Stephen King
Le notti di Salem

"At three in the morning the blood circulates slowly and heavily and sleep is deep. The soul either sleeps in absolute ignorance of the dangers of the hour or looks at itself despairing of salvation."

It is said that once adolescence is over, it is difficult for something to deeply scar a person. 'Salem's Lot took me by surprise, marking me forever. Engrossed in other readings, I glanced at its first pages out of mere curiosity, only to inevitably be captivated by it. As a child, I read King’s Misery and The Shining, but failed to absorb them; a few phrases and moments linger in my mind. Other things shook my childhood. 'Salem's Lot, however, revealed itself as a disease for this now-grown man. Accustomed to reading at a lethargic pace, I found myself turning into a sort of vampire, day and night hunched over King's pages desperately seeking the end. An end that approached, as the pages gripped in my right hand dwindled and those in the left swelled, both joyously and terribly. Just like staring at a monster, I lamented losing such a tremendous and wonderful read paragraph by paragraph.

The horror narrated by Stephen King slowly penetrates the reader's mind; within the genre’s standards, he skillfully weaves human stories, loves; he turns to the American society—particularly, with Salem, to the disenchanted society of Watergate—and its actors, who are different faces of the same grotesque humanity. The Maine author is ruthless in portraying those who could be his neighbors, his grocer, his lover. The vampire story runs parallel to man’s horrors: the exploited person forced to work to survive, the one who drowns in rivers of alcohol losing touch with what is elevated, with what makes life worthy and not simply a rag to discard when worn out. We observe, for example, a husband bound to his wife only if able to fill her with blows, or a mother beating her hungry newborn with contempt—then comes the drunk husband: he reprimands the woman and asks for a chilled beer. Ultimately, the vampires and their Lord elegantly align themselves with these lives, simply exercising their primal instinct. Sucking blood from other horrible "human beings"; nothing so horrific when we think of King’s invocation of Vietnam, the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of those who close their eyes to the dirtiest affairs for a fistful of dollars. Ben Mears knows all this and, disenchanted, writes about America without striving for a masterpiece: he vomits pages one after another, aware that some fool will swallow them without asking for more, swelling his bank account.

Besides social consciousness, King plays with words, delicately constructing a love story—further surrounded by two troubled and equally touching pasts—he paints the melancholy for adolescence spent in the countryside, far from the city. The melancholy that rises while driving the car at sunset, skirting the fields, as the past erodes each peace; suddenly we glimpse two boys going fishing, rods in hand, much like decades before had happened to the protagonist (one can imagine). King then enriches each page with his caustic irony, with his similes:

"Jimmy looked out the window and murmured: <> just like a poor man would say <>"

"The trees surrounding the hospital’s grassy yard were almost completely bare, and their black branches stood out against the gray sky like giant letters of some dark alphabet."

"His face was sad and old, like the glasses of water served in cheap restaurants."

King’s chapters beg to be read eagerly; the United States author's innate skill in gripping the reader is evident: phrases flow like the tinkling of a razor. A few moments, perhaps a smile, then horror is ready to crash down again as a new page turns, like a shadow leaving no escape. That primal horror returns, capable of regressing one to childhood; few things seen on screen can terrify as much as the fierce Barlow's entrance into the Petrie home before Father Callahan’s stunned eyes. Just as indescribable are the shivers experienced observing young Mark freeing himself from the ropes while Straker’s steps echo through Marsten House. Marsten House, with its door at the end of the corridor, beyond which Hubie hanged himself in '39...

Marsten House, the eye that watches over Jerusalem's Lot, is the emblem encompassing all the moods of King's work. A work ascending to masterpiece status precisely because of its enveloping plot, capable of intertwining the lives of so many characters, making them throb in unison on Lot’s stage; the little town of Salem, so distant from the world, yet capable of speaking for all America. An America in autumn, on the verge of withering. A humanity already dying in '75, an unwitting custodian of ancient secrets, powers even the church fails to comprehend: the light illuminating a cross, not in God’s name, but in the name of an entity fighting against the drives animating the world’s vampires, the Barlows and their Supreme Lords. Politicians? Entrepreneurs? Assassins? It is not given to know.

After leaving behind the sign signaling the end of Jerusalem's Lot, the terror will continue to crack the walls of any house. Even days after closing the book, unease will envelop those who have read of Ben Mears and his Susan. A book ever-present whispering: "Listen to me. Look at me. Return to the first chapter."