This week, I continued with Chapelwaite, watching “The Offer” (Episode 6), “De Vermis Mysteriis” (Episode 7), and “Hold the Night” (Episode 8). While the first three episodes offered slow-burn narrative context, and Episodes 4 and 5 leaned into the horror framework, these three episodes upped the action, particularly when the two vampire groups laid siege to Chapelwaite over the seventh and eight episodes. 

I continue to be fascinated with the way Chapelwaite is engaging with vampire mythology, including the subversion of established tropes and expectations. I breathed a hesitant sigh of relief when Charles Boone (Adrien Brody) buried Loa’s (Sirena Gulamgaus) body at sea, both because it connected her back to her island heritage, her mother, and her true self, but also because of the (fleeting) hope that maybe she wouldn’t rise as a vampire because vampires can’t cross moving water, right? But no. Given the series’ historical and isolated setting, it was also an interesting twist to see Charles and the others preparing to fight the vampires without any established lore to rely upon, instead going by trial and error in the face of pretty daunting odds. (The cross proved useful in previous encounters, so that’s something to build on, but they’re otherwise pretty much making it up as they go). 

Mary Dennison’s (Trina Corkum) presence and role in the basement of Chapelwaite as the house is attacked is also really interesting, as she tempts and feeds upon her husband (Hugh Thompson), but also carries on more extended conversations post-vampire transformation than in many similar stories, telling the constable about her experience of death and what is (or isn’t) on the other side. She seems both threatening and complacent by turns, but even her complacency is unnerving, as if she’s just waiting for something to come or the right moment to strike. The fact that they have her restrained in the madness-countering ice bath tub also keeps tugging at my brain, suggesting their may be something important there, but maybe it’s just that there are convenient, ready-made restraints on the tub and it keeps her somewhat physically confined, so she’s not kicking or tripping people. 

Temptation seems to be the order of the day throughout the siege, as the unlikely band of protectors work to hold Chapelwaite, led by the Boones, Rebecca (Emily Hampshire), the constable, and the minister (Gord Rand). The constable’s love for his wife compromises his judgment and may literally weaken him as he allows her to feed on him, and though her transformation is undeniable, he continues to care for her, refusing Charles’ advice. Within the larger scope of King’s work, I was least surprised by the minister’s shaky faith, particularly when faced with the supernatural: after all, we all know what happened with Father Callahan in ‘Salem’s Lot (1975), and there are other shaken men of the cloth throughout King’s work, like Reverend Lester Lowe in Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) and Reverend Jacobs in Revival (2014), though Chapelwaite’s Minister Burroughs has pulled it together and pulled through (at least for the moment). 

The fate of the book seems a win-less proposition: in the hands of either Jakub (Christopher Heyerdahl) or Stephen Boone (Steven McCarthy), the apocalyptic results are devastating, but hanging on to the book spells madness for Charles and a curse that will continue to plague his family. It can’t be destroyed, it can’t be safely gotten rid of, and he can’t keep it. Securing it to Mary Dennison is a temporary stop-gap measure, but doesn’t actually solve the problem. Charles’ reclamation of the book and the visions he saw when he touched it in “Der Vermis Mysteriis” were overwhelming and disorienting, and given the series’ previous negotiation of potential unreliably and the “legacy of madness” of the Boone family, I went back and forth between whether these visions were reality or nightmare, though this seems to be the truth. 

And then, again, there’s Loa. I’m still holding on to hope for Loa, not that she’ll be restored to her family (which seems impossible) but that she will resist her new nature, subvert expectations, and prove to be a hero. I keep thinking back to Charles’s wife reassuring him in the first episode that “you are not your father,” and wondering if this belief in the innate goodness of those we love could still apply to Loa as well: she’s a vampire, but perhaps she is not entirely defined by that monstrous transformation. Stephen clearly mourned his daughter Marcella’s (Acadia Colan) death, which happened after he had been transformed, which seems to indicate that at least some love remains post-transformation. The Boone women also seem stronger, less affected by the curse that drives their male family members mad. Loa protected Tane (Ian Ho) during the attack on Chapelwaite and kept him safe (though she was also manipulating him to get the book). And given that there’s a family history of vampirism with the Boones, maybe they are simply affected differently by the transformation, having built up a kind of resistance to losing themselves in their new vampire identities. I could be grasping at straws here and setting myself up for more heartbreak in the final two episodes, but I’m not giving up on Loa yet.