“The town knew something was wrong. Not everyone could name it, but they felt it—like a weight on the chest, a bad dream you wake up remembering only in pieces.”
Chapters 4 through 6 feel like the moment you look up and realize the sky has darkened—and you don’t know when it started. The familiar has become strange, and something new has arrived.
The school scenes are deceptively normal—textbooks, bullies, distracted teachers—but there’s this thick layer of emotional dust over everything. The children, especially Mark Petrie, seem more alert to the wrongness seeping through the cracks. Maybe kids are just better at seeing monsters.
And then we meet Father Callahan.
He’s not your typical priest. He drinks, he doubts, and yet… there’s a fire in him. You can tell he believes evil is real, and he’s almost waiting for it. Or maybe hoping it’ll come so he can fight it. There’s something tragic and brave about him. He feels like a man built for a battle the world has forgotten.
But the real shift comes with the arrival of Straker. Elegant, eerie, and wrong in all the right ways. The kind of man who doesn’t need to raise his voice to command attention. He opens an antique store, but really, what he opens is a door—and what steps through it feels ancient.
We don’t see Barlow yet, but his presence already clings to the air. Everyone talks about him. No one sees him. That’s how real fear works—it’s invisible until it touches you directly.
Reading these chapters, I felt unease curling in my stomach. Like I was standing in a room where someone just turned off the lights. Straker isn’t just a character. He’s a warning.
Prompt used:
This evocative oil painting presents an elderly Catholic priest seated in a dim, atmospheric church at twilight. With a serious expression and weathered features, his black cassock and posture suggest a reflection on the spiritual and temporal while the soft candlelight contrasts with the cold moonlight illuminating a distant, gothic house just beyond the open door.
Have you ever met someone who felt... wrong, even if they never did anything wrong? Tell me about it—fictional or not, I'm listening.
🕮 Next time: Ralphie Glick disappears, and Salem’s Lot begins to rot from the inside.