Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman
Several of the characters in Stephen King’s latest novel, Under the Dome, suffer seizures. Some are thought to be petite mal epileptic seizures; others are presumed to be cause by too much exposure to the sun; still others are said to result from too much excitement. (Only later does physician’s assistant Rusty Everett suggest that the seizures may be “a side effect of whatever force is powering the Dome” [396]).
Among the children who experience such seizures are sisters Judy and Janelle Everett, Little Walter Bushey, and Aidan Appleton. Judy, Janelle, and Little Walter are children of Chester’s Mill residents Linda Everett and Samantha (“Sammy”) Bushey; and Aidan is the orphan son of an out-of-town mother who is killed by the descent of the dome.
Their seizures are accompanied by murmurings about strange visions. “Stop Halloween,” Janelle warns, “you have to stop Halloween.” Judy reports, “The pink stars are falling,” adding “it’s so dark and everything smells bad” (389). Little Walter hasn’t had a visionary experience, as far as anyone knows, but, at only 18 months, he may not be able to articulate any such hallucination or prophecy if he has had one. Nevertheless, the reader learns, from Ginny Tomlinson, a nurse at the local hospital to which Sammy took her son after his crib collapsed (and she herself had been gang-raped): Little Walter, she tells the Reverend Piper Libby, is “your basic healthy eighteen-month-old, but he gave us quite a scare. He had a mini-seizure. It was probably exposure to the sun. Plus dehydration. . . hunger. . .” (384). (It is also from Ginny that the pastor learns that Sammy was raped; the pastor quickly accomplishes what no one else has been able to do, extracting from Sammy the names of her rapists.)
A few pages later, Aidan has the same bizarre vision as he experiences a seizure:
Among the children who experience such seizures are sisters Judy and Janelle Everett, Little Walter Bushey, and Aidan Appleton. Judy, Janelle, and Little Walter are children of Chester’s Mill residents Linda Everett and Samantha (“Sammy”) Bushey; and Aidan is the orphan son of an out-of-town mother who is killed by the descent of the dome.
Their seizures are accompanied by murmurings about strange visions. “Stop Halloween,” Janelle warns, “you have to stop Halloween.” Judy reports, “The pink stars are falling,” adding “it’s so dark and everything smells bad” (389). Little Walter hasn’t had a visionary experience, as far as anyone knows, but, at only 18 months, he may not be able to articulate any such hallucination or prophecy if he has had one. Nevertheless, the reader learns, from Ginny Tomlinson, a nurse at the local hospital to which Sammy took her son after his crib collapsed (and she herself had been gang-raped): Little Walter, she tells the Reverend Piper Libby, is “your basic healthy eighteen-month-old, but he gave us quite a scare. He had a mini-seizure. It was probably exposure to the sun. Plus dehydration. . . hunger. . .” (384). (It is also from Ginny that the pastor learns that Sammy was raped; the pastor quickly accomplishes what no one else has been able to do, extracting from Sammy the names of her rapists.)
A few pages later, Aidan has the same bizarre vision as he experiences a seizure:
“He’s having some kind of seizure,” Carolyn [Sturges] said. “Probably from overexcitement. I think he’ll come out of it if we just give him a few m--”
“The pink stars are falling,” Aidan said. “They make lines behind them. It’s pretty. It’s scary. Everyone is watching. No treats, only tricks. Hard to breathe. He calls himself the Chef. It’s his . He’s the one” (391).
Upon recovering, none of the children remembers seeing, hearing, smelling, or saying anything unusual. However, their seizures and their hallucinations, like the migraine headaches that Junior Rennie suffers, suggest that something is very bad, indeed, in Chester’s Mill and that, as bad as things may be, events are likely to get worse soon. Halloween and pink stars point to something sinister. According to Aidan, the Chef is the one responsible for the coming catastrophe, whatever it might be. The last time the reader encountered the Chef, he was lurking about inside the methamphetamine laboratory that Big Jim Rennie and Andy Sanders operate behind Christ the Holy Redeemer Church. The pastor of the church was also a partner in the manufacture and sale of the illegal drug before Big Jim killed him. Police officers Jackie Wettington and Linda Everett, who had checked on the church, the parsonage, and the church’s radio station missed the Chef:
A door neither woman had noticed eased open at the back of the studio. Inside were more blinking lights--a galaxy of them. The room was little more than a cubby choked with wires, splitters, routers, and electronic boxes. You would have said there was no room for a man. But The Chef was beyond skinny; he was emaciated. His eyes were only glitters sunk deep in his skull. His skin was pale and blotchy. His lips folded loosely inward over gums that had lost most of their teeth. His shirt and pants were filthy, and his hips were naked wings; Chef’s underwear days were now just a memory. It is doubtful that Sammy would have recognized her missing husband. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one hand (he could eat only soft things now) and a Glock 9 in the other.
He went to the window overlooking the parking lot, thinking he’d rush out and kill the intruders if they were still there; he had almost done it while they were inside. Only he’d been afraid. Because demons couldn’t actually be killed. When their human bodies died, they just flew into another host. When they were between bodies, the demons looked like blackbirds. Chef had seen this in vivid dreams that came on the increasingly rare occasions when he slept.
They were gone, however. His atman had been too strong for them.
Rennie had told him he had to shut down out back, and Chef Bushey had, but he might have to start up some cookers again, because there had been a big shipment to Boston a week ago and he was almost out of product. He needed smoke. It was what his atman fed on these days.
But for now he had enough. He had given up on the blues music that had been so important to him [as he had given up on sex, too, according to Samantha, his wife, in favor of his drug of choice] in his Phil Bushey stage of life--B. B. King, Koko and Hound Dog Taylor, Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf, even the immortal Little Walter. . . he had even pretty much given up on moving his bowels, had been constipated since July. But that was okay. What humiliated the body fed the atman.
He checked the parking lot and the road beyond once more to make sure the demons weren’t lurking, then tucked the automatic into his belt at the small of his back and
headed for the storage shed, which was actually more of a factory these days. A
factory that was shut down, but he could and would fix that if necessary.
Chef went to get his pipe (320-321).
Judy, Janelle, Aidan, and Little Walter are not the only ones to have had seizures, the reader later is told: according to the omniscient narrator,
During the first fifty-five hours of the Dome’s existence, over two dozen children suffered seizures. Some, like those of the Everett girls, were noted. Many more were not, and in the days ahead the seizure activity would rapidly taper down to nothing. Rusty would compare this to the minor shocks people experienced when they came too close to the Dome. The first time, you got that almost electric frisson that stiffened the hair on the back of your neck; after that, most people felt nothing. It was as if they had been inoculated (424-425).King associates characters through their sharing of a common environment, through their sharing of a common experience, and through such relationships to one another as those of family, friendship, and business. In addition, a few are associated with one another more particularly than others. For example, not only do Judy, Janelle, Aidan, and Little Walter share the common environment of Chester’s Mill, but they are also connected by the seizures they suffer and by the resulting hallucinations they experience. Samantha and her son Little Walter are also connected to Phil (“The Chef”) Bushey, the one whose “fault” some yet-to-occur catastrophe related to Halloween and the falling of pink stars it is (according to Aidan). They are a family, and, the reader suspects, they will somehow oppose one another during the future incidents of which the children, during their seizures, seem to predict will occur.
In one case, a character--Junior Rennie--is associated also with the dead, both the “girlfriends” he has killed and whose company he keeps, in the dark pantry of one’s home, and the Pastor Lester Coggins, whose body he has hidden with those of Angela McCain and Dodee Sanders after his father killed the pastor. There are hints of necrophilia between Junior and the female corpses. Junior suffers frequent migraines, and he often retreats to the makeshift tomb when such a headache seizes him, and he always feels better, he asserts, after spending time with his “girlfriends.” Not only do such associations unify the plot of King’s sprawling novel, but they also add to the story’s suspense.
Other loose threads of the plot also intrigue the reader. What, if anything, will happen to Samantha Bushey? Her attackers warned her not to tell anyone about the brutal assaults they committed against her; nevertheless, Sammy identified them to the Reverend Piper Libby. Will the children be cured of whatever causes their seizures? Will Big Jim Rennie succeed in his bid to wrest more power from the community’s residents? Will he and his son Junior get away with the murders they’ve committed? Will Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell be able to beat her addiction to pain pills? Will Big Jim and Junior be able to frame Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara for the murder of the Reverend Lester Coggins? Will Barbie connect the stolen propane tanks with Big Jim’s methamphetamine manufacturing operation? Will the dome ever be destroyed? These questions, and those related to the ethical issues that King raises early in his novel, are at least as compelling as a video game, a TV program, a movie, or surfing the Internet.
It isn’t long before Judy’s visionary experience proves prophetic. . . .