jerusalem's lot, spoilers, abandon hope, yadda yadda

[wally wonder]

hi. reading this collection again. (nice intro by john d mcdonald and an interesting forward by sk) but i don't like the ambiguity in this first story. troublesome. has to do w/some images in the story.

most troublesome is the lamb. who, or what, placed the lamb there? 'down the center aisle, like a ghastly bridal path, was a trail of black ichor, mingled with the sinister tendrils of blood. our eyes followed it to the pulpit--the only untouched thing in view. atop it, staring at us from across that blasphemous book with glazed eyes, was the butchered body of a lamb."

calvin whispers, god.

and why is the body of the lamb transparent where it lay over the book?


the church is a wreck. the wicked cross has been hurled (like paradise lost, him he hurled headlong flaming...from the ethereal sky[maybe]). so was the force at work there a force for good? or was it some combination of the worm and/or james boon? or just a hallucination? the last of the boone line, at the end, believes his ancestor charles was wrong--there is no sign of explosion or huge damage to the floor where the thing "skyrockets" from below.

and what to make of the trail that clifton brockett found beyond chapelwaie, where all had withered and gone white?

[Renzo]

Just read this story last night. I didn't see many connections to this and Salem's Lot, which I was hoping for. I thought it was very Lovecraftian in nature, which is always a good thing, but it felt lacking in some areas like you mentioned. However, I believe the lamb in the church was not transparent over the book, just its blood. Maybe I read it wrong but that was my initial thought in my head after reading this story.

Does anyone know what happened to the worm between this story and Salem's Lot?

[aeroplane]

After having read Salem's Lot and One For The Road, I was excited as a flea in an animal shelter to read the Jerusalem's Lot short story.

Needless to say, I was awfully disappointed that it was basically a completely different story than those two.