Dreamcatcher
Published: 20, February 2001
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Alien Invasion, American, Fiction, Horror, Literary, Literature, Occult, Science Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
Check out the review of this book here:
Summary
Dreamcatcher is the story of four longtime friends: Gary "Jonesy" Jones, Pete Moore, Joe "Beaver" Clarendon, and Henry Devlin.
It is set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. The four defended Douglas "Duddits" Cavell, an older lad with down syndrome, from a gang of vicious bullies when they were adolescents.
Jonesy, Beaver, Henry, and Pete began to share the boy's unique talents, such as telepathy, shared dreaming, and seeing "the line," a psychic trail left by human movement, as a result of their new connection with Duddits.
Jonesy, Beaver, Henry, and Pete gather for their yearly hunting expedition at the Hole-in-the-Wall, a remote lodge in the Jefferson Tract.
They are sandwiched between an extraterrestrial invasion and a deranged retired US Air Force Colonel named Abraham Kurtz.
Jonesy and Beaver, who are staying at the cabin while Henry and Pete go out for supplies, come upon Richard McCarthy, a bewildered and delirious stranger who is roaming around the lodge during a blizzard and raving about lights in the sky.
McCarthy, a victim of alien abduction, becomes ill and dies while sitting on the toilet. After gestating in his gut, an alien parasite chews its way out of his anus and assaults the two guys, killing Beaver.
Jonesy inhales the spores of the weird reddish fungus distributed throughout the cabin by the stranger and his parasite, and an extraterrestrial creature "Mr. Gray" takes over his consciousness.
Henry and Pete come across a woman from the same hunting group as the weird man at the cabin on their way back from their supply run.
She is also crazy and parasitically afflicted. After their car crashes, Henry abandons Pete with the lady and attempts to return to the lodge on foot.
His telepathic senses then alerted him to the fact that Pete is in jeopardy, Beaver is dead, and Jonesy is no longer Jonesy.
Mr. Gray is attempting to flee the place while influencing Jonesy's body. The aliens attempted to infect Earth several times, beginning with the Roswell accident in the 1940s, but environmental reasons always prevented them, and the US government always covered up the unsuccessful invasion attempts.
Mr. Gray has become the perfect Typhoid Mary—and he knows it—with the infection of Jonesy, who can hold the alien within his head while also spreading the illness.
Mr. Gray hijacks a vehicle carrying a spore-filled extraterrestrial body, and Jonesy, who is confined inside a mental fortress, is unable to stop him.
It is up to Henry, who is now a quarantined Army prisoner, to persuade the military to go after Jonesy/Mr. Gray before it is too late.
Jonesy, who is now a prisoner in his own head, attempts to assist. Both are persuaded that their old pal Duddits holds the answer to save the planet.
Using telepathic abilities garnered from the alien fungus, Henry informs Army commander Owen Underhill of Kurtz's intention to kill the majority of Army men in order to preserve secret.
The two stage an escape by instigating a disturbance among the other convicts and damaging the base in the process.
An angry Kurtz, together with his followers Freddy and Perlmutter, pursues the duo as they flee.
Despite his own reluctance and agony, Perlmutter gets infected with a psychic parasite and is being used to seek out Owen and Mr. Gray.
Owen and Henry accompany Jonesy/Mr. Gray to Derry, Maine, and share childhood recollections along the journey, including a time when Duddits and his buddies searched for a missing girl.
Henry and Owen get together to help Duddits, who is suffering from leukemia. Following a tearful departure with Duddits' mother, the trio uses Duddits' abilities to track Jonesy/Mr. Gray southward to Quabbin Reservoir.
Mr. Gray aims to infect the local water supply with a parasite-affected dog he infected with the spores.
Jonesy is able to significantly impede Mr. Gray's growth by inducing the presence to seek bacon, which it consumes uncooked after procuring it from a convenience shop.
Jonesy's body is considerably sickened by the raw meat, allowing the trio just enough time to catch up and face Mr. Gray at the reservoir.
Using the last of his abilities, Duddits assists Henry and Jonesy in psychologically defeating Mr. Gray, as well as assisting Owen in shooting the parasite that erupts from the dog.
Duddits dies as a result of the endeavor, but he has stopped Mr. Gray's ambitions. Kurtz and his men arrive, the infected soldier still in their van.
They ambush and murder Owen, but Kurtz is killed by Freddy, who is afraid Kurtz would kill him next.
Freddy runs, returning to their truck, but is murdered by the parasite that was developing within Perlmutter's now-dead body.
Exhausted and half-crazy, Henry shoots the car's gas tank, killing the last of the extraterrestrial presence on Earth. He re-encounters Jonesy, who collapses from weariness.
Jonesy and Henry reminisce about their time in an underground military complex where they were detained after the events at the reservoir months later.
Jonesy was resistant to the alien fungus the entire time, and Mr. Gray was only able to take over his mind because he imagined it could - the concept being captured like in a dreamcatcher.
Useful Search Related Words & Keywords
Annual Hunting, Bag Of Bones, Charles Okun, Donnie Wahlberg, Girl Who Loved, Hearts In Atlantis, Hole In The Wall, Hunting Trip, Ingrid Kavelaars, Jason Michael Lee, Lawrence Kasdan, Loved Tom, Main Characters, Michael O'Neill, Morgan Freeman, Rosemary Dunsmore, Thomas Jane, Timothy Olyphant, Tom Gordon, Tom Sizemore, Warner Bros.
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