizziness or nausea’?’ ‘No.’ ‘Experience of strange odors, colors, or-’ ‘No, no, and no. I feel fine.’

The initials engraved on the inner curve were MCR Michael Corey Ryerson. For the moment, in the dark, she believed. She believed it all.

… change of linen, came with their rent-and shortly the peace would be broken as Grover Verrill and Mickey Sylvester came down to slop up their cereal before leaving for the textile mill over in Gates Falls where they both worked. As if her thought had …

He had gone to that damned wet-ass principal and reported Mike Philbrook and Audie James. He had known it was them-who had to see? Are you sure it was them, Rhodes? I told you, didn’t I?

I wasn’t in the Lot then, but Mabel Werts and Glynis Mayberry and Milt Crossen were. Some of them have made the connection already.’ ‘What connection?’ ‘Come now, Ben. The connection is pretty obvious, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s not. Let me tell you one other thing before I tell you exactly what I think. Something Minella Corey said. She said there are evil men in the world, truly evil men. Sometimes we hear of them, but more often they work in absolute darkness.

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 …

Anybody. Don’t even stop if it’s someone you know.’ ‘I never pick up hitchhikers,’ Miss Coogan said righteously. ‘And when you get home, stay away from Jerusalem’s Lot,’ Callahan went on. He was looking at her fixedly.

Every day for you.’ Kids began to drift over to watch Richie stomp the new boy. Miss Holcomb, who was playground monitor this week, was out front watching the little kids on the swings and seesaws. ‘What’s your racket?’

It was the face of Mr Flip, his own personal bogeyman, the thing that hid in the closet during the days and came out after his mother closed the bedroom door.

‘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.

‘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.

Her voice was reedy and thin, close to hysteria. ‘Who are you?’ Ben asked. ‘Mrs Curless. I’m Father Callahan’s housekeeper. Where’s the Father? What are you doing?’ Her hands came together and began to war with each other.

‘First-grade teacher?’ ‘Mrs Perkins. She rinsed her hair.’ ‘Father’s middle name?’ ‘Merton.’ ‘Any dizziness or nausea’?’ ‘No.’

But if Mrs Rodin takes over the class play for me-the students call her Mrs Rodan after a quaint Japanese science fiction film-that area would be used a …

He leaned forward with his hands clasped between his knees and spoke for a long time. Muñoz listened intently, his face carefully expressionless. When the priest finished, Muñoz said: ‘He says there are strange things in the world.

… front step of the brick Municipal Building, looking through his high-powered Zeiss binoculars when Nolly Gardener drove up in the town’s police car and got out, hitching up his belt and picking out his seat at the same time. ‘What’s up, Park?’ he asked, …

He fetched Norris Varney, who was constable at the time, and three or four of the hangers-on from Crossen’s Store-Milt’s father was still running the place in those …

‘No.’ By the time he reached the second-floor landing he could hear Matt on the phone to Parkins Gillespie, answering questions. The words melted into a background murmur as he went down the hall.

… When Straker drove up in that ‘39 Packard-or was it a ‘40?-it was just misting gently, and Milt and Pat Middler were having a desultory conversation about whether Freddy Overlock’s girl Judy run off in 1957 or ‘58. They both agree that she had run off …

John Groggins, the Methodist minister, was a hypocritical old poop, and Patterson, from the Church of the Latter-day Saints and Followers of the Cross, was as crazy as a bear stuck in a honey tree.

… other funerals she had attended all the way back to 1930); Lester Durham and his wife, Harriet; Paul Mayberry and his wife, Glynis; Pat Middler, Joe Crane, Vinnie Upshaw, and Clyde Corliss, all riding in a car driven by Milt Crossen (Milt had opened …

‘Mrs Glick? What about her?’ ‘She ‘s dead. ‘Of what?’ ‘Pauline Dickens seemed to think it was a heart attack,’ Callahan said, but hesitatingly. ‘Has anyone else died in the Lot today?’

‘Mr Sawyer... Reggie... ’ ‘Your name’s Bryant, ain’t it? Your daddy’s Pete Bryant, ain’t be?’ Corey’s head bobbed madly in agreement. ‘Yeah, that’s right. That’s just right.

‘Hey there, Mr Mears, howya doin’? Where your Citrowan?’ ‘Laid up, Sonny. Where’s Pete?’ Pete Cook was Sonny’s part-time help, and lived in town. Sonny did not. ‘Never showed up today. Don’t matter. Things been slow, anyway.

… According to State Police Chief Peter McFee, ‘We’ve got tracers out on a great many people from Jerusalem’s Lot-but that isn’t the only Maine town where people have dropped out of sight.

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 …

‘When I finish my coffee, I’ll go home and see what horror Rachel has produced for my Sunday dinner. Here is the key. Lock up when you go, Jimmy.’ Jimmy tucked it away in his pocket. ‘I will.

Needless to say, any possibility of a deal went right down the chute with Ralph Miller. The sawmill that he had saved in 1951 closed for good in February of 1960.

… Chapter Four DANNY GLICK AND OTHERS 1 Danny and Ralphie Glick had gone out to see Mark Petrie with orders to be in by nine, and when they hadn’t come home by ten past, Marjorie Glick called the Petrie …

Sad excuse for a human being. He had baptized the baby. Randall Fratus McDougall. Conceived in the back seat of Royce McDougall’s car, probably during the second feature of a drive-in double bill.

It concerns a good friend of mine, Father Raymond Bissonette, who has been ministering to a parish in Cornwall for some Years now-along the so-called Tin Coast. Do you know of it?’

The pounding went on monotonously, with regularity but no rhythm. ‘Come on in,’ Reggie Sawyer called. The pounding stopped. There was a long pause and then the doorknob turned, very slowly, until it had reached full cock.

Here now! What are you doing?’ Ben turned around. It was Rhoda Curless, Father Callahan’s housekeeper, who had been sitting in the first pew and twisting a rosary helplessly between her fingers.

… and Danny had been on their way to see the night Ralphie disappeared) and his mother and father; Richie Boddin and family; Mabel Werts in a car containing Mr and Mrs William Norton (sitting in the back seat with her cane planted between her swelled …

… 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 …

To Romeo Poulin he described this process as going into the tunnel of love with girl A, screwing girl B in the car behind you, and ending up holding hands …

Lawrence Crockett called up Royal Snow and invited him over to the office to play some cribbage. When Royal pulled up front and walked in, Lawrence and his wife fell on him.

He had baptized the baby. Randall Fratus McDougall. Conceived in the back seat of Royce McDougall’s car, probably during the second feature of a drive-in double bill. Tiny screaming little thing.

That next one now, that was that slutty little Ruthie Crockett, the one who didn’t wear no bra to school and was always elbowing her chums and sniggering when Dud passed on the street. Bang.

Billy Royko dying in a Vietnam helicopter crash two months before the cease-fire; Sally Greer, one of the brightest and most vivacious girls he had ever had, killed by her drunken boy friend when she told him she wanted to break up; …

‘Have you heard how the baby died?’ ‘My mother said Mrs Evans came over when she heard Sandra McDougall screaming, and Mrs Evans called old Dr Plowman.

‘Well, Floyd beat him up,’ Eva said unhappily. ‘Right out in my parking lot. Sheldon Corson and Ed Craig went out and dragged him off.’ ‘Ben. Is Ben all right?’ ‘I guess not.’ ‘What is it?’ She was holding the phone very tightly.

… with bouffant hairdos and their names written in gold thread on their white blouses (Jackie, Toni, Shirley) circulated to the tables and booths. Behind the bar, Dell was drawing beers, and at the far end, a hawk-like man with his hair greased …

Nolly turned the radio down and went on snapping his fingers. ‘Hello?’ Parkins said. ‘Constable Gillespie?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Agent Tom Hanrahan here, Sir. I’ve got the information you requested.’ ‘Good of you to get back so quick.’ ‘We haven’t got much of a hook for you.’ ‘That’s okay,’ Parkins said.

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.

… with bouffant hairdos and their names written in gold thread on their white blouses (Jackie, Toni, Shirley) circulated to the tables and booths. Behind the bar, Dell was drawing beers, and at the far end, a hawk-like man with his hair …

‘Awful thing,’ she said, her eyes straying to the empty house across the road. Tony Glick’s car sat in the driveway like a large and dusty dog that had been chained and then abandoned.

‘Ayuh,’ Vinnie said, and paused. ‘That was a thirty-nine, though. My half brother Vic had one. Was the first car he ever owned. Bought it used, he did, in 1944.

… who had been on the county and could barely walk down to the breakfast table with his arthritis; Vinnie Upshaw; Grover Verrill. They stepped over them and stood by the coffin. Ben glanced down at his watch; it was 6:40. ‘We’re going to take it out …

… 6 It was midafternoon when Franklin Boddin and Virgil Rathbun drove up to the slatted wooden gate at the end of the Burns Road fork, two miles beyond Harmony Hill Cemetery. They were in Franklin’s 1957 …

In some cases, sheep have been disemboweled. Deputy Game Warden Upton Pruitt said ‘As you know, this situation has worsened a good deal in southern Maine... May 29, 1976 (p.

… ties, were the bodies of the people Ben had lived with and broken bread with: Eva Miller, and Weasel Craig beside her; Mabe Mullican from the room at the end of the second-floor hall; John Snow, who had been on the county and could barely walk …