Characters in The Mist

His wife had died the previous November. Cancer. Aggie Bibber told Steffy that. Aggie was our resident necrologist. Every neighborhood has one.

Her eyes were glistening. I leaned over and patted her shoulder. “I’m so worried about Alan,” she said. “He’s dead, Davey. In my heart, I’m sure he’s dead.” “No, Hattie. You don’t know any such thing.” “But I feel it’s true.

She rooted in her purse again and brought out a box of Smith & Wesson ammunition. “I’m Amanda Dumfries,” she said to Miller. “This gun . . . my husband’s idea. He thought I should have it for protection.

An old man with grizzled white hair who introduced himself as Ambrose Cornell said he had a shotgun in the trunk of his car. “I’ll try for it, if you want.”

A little boy named David Drayton with his father, the famous artist Andrew Drayton, whose painting Christine Standing Alone hung in the White House.

Then it would fade back to gray. And the stuff is swirling around. Even Arnie Simms said he felt like something was going on out there, and Arnie’s almost as blind as a bat.” “What about the others?”

“I’ve heard stuff from maybe two dozen people,” Ollie said. “Justine Robards. Nick Tochai. Ben Michaelson. You can’t keep secrets in small towns. Things get out.

I had even heard—was it from old Bill Giosti?—that Mrs. Carmody could be seen (in total confidence) about your love life; that if you were having the bedroom miseries, she could give …

“The boathouse is all bashed! There’s a dock on the rocks . . . and trees in the boat cove . . . Jesus Christ!” “Billy Drayton!” Steff thundered. “Sorry, Ma—but you gotta—wow!” He was gone again. “Having spoken, the doomsayer departs,” I said, and that made Steff giggle again.

… the not-so-dulcet tones of my next-door neighbor, the renowned lawyer and lakefront-property-owner, Brenton Norton. I moved down a little closer to the water, pretending to stroll toward the dock beached on our breakwater. Now I could see Norton. He was …

We were all together by the meat counter, all but Bud Brown. He had thanked us for the invitation and then declined it.

And I could see it when it twisted around the thigh of Buddy Eagleton’s jeans. He screamed and grabbed for the first thing handy, which happened to be the telephone.

I patted my hip pocket. Her eyes shifted to Norton. “I’m very sorry about Carla, Brent. We all were.” “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.” There was another moment of awkward silence which Billy broke.

“Any ideas?” I asked Bud and Ollie. “Hold on a sec,” the man near Hatlen said. “I’m Dan Miller. From Lynn, Mass. You don’t know me, no reason why you should, but I got a place on Highland Lake. Bought it just this year.

“Yours will be head on the list, you . . . you bohemian.” “Mr. David Drayton has got something to tell you,” Ollie said, “and I think you had better all listen up, in case you were planning on going home.”

“These are different atoms, son.” “Oh, yeah,” Billy muttered, giving in. Dick Muehler, our insurance agent, said the Arrowhead Project was an agricultural station the government was running, no more or less.

Gault pointed out that in the forties Weird Tales had only been able to pay a pittance, and that in the fifties it went broke.

… I had a dream that I saw God walking across Harrison on the far side of the lake, a God so gigantic that above the waist He was lost in a clear blue sky. In the dream I could hear the rending crack and splinter of breaking trees as God …

Miller nodded. “Those pink bugs,” he said. “They’re all gone. So are the birds. Hank Vannerman said the last one hit the windows around four. Apparently the . . . the wildlife . . . is a lot more active when it’s dark.”

She seemed as happy to see him as he was to see her, and in a little while they came over. Hattie Turman was a tall, thin woman with lovely red hair just beginning to streak gray.

The seventh was Hilda Reppler. Miller and Hatlen tried halfheartedly to talk her out of coming. She would have none of it. I didn’t even try.

Janine Lawless, our postlady, said it was a geological survey having something to do with shale oil.

“But it feels right in my hand.” She looked him over closely, and her eye was cold. “Jim Grondin, isn’t it? Didn’t I have you in school?” Jim’s lips stretched in an uneasy egg-suck grin. “Yes’m. Me and my sister Pauline.”

“Brent, what happened to that man who came in raving about something in the mist getting John Lee Frovin?” “The guy with the nosebleed?” “Yes, him.”

“I’ve heard stuff from maybe two dozen people,” Ollie said. “Justine Robards. Nick Tochai. Ben Michaelson. You can’t keep secrets in small towns. Things get out.

There were about seven of them, all out-of-staters except for Lou Tattinger, who ran the Pine Tree Car Wash. Lou didn’t need any excuse to sniff the cork, as the saying was.

“Proposing? Why, I am proposing that you prepare to meet your God, Michael Hatlen.” She gazed around at all of us. “Prepare to meet your God!”

I took him back by the long white meat cabinet that ran the length of the store at the back. Mr. McVey, the butcher, was still there. We nodded at each other, the best we could do under the circumstances.

… sleep . . . if I can sleep and not be haunted until daybreak by the faces of Ollie Weeks and Mrs. Carmody and Norm the bag-boy . . . and by Steff’s face, half-shadowed by the wide brim of her sunhat. There is a restaurant here, a typical HoJo …

Hopefully, we’ll be able to bring something back to aid Mrs. Clapham.” She was the lady who had been trampled yesterday, when the bugs came.

“Mr. Giosti, the air’s full of atoms,” Billy had said. “That’s what Mrs. Neary says. Mrs. Neary says everything’s full of atoms.” Bill Giosti gave my son Bill a long, bloodshot glance that finally deflated him.

We didn’t get going until 9:30 A.M. Seven of us went: Ollie, Dan Miller, Mike Hatlen, Myron LaFleur’s erstwhile buddy Jim (also hungover, but seemingly determined to find some way to atone), Buddy Eagleton, myself.

… center of my own fears, on the sense of almost foregone doom that had gripped me since I had seen Norm dragged out through the loading door. You could only see the sun through the mist as a little silver coin. It was like being on Venus. It …

I’ve got to get some sleep . . . if I can sleep and not be haunted until daybreak by the faces of Ollie Weeks and Mrs. Carmody and Norm the bag-boy . . . and by Steff’s face, half-shadowed by the wide brim of her sunhat.

Jim’s lips stretched in an uneasy egg-suck grin. “Yes’m. Me and my sister Pauline.” “Too much to drink last night?”

The ’Gansett beer had flowed like water and my uncle Reuben took a dive into the lake with all his clothes on, even his deck-shoes. In those days there were still deer in these woods.

I was getting scared, too. The confusion was mounting. Sally, the checker by Bud Brown, started away and he grabbed her back by the collar of her red smock. It ripped.

I remembered looking at the bruise and thinking, When she got that, she was still Stephanie Stepanek, and feeling something like wonder. Then we had made love, and outside it was spitting snow from a dull gray December sky.

… of agony, twisting and turning crazily and at last falling from the bags, bouncing off the body of Tom Smalley—who was dead beyond any doubt or question—and finally landing on the floor. Its wings buzzed madly, but they weren’t taking it anywhere; …

For twelve years it had been sagging tiredly in Tommy Ellitch’s back field, up to its hips in sunflowers, goldenrod, and Lolly-come-see-me.

… light . . . and sometimes he pulls out the plugs . . . little Victor does . . . and Wanda gets . . . bored watching him after a while . . . she’s just eight . . .” She stopped talking and just looked at us. I …

“Yeah?” “Yeah. Victor McAllister says they lectercute people for it.” “Well, you tell Vic he’s full of what makes the grass grow green.” “Horseshit, right?”

I asked Walter, and he said he had the same feeling, that parts of the mist would go darker for a minute—sometimes just a little smudge, sometimes a big …

he likes that light . . . and sometimes he pulls out the plugs . . . little Victor does . . . and Wanda gets . . . bored watching him after a while . . . she’s just eight . . .” She stopped talking and just looked …