Krishna
Stephen king has a penchant for keeping his supervillains across books. Randall Klegg comes in multiple stories and now we find Crimson King from the Dark Towers series transported to this book as well. But this book has some deeper ties to the series than just the archvillain. More of it later.
Two policemen are upset about media reports about a murderer not being caught. We meet the corrupt retirement home manager Chipper and his secretary cum mistress Rebecca Vilas. Then we have the bad tempered lady who is hated by everyone in the same retirement home.
Charles Burnside is alternately lucid and deep in the grips of Alzheimer’s. He is hated universally in the retirement home.
Meanwhile in an abandoned building outside the town we find the third victim of the Fisherman, a killer.
Fred and judy have been married a long time. Judy now is a shell of her former fearless self, in fright of something evil and Ty is their son.
A blind man Henry Leyden has multiple personalities George Rathburn, Wisconsin Rat etc. When a boy Morris finds out through a friend who accidentally saw Henry as ‘the Rat’, Henry intimidates him into keeping it quiet.
We learn that the ‘Fisherman’ so called because he apes another serial killer called Fish several decades ago has been writing letters to parents of his victims with almost exact replica of the letters of Fish. We learn it because the Police Chief,Dale Gilbertson, is obsessing over the mystery. He feels out of his depth. He hopes that his strange but effective friend, Jack Sawyer, who caught the elusive Thornberg Kinderling, can help.
However, Jack has retired but come back to retire in the place where he grew up. He likes Jazz (strange in those times)
Henry Leyden and Jack Sawyer develop a deep friendship. Jack is the child of a famous supporting actress in Hollywood and is therefore loaded.
The badly managed care facility under Chipper Maxton has a janitor called Pete Wexley who is cruel and tortures patients (because Chipper does not care) and smokes inside the building in violation of the rules – also because Chipper does not care.
The story suddenly turns supernatural. Ty, who is going with his buddies (who are really bullies) falls behind on his cycle and falls under the eye of our Charles Burnside who alternates between lucidity and vacuity. He decides to take him as his next victim. He goes to the bathroom and “disappears”. Distracted by a crow that utters his name (“Ty”) several times, he goes near the bushes only to be grabbed and killed. She has a vision of ‘a shoebox with Ty’s entrails on the table’ and this finally sends her over the edge completely into insanity. Upon a neighbour’s call, Fred rushes home.
He finds her completely gone and then realizes that Ty is indeed gone, as she said.
When Jack agrees to investigate you know suddenly that he can transport across worlds and he even find Ty’s cap in the ‘other place’. The story gets interesting. The fisherman (who uses the dolt Charles Burnside’s body) sends him a shoe of Irma, his earlier victim and tells him to go to Ed’s Eats, an abandoned restaurant. But he also calls the police and tells an idiot constable that same information. The policeman tells his wife ‘in secret’ and the whole town shows up at the place.
Meanwhile Wendell Green, a sleazy reported takes illegal photos but luckily the film is ruined by a band of good hearted bikers, one of whose daughter was an earlier Fisherman victim.
Meanwhile one man in a hotel finds photos of the victim in a cupboard, and thinks that the person Potter whose room it was is the Fisherman. But he saw an old, bald guy with one slipper in the corridor a few minutes before and Jack is more interested in that man than the killer apprehended ‘red handed’.
When the town crowd gets notified by a stupid deputy and the townsfolk want to lynch Potter, Jack stops the madness. Wendell Green tries to stir up trouble but is knocked down. Jack wins by giving Irma’s mom Tancy, who was under the spell of the Fisherman in raven’s form, flowers. He then wants to interview Potter alone. He finally gets the identity of the Fisherman who is Charles Burnside and he hears about Mr Munshun, who is inside him activating him.
When Henry is invaded by a materializing Burnside, he finds that his days are done and he leaves an important clue to Jack, his friend. There is a moving portrait of how Jack finds his best friend.
Also the Hells Angels type Doc and St Beezer, with Mouse and three others finally find where the hidden entrance to the Black House is and Mouse gets bitten by an outwordly “dog” and as he lies dying, he gives Jack another clue. Now, two of their buddies cut and run. Second, one of them, Doc, was a medical doctor in his previous vocation and also one of them is quite literate, which facts come as a total surprise to Jack.
Burnside is now wounded (Henry wounded him) and with the shears, he manages to kill the nurse on duty (who noticed him bleeding) and then pays a visit to Chipper, which ends badly for Chipper Maxton.
Burney flips to the Black House, retrieves Tyler and with Mr Munshun guiding him – suffering from wounds (his intestines threaten to strike out) tries to betray Munshun. After he shackles one hand of Ty intending to eat parts of him (‘his commission’) before turning him over to Munshun, he gets killed.
More tie ins to Dark Tower follow. Munshun has gone to get the monorail called End-World Mono, successor to the (Dark World series characters) Patricia and Blaine. There is also a suggestion that another man, Speedy Parker, who can travel between worlds at will ‘is probably the Gunslinger’ of the Dark World series. And I have issues with it. If you have read that series, you know that Roland of Gilead cannot travel at will between worlds. He had to hunt for specific portals every time to go. So it is like Stephen King is twisting facts in Stephen King’s own stories. (Like a real life remake of Disney cartoons where they take some liberty with the old films, which have themselves deviated from the original fairy tales? Go figure!)
Dale collects Doc and Beezer who are the only two who are prepared to go with him and Dale. He also is aided by the word Di’yala given by his otherworld friend Speedy Parker, and the baseball bat sent via Fred Marshal by Henry – who must have mailed it before he died. They go into the Black house, aided through its mind games by the swarm of bees summoned by Jack as guides.
When Munshun takes the boy (with a mind debilitating cap reminiscent of the aluminium foil folks wear to ‘ward off interference to their thoughts from the aleins’ ) he is confronted by Jack, Dale, Beezer and Doc in a confrontation. What happens after Munshun is vanquished is lovely. Jack gets Ty to demonstrate the power he has (mental) by ordering the destruction of the Big Combination, the machinery that powers the breakers to be destroyed.
The ending after their escape is added to change the entire colour of the story. It does stand together, I agree, but still the story would have been complete even without it.
A good read indeed.
7/10
– – Krishna (April 2019)