Revival by Stephen King — A Spectacularly Dark and Riveting New Novel!

Revival: A New Novel by Stephen King
A spectacularly dark and riveting novel about addiction, religion, fanaticism, and what might exist on the other side of life
Last Chance To Lock In Your First Edition, First Printing!

Hi Folks!

Revival by Stephen King will be published next month and we WILL be getting some copies for our collectors, but we need to place our order with the publisher TOMORROW if we want to lock in first edition, first printings, so please place your order ASAP through our website or we won’t know how many copies to order for our collectors!

About the Book:
Stephen KingIn a small New England town, over half a century ago, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend Jacobs—including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister, Claire. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on a secret obsession. When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town.

Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from the age of 13, he plays in bands across the country, living the nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll while fleeing from his family’s horrific loss. In his mid-thirties—addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate—Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings.

Add A Special Exclusive Slipcase To Protect Your Book!

Even though Revival by Stephen King is being published by another publisher, we will be producing one of our popular custom-made slipcase for this title like we have for the last few Stephen King books!

The easiest way to add a slipcase to your purchase is by selecting the “Trade Hardcover Edition with Exclusive Slipcase!” option on the Revival product page— you’ll also save on shipping by ordering this way! (You can order just the slipcase by itself on the Revival custom slipcase product page.)

Don’t know what a slipcase is? That’s okay! You can see some sample images of other slipcases we’ve made below. We’re using the same high-quality materials we have used for our previous Stephen King cases, with one color hot foil stamping. The company who makes these for us is the best in the business and you won’t find a better way to protect your investment! (If you are new to collecting, you can read more about slipcases on our Book FAQ page.)

We’re selling these special slipcases for just $24.95, making them an extremely affordable way to protect your book.  These cases will be produced after the book is published because we need a real copy of the book to get the sizing just right and your book and slipcase will ship together to save you on shipping. We think our collectors will be very pleased with what we have in mind for these very special cases, so don’t wait to place your order!

Sample Photo of a Previous Slipcase:

Sample Photos

Read more on our website or place your order!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

The Best of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Scripts

The Best of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Scripts
Brand New Trade Paperback Collection Coming Soon!

We’re pleased to report we’ll be receiving copies of The Best of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Scripts from Gauntlet Press, but our supplies are very limited and this volume is a great value, so don’t wait to place your order!

The Best of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Scripts
edited by Tony Albarella

Twilight Zone

About the Book:
In 1959, renowned writer Rod Serling embarked on an ambitious new television series, The Twilight Zone. This groundbreaking anthology wove morality tales – often with an allegorical bent and featuring twist endings to rival O. Henry – spanning the science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and horror genres. In addition to his producing and narrating chores, Serling himself wrote a remarkable 92 of the show’s 156 episodes. Running for five years, The Twilight Zone went on to become a cultural landmark, winning Serling two of his six Emmy Awards and securing a vaunted position as one of the greatest and most influential television shows of all time.

In 2004, publisher Gauntlet Press embarked on an ambitious new book series, AS TIMELESS AS INFINITY: THE COMPLETE TWILIGHT ZONE SCRIPTS OF ROD SERLING. This ten-volume, limited edition run of signed hardcovers collected all 92 of the Twilight Zone scripts written by Serling, reprinted from the writer’s personal copies. Running for a full decade, the series was edited by writer and Rod Serling Memorial Foundation board member Tony Albarella with direct input from Serling’s wife, Carol. Contributors included Serling’s family, friends, contemporaries who worked with the writer, and current talents who were inspired by him.

Now, Gauntlet Press makes THE BEST OF ROD SERLING’S TWILIGHT ZONE SCRIPTS available for the first time in paperback. By contract these will be the ONLY scripts from AS TIMELESS AS INFINITY to appear in paperback. They have been selected by Carol Serling and editor Tony Albarella.

This collection presents ten of Serling’s most iconic scripts, along with analysis commentaries, rare photos, and interviews with Twilight Zone actors, writers, producers, and directors. THE BEST OF ROD SERLING’S TWILIGHT ZONE SCRIPTS includes the following scripts:

“Walking Distance”

“Time Enough at Last”

“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”

“A Stop at Willoughby”

“A Passage for Trumpet”

“The Eye of the Beholder”

“The Obsolete Man”

“The Shelter”

“Death’s-Head Revisited”

“To Serve Man”

Read more on our website or place your order while supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

A Little Orange Book of Ornery Stories by Ed Gorman

A Little Orange Book of Ornery Stories
by Ed Gorman
Signed & Numbered Limited Edition of Only 500 Copies!

Hi Folks!

Little BookWe’re pleased to report we’ll be getting copies of A Little Orange Book of Ornery Stories by Ed Gorman from Borderlands Press, and it probably goes without saying that Borderlands is one of our favorite presses and Ed is one of our favorite authors, so this is a match made in heaven for us!

A Little Orange Book of Ornery Stories
by Ed Gorman

Publisher: Borderlands Press
Publication Date: October 2014
Signed Limited Edition: 500 numbered copies SIGNED by the author
Retail Price: $30

About the Book:
Ed Gorman has enjoyed a prolific, award-winning career in a variety of genres—mystery, science fiction, thriller, and horror. He’s published more than 50 novels, 8 collections, 100+ short stories, and edited 12 anthologies. His presence in the Little Books–Series II is a welcome and honored one. Collected in this volume are four of his more cantankerous and hard-nosed novelettes and stories.

If this is your first introduction to Gorman’s work, we’re sure after reading these selections, you’ll be looking for more of his tightly-written tales.

Read more on our website or place your order while supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

John Dies at the End by David Wong: Brand New Oversized Signed Limited Edition Rolling at the Printer!

John Dies at the End
by David Wong
Brand New Oversized Signed Limited Edition Rolling at the Printer!
Limited Edition is Already 60% Sold Out and Lettered Edition is 90% Sold Out!

“…a case of the author trying to depict actual, soul-sucking lunacy, and succeeding with flying colors.”
— Fangoria

We’re pleased to announce a brand new oversized signed Limited Edition, the internationally acclaimed John Dies at the End by David Wong, and this one is already rolling at the printer and will be published in December!

Due to the lower than normal print run and the excitement surrounding this author’s work, we don’t expect these to last long, especially since the members of our Cemetery Dance Collectors Club snapped up 60% of the Limited Edition and 90% of the Lettered Edition during their advance notice window!

About the Book:
John Dies at the EndMy name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours.

You may not want to know about the things you’ll read in these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it’s too late. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye.

The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

The important thing is this:

The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension.

John and I never had the chance to say no.

You still do.

Unfortunately for us, if you make the right choice, we’ll have a much harder time explaining how to fight off the otherworldly invasion currently threatening to enslave humanity.

I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind:

None of this was my fault.

Read more or place your order today while supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman

Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman
by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette
Featuring an exclusive introduction by Bill Hader and exclusive artwork by Stephen R. Bissette!
Cover artwork by Tomislav Tikulin

Prince of StoriesWe’re extremely pleased to announce we have received Tomislav Tikulin’s cover artwork for Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman and it’s even more stunning than we expected.

This book is officially slotted for our 2015 publication schedule and we expect the remaining copies to sell very quickly thanks to the exclusive introduction by Bill Hader and exclusive artwork by Stephen R. Bissette and the overall beauty of this deluxe special edition!

About the Book:
For more than twenty years Neil Gaiman has been one of the world’s bestselling authors, and his loyal following is like none other. But no one has ever undertaken the daunting challenge of cataloging and researching every work the man has ever created. Until now.

In Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette take the reader on a detailed look at the man and his creations. Highlights include interviews with the author himself, collected rare works and previously unpublished writing, photographs, artwork, and conversations with Gaiman’s beloved collaborators. Every story and every character are featured at length in this amazing overview of an incredible career. Gaiman’s own comments are scattered throughout, shedding light on how he feels about the work he has created.

Whether you’re new to the worlds of Neil Gaiman or a long time traveler who knows these roads by heart, there is something new for everyone in this magnificent special edition of Prince of Stories. Exclusive to this oversized hardcover edition are a special introduction by Bill Hader that won’t appear anywhere else and exclusive artwork by Stephen R. Bissette!

Read more or place your order today while supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Carrie: The Deluxe Special Edition Production Update and Gift Edition 3-D Image Mock-Up!

Carrie: The Deluxe Special Edition
Production Update

Carrie: The Deluxe Special Edition is rolling at the printer, and we’ll have a better idea soon when the books will be finished, but in the meantime we wanted to share this 3-D mock-up of the Gift Edition our cover designer created. This image doesn’t show the finer textures of the slipcase material, but we thought it still looked really cool:

Carrie

Read more on our website or place your order while supplies last!

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #173

If you read back over my previous several posts here, you’ll see that they’ve all been leading up today, the launch of Season 5 of Haven, the Syfy TV series loosely based on The Colorado Kid. This season will consist of 26 episodes, spread over the fall and spring in two 13-episode blocks. I visited the set at the end of June, when they were working on the 7th and 8th episodes. This morning, I had the chance to see tonight’s episode, “See No Evil,” which starts immediately after the final moments of Season 4, at which point William had been tossed through the portal under the lighthouse and Audrey had become her original form of herself, Mara, a trouble-maker in the most literal form.

In the first episode, something destroys the lighthouse and the cavern beneath and, presumably, the portal. The main characters are scattered far and wide before the blast, so for a while no one knows where anyone else is, and some time is spent in getting everyone back together. Nathan is the first one to encounter “Audrey,” but she’s not the woman he loves. Not on the surface, anyway. Mara (and kudos to Emily Rose for creating such a different personality, someone who is as gleefully malign as William) has an agenda, and she’s not going to let anyone stand in her way. She wants to get William back, something she can only achieve by a doorway or, rather, via a thinny, which will be a familiar concept to Dark Tower fans. However, something vexes her plans. And Nathan hasn’t given up hope that Audrey is still inside somewhere and he can bring her back.

On another front, Duke is trying to find Jennifer, who is the only lighthouse person unaccounted for. And, of course, there’s a Trouble, which manifests itself in people having their eyes and/or mouths sewn shut with a leather cord that defies all efforts to remove it. Though everyone tries to impress on Dwight the importance of reining in Mara, he knows this Trouble has the potential to be deadly, so that’s his #1 priority. The repercussions of Audrey giving Duke back his Trouble in the penultimate episode last season also start to come to light, and it’s a doozy. And, based on the previews for the season I’ve seen so far, there are going to be callbacks to a lot of past Troubles. Mara made ’em, so she could potentially use them as weapons to achieve her nefarious goals.

And I’m very worried about Dave Teagues. Is he having morphine-induced nightmares or terrifying memories?

Interested in learning more about the origins of the Troubles? There’s a 16-page mini-comic in the Season 4 DVD, and a web series called Haven Origins coming on September 12. Here’s a trailer for it.


King will embark on a six-city book tour to promote the release of Revival. He will appear in New York City (Nov 11), Washington, DC (Nov 12), Kansas City, MO (Nov 13), Wichita, KS (Nov 14), Austin, TX (Nov 15) and South Portland, ME (Nov 17). Further details regarding the itinerary will be posted on King’s official website on September 15th.

Issue 1 of The Prisoner, the first cycle adapting The Drawing of the Three from Marvel, came out this week. For the first time, these comics are being offered digitally as well as in print.

In case you missed it, King’s latest short story “That Bus Is Another World” appeared in the August issue of Esquire. Also, here is King’s response to the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS. And here is an interview with King about how he teaches writing, from the Atlantic.

The PBS series Finding Your Roots will feature King in its first episode of the new season on September 23. In this promo, King is shown a photo of his father and in this one, he learns more about his distant ancestors.

Encore is running King movies every day during September, with a special selection scheduled for King’s birthday.

There’s lots of news on the movie/TV front. Let’s hit the high spots:

  • A Good Marriage will be in cinemas and available via Video On Demand on October 3. ‘We went in fearlessly’: Stephen King on adapting A Good Marriage for film.
  • Big Driver will premiere on Lifetime on Saturday, October 18 at 8pm ET/PT. The movie stars Maria Bello, Olympia Dukakis, Joan Jett, Will Harris and Ann Dowd (from The Leftovers). The script is by Richard Christian Matheson, with Mikael Salomon directing. Here is a teaser video.
  • Mercy, the film adaptation of “Gramma,” will be “dumped to digital” in October. I assume this means it’s going straight to Video On Demand.
  • Mr. Mercedes will be a 10-episode TV series. Jack Bender will be on the production team.
  • CBS has ordered a “put pilot” (a serious commitment) from Warner Bros. TV for a series based on “The Things They Left Behind.” It is described as a supernatural procedural drama in which an unlikely pair of investigators carry out the unfinished business of the dead.
  • Mark Romanek will direct Overlook Hotel, the prequel to The Shining.
  • In this video, King discusses his involvement with the second season of Under the Dome, which is nearing the end of its second season. There are also a couple of good interviews with him: Stephen King Isn’t Afraid Of The Big Bad Adaptation and Written by — and tweaked for TV by — Stephen King
  • Now that Cell has wrapped, King teased what he could about the film. “The movie is not totally close to the original screenplay that I wrote,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what, the end of it is so goddamn dark and scary. It’s really kind of a benchmark there.”
  • Writer Jeff Buhler has come aboard director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Pet Sematary reboot for Paramount. He discusses the project with Dread Central.
  • The Stand director Josh Boone says: I finished writing the script maybe a month ago. Stephen [King] absolutely loved it. It’s, I think, the first script ever approved by him. [It’ll be] a single version movie. Three hours. It hews very closely to the novel…I don’t imagine we would shoot the movie until next Spring at the earliest. His full comments are available at Collider.

Tortured Souls by Clive Barker — Beautiful Subterranean Press Hardcover Edition!

Tortured Souls by Clive Barker
Beautiful Subterranean Press Hardcover Edition!

Hi Folks!

Tortured SoulsWe’re very pleased to report we’ll be receiving copies of Tortured Souls by Clive Barker from Subterranean Press, so don’t wait to place your order or you might miss out!

About the Book:
Tortured Souls is one of the most vividly imagined, tightly compressed novellas ever written by the incomparable Clive Barker. At once violent and erotic, brutal and strangely beautiful, it takes us into the heart of the legendary “first city” known as Primordium, the site of political upheaval, passionate encounters, and astonishing acts of transformation.

Lurking at the edges of this extravagant tale is the ancient entity known as “Agonistes,” who accepts the pleas of selected “Supplicants,” transforming them, through a combination of art, magic, and pain, into avatars of violence and revenge.

The story begins when a freelance assassin named Zarles Krieger commits a routine murder-for-hire. This act will lead him to two life-altering encounters, one with the daughter of his victim, the other with Agonistes himself. This conjunction of the human and the inhuman stands at the center of this instantly absorbing creation.

With great authority and equally great economy, Tortured Souls expands to become a portrait of Primordium itself, with its hierarchies, its hidden mysteries, its shifting power structure, and—most significantly—its indelible cast of characters. A perfectly controlled example of what Barker calls “the fantastique,” Tortured Souls is something truly special, a story whose imaginative reach and sheer narrative power are evident on every page.

Read more or place your order today while supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

 

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #172 (Haven part 6)

This is Part 6 of my Haven series leading up to the premiere of Season 5 on Thursday, September 11. Note: at least the first episode will be airing at 8/7 Central instead of the previously announced 10/9C. However, my DVR has not updated to reflect that announced change.

In the first part, I looked at the series in general and in Parts 2 -5 I reviewed the events of Season 1Season 2Season 3 and Season 4, respectively. For each season, I include a list of episodes along with a summary of the Trouble(s) featured in each episode and a list of the Stephen King references (some of them admittedly a stretch).


Haven: Part 6

A Haven Who’s Who

Haven promo

 

Audrey Prudence Parker:

When we first meet Audrey Parker at the beginning of the first episode, she is in her rather sparse NY apartment receiving orders from her boss at the FBI, Agent Byron Howard. She’s to proceed to Haven, Maine to find an escaped convict who killed a prison guard. Audrey has a reputation for being “open to possibilities” beyond the norm and has a good reputation for closing cases. Audrey believes she’s an orphan, born in Ohio and raised by the state. She became a cop because one of her foster sisters at her third foster home, in Dayton, reported abuse from her father and Audrey stuck a pair of scissors into his neck.

However, the reality is that there is an FBI Special Agent named Audrey Parker with that background, but it isn’t her. The opening scene probably takes place in that place between worlds that we will come to know as “the barn” and this is where the person known to Havenites as Audrey is created. In some ways, her background is a blank slate. For example, she doesn’t have a favorite film (although she does admit that Justin Timberlake was her favorite musician). She also has talents that don’t come from the other Audrey Parker—she can play the piano, for example, and Agent Parker never took lessons. She doesn’t always trust her memories. In one scene, she deliberately tries vegemite to see if she likes it because her memories tell her she doesn’t. She does remember that Audrey Parker was popular in high school.

Audrey has been to Haven before; by my calculation, perhaps as many as twenty times. Audrey Parker is her identity in 2010. In 1983, she was Lucy Ripley, who was in Haven for a few months and disappeared shortly after the Colorado Kid murder. She tried to run away when it came time to go into the barn but was forced to do so by the Guard. In 1955, she was a VA nurse named Sarah Vernon—Vince and Dave Teagues tried to blow up the barn so she wouldn’t have to go away but that plan failed. A future incarnation is a saucy bartender called Lexie Dewitt. Her original persona seems to be a woman named Mara who came from another world with a man called William. During her repeat appearances in Haven, she always helps Troubled people, but Mara was a Trouble-maker who took great delight in inflicting the Troubles on people for sport.

When she gets to Maine, older people comment on how familiar she looks, and she is soon shown a photograph from a newspaper article about a mysterious crime from the 1980s. The body of the Colorado Kid can be seen in the picture, along with a woman who strongly resembles Audrey. For most of the first season, Audrey seeks information about this woman, whose name she learns is Lucy Ripley and who she suspects might be her mother. Eventually she figures out that Lucy is really her (based on an identical scar on their feet) and—surprise of surprises—the Colorado Kid is actually her son, the offspring of Sarah Vernon and Nathan Wuornos (who had been sent back to 1955 by a Troubled man).

Audrey is immune to the Troubles (although she can be affected by physical manifestations created by a Troubled person), which facilitates her role as someone who assists the afflicted. She has great intuition and an innate sense of what’s behind the Troubled person’s problems. As Lucy, she worked with Garland Wuornos to help the Troubled and, without knowing any of this history, she falls into the same pattern with Nathan in 2010.

Jordan McKee suggested that all of Haven’s Troubles are actually her Trouble—after all, it may not be a coincidence that the Troubles return every time she does. When Audrey starts to remember Mara, it’s different from her previous personalities. She can remember being Mara, and it’s no one she wants to be. She has a strong connection to William—not only do sparks leap between them when they touch, when something physical happens to one of them, it happens to the other. Presumably we will learn in Season 5 the truth behind this assertion because at the end of the Season 4 finale, Audrey has turned into Mara after pushing William through the portal to the other world and she wants to bring William back.

What is Audrey’s true nature? Agent Howard, who is her otherworldly chauffeur, tells her that the barn is a kind of amplifier for her powers. When she’s in the barn, her energy keeps the Troubles at bay. But every 27 years she needs to recharge, so she emerges from the barn in a different guise to find the love she needs to last her another 27 years. Is she human? According to Agent Howard, she’s all too human, which is her problem. Is she being punished? As always, Agent Howard is coy in his answers: “It does seem that way,” he says. She can either end the Troubles for 27 years or she can end them forever, by killing the man she loves the most. But who is that? It’s easy to assume that it’s Nathan, with whom she has fallen in love with as Audrey, but perhaps Howard means it’s the man the original she—Mara—loves: William.

Nathan Thaddeus Wuornos

For most of his life, Nathan Wuornos believed he was the son of Haven’s police chief, Garland Wuornos. In fact, he is the son of a murderer named Max Hansen, who has been in Shawshank Prison since Nathan was very young. Hansen supposedly abused both his mother and Nathan. Garland Wuornos married his mother and adopted him, though Nathan has no memory of his early life. His mother died when he was young. He was a geek in high school, president of the A/V club, and was often bullied by Duke Crocker.

He followed his adoptive father into the police department, though the two have a generally strained relationship. Over the course of the first four seasons, he will be Detective, Acting Chief, Detective, Chief, Citizen and, once again, Detective Wuornos. In a perfect world, one without Troubles, Nathan would have remained with his Hansen family and grown up to be a doctor with a wife and daughter. His favorite food is pancakes, for any meal, and he has been known to do decoupage to relax.

Nathan’s Trouble is the ability to feel anything. He experienced this curse when he was a boy: he broke his arm while sledding, a compound fracture that caused him no pain whatsoever, but he didn’t know what it was at the time. His Trouble flared up again recently after an altercation with Duke. His old tormentor invited him out on a boat trip under the pretext of patching up their relationship. Duke actually wanted Nathan to cover for him as he smuggled something past the Coast Guard. When Nathan found out, they got into a fight and Nathan’s Trouble activated. Even then, he refused to believe it was a trouble and went to a doctor, who diagnosed him with idiopathic neuropathy. Eventually he is forced to confront his affliction. However, when he is briefly cured of his Trouble, he performs a heroic and generous act by accepting his inability to feel again so that another Troubled woman could live a normal life.

Though he and Audrey get off to a rocky start, pointing guns at each other shortly after she arrives in Haven, they become friendly and gradually more. Because Audrey is immune to the Troubles, he is able to feel her touch, something he realizes after she gives him a peck on the cheek. Their relationship doesn’t run smoothly, though. She pushes him away when she realizes her time in Haven is running short. He starts a relationship with Jordan McKee, a woman whose Trouble causes her to inflict terrible pain on anyone she touches. Their Troubles are complementary—she can touch him, because he can’t feel. Eventually, though, Audrey and Nathan are able to get past their issues and get together…until Mara comes along.

Duke Crocker

Duke is another Haven native. He and Nathan are the same age and have known each other since they were five. Theirs is a rocky relationship, though. As kids, Duke frequently tormented Nathan (on one memorable occasion, he stuck tacks in Nathan’s back, knowing Nathan wouldn’t feel or notice) and as adults, Duke works on the opposite side of the law. Though he was very young at the time, he knew Lucy Ripley; however, he has lost all memories of the day he was with her at the scene of the Colorado Kid murder.

He is a rogue, a bon vivant and a ne’er do well driven mostly by self-interest. One of his operating principles (which he often breaks) is that he doesn’t help cops, even those he likes. He is a procurer of big ticket rare and illegal goods. He buys and sells things, and sometimes acts as a delivery person for products (he doesn’t always know what they are) on behalf of third parties. He takes pride in his work—he’s not a petty crook; he’s an exceptional crook, with a heart of gold. He can read Chinese and speaks Japanese and Russian. He often quotes Buddha and is a yoga practitioner. He was married to a woman named Evi (Evidence) Ryan, with whom he used to run illegal and dangerous capers until she was shot and killed shortly after she came to Haven.

He has been away from Haven for a period of time, traveling the world and pulling con jobs, but his father had always told him that if he heard the Troubles were back, he was to return. He lives aboard a rusting junker moored in the harbor and becomes the proprietor of the Grey Gull bar after it is gifted to him by an old friend. Though he operates on the shady side, he is a loyal friend and a straight arrow. However, he is also afflicted by a Trouble, the Crocker family curse. When the blood of a Troubled person touches him, his eyes turn silver and he experiences a brief surge of superhuman strength. This is used on occasion as a litmus test to tell whether a person is Troubled or not.

If he kills a Troubled person, that Trouble is forever erased from the family’s bloodline. For that reason, his family has often been sought in the past to rid Haven of Troubled people. His father Simon and grandfather Roy—and members of each generation before that all the way back to Fitzwilliam Crocker in 1786—gave in to the temptation to exert their special talent, which gives the killer a drug-like rush and can become addictive. Duke resists the family obligation, though he begrudgingly agrees on one occasion to kill Harry Nix, a dying man whose family Trouble endangers many people. Previous incarnations of Audrey have been responsible for the deaths of Duke’s ancestors. Duke’s other curse is that he was told by a Troubled person how he would die—but not when. He will be killed by someone who has the Guard tattoo. Because of the Crocker family curse, he has long been at odds with the Guard.

His brother Wade, who did not grow up in Haven, was unaware of the Crocker family curse until Duke vanished inside the barn with Audrey. When he is informed of his talent, he falls pretty to it and is consumed by it. Duke is forced to kill him, which also rids Duke of his Trouble—until he asks Audrey to give it back to him to resolve another Trouble that could have killed hundreds of people.

Though Duke is Troubled, he has also been impacted directly by the Troubles of others. He grew prematurely old (after fathering a daughter) and nearly died, he was turned back into a teenage version of himself, and he was sent back in time to meet his grandfather. One Troubled person possessed his body, intending to keep it, a little girl convinced him to leap from a balcony at the Grey Gull and he is almost drowned by another Trouble. In the un-Troubled version of Haven, William shoots him. At the end of Season 4, it was revealed that every Trouble the Crockers have ever absorbed into themselves has been activated, turning him into a ticking time bomb. Ironically, in a trouble-free world, the Crockers would all have been Haven police officers instead of rogues.

During a trip with Audrey to Colorado to dig up information about the Colorado Kid, Duke kisses Audrey. He later confesses to Nate that he loves her, too, although he is able to put his feelings aside and form a relationship with Jennifer Mason, the woman he meets after he passes through the barn.

The Teagues brothers

Vince and Dave Teagues know everything about Haven’s past, but they are tight-lipped and often at odds with each other over what information should be shared with anyone else. They’ve lived through the Troubles twice before and have archives that go all the way back to the earliest days of Haven. They secretly own half the commercial real estate in Haven and have millions of dollars in off-shore accounts. They are yin and yang to each other—one is big, the other small. Dave likes to photograph (it reveals truth, he says), while Vince sketches (it reveals his soul, he claims). They bicker all the time. In an alternate reality, Dave murders Vince. In another, William murders them.

As the owners and operators of the Haven Herald, their main duty is to write cover stories that sweep supernatural incidents under the rug so that Haven doesn’t come to the attention of outsiders. They can be quite creative at times, but there have been a lot of “gas leaks” in Haven. A lot. They have also worked together (or at cross purposes) to end the Troubles. When Sarah Vernon was supposed to enter the barn, they attempted—unsuccessfully—to blow the building up. This time, Dave wants to keep Audrey out of the barn and Vince wants her to go inside to end the Troubles.

As the series develops, we learn a lot more about these brothers and what they know about this troubled community. Vince, the older brother, has a flickering birthmark on his forearm, the sigul of the Guard, a group of Troubled people who help others—a kind of underground railway, bringing Troubled people to Haven from across the country and providing them with a safe haven. Unbeknownst to even those closest to Vince, he has been their leader, which is the legacy of the firstborn Teagues since the beginning of Haven. The Teagues have Mi’kmaw  blood. However, his younger brother, Dave, is adopted—another in a group of important people placed in Haven by the man known as Agent Howard (or Captain Howard to Sarah Vernon). He comes from the mysterious universe on the other side of the thin spot that exists in Haven.

The Teagues are Trouble-free. However, Vince’s wife’s family had a terrible Trouble, so he activated Simon Crocker (Duke’s father) and convinced him to kill Vince’s father-in-law to end the family curse. Ultimately his wife discovered what he did and hated him for it. Later, with Lucy’s help, he had to kill Simon Crocker.

Dwight Hendrickson

Dwight Hendrickson emerges as an important character to the point where he can now be considered a series regular. He was introduced as a “cleaner,” a man who is brought in by Vince on occasion to clean up the fallout from a Trouble incident. He worked with Chief Wuornos, who didn’t ask too many questions about what he did, which suited Dwight fine. He is an imposing presence, so when he tells people they imagined something, they tend to believe him. He is a Gulf War vet whose Trouble made him unfit for combat: he is a bullet magnet. Any bullet fired in his vicinity will divert from its course and hit him instead.

He became a member of the Guard (he has a large version of the maze tattoo on his back instead of his forearm) after they brought him to Haven to help him when his Trouble manifested, ferrying Troubled people from around the country to Haven, but had a falling out with them when he was ordered to kill a man who refused to go with him in a forced relocation. He also had a young daughter, Elizabeth, who died under circumstances related to his curse and his work with the Guard. His wife, never seen in the series, left him. After Nathan abdicates from his post as Chief of HPD following Audrey’s return to the barn, Dwight is given the job, which he continues to hold at the end of Season 4. Because of his Trouble, Dwight’s primary clothing accessory is a bullet-proof vest. His weapon of choice is a crossbow (no bullets).

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #171 (Haven part 5)

This is Part 5 of my Haven series leading up to the premiere of Season 5 on Thursday, September 11. Note: at least the first episode will be airing at 8/7 Central instead of the previously announced 10/9C. However, my DVR has not updated to reflect that announced change.

In the first part, I looked at the series in general and in Parts 2 -4 I reviewed the events of Season 1Season 2 and Season 3, respectively. In a couple of days, I’ll wrap up with an overview of what we currently know about the major characters. For each season, I include a list of episodes along with a summary of the Trouble(s) featured in each episode and a list of the Stephen King references (some of them admittedly a stretch).


Haven: Part 5

Season 4 — After a While, You Sort Of Get Used To It

For Duke Crocker, only minutes have passed since he jumped into the barn and fell through the floor as the building collapsed on itself. He fell into the seal tank at the Boston Aquarium and was arrested and taken to a psychiatric hospital on a temporary hold after he pretends to have amnesia. The fact that his wallet is full of fake IDs calls his true identity into question.

Jennifer Mason sees Duke on the television news and recognizes him. A former reporter for the Boston Globe, she’s been having her own psychiatric issues of late. She’s been hearing voices, but comes to realize that she had a channel into the barn. She heard Audrey, Nathan, Agent Howard and Duke. However, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic and the drugs she was prescribed have silenced the voices. She seeks Duke out in the hospital, pretending to be his sister “Audrey.” Duke believes she’s Troubled and talks her into helping him escape and going back to Haven with him. If he escaped from the barn, then maybe Audrey did, too and Jennifer might be able to help track her down. After she sees what’s going on in Haven, she voluntarily goes off her meds so she might hear the barn voices again.

For the rest of the world, six months have passed and Duke’s friends in Haven think he’s dead. His older brother Wade has been making regular trips from New York to tend to the Grey Gull and Duke’s other affairs. Nathan is no long working for the police department and Dwight is the new chief. The Troubles are pulling the town apart. People who have no Troubles in their family history begin to shun the Troubled, going so far as to create segregated schools for un-Troubled kids.

When Duke tracks Nathan down, he’s making money by letting bikers beat him up outside a bar. It’s cheaper than seeing a shrink, he says. The meteor storm stopped shortly after Duke went into the barn. Dave believes that by shooting Agent Howard, Nathan somehow disrupted the natural cycle. Even though Audrey is gone, the Troubles persist and a lot of people in town, especially those who belong to the Guard, are angry enough to kill him. At the top of this list is Jordan, who survived being shot after Nathan explained her condition to the doctors who treated her.

Nathan keeps at bay those who want to see him dead by explaining that there’s a way to end the Troubles forever: by letting Audrey kill him. He plans to find her so she can do just that. If anyone kills him now, they ruin what may be the only chance of ending the Troubles. Vince convinces Nathan that it would be a show of good faith on his part to help Haven with its current spate of Troubles, so he agrees to rejoin HPD, but only as a detective. Abdicating his post as chief means he’ll never get that job back again, but being on the force gives him access to police databases that will help him track down Audrey. He soon puts into practice the things he learned about handling Troubled people from Audrey. Jordan isn’t happy that Nathan is risking his life by being at the front lines of dangerous situations.

Meanwhile, inside the barn, the woman formerly known as Audrey Parker is now Lexie Dewitt, 31, born in Tucson, a sassy bartender working in a seedy joint called the Oatley Tap. A handsome man named William comes in one day, telling her that she isn’t who she thinks she is and that she needs to remember or a lot of people are going to die. There is someone she loves, but it’s not anyone she has met in this imaginary life of hers. She needs to recall Haven and what happened there. At first it seems like he’s talking about Nathan, but ultimately it will be revealed that he’s talking about himself.

A creepy guy points a gun at her and William comes to the rescue. When the guy returns with a giant of a sidekick, William forces Audrey to reassemble the gun to scare them off, which tells her she has skills she doesn’t remember. She thinks William is weird, though, and is reluctant to engage him in serious conversation.

He starts breaking down her defenses, and she realizes something strange is going on when she leaves the bar through one door and immediately re-enters through another. For her, no time has elapsed, but her co-worker acts as if it’s the following day. William gradually gets her to accept that nothing around her except for him and the barn is real. Once she does, the other people vanish. She needs to find a door that will get her out of this place, which is imploding—dying—and if she doesn’t find a way out, it will take her with it.

Duke tries to get his brother to return to New York because the Guard won’t be happy to discover that there’s another Crocker in town. Wade knows nothing about the family curse, though, and his Trouble is inactive. When he discovers that his wife is having an affair, he ends up staying in Haven.

Jennifer starts hearing voices again and tells the others that Audrey is still inside the barn. Everyone has been assuming she got out like Duke did, so this changes matters. They have to figure out where to find the second door that needs to be opened for Audrey to come through from the barn. Lexie knows that someone on the outside is looking for her, which helps her focus on finding her door. She always has friends, William tells her. It’s part of who she is. She gets to pick who she wants to be when she returns to Haven.

The door materializes in a clearing, although only Jennifer can see it and she can’t open it. Dave isn’t at all happy with the plan, saying that opening it could unleash powers beyond their control. The others can only see the door after Lexie opens hers, at which point Jennifer can open the one in the clearing. There’s a stormy void between the two and William tells Lexie she needs to take a leap of faith and go through to the door she can see in the distance.

The Guard shows up, heavily armed and prepared to force Audrey to kill Nathan as soon as she comes through the door. Duke tells Nathan he’ll create a distraction so he and Audrey can escape but Nathan wants the Troubles to end right now. When Audrey appears, Nathan gives her a gun and a kiss and tells her to kill him. Audrey foils their plan by pretending to be Lexie. Unlike with her other identities, Audrey can remember being Lexie and can tap into that personality to keep the ruse going. However, if everyone thinks she’s Lexie, they’ll believe that it will be pointless for her to kill “cheekbones,” aka Nathan, since she doesn’t love him.

Duke concocts a delaying tactic that he presents to the Guard via Vince, who tells Nathan that he has to get Lexie to fall in love with him, so they are to spend as much time together as possible. The biggest flaw in this plan is that Nathan doesn’t particularly like Lexie. Duke is the first to see through her trickery when she reveals knowledge of the Troubles that only Audrey would have. For a while he tries to keep her and Nathan apart, but Nathan figures it out before too long as well, but they keep up the pretense, knowing that the Guard will be after them again if they realize Audrey has returned. Jordan wants to find the barn again and shove Lexie back inside but Jennifer knows that the barn is gone for good.

Everyone else in town believes she’s Audrey, so they go along when she shows up at crime scenes. Jordan isn’t on board with this plan. She thinks that Haven’s Troubles are all Lexie’s Troubles (she isn’t far wrong on this point). She befriends Wade, believing that if she can activate his Trouble and he kills Lexie, the Troubles will come to an end. She doesn’t understand the seductive nature of the Crocker family curse. Once Wade gets a taste of the rush from killing a Troubled person, he goes on a rampage, killing several Troubled people, most of them members of the Guard, including Jordan, just as she was about to leave Haven.

Duke finally figures out what Wade is doing and locks him up on his boat; however, Jennifer doesn’t know the full story, so she releases him. When Duke finds Wade about to kill Jennifer, he kills his brother in a struggle, thereby putting an end to his own Trouble. He buries Wade without telling anyone what happened, which means he can’t admit that his Trouble is gone without revealing that he killed his brother. In the aftermath, Duke temporarily decides it’s time to leave Haven—he’s a businessman but somehow he’s become the “schmuck” who helps everyone else.

After the barn is destroyed, Jen decides to return to Boston, but Duke convinces her to stay with him and they begin a relationship. She gets a job at the Haven Herald, which gives her inside access to Vince and Dave’s intelligence, but also gives the brothers a chance to dig into her background to find out why she was connected to the barn. Her first assignment is to do a deep background check on herself. Vince and Dave come up with a list of possible people who might be her real parents once they discover that the man they know as Agent Howard was responsible for her adoption.

Nathan and Audrey struggle with their relationship with each other. Audrey feels that too much has happened for them to be able to go back to that magical time and Nathan isn’t a big fan of the Lexie aspect of her personality. However, passion wins out and they finally consummate their smoldering affair.

Among the new characters this season is Gloria Verrano, the feisty medical examiner who takes over from Dr. Lucassi after he snaps, steals the neighbor’s cats and leaves Haven. She used to work with Garland Wuronos, but then left to become a medical examiner in Ixtapa. She knows Duke because she used to buy marijuana from him. She’s only planning to stay in Haven long enough to get her intern, Vicky, up to speed. However, events conspire against this move when her husband is Troubled by Audrey in an attempt to rectify another family Trouble.

Haven only thought it had things bad with the Troubles, when another twist happens. Troubles become contagious or appear in families that were previously un-Troubled. People can even acquire multiple Troubles. The common thread is the two guys from the barn, the tall one and the creepy one. People with permuted Troubles have glowing black handprints on their bodies, but only Audrey can see them.

Vince and Dave refer back to Sebastian Cabot’s journal. He wintered with the Mi’kmaw in 1497 and describes much of what is currently known about the Troubles. The blackest times the Mi’kmaw knew dated back to a time when someone opened an other-worldly door that shouldn’t have been opened. There are indicators that these times have returned—horseshoe crabs with human eyes—that Jen has seen. The book contains a riddle: What was once your salvation is now your doom; i.e., Audrey killing Nathan will now make things much worse instead, a message that arrives just in time.

Creepy Guy and Big Guy kidnap Dwight while looking for a box. When Audrey and Nathan rescue Dwight, they find William in a closet, tied up and beaten. As he was in the barn, William seems at first to be a good guy. He’s charming and charismatic, and seems genuinely interested in helping Audrey. However, he feigns amnesia while biding his time to figure out how to get what he’s really after. His two henchmen will turn out to be his creations—even though they were present in the barn, they didn’t come from another universe.

The first indication that there’s some kind of mysterious connection between Audrey and William is a spark that occurs whenever she touches him. When she left the barn and went back to being Audrey, he thought he’d lost her forever. Everything he’s been doing with his two henchmen has been in hopes of jarring her memories. He plans to keep doling out new and more twisted Troubles to get her to remember who she once was. He loves her and the original Audrey loves him. He tells her that she’s not some kind of savior to Troubled people—she caused the Troubles. That’s why she keeps coming back again and again—she’s being punished. She and William made the Troubles together and they liked it. The connection between Audrey and William is underscored when Nathan shoots William and Audrey suffers the same wound.

Jennifer becomes increasingly important to solving the William problem. She was born on the same day the Troubles began in the 1980s. Audrey sees her with a copy of Unstake My Heart that she found among the remaining possessions of her birth parents—the same book Audrey gave Agent Howard before she came to Haven. Its importance is revealed when Jennifer uses it to defeat William’s transdimensional rougarou. The Guard insignia glows orange on the cover, but only she can see it. Inside the book, she finds a message: In times of great evil, the child of ruin must find the heart of Haven and summon the Door. She is the child of ruin, the only one able to banish William.

Once William realizes Jennifer has the book, he steps up his game. He creates a Trouble that Audrey can’t fix with her normal methods. In 1901, the same curse killed hundreds of people and the version of Audrey present at the time wasn’t able to end it—the Troubled person had to be killed. She’s going to have to give someone else a complementary Trouble to rectify the situation; otherwise, many more people are going to die. William believes that she will remember who she really is when she gives a new Trouble.

Duke understands the seductive power of the Troubles and is afraid that once Audrey starts down the path of doling out Troubles, they’ll really be screwed. After her first failed attempt, Audrey admits to Duke that she felt something—a jolt of evil that some part of her liked. Duke convinces her to give him back the Crocker family curse so he can take care of the deadly Trouble William concocted. She does, but it has unforeseen effects on Duke. William later says that Audrey reactivated every curse the Crockers ever absorbed and they are now mutating and combining, becoming something deadly: Duke is now a ticking time bomb. Duke senses that something happened with Audrey when she Troubled him and advises Nathan to keep an eye on her. She had a flashback to herself as Mara, frolicking naked in a Haven pond with William.

When Jennifer mentions that the Guard insignia flickers in and out, Duke realizes that it’s doing the same thing as Vince’s tattoo, which turns out to be a birthmark inherited by the eldest son in his family. When the book and Vince’s birthmark are in close proximity, they act like a compass, pointing at the lighthouse. There’s always been one on that spot as long as anyone can remember. Jennifer is the only one who can see the trapdoor in the floor inside of it, so that points them in the direction they need to go. In the basement, they find an oversized carving of the Guard logo. They need to find four people to stand at the compass points—four people who come from another world. Ultimately these people are revealed to be Audrey, William, Jennifer and Dave, although Dave goes to great lengths to hide the fact that he came from the other side of the void, too.

The connection between Audrey and William makes it more difficult to get rid of William. They can’t just shoot him, although Nathan tries to tranquilize him. Ultimately he is forced to knock William out by bashing Audrey in the head. Later, he realizes that William has body parts Audrey doesn’t, and uses that to his advantage (and glee).

The climax of the season takes place in the cavern beneath the lighthouse. The gang is all assembled, William and Dave reluctantly. Duke is exhibiting signs that his illness is worsening. William still believes that Audrey won’t be able to throw him through the door once it’s open. He tries to frighten them by implying that something dangerous will come through to this side when the door is open. Dave is so terrified by the possibility that he’ll be dragged through the door that he shoots Vince; however, Dwight anticipated the danger and stood behind Dave so the bullet turns around, hits Dave in the shoulder and then Dwight’s bulletproof vest.

When Jennifer holds out the magic book, the Guard symbol on the cover glows and a square portal in the floor opens. Once there’s a very real possibility that he’s going through the doorway, William displays fear for the first time. He promises to fix Duke’s Trouble. Dave falls through the doorway and dangles while Vince, Dwight and Nathan rescue him. Duke collapses. Audrey keeps watch on William and, when the time comes for him to leave, she pushes him into the gaping hole. However, there’s another spark between them, stronger than ever before. After Jennifer closes the door, she collapses, saying that they should never have opened the door. William wasn’t what they should have been afraid of. She stops breathing and Duke starts bleeding from the eyes. Audrey is now fully Mara. She steps forward and asks, “Who’s going to help me get William back?”

Troubles

1) Fallout

Trouble: Marian Caldwell again causes catastrophic weather events after her husband dies.

King references: Haven police officer Rebecca Rafferty (played by Lucas Bryant’s wife), shares a surname with another cop, Ennis Rafferty in From a Buick 8. Lexie is a bartender at the Oatley Taproom, a reference to a bar from The Talisman. The Haven Bookshop’s shelves are filled with Hard Case Crime novels—is The Colorado Kid among them?

2) Survivors

Trouble: Donald Keaton, a guilt-ridden firefighter, burns people who think he’s a hero.

King references: Don Keaton shares a surname with a selectman from Castle Rock in Needful Things. Black House Coffee is a reference to the King/Straub book of the same name. Its logo is a black crow, alluding to Gorg from that book.

3) Bad Blood:

Trouble: When someone in the Gallagher family’s blood spills, it comes to life and goes after whoever that person hates the most.

King references: Lexie Dewitt’s last name is a reference to a character from “LT’s Theory of Pets.” A Trouble that travels via the sewers is reminiscent of It.

4) Lost and Found

Trouble: Braer Brock, a childless man, conjures douen to lead astray other children so he can build a family with his wife.

King references: Free-standing doors into another universe that can only be opened by certain people are common in the Dark Tower series. Jake Chambers returned to Mid-World through a door that had to be opened simultaneously on both sides.

5) The New Girl

Trouble: Tyler can temporarily turn other people into his puppets so long as he is holding something that belongs to that person.

King references: Katie is named for a character in “Sorry, Right Number.” The way Tyler possesses people is similar to what Roland does with Jack Mort in The Drawing of the Three. Duke is still inside his body but Tyler is in control and Duke is in the back seat.

6) Countdown

Trouble: Paul Krebbs causes other people to see a countdown timer that marks the seconds until they die from rigor mortis.

King references: Paul Krebbs was named after a forensic assistant in The Colorado Kid. Cleaves Mills is a town in The Dead Zone. Paul asks Ellie on a date at Black House Coffee, named after the sequel to The Talisman. The school for the un-Troubled, Stillwater, is named after a river next to which King lived after he graduated from the University of Maine.

7) Lay Me Down

Trouble: Carrie Benson’s worst nightmares come to life and happen physically. This Trouble used to be confined to the women in her family, but William made it contagious, passed from her to the people on her newspaper delivery route.

King references: Sonia Winston is named after Patrick Danville’s mother (Insomnia) and Carrie Benson is a reference to King’s first novel. Stansfield National Park is named after the patient whose story is central to “The Breathing Method.” Jennifer becomes the Girl Friday at the Haven Herald, just like Stephanie McCann was in The Colorado Kid. Duke’s license plate number is 98 KA 16—Ka is a central concept in the Dark Tower series.

8) Crush

Trouble: Jack Driscoll and his brother Aiden create enormous pressure bubbles when under duress. They are related to Reverend Driscoll and are hence from a family that has never been Troubled before.

King references: Lumley Street is named for a character in “One for the Road.” Jack Daniels’ name is a combination of the main character from The Talisman and a villain from Rose Madder. The concept of a soft spot between universes is common in the Dark Tower series.

9) William

Trouble: Nathan, Dwight and Jen suffer paranoid delusions in a temporary Trouble caused by William’s henchmen.

King references: The concept of paranoid delusions comes from the poem “Paranoia” in Skeleton Crew.

10) The Trouble with Troubles

Trouble: Cliff wishes the Troubles never happened, turning Haven into a blissful but boring seaside resort. When Doreen Hanscomb remembered her Hawaii vacation, she would get sand in her shoes until William amplified her Trouble. She then caused a volcano to erupt in Haven.

King references: Two businesses in the Trouble-free Haven are Balazar’s Clothing Bazaar (a reference to a mob boss from the Dark Tower series) and Joyland Bicycles. Doreen Hanscomb shares a surname with a main character in It. Cliff’s ability to rewrite reality is akin to “The Word Processor of the Gods.” One of the boat repair shops is at 123 King Boulevard. Many of the labels on the card catalog in the Haven Herald reference King stories or important dates from his works.

11) Shot in the Dark

Trouble: William creates a rougarou, a werewolf-like creature that eats the hearts of people born on the same date as Jennifer Mason. It is a Trouble that has no Troubled person attached. It is a transdimensional Trouble.

King references: The ghosthunters are called Darkside Seekers. King contributed a short story to the movie Tales from the Darkside. Tarker’s Mills Grocery is a reference to the small town where “Cycle of the Werewolf” is set. Canaan Street references a Barony in the Dark Tower series whose capital is Gilead.

12) When the Bough Breaks

Trouble: “Never let a Harker cry lest people near or far die.” This Trouble normally didn’t kick in until puberty but William activated a baby. Duke Crocker gets his family curse back to put an end to this particularly lethal Trouble. When Gloria’s husband Lincoln hears sounds, they are magnified to ear-splitting volume, a Trouble given to him by Audrey to try to counter the Harker curse.

King references: Ben Harker is named for Ben Richards, the main character in The Running Man who sacrificed himself for his child.

13) The Lighthouse

Trouble: Audrey activates within Duke every Trouble the Crocker family has ever absorbed.

King references: Doors between worlds and the concept that Haven is located at a “thin spot” in reality is a common concept in the Dark Tower series.

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #170 (Haven part 4)

This is Part 4 of my Haven series leading up to the premiere of Season 5 next Thursday, September 11. In the first part, I looked at the series in general and in Parts 2 & 3 I reviewed the events of Season 1 and Season 2, respectively. After tackling Season 4 in the next post, I’ll wrap up with an overview of what we currently know about the major characters. For each season, I include a list of episodes along with a summary of the Trouble(s) featured in each episode and a list of the Stephen King references (some of them admittedly a stretch).


Haven: Part 4

Season 3 — They don’t call them Troubles for nothing

Season 3 begins immediately following the end of the twelfth episode of Season 2. The Christmas episode was a kind of lagniappe, and isn’t in sequence with the rest of the episodes.

A lot happens in the third season: we are introduced to the Guard, the identity of the Colorado Kid is revealed, a Troubled serial killer stalks Haven, a new cop comes to town, Nathan finds a new love interest, and a timer starts to count down the amount of time Audrey has left before she is supposed to leave Haven and end the troubles. And that’s just a quick summary.

The season begins with a fight between Nathan and Duke that is reminiscent of the one that triggered Nathan’s Trouble. There is a gunshot, but no one is injured. At first, Nathan has the advantage in that he can’t feel Duke’s punches. However Duke gets an upper hand when a drop of blood triggers his supernatural powers. They are interrupted by the manifestation of another person’s Trouble. Audrey, meanwhile, is tied up in the basement of an inn, taken prisoner by the indi­­­vidual we will come to know as the Bolt Gun Killer. This individual, a shapeshifter, wants to find out what Audrey knows about the Colorado Kid. The Bolt Gun Killer is also digging around at the Haven Herald because Dave and Vince know so much about the town’s past.

Audrey’s captor claims that Lucy Ripley loved the Colorado Kid and implies that someone else did, too—a major clue to the kidnapper’s identity. It turns out to be Arla Cogan, the Colorado Kid’s wife, but we won’t learn that—or the Kid’s real name—for quite some time. We won’t find out the real reason why Lucy loved Cogan until late in the season, either: he is her son, or rather the son of Sarah Vernon and a time-traveling Nathan Wuornos, who was sent back to 1955 with Duke. Uncertain that he’ll ever get back to the present, he and Sarah have a fling in the back seat of a car on the day she arrived in Haven and later that same day Sarah kills Duke’s grandfather, Roy Crocker.

Audrey now thinks there’s a chance that the Colorado Kid is still alive, even though Dave and Vince refute that possibility. When they exhume his grave, the coffin is empty except for some bricks, and there’s a cryptic message written in Audrey’s—or, rather, Lucy’s—handwriting that says she has to find him before the hunter arrives. At first they assume that’s a reference to a person, perhaps someone hunting the Colorado Kid, but Duke figures out that it refers to a meteor storm that always occurs at the end of the Troubles.

The next storm is due in 49 days (at the beginning of the season), which sets the countdown on Audrey’s remaining time in Haven. Audrey, like her predecessors, is supposed to enter the mystical barn, which will end the Troubles for 27 years. This knowledge creates a shift in the relationship between Audrey and Nathan. Aware that she will be leaving in less than two months, she starts pushing Nathan away because she knows he’s intent of saving her. Hedonistic Duke tries to talk her into seizing the day, taking off from Haven and enjoying what time she has left, but Audrey stays on the job until the bitter end.

The Troubles, of course, continue as before. Because of their past issues with the Rev and his faction, Audrey and Nathan often work these cases alone, without the backup of the rest of the Haven Police Department. They don’t want to draw any more attention to these situations than necessary.

Nathan has the maze tattoo on his forearm. He figures that if the person who kills Duke someday has the tattoo, he wants to make sure he’s on the approved list. He doesn’t know what it represents at first, but Dwight warns him that not everyone who has the tattoo is good. Vince and Dave finally cough up some helpful information by telling Nathan and Audrey what the maze tattoo means. It is a symbol of the Guard, a group that has existed for generations. They refuse to let the Troubled be victimized and won’t hesitate to kill to protect them. Vince won’t admit for a long time that he’s the head of the Guard, though it’s clear he knows more than he’s saying. The Guard also relocates Troubled people to Haven from around the country, sometimes against their will. They know what is supposed to happen to end this round of the Troubles and they are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure Audrey keeps her rendezvous with the barn.

Several new characters rise to prominence this season. Dr. Claire Callahan, a psychiatrist who works with Troubled people (she treats many of the characters from past seasons) is assigned to counsel Audrey after her abduction. Claire insists on shadowing Audrey at work and the two eventually become close and work together on several cases. She also tries regression therapy to see if Audrey can access her past lives, which works to a point. Audrey has visions of herself as Lucy in the company of the Colorado Kid, which provides the clue she needs to find out his real identity, although these flashbacks take a physical toll on her. Ultimately, Claire is murdered and her body taken over by the skinwalker.

Dr. Lucassi, first seen as the psychiatrist affected by the music Trouble in the Season 1, becomes Haven’s medical examiner, a position he will hold until he has some sort of breakdown and vanishes from town with his neighbor’s cats.

Detective Tommy Bowen comes to Haven on the trail of the person who killed his trainee back in Boston. After the case is solved, Nathan offers him a position on the Haven Police Department, though they keep him in the dark about the Troubles for a while. His bosses back at Boston PD aren’t unhappy to see him go—he has been under Internal Affairs investigation because of a shooting incident, although the file is sealed. Nathan figures out he’s the Bolt Gun Killer after seeing his GPS history. Bowen kills Nathan (who is later resurrected by Noelle Keegan) and flees, taking Vince and Dave hostage before pretending to be killed in a boat explosion. The real Tommy Bowen was killed by the shapeshifter before Audrey and Nathan met him the first time.

Jordan McKee is the member of the Guard to whom Vince directs Nathan. She works at a bar and dresses in black, including black gloves. Her Trouble is extreme pain delivered to anyone she touches or who touches her. However, because of his Trouble, Nathan is unaffected. She is seduced by the fact that she can touch him, and they have a brief but intense relationship. Jordan doesn’t trust Nathan at first and gives him a few tests to pass before she is semi-convinced that he’s being straight with her. She gets him to transfer a prisoner who she claims is dying to a nearby facility, but it’s a setup so they can break the Troubled man loose and take him somewhere safe. She lies to Nathan on other occasions when his purposes oppose those of the Guard’s, making it plain where her allegiances lie. She is arrested after trying to take Ginger Danvers but is released in a prisoner exchange deal with the Guard. The Guard wanted the girl for her powers of persuasion, which they planned to use on Nathan to coerce Audrey if she refused to go into the barn.

After Audrey learns the Colorado Kid’s identity and sees what he looks like in a vision, she and Duke travel to Nederland, Colorado, James Cogan’s hometown. There she learns that the Cogans are part of the Guard’s underground network and operate a safe house for Troubled people in transit to Haven. They also learn that James was married to Arla, though she hasn’t been seen since he went east and there are suggestions that she killed herself. The Cogans took James in when Audrey (as Sarah) brought him to them—he was Sarah’s son, which explains why Lucy loved him. On this trip, Duke and Audrey kiss, the first time that Duke admits that he has feeling for her, too—something he will confess to Nathan at the end of the season.

Duke struggles with his curse. Nathan suspects that he is ready to use it at any time and chides him about it, but Nathan isn’t above letting someone sacrifice himself to end a dangerous trouble, which leads to some philosophical discussions about what the difference in their approaches are, if any. Audrey talks Duke into killing a dying Harry Nix, who has hundreds of offspring and his Trouble is lethal. Countless lives are at stake. Duke refuses at first, but finally gives in when he sees what the consequences of his inaction might be, but he’s furious with Audrey for putting him in that position, even though Nix would have died in a few minutes anyway. The worst thing about his curse is that giving into it feels good, like a drug. Nathan’s not happy about Audrey using Duke this way, especially without consulting him first.

The Bolt Gun Killer is murdering women. In some cases, the killer takes off the victims’ skin so that it can be worn later when it’s time to take on a different guise. In other cases, only specific body parts are removed: lips, noses, ears. The common thread in all of these murders is the way the people are killed: a bolt gun shot at the back of the skull, which leaves no exit wound and does minimal damage to the skin. Unlike the chameleon seen last season, this shapeshifter/skinwalker does not need to change bodies regularly—only when circumstances require it. The shapeshifter first appears as Rosalyn Toomey, the woman Audrey talks with through the wall while she’s tied up in the cellar. For most of the season, though, the killer is in the guise of Tommy Bowen, who was dead before he first appeared in Haven. The shapeshifter is Arla Cogan and her goal is to create a skin for herself that looks the way she did back in 1983 so that her husband, James, will be comfortable seeing her when he emerges from the barn. Audrey is able to identify her by putting together the stolen body parts in a police Identikit program.

After James was murdered (perhaps by the Guard to force Lucy into the barn), Lucy took him to the barn, believing that its restorative properties that kept her the same age would bring him back to life. Lucy was supposed to take Arla in, too, but she didn’t because Arla’s Trouble kicked in and she murdered someone to steal their skin. Now, Arla wants Audrey to show her where the barn is so she can be there when James emerges. James told her that Lucy had found a way to stop the Troubles for good. However, James leaves the barn (in the company of Agent Howard) before anyone reaches it and stumbles into town, confused over how much time has passed. He’s deathly sick—he can’t survive outside the barn. Arla has convinced James that Lucy killed him to try to end the Troubles.

The Hunter meteor storm arrives, and it’s a killer. Fireballs rain onto Haven, destroying buildings, starting fires, and killing people. The storm won’t stop until Audrey leaves, according to the Guard. It will only intensify until Haven is destroyed. Audrey meets Agent Howard in the field near the barn’s locations. He sends Arla into town to find James and tells Audrey that the barn will appear whenever she’s ready to go inside. She has to want to go inside, to leave Haven—she can’t be forced in against her will.

One of the main themes of the season is destiny. Duke struggles with what everyone else calls his family’s destiny. His purpose. He commiserates with Audrey, telling her that she shouldn’t blindly accept this fate. He chooses his own fate, he says. Nathan struggles with the notion that Audrey must go into the barn on the appointed day. He feels there must be another way to end the Troubles without losing Audrey. There is, as it turns out, but it’s not a palatable one: Audrey must kill the person she loves most, and she’s not going to do that.

In the final scenes at the barn, Duke tricks Arla into bringing James along and then holds her at gunpoint. James is very sick but manages to revive himself enough to dash inside the barn. Audrey follows, believing him to be her one chance to end the Troubles forever and stay in Haven without losing her identity. Nathan goes inside with her while Duke keeps Arla at bay. Inside, Nathan’s Trouble goes away. The barn shows them things from the past they need to know: it shows Vince and Dave’s failed attempt to blow up the barn with Sarah Vernon, and it reveals that Nathan is James’s father.

The Guard, led by Jordan, shows up to make sure that Audrey is still inside the barn when it leaves. Vince and Dave arrive on the scene separately—Vince wants Audrey to go into the barn and Dave doesn’t. Dwight sides with Dave—he wants the Troubles to end, but there must be a way to put a stop to this vicious cycle. Vince is revealed to be the leader of the Guard. He orders them to leave, but Jordan lingers.

Audrey can’t convince James that there’s something wrong with Arla, so she brings Arla inside the barn. Her Trouble ends, so the grotesque stitches in the skin she is wearing are revealed to her husband. When he finds out that she has murdered so many people, he is enraged. Arla pulls a knife, meaning to attack Audrey, but James gets in the way and is stabbed. In the ensuing struggle, Arla is stabbed, too, and dies. Nathan takes her from the barn so she won’t be revived by it. Agent Howard spirits James away somewhere so he can heal. He can never leave the barn.

Audrey doesn’t love James—she just met him—and she won’t kill the person she loves, so she makes the decision to leave. She goes outside to say her goodbyes and gives Duke a gun to prevent Nathan from stopping her. After she goes back inside, Nathan tries to open the door, but it won’t budge. In a rage, he grabs the gun and shoots Agent Howard several times. Jordan shoots at him but misses—Duke pivots Nathan around so that he can shoot Jordan before she tries again. Instead of vanishing, the barn begins to break apart. Light streams through holes that mimic Agent Howard’s wounds, and from his wounds as well. Nathan tells Duke, who admitted his love for Audrey, to go after her. Duke leaps into the barn as it collapses onto itself, screaming her name. The meteor storm is still raining fire and destruction down on Haven.

Episodes

1) 301

Trouble: Wesley Toomey, whose grandfather was abducted by aliens, thinks they are back and about to attack Haven. He brings to life several “news” items about alien incidents from the past.

King references: The Altair Bay Inn is named after Altair 4, an alien planet from The Tommyknockers. Wesley Toomey is named for Craig Toomey from “The Langoliers.”

2) Stay

Trouble: Whenever people in Tor Magnusson’s family try to slaughter animals, they become human. When he treats the animals (dogs in this case) like people, they revert.

King references: The Dixie Boy truck stop from Maximum Overdrive makes its second appearance. Dr. Claire Callahan shares a surname with the priest from ‘Salem’s Lot. Dr. Lucassi goes surfing in Ogunquit on Wednesdays—that’s where Fran Goldsmith and Harold Lauder lived in The Stand. The Tarker’s Mills Tigersharks mentioned in the Haven Herald references a town from “Cycle of the Werewolf.”

3) Farmer

Trouble: Harry Nix suffers chronic organ failure. He secretly fathered dozens or hundreds of children so he would have a source of replacement organs, which he sucks out of his victims with a tube that comes out of his mouth. If his attack fails, the victim’s trouble (which is the same as his) is triggered, so this lethal Trouble spreads.

King references: Tommy Bowen is named after Todd Bowen from “Apt Pupil.”

4) Over My Head

Trouble: When Daphne’s car goes off the highway into the water, she transmits whatever bad thing that’s happening to her at the moment to the people who she thinks might rescue her. When Jordan McKee touches anyone, she delivers an extremely painful jolt.

King references: Frank Bentley shares a surname with Wes Bentley from “Dolan’s Cadillac.” Jason Dooley shares a surname with a character from Lisey’s Story.

5) Double Jeopardy

Trouble: Lynette creates a golem out of the painting of Lady Liberty she sees every day in the courthouse. This vengeful creature exacts fitting justice on people she believes have gotten off on technicalities. Duncan Fromsley starts fires in his sleep.

King references: The hidden camera has Dandel-O’s brand, with a spider on the box, a reference to the shape-shifting creature Roland meets close to the Dark Tower. James Dooley shares a last name with Jim Dooley from Lisey’s Story. Judge Boone shares a surname with Charles Boone from “Jerusalem’s Lot.” The Dixie Boy truck stop from Maximum Overdrive is seen for the third time. A gazebo plays a pivotal role in the serial murder case in The Dead Zone. Lynette enters a painting much like Rosie McClendon does in Rose Madder. Duncan Fromsley was incarcerated at Shawshank Prison.

6) Real Estate

Trouble: Roland Holloway became so obsessed with the house he was restoring that he lost his body and became the house itself. Lucy Ripley couldn’t help him 27 years ago, so now he’s set on pitting everyone who comes to the house against each other.

King references: The Holloway House is on Marsten Road, a reference to the haunted house in ‘Salem’s Lot. Roland Holloway’s first name is a tribute to Roland Deschain, the gunslinger from the Dark Tower series. For Halloween, Dwight is dressed like the gunslinger. Tina Teagarden shares a last name with a police constable from Gerald’s Game. James Cogan is real name of the Colorado Kid in the book. Nederland, Colorado is also a setting from King’s forthcoming novel, Revival.

7 & 8) Magic Hour

Trouble: Moira and Noelle Keegan can bring people back from the dead (one per day) by absorbing their injuries. Moira uses this Trouble to extort money from people.

King references: Arla is the Colorado Kid’s wife in the book, too. Trapingus Cove is named for Trapingus County from The Green Mile. Grady Smith, one of the Bolt Gun Killer’s victims, is named after Delbert Grady from The Shining. The Kitchener Mill is a reference to the Kitchener Ironworks from It. EMT Joseph Brentner shares a surname with Ralph Brentner from The Stand.

9) Sarah

Trouble: Stuart Mosley, a war vet, sends people back and forth in time to put them out of harm’s way.

King references: Roy Crocker is named for Roy Depape from Wizard and Glass. Both men are Big Coffin Hunters. Roy’s family lives in Derry. Traveling back in time and changing the outcome of the future is the main storyline in 11/22/63.

10) Burned

Trouble: Young Ginger Danvers has the power of suggestion / command.

King references: Ginger Danvers shares a surname with Mrs. Danvers from the “Father’s Day” segment in Creepshow. Waterman Lane may be a nod to King’s favorite pen maker, the brand he used to write Dreamcatcher longhand. The warehouse where the Bolt Gun Killer kept his skins has a “King Bros.” sign on the wall.

11) Last Goodbyes

Trouble: Will Brady, who has been in a coma for two months and was being transferred home to die, sends everyone in Haven into coma so he can wake up.

King references: Will Brady shares a surname with the mother and son from Sleepwalkers. His prolonged coma is reminiscent of Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone.

12) Reunion

Trouble: Robby “Robert” Farson, who was bullied as a teenager, turns his former tormentors back into their teenaged selves. Any food former prom queen Janine touches turns into cake.

King references: Robert’s last name is Farson (according to credits), which is a tribute to John Farson, the so-called Good Man from the Dark Tower series. Also, the initials RF are common to identities adopted by villain Randall Flagg. The basement boiler that builds up explosive pressure is reminiscent of The Shining.

13) Thanks for the Memories

Trouble: Arla Cogan is a skinwalker, able to strip the skin from other people and wear it like it’s her own. The meteor storm can be thought of as Haven’s Trouble.

King references: The inside of the barn is impossibly big with many doors, like the Black House. The destructive meteor storm is reminiscent of an incident in Carrie.