When Dr. Louis Creed moves his family from
Chicago to Ludlow, Maine, their new neighbor, an elderly man named Jud
Crandall, warns Louis to keep his children away from the highway that runs past
their house, which trucks from a nearby chemical plant frequently pass at dangerously
high speeds. After his daughter’s cat,
Church, is stuck on the road, Jud reveals a terrible community secret: hidden in the woods beyond Louis’s property is
an ancient burial ground that was once used by the Micmac Native American tribe
to bring the dead back to life.
Things take an even more tragic turn when
Louis’s two-year old son, who’d recently learned to walk, wanders into the road
and is similarly killed by a speeding truck.
Overcome with grief, Louis becomes intrigued by the prospect of digging
up Gage’s body and taking it to the ancient burial ground to return his son to
life. Guessing Louis’s plan, Jud tries
to dissuade him by sharing an incident from World War II, where a local resident
had used the burial ground to resurrect his son, Timmy Baterman, who’d been
killed in combat. But what returned from
the burial ground wasn’t Timmy Baterman—it was a demon possessing Timmy’s body
that terrorized the town for several days until the regretful father killed
them both by burning the house down with them inside.
Undeterred by Jud’s warning, Louis carries
out his plan… with deadly consequences for those around him.
But being King’s scariest novel wasn’t enough
to push this book to the top of this list.
Which book will occupy the #1
position?
Check back tomorrow on
Halloween to find out!
The book was poorly adapted into
an entirely forgettable movie in 1989, noteworthy only for the scenes toward
the end of the film where Gage comes back from the dead. If your lasting impression of this work was formulated by the movie, then I'd suggest giving the book a try instead.
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