Chapter 5 - Puppies, Stephen King & Holy Shit, This Stuff is Really Real

Old School

It probably comes as no surprise that my favourite author is Stephen King. It started with Carrie in grade 7 and I have been a Constant Reader ever since. By the time I was 13 I had finished The Stand and read an excerpt (where Lloyd contemplates cannibalism and eats a cockroach) to my grade 8 class for a public speaking project. I did not read The Shining until I was 16 and living in Toronto. Hit a little too close to home for me, what with the haunted resort and all.

My mother is also a very big Stephen King fan. So, when CBC announced it would air Salem's Lot on a Friday night in August, she was thrilled. You'll love it, she said. It's about vampires. Sure, we agreed. Vampires would be a nice change from mattress bodies and exploding pop cans. Besides, we loved movies. They were such an amazing escape form. That summer had been particularly good for movies, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Time Bandits and For Your Eyes Only. We were no strangers to thrillers and vampires were intriguing.

The night the movie aired, the reception was very poor in our house. The picture would roll and go fuzzy and no amount of fiddling with the vertical hold and rabbit ears helped. If we wanted to see the movie, there was only one way - watch it on the big set in the lounge of the main lodge.

JR and I did not think this was a very good idea. At all. It was 8:00 pm and still light outside, but it wouldn't be for long. We had not been inside the main lodge building after dark and had no real desire to do so. But my mother was determined to see this movie, so off we all trotted, carrying a big bowl of popcorn and several pops.

All was quiet in the Lodge. The reception on the big TV was perfect. Never better. We pulled three cozy armchairs into a semi-circle in front of the TV and settled in to watch Salem's Lot. Nothing much happens in the beginning of the movie, and the Lodge was very quiet. No mysterious footsteps from upstairs, no pinging radiators. Outside, you could hear the loons crying on the lake. The sunset bathed the lounge in a warm, reddish glow. Red sky at night - we were going to have nice weather the next day. Darkness was falling. So was the temperature. "Are you guys cold?" asked my mother. We were.

Barlow

Salem's Lot was a very scary movie in its day. (The book is even scarier.) Watching it in a huge, empty, apparently haunted building adds a whole new dimension to the scary. By the time we got our first glimpse of Barlow, we were freaked the fuck out but deeply invested in the story. Danny Glick scratching at the window made me vow to never again open the curtains at night. However scary the movie was though, was nothing compared to whatever prowled the long, empty halls of the Lodge.

That oppressive ick feeling moved in as we were sitting there watching the movie. Suddenly we knew it was there and it was watching us and it was not happy.

Then the office phone started to ring. "There's phone service in here?" asked my mother. She got up and walked down the long, semi-dark hallway to the office. We followed, of course. There was no way she was leaving us alone in the lounge with Barlow and the ick. The telephone that we had been playing with all summer was sitting in the middle of the desk, and it was ringing. It was a black rotary multi-line office phone, the kind with the row of light up buttons along the bottom. Every line was flashing.

As my mum walked towards it, to answer it, I was filled with such an ice-cold dread, such a feeling of utter terror, that I barely squeaked out, "Don't answer it!" That thing, that ick, whatever it was, felt like it was sitting on my head. A giant pressure pushing down. We HAD to get out of there. It wanted us OUT.

My mum picked up the phone. "Hello?" Then, she carefully replaced the receiver and said calmly, "We should go."

We all slept in the same room that night. The next morning, we realized that we had left the TV on in the lounge. Ugh. We'd have to go and turn it off and tidy up. Not looking forward to it at all, we accompanied our mum back into the Lodge. The ick was not present but we were startled to see the TV had been turned off and all the chairs that we had pulled out had been put back in their proper places. There was no need to hang around and as we were leaving, I glanced into the office, my eyes drawn to the black phone. The cord was wrapped around it. The cord that would normally plug into the wall, for service. Service, that is, in a building that did not currently have its phone lines wrapped around a fallen tree.

We did not go back into the main lodge for the rest of the summer. It was just too real. The things we had experienced up until that point could have been explained rationally, when one reached for it. The ringing phone defied logic. I don't know what that presence would have done if we had not gotten out of there. Looking back on it now, we realize that the ringing phone was a warning. A message from the others to get the hell out of there.

Major Duncan and me

As you can imagine, JR and I were not sleeping that well. My parents decided to get us a new dog, something to bring some joy into our world and take our minds off spooky shit. Sadly, the summer before, our golden lab Truffles had been hit by a dump truck and killed. We were devastated. The winter before that, a neighbour had complained about our old hound dog, Major Duncan. Duncan loved to track and would spend his days roaming the woods around the Lodge. An asshole neighbour complained that he was scaring the deer away and the ministry of natural resources forced us to give him away. Seems it's much more important for the hunters to have deer to shoot, than for kids to give an old sweet dog a home. Motherfuckers. I digress.

Truffles

Jackson and Strider (we were raised on Tolkien) joined our family as 8 week old Labrador puppies. Ally and Grandmama came for another visit and the rest of the summer passed without any really significant spookiness. That I can recall, anyway.

Jackson & Strider

Except for this. I was in the kitchen of our house, looking for something. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother standing in the doorway, wearing one of the maxi dresses she was so fond of in the early 80s. When I turned to ask her something, there was no one there. It was the only time I ever remember experiencing something in our house, but I wasn't frightened. It felt more like someone checking on me, out of concern or curiosity, perhaps.

We left the Lodge at the end of August and moved into a nice little cottage on the other side of the lake, where nothing otherworldly or scary ever happened. (To my recollection.)

Little did we know, the summer of 1982 would see us living in a place that I refer to as The Scariest Place on Earth...

Coming Soon... Chapter 6 - The Trailer on Lilac Lane