Salems Lot

5 Pages 1141 Words

Salem’s Lot is the story of a man who returns to his home town to face the fears of his childhood, only to find a entire new set of fears awaiting him. Ben’s hometown now has a new occupant, Barlow, an evil as old as time. As one by one the inhabits of Salem’s Lot disappear only to turn up later in the night, as something worse than dead. Ben Mears is a successful novelist who returns to Jerusalem’s Lot his hometown. As a child Ben had gone through a terrifying experience in the local “haunted house”. He believed that by renting the old Marsten house he could face his fears, and be able to write away old ghosts.

The first person he meets when he returns is Susan Norton, a fan of his writing, with whom he is immediately attracted to. He tells her about his childhood experience; how on a dare from a group of friends he was supposed to go into the Marsten house and bring something out. But all that the nine-year-old had seen was the hanging body of the former owner Hubie Marsten, and how the dead body had opened its eyes. And though now he knows that he really didn’t see the body, he feels that the Marsten house is a ‘storage place’ for the evil things that had happened there. Susan tells Ben that the house, unoccupied for many years has already been rented to a newcomer in town, a Mr. Barlow, a man that no one has ever seen, but intends to open an antique store in town. His partner, Mr. Straker, has made all the arrangements. The book then describes how the inhabitants of Salem’s Lot discover what Mr. Barlow truly is. Young children disappear, and adults as well as children begin to suf!
fer from a mysterious illness, extreme sensitive to the sun, anemia, and eventually death. But as twelve year old Mark Petrie, a supernatural lover, discovers when one of his recently deceased young friends scratch outside his second story bedroom window begging to be let in, that there is no mysterious illness but they are the un...