’Salem’s Lot

I am a Vampire Aficionado, having Immersed myself in the subject since childhood. Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot”, is a superior story. I have read it uncounted times, viewed both films innumerable times. I love it sooooo much that it is my FAVOURITE VAMPIRE STORY EVER

Good read.

Scary as shizzle and teeth to die for

OK.

At the time of writing (Oct 2019), I’m forty-seven.

Remember that number, OK?

Right, the book: ‘Salem’s Lot.

In no particular order.

It started slowly. Very slowly. It crawled. But, round about 15%

(Yes, I read on a Kindle so talk about % now rather than page numbers…)

of the way in, I realised that the crawling plot had, in fact, been tying loose knots around my imagination. And when the first few people disappeared, those knots started tightening. That didn’t stop until the end of the novel. And that’s the thing – no one and nothing is sacred in this story. From the initial, chilling sacrifice to the Lord of Flies to the final show down. People drop like, well, flies, I guess. They are there and then they’re gone.

The problem is, most of these people come back. After dark. And these are not nice vampires. They don’t sparkle. They don’t come armed with comedy accents and cliches and dress in cloaks. They are unpleasant and, in some cases, tragic. But the nastiness doesn’t stop there. There’s a house – The Marsten House. Its cellar is almost as scary as some of the monsters. As the author says in the foreword: ‘it’s one of the scary ones.’

But, outside of Barlow and his vampires, and the Marsten House and its cellar, and the superb depictions of some very messed up people there were a few things that jarred.

1 – the vast number of peripheral characters was hard to follow. We’re talking about a town’s worth. Many appear and disappear then reappear and I wasn’t always sure who was who. Are you the useless cop? The horny (pervy) dump manager? The wifebeater. And so on…

2 – the ending was over too quickly. The set up to the final moments were chillingly good, but the final resolution? Over too soon. Maybe it’s better that way rather than turning the last pages into a B-movie gore schlock fest?

3 – where are the rats? They exist in the deleted scenes at the end of the book but were culled from the finished version. I’d have preferred they were kept as some of those scenes are terrifying.

All in all, though, this is another one of those books where I found myself wondering why I had never read it before.

So. Back to my age. You remember how old I am, right? Go check it you’ve forgotten. I’ll wait.

Back already?

OK.

I read the bulk of this book whilst staying in a largish flat in London. I was on my own. Reading late in the evening. Suffering from insomnia. One night – I think it was near the end of the book when things had really gone belly up for the inhabitants of the Lot – I couldn’t sleep. Not because of my insomnia, but because a doubt had crept up on me, rat-like, whiskers tickling the toes of my imagination. Who, or what, was in the other rooms in the flat? I was there on my own, right? Of course I was. Just me. No one else. Not a soul. Only little old me…

Yup.

A forty-seven year old man got out of bed to check there were no monsters in the closet, under the bed, in the other rooms or hiding on the landing.

Are you laughing at me?

You should be…

Now go read the book. It’s scarily good.

PS Ben Mears (the protagonist) is an author, a ‘serious-minded person’. At one point he meets a young woman’s parents for dinner. After a few beers he goes home while the evening’s young because he wants to write. The reason he gives the woman’s dad is that he owes his current book some pages. I’m paraphrasing (badly), but I think it’s a great idea: an author owing their book words. Guess where I’m going now.

Loved it !

My first Stephen King read from over 40 years ago. Still holds up.

Salem’s Lot is a vampire story set in a small New England town called Jerusalem’s Lot, and I’m sorry, but I’ve already forgotten as to why it became Salem’s Lot. Ben Marsten, the protagonist, is a writer of pulp fiction and he has returned to Salem to exorcize some boyhood fears and to write about an infamous mansion called the Marsten House, that sits up on a hill overlooking the town. It has an unsavory history and has earned a reputation of being a rather spooky place. Ben wants to research the history and write about the house as a historical piece of fiction, his next novel. Right around the same time that Ben moves to the town, two gentlemen purchase the Marsten mansion, move in, and open a business in Salem, an upscale furniture shop, creating suspicion and distrust amongst the locals. Soon a child disappears, and people begin to die mysteriously.

I found Salem’s Lot well written and the use of symbolism skillfully woven throughout the story. The novel is a modern-day Dracula story borrowing on some of the same themes and gothic tropes as Dracula. Some of King’s style seems inspired by Shirley Jackson, who wrote about the plain and everyday beset with elements of horror. The Marsten House in Salem’s Lot is like a living entity itself, the town scarred by its sinister history. King talks a lot about darkness and writes, “the town knew about darkness.” Again, like the house, the town has taken on a life of its own and is a reflection of the darkness and inner demons that many of the residents struggle with beneath the surface of their mundane blue-collar lives. Like many small towns, it has an incestuous quality in that there is a distrust and shunning of the stranger and a clinging to and acceptance only of what is familiar. But the town is dying existentially and then literally as a series of deaths sweeps through in short succession. Like Dracula, Salem’s Lot explores the theme of the monster, the monster inside of us and the monster as other, out there, waiting to devour.

I’m not the fastest reader these days because I usually spend my time writing. This novel took me a while partly for that reason, and because I didn’t feel compelled to pick it up when I did have the time. There is nothing wrong with the story, as I said, it’s well written. There were, however, a few things that slowed me down. I don’t mind a wide cast of characters, but some of them were so fleeting that when they showed up again, I couldn’t remember who they were. I also had no real feeling for any of the characters, they didn’t interest me much, and I found their world dull. Sometimes I found the prose a little purple to make up for the gray aura of Salem’s Lot and its people. There was nothing particularly surprising to me about the plot probably because I’ve read a number of vampire stories, but it was good enough for me to read till the end.

‘Salem’s Lot is an interesting take on the vampire genre in which the town’s residents turn into vampires over the course of an Indian summer in 1975. The story opens with an author, Ben Mears, returning to his hometown to exorcise childhood demons associated with a mansion that overlooks the town of Jerusalem’s Lot.

He plans on facing his fears by renting the place for a while but learns that the house has been sold to a stranger and his mysterious associate. Soon, the town’s residents are affected by their new neighbor–and not in a good way. There are key characters–including Jerusalem’s Lot itself–whose backstories prove interesting as the story plays out.

The Kindle edition version also includes One for the Road, which revisits ‘Salem’s Lot, which at this point has “gone bad” and is known as a place to avoid–especially at night. This story involves a snowbound motorist who makes his way from Jerusalem’s Lot to a nearby town to seek help at a bar in the midst of a blizzard.

The novel also includes Jerusalem’s Lot, a prelude to the main story. It’s an epistolary account about the new owner who inherits the mansion in 1850–long before it becomes the nightmare that haunts Ben Mears. Both, too, are good reads.

So, if you like this particular genre of horror, you won’t be disappointed.

I am normally not a vampire reader but since it was Stephen King I gave it a chance. It was very character-driven and scary. I finished it in one night. I think it was the last vampire story I’ve ever read.

I remember exactly where I was when I read Salem’s Lot. I was in graduate school at Auburn University and had my wisdom teeth removed. A rare opportunity for pleasure reading. I was alone in our little trailer and scared to death. Stephen King is the master of instilling dread. I could not turn the page but I had to turn the page. If this is a genre you enjoy, Salem’s Lot is a good one.