'Salem's Lot

“That above all else. They did not look out their windows. No matter what noises or dreadful possibilities, no matter how awful the unknown, there was an even worse thing: to look the Gorgon in the face.” - Stephen King

Have you ever read ‘Salem’s Lot? If you haven’t, you totally should. It’s one of Stephen King’s earliest books and it’s a favorite of mine. First published in 1975, the book is King’s take on vampires. Not sparkly vampires. Not soulful, romantic vampires. No, these are old-school vampires. The kind that will rip out your throat and laugh as the blood sprays. Scary vampires.  Probably not an ideal book for a 12 year old to have been reading, but that was the rule in our house – we could read or watch whatever we wanted (this was, of course, long before the internet became a fixture in every household) as long as it didn’t give us nightmares.  Nightmares meant waking up my mother and that simply Wasn’t Done.

So. It was a dark and windy night. I was curled up in my bed reading long past midnight. The house was dark and quiet – my older brother was off spending the night at a friend’s house, my parents had gone to bed hours earlier. It was just me and my book in the quiet.

Slowly I became aware of a tapping noise at my window. I brushed it off at first. There was a large oak tree close by and the wind would sometimes push the branches against the window.

I was at a point in the story where a boy is visited by a vampire knocking on his second story window when I remembered that my stepfather had cut the branches of the oak tree back not 3 days earlier. He’d been proud of his work, telling me that I no longer would have to listen to the scraping of the branches at my window.

I froze, mid page turn. If the branches had been cut back, what was tapping at my second floor window?

“I’ll ignore it,” I thought. “He must have missed a branch, that’s all. It’s really windy and he missed a branch and that is what that noise is. Vampires aren’t real.”

My resolve lasted all of 15 seconds. Then the tapping started up again, stronger now. I turned out the light and crept towards the window. I slowly, slowly, slowly parted the blinds and peeked through the crack. A bat stared back at me. A bat. A freaking bat! It had somehow made it’s way past the screen and was fluttering crazily against the window panes.

I bolted down the pitch black hallway to my parents’ room, sure that something was going to pop out and grab me as I ran.

“Mom! Mom!,” I whisper-hissed when I got to her bedside.

“Mmm?” she said, half asleep still. “What is it? What time is it?” She was coming more awake now. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a bat, there’s a bat, there’s a bat in my window Mommy!” I was half-hysterical at this point.

“A what? A bat?” she said. “Wait a minute. What book are you reading?”

“’Salem’s Lot,” I answered.

She rolled over. “Go back to bed. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

“But Mom!”

“Go. To. Bed. I am not getting up in the middle of the night because you’ve scared yourself silly over a book. Good night.”

I went back to my room, packed up most of my things, and moved into the guest room down the hall where I sat up the rest of the night reading Babysitter’s Club books in an effort to distract my brain from all things creepy and dark.

In the morning my mother came to check on me before she left for work and I showed her that I had not been dreaming the night before. I hid behind my almost closed bedroom door and watched through the crack as she slowly opened the window and carefully raised the screen (a corner of which had not been in its track – the bat had pushed it’s way inside but then been trapped) so that the now-sleeping bat could get out when it woke up in the evening.

She apologized, laughing. “I’m so sorry honey. I just thought you were dreaming. I mean really, a bat? In your window? I’ve read that book. I just thought you were having a nightmare.”

I can look back on The Incident With The Bat now and laugh but at the time...not so much. I had trouble sleeping in my room for a week and it took me a month to pick ‘Salem’s Lot back up.

Seriously, if you haven’t already read it, pick up a copy and read it now. And when you get to the part where there’s tapping at the window, think of me and my bat.