Bag of Bones ~ Stephen King (29 of 24)

 

The narrator, Mike Noonan, a bestselling novelist, suffers severe writer's block after his pregnant wife Jo suddenly dies due to a brain aneurysm. Four years later, Mike, still grieving, is plagued by nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90 (an unincorporated town named for its map coordinates), Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to his vacation house on Dark Score Lake, known as "Sara Laughs".

On his first day, he meets Kyra, a 3-year-old girl and her young widowed mother, 20-year-old Mattie Devore. Mattie's father-in-law is Max Devore, an elderly rich man who will do anything to gain custody of his granddaughter, Kyra. Drawn to Kyra and Mattie, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie, and things start looking up. Mike begins to write again, and realizes that Jo's ghost is helping him to solve the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose ghost haunts the house. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him.

Mike begins having recurring, disturbing dreams and visions, and realizes he shares a psychic connection with Kyra. Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, try to drown Mike but he survives with the help of his wife's spirit. Max unexpectedly commits suicide that same night. Mike sees a pattern when he sees that local inhabitants have names that begin with "K" or "C" and learns how relatives of townspeople have drowned in childhood.

While Storrow and the private detective he hired are celebrating the end of the custody battle, Mattie attempts to seduce Mike. As they are embracing, Mattie's trailer is subjected to a drive-by shooting, injuring Storrow and the detective and killing Mattie. The detective is able to kill the driver and incapacitate the shooter with Mike's help. Mike then grabs Kyra and drives back to his home as a violent thunderstorm begins. The shooter's buddies try to stop them, but refuse to follow him to "Sara Laughs". Under the influence of Sara's ghost, Mike is tormented to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself. Jo's ghost prevents him and calls his attention to the novel he has begun to write. In the pages there are clues that lead Mike to discover documents Jo had hidden, among them a genealogy showing Mike's blood relationship to one of the town families.

Several families whose origin lay within the town had firstborn children with "K" names who were all murdered—Kyra, as a descendant of Max Devore, is scheduled to be the next to die. The genealogy also shows that Mike and Jo's child would have been the next firstborn child with a "K" name in the family line. Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell's curse for something that had been done to her. He leaves and searches for Sara's grave, stopped by the ghosts of several members of the old families. He learns in a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake; all the "K" children who died were descendants of those men. Mike reaches Sara's grave and succeeds in destroying her bones, ending the curse.

Upon returning to the house, Mike discovers that Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. He follows them to the lake, where Mattie's ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the water. Rogette tries to pull Mike in with her, but is impaled by the storm's wreckage from the dock. Mattie's ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra.

The novel ends with an epilogue, revealing that Mike has retired from writing and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than anticipated. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end, but the reader is given hope that it will be positive.

The film adaption show:

Best-selling novelist Mike Noonan and his wife, Jo, are unable to conceive children; Mike conceals that he has a low sperm count. Jo is killed by a bus while crossing a street. As she dies in his arms, Mike notices she bought a pregnancy test, and assumes that she may have been having an affair. Overcome by grief from her death, Mike develops a case of writer's block. He suffers a series of nightmares about his wife and their summer home on Dark Score Lake in Maine. On advice from his brother, Sid, Mike takes a trip to the summer house.

Once there, he meets a young widow named Mattie Devore and her 6-year-old daughter, Kyra. Befriending them, he earns the ire of Mattie's estranged father-in-law Max Devore. Max has been trying to get custody of Kyra since Mattie shot his son Lance (Lance was trying to drown the child). Despite the turmoil, Mike begins to write again, but visions and nightmares lead him to believe he isn't alone. He finds that his wife's spirit is with him. He also detects the spirit of a 1930s singer named Sara Tidwell who plays records of her music. Sara also appears in dreams that Mike has of her last day alive in 1939. During his stay at the lake, Mike learns about "Dark Score Crazy," an apparent form of madness that caused several men in the town to murder their daughters by drowning them.

Max and his assistant attack Mike while he is in the lake. Afterwards, Max gives Mike an offer that he will stop the custody battle for Kyra if Mike agrees to leave them alone and not press charges. Mike agrees to it, and Max after that commits suicide. At the funeral, Mike meets Edgar White, an old friend of his grandfather. Edgar confesses to Mike that Edgar, Mike's grandfather, and two other men assisted Max with the rape and murder of Sara Tidwell and the drowning of her daughter, Keisha. With her dying breath, Sara cursed the boys' descendants to drown their own daughters in retribution for drowning Keisha. The boys buried Sara with her daughter in the woods.

Mike tells Mattie the story. Mattie concludes that since Jo was pregnant, she returned to Dark Score and spent time investigating the curse on Mike's bloodline, not cheating on him as he hypothesized. Mattie is suddenly shot and killed in a manner that Mike saw in a dream, but before she dies she begs him to take care of Kyra. Mike is chased back to his home by Mattie's killers who turn out to be descendants of Sara's attackers obsessed with fulfilling the curse, but he escapes when they are caught by surprise and killed by a falling sign during a storm. Mike tries to console Kyra and puts her to bed. Max's spirit angrily compels Mike to drown Kyra in fulfillment of the curse, but Mattie's spirit struggles to thwart him. Mike takes refuge in his office, where he finds clues left by Jo in the story he had been writing, directing him to douse Sara and Keisha's remains with lye to end the curse.

A tree that had been transformed into the figure of a woman marks the burial site. Mike returns to this tree to recover the remains, but the tree haunted by Sara's spirit attempts to deter him. Jo appears and distracts Sara, allowing Mike time to use the lye to dissolve the bones. Sara's spirit is appeased and the tree returns to normal. Mike says a final goodbye to Jo. He returns home to find Kyra in the bathtub, and he is attacked by Max's assistant who tries to kill them both. Mike kills her, and Mattie's spirit appears before them. Mattie tells Kyra that she is safe and that Mike will take care of her. The next morning, Mike announces that he intends to adopt Kyra as his own daughter.