Salem's Lot

Stephen

KING
'SALEM'S LOT

Hodder & Stoughton

First published in the USA by Doubleday & Company Inc in 1975. First published in Great Britain by New English Library in 1976, Copyright © 1975 by Stephen King. Grateful acknowledgements are made to the following for permission to include copyright selections. First stanza from 'The Return of the Exile' and one Haiku from the book of Poems,by Georae Seferis. English Translation © Rex Warner 1960. Published by Little, Brown and Company in association with Atlantic Monthly Press and Bodley Head, Ltd. 'The Emperor of ice Cream', copyright 1923 and renewed 1951 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Faber & Faber, Ltd. Excerpt from The Haunting of HillHouse, by Shirley Jackson, Copyright © 1959 by Shirley Jackson. Reprinted by permission of Viking Press, Inc., and Brandt and Brandt. One line of lyric from 'North Country Blues ' by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1963 by M. Whitmark & Sons. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Music. New English Library Paperback Edition 1977 Twenty-third impression 1992 The characters and situations inthis book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happenings, The right of Stephen King to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is sold subject to the condition that it Shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired Out or otherwise circulatedwithout the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrievalsystem, without either the prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence, permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WC 1 P 9HE. Printed and bound in Great Britain for Hodder and Stoughton Paperbacks, a division of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent TN132YA (Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square, London WClB 3DP) by Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading, Barks. Photoset by Rowland Photosetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

For Naomi Rachel King ' . . . promises to keep.'

CONTENTS

Prologue PART I: PART II: PART III: Epilogue The Marsten House The Emperor of Ice Cream The Deserted Village

AUTHOR'S NOTE

No one writes a long novel alone, and Iwould like to take a moment of your time to thank some of the people who helped with this one: G. Everett McCutcheon, of Hampden Academy, for his practical suggestions and encouragement; Dr John Pearson, of Old Town, Maine, medical examiner of Penobscot County and member in good standing of that most excellent medical speciality, general practice; Father Renald Hallee, of St John's Catholic Churchin Bangor, Maine. And of course my wife, whose criticism is as tough and unflinching as ever. Although the towns surrounding 'salem's Lot are very real, 'salem's Lot itself exists wholly in the author's imagination, and any resemblance between the people who live there and people who live in the real world is coincidental and unintended. S. K.

PROLOGUE

Old friend, what are you looking for?After those many years abroad you come With images you tended Under foreign skies Far away from your own land George Seferis

1
Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son. They crossed the country on a rambling southwest line in an old Citroën sedan, keeping mostly to secondary roads, traveling in fits and starts. They stopped in three places along the way before...