OVERVIEW by Brenda Krekeler
Duma Key by Stephen King
Edgar Freemantle was a mover and shaker in the building and contracting business in Minneapolis-St Paul. He was married to Pam and they had two daughters, Ilse and Linnie. Ilse was Edgar’s favorite daughter. He simply just loved her more.
Edgar was at a job site in his Dodge Ram when he was crushed by a falling twelve-story crane. This accident resulted in a cracked skull with brain damage, broken ribs, severely damaged leg and oh yeah, he lost his right arm. The silver lining to this tragedy is that Edgar is left-handed. For months after his accident he couldn’t talk using the words he wanted to use. He had and expressed an overwhelming amount of anger. He would curse everyone who came into his room and almost choked his wife Pam which he didn’t even remember doing.
He soon began seeing a psychologist Dr. Kamen who specialized in hypnotherapy and showed him some neat tricks for managing the phantom aches and itches in his missing arm.” Kamen also gave Edgar a doll which was used as an anger management tool. The doll had red hair and Edgar named her Reba.
Pam soon told Edgar she wanted a divorce because he was not the same man since the accident. Duh. Edgar moved to a house he owned on Lake Phalen. He continued to see Kamen and Kathi Green his rehabilitation therapist. Kamen asked him if there was a hobby he had an interest in. Edgar had enjoyed drawing when he was a youth but had not taken up a pen or brush since, except maybe to doodle during phone conversations.
Kamen also suggested that Edgar move away from his home to somewhere totally different. Someplace Edgar could start a new life. Edgar had many brochures from many different locations but once he saw the palm trees on Duma Key he knew that was where he was going to go to live his second life.
Once at Duma Key he hired a college student Jack Contorri to shuttle him around, purchase groceries and run errands for him. Edgar got settled into his large Floridian pink house. He liked the house and called it Big Pink. He set up a painting studio on the second floor. He called his studio Little Pink.
His first night at Big Pink he was taken by a powerful urge to draw and he did. He had some colored pencils and he drew the beautiful sunset from his view at his studio. He knew the drawing was special. He saw a ship in the distance just at the horizon and he drew it as if the sunlight was shining through the ship.
Each day Edgar set out in the mornings to walk the beach. He walked twelve steps. The next day he walked 20 steps. He continued to walk further each day.
His daughter Ilse came to visit him and he was thrilled to see her. She saw one of his art pieces. Now he had painting supplies and he was pounding out the pieces almost daily. His daughter saw one of a girl in a rowboat with dozens of greenish-yellow tennis balls floating in the water. She fell in love with it and asked if she could have it. How could Edgar deny his precious daughter’s request?
One day, while Ilse was with her Dad, they decided to drive down to the western end of Duma Key just to check it out. They passed the palace/house that Edgar has seen every day on his beach walks. In the driveway was an elderly woman in a wheelchair with a gun on her lap. Edgar and Ilse waved and she returned the wave.
They continued following the road. The vegetation grew into and over the road so that there was almost no road left. Ilse became extremely ill and vomited out the car door. Edgar slid her over and he backed the car all the way back to the house where the old lady had been and turned around. His phantom arm was itching and he didn’t feel so good either. He knew however in no uncertain terms that it was the west end of the island that had made Ilse sick.
Ilse’s stay was only for a few days and then Edgar got back into his morning walks and his evening sessions of obsessed, possessed painting. Sometimes, often he would finish his work after the sun set in the dark. He would be so hungry after these sessions; he would race downstairs for food without even looking at his finished piece.
The following morning he would see what he completed and he believed that his work was good. Very good.
There was a man who sat at the beach each day under an umbrella. He brought out a second chair and waved Edgar to join him. Edgar waved and said he couldn’t quite make it that far but soon he would. Time passed and every day the man brought out the second chair for Edgar and one day Edgar did make it all the way to the chair.
Edgar met Wireman and they became fast friends. Wireman was the caretaker of the elderly women Elizabeth Eastlake. Wireman had been a lawyer in his previous wife. After his wife and child died, Wireman shot himself in the head but it didn’t kill him. He still has the bullet lodged in a part of the brain where it cannot be removed. He suffers with bad headaches and his one eye is bloodshot. His sight in that eye is worsening. Wireman loves Miss Eastlake and cares for her during her fight with Alzheimer’s.
The police recently apprehended Candy Brown who was a child abductor, sexual predator and now murderer. One night Edgar painted a piece. The next morning he heard that Candy Brown was found dead in his cell. Originally it was thought to be a severe case of sleep apnea but later it was ruled a heart attack. When Edgar went up to see what he had worked on the previous night he found a painting of Candy Brown without a nose or a mouth. Edgar believed he had killed Candy Brown. And he had.
Through his paintings, Edgar discovered his x-wife Pam was having affairs with two other men. One of which was his best friend Tom Riley. He also discovered that Tom Riley was about to commit suicide. Edgar called Pam, told her to stop Tom from taking his life. Pam only believed Edgar after he described what she was doing in her house and her new cat. Pam talked to Tom and was able to convince him not to end his life. Edgar decided his paintings had power and he could control things, make things happen. When Wireman called him and told him his bad eye had gone completely blind Edgar took him to the hospital. There they told Edgar that the bullet in Wireman’s brain would soon kill him because it was moving. Edgar decided he could do something about Wireman’s condition. That evening Edgar stole one of Wireman’s x-rays and he sketched Wireman’s brain and removed the bullet. The next morning, Wireman called and announced that his headache that had plagued him since the suicide attempt had disappeared. Edgar knew in order to get Wireman’s sight back and to repair the brain damage he would have to do a great deal more work. He had Wireman sit for the painting. Then Edgar took several pictures of Wireman. It took several days for Edgar to finish the painting of Wireman but when he was done Wireman’s sight had returned. The completed painting was Wireman but it looked like he was maybe twenty-five-years old. When Wireman saw it he remarked that it was beautiful and that it was him maybe on one of the best days of his life.
At Ilse’s, Wireman’s and Jack’s suggestion, Edgar made arrangements to show his work to an art gallery. The Scoto’s Gallery set up a showing for Edgar’s work. With Wireman’s and Pam’s assistance, arrangements were made for all of Edgar’s friends from Minnesota, his therapist Kamen and his physical therapist Kathi Green to be at his show. That evening everyone was there to support Edgar and every one of his paintings sold. A great surprise to everyone was the arrival of Elizabeth Eastlake. She had been a patron of the arts her entire life and she had come out of her dementia and wanted to go to Edgar’s show. She loved seeing the paintings, but was taken ill. She was taken to the hospital but did not survive.
It was the following evening that defined what Edgar’s art was capable of and the possession’s / obsession’s source was. Once Edgar was home he received a frantic call from Pam. She told him that his therapist Kamen had a heart attack and died. Also, Tom Riley had had a fatal accident by speeding into a concrete abutment. Edgar quickly realized that everyone who had one of his paintings or sketches was in danger. They were going to die. Most of the paintings were still at the Gallery. Edgar called and instructed them not to ship any of the paintings. He believed that everyone was safe then he remembered his daughter Ilse had taken one of his early paintings home after her visit with him. He called her and she sounded drugged but he convinced her to burn the painting. He was then satisfied that she would be safe.
Pam called screaming at him, blaming him. She told him Ilse had been murdered and it was all Edgar’s fault. Edgar was horrified. Edgar, Wireman and Jack put the pieces of these bizarre occurrences together.
Duma Key granted special gifts to people who came there and who were broken. Wireman had telepathy before Edgar removed the bullet. Edgar was a talented artist. And finally, they all recognized the talents of Elizabeth Eastlake. As a child she had an accident and suffered brain damage when she was two-years old. She began painting at age two and continued for almost two years. She was in the newspaper as a child prodigy. Her paintings had terrible ramifications as well. Her twin sisters were drowned, monsters she painted became reality and eventually Elizabeth, with the help of her nanny Melda, realized the source of the powers. All the information was presented by Edgar as he sketched picture after picture depicting all the terrible things that happened at Elizabeth’s first home.
Perse was an entity that had washed up on shore. Perse was in a little china doll Libbet’s father John Eastlake gave her from his discovery of a ship wreck. The only thing that would put Perse to sleep was to be encased in fresh water.
Edgar, Wireman and Jack headed out to the west end of the island to the first Eastlake mansion. Edgar knew how to find the china doll. They located it in a freshwater well that had gone dry. Edgar placed the doll into a flashlight casing. Subsequently, they had it encased in a silver tube. Edgar and Wireman dropped it into a crevice in Lake Phelan.
Wireman invited Edgar to a small town in Mexico where they would renovate and manage a hotel together. Edgar said he would think about it. Wireman drove to Mexico and visited various places throughout the southwest. Wireman died of a heart attack two months later. Edgar relocated to Tamazinchale in Mexico. It was the same small town that Wireman had planned for them to manage a hotel. That was Edgar’s third life. |
