When I reread “Nona” (from Nightmares & Dreamscapes, 1993) for the previous blog post, that was the first time I had returned to that story in at least a decade, and the H.P. Lovecraftian “Rats in the Walls”-ness of the story had entirely slipped my memory. Lovecraft’s chilling tale of the descendent of the Delapore family, his return to his ancestral home, the rats he hears scurrying behind the walls (even though no one else can hear them, with the exception of his faithful cat), and the horrors he discovers beneath the house is also a direct inspiration for King’s long story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” which opens his 1978 Night Shift collection. 

As a result, while I had planned to dig deeper into Castle Rock, I found myself instead drawn back to Jerusalem’s Lot (both the town of the 1975 novel ‘Salem’s Lot and the Night Shift story), and the excellent conversation my King Short Fiction class and I had back in April on “Jerusalem’s Lot” and the first episode of Chapelwaite (Epix, 2021). This served as an great foundation for some of the resonant themes of our class, including the significance of place, tensions between subjective perception and objective reality, and the interconnection between past and present. This was also a particularly interesting viewing and discussion experience because none of the students had seen the series and similarly, I had only watched the first episode (mostly to review for potential content warnings) before we watched it together in class. I was transparent with my students about not having seen any more than that first episode and when we got to the closing credits, we had a range of questions, expectations, and theories, but we were all sharing that moment of uncertainty together. 

I had intended to return to Chapelwaite after the semester wrapped up for the summer, but as Robert Frost observed, “way leads on to way” and I hadn’t gotten back there yet when I reread “Nona” a couple of weeks ago, then followed the rats back to Lovecraft and Jerusalem’s Lot, and onward back to Chapelwaite. 

For the next few posts, I’ll be watching the series and working through some of my thoughts on and responses to it he, with a particular interest in how the series engages with King’s fictional geographies and creates a very effective (and unsettling) experience of place on screen. For this post, I rewatched the first episode (“Blood Calls Blood”) and then watched the second and third episodes (“Memento Mori” and re“Legacy of Madness”), and here are some of my early thoughts: 

• I love the opening credit sequence—the establishing shots of the woods and ocean ground us in a particularly vivid geographic space that highlights both past and present, including the impact of industries like lumber and whaling. It signals a distinct time and place, while also underscoring the immensity and isolation of the place where the Boones are trying to make their new (old) home. Close-ups of Chapelwaite itself, the scarecrow, the tombstones, and the church speak to resonant feelings and moments that are still developing at this point in my viewing, but definitely set a tone and mood. 
• I find myself thinking a lot about the house versus the House, a la Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Boones and their legacy are in the very bones of Chapelwaite, with their lingering presence further underscored by things like the portrait gallery, Marcella’s blood on the cellar floor, their letters in the library, and the cemetery on the property. I feel like Charles Boone (played by Adrien Brody) is almost hysterically frightened by the legacy of his family and yet somehow not frightened enough (or maybe not frightened of the right things?) all at the same time.
• The visual depiction of what’s “real” and the things Charles remembers, fears, or worries he might be hallucinating is very effective. With the family’s alleged “legacy of madness” (as the third episode’s title highlights), it behooves him to take it seriously, but I also find it hard to shake his late wife’s faith in him, the possibility that things could be different, and that he doesn’t have to be defined by his family and its dark history. Still, we’re dealing with horror and the Gothic here, and when he optimistically says that he and his family will “be the first” Boones to be happy at Chapelwaite, I feel a strong, sad sense of foreboding. It doesn’t seem likely, does it?   
• The distinction between what’s above and what’s below is fascinating, with the series frequently diving beneath the surface of things, both literally and figuratively: Charles immersing himself in the water (and later the ice bath), the grave dirt that is continually covering different characters (whether in memory, reality, or nightmare), the frequent descents into the cellar, and of course the worms wriggling their way through the dirt itself. 
• Vampires, for sure. The connections between the story “Jerusalem’s Lot” and King’s ‘Salem’s Lot novel are diffuse and interesting, and have inspired a lot of great conversations and speculations in my classes over the years. But I’m excited about the possibility here of a more direct throughline that establishes those vampires (I think. I hope) alongside the worm and “Jerusalem’s Lot”’s horrors. 

Chapelwaite, Preacher’s Corners, and Charles Boone himself clearly hold a wealth of secrets and I can’t wait to watch the next episode to find out what some of those those are.