SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 52 - 55)

Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle.

Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura Tremaine

We are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version)

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If you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episode as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos!

Mentioned in this episode:

* The Stand by Stephen King

* Cujo by Stephen King

* Kojak (CBS, 1973–1978, starring Telly Savalas)

* The Message (Bible in contemporary language)

* Erin Hicks Moon’s Substack

* Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (the 90s movie with the two dogs and the cat)

Welcome to Slow Read: The Stand. We are your hosts Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura Tremaine.

This is episode [N] of Slow Read: The Stand.

If you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episode as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos!

Mentioned in this episode:

* The Stand by Stephen King

* Cujo by Stephen King

* Kojak (CBS, 1973–1978, starring Telly Savalas)

* The Message (Bible in contemporary language)

* Erin Hicks Moon’s Substack

* Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (the 90s movie with the two dogs and the cat)

Chapter 52 - Mother Abagail’s Crisis

Sarah: We are now deep into Stephen King’s The Stand.

Laura: Deep.

Sarah: Deep. And this week we’re talking about chapters 52 through 55 and all the ridiculous things it contains. Do you like what I did there with “ridiculous things”?

Laura: Oh yes. God. Killing it.

Laura: All right — we are now in the heat of August and the chessboard is being set. We spent all our time in this section in the Free Zone, where society is forming, spies are aligning and alighting on their missions. We are burying bodies, having elections, thinking about law enforcement. But first, we start in Chapter 52, where our Free Zone fearless leader is actually a not-so-fearless leader. We start with Mother Abagail, who seems to be having a bit of a spiritual crisis. What did you think of this section as a whole? Because I was reading it thinking — is this a horror book? Is this a literary book? What are we doing?

Sarah: I got a little bored when I was writing up the summary and kind of getting ready for this episode. A lot of things happened that I thought were interesting as I was reviewing it. But while reading it, I kept putting it off. I think I was just a little — I’m ready for something to happen. And I’m also terrified one of these people I like is going to get killed. So I’m both ready for something to happen and dreading it.

Laura: Well, what was interesting is that we are deep into this book. This is the final third, maybe even the final quarter. And this felt like a lot of world-building. We are world-building 800 pages in, which is interesting as a writer and a craft storyteller, but as a reader it definitely changes the pace. Also, because I’m reading every word of this book aloud, I stop and underline or make little notes when I get to interesting things I want to talk about. And this section, more than any section we have read thus far, I made the least amount of notes. Almost no notes or underlines until Chapter 55 — the last chapter we’re going to talk about today. And then I had several, all kind of coming from the same source, which is Judge Ferris. But in general, this hundred-page section — it was not a nothing burger because there are a lot of important things that sort of happen here, but nothing super notable or memorable to me.

Sarah: Yeah. I would be interested in how much this got changed between the 70s version and the 90s version. It was too much logistics for me. Though I mean — this first section in Chapter 52 with Mother Abagail, where she’s really battling it out, I thought was incredible. I’m always struck by Stephen King’s knowledge of the Bible. I underlined: Acts was the last book in the Bible where doctrine was backed up by miracle. And I was like, wow, that sounds true. Did I double-check it? I didn’t. But it sounded true.

Laura: So much religion. There’s always a lot of religion in this book. And it’s really humming in the background in this section, because what we get from this first moment is that she is struggling

Sarah: — she feels like she’s battling pride, and she also learns that it was not God who saved her from the weasels. It was Randall Flagg who called the weasels off. I thought that was really scary. She kind of feels like God has gone silent, so she pieces out. And that changes the dynamics of so much within the Free Zone, because she’s not there as their guidance.

Laura: Did this change the way you think about her?

Sarah: No, because I felt like this was very true to who we knew she was — someone very centrally focused on her relationship with God, consistently hesitant, even afraid, of what she’s been called to do. The way she was battling with this, and seeing the way they kept leaning on her and leaning on her, which was building her pride and changing the way they were thinking about themselves — it rang really true to me. What about you?

Laura: Well, it’s very Jesus-y to take to the wilderness and pray about it. I thought it did change things for me a little, because it can read as abandonment — of your post. Maybe not the initial day she leaves, but as the week to ten days goes on and she’s still gone. I mean, I guess you can also see it as a fulfillment of her role. She got everyone here. That was her main part in this history, and now she’s going to peace out. But as she’s wrangling with her pride and who really called off the weasels and going into that mind swirl — I didn’t totally believe her. Whereas in the past, every inner monologue we got from Mother Abagail, you believed her. You had a lot of trust in her discernment and her connection to God or the universe. In this section we’re meant to follow her mind swirl as she tries to get right with God, but because that has wavered, it made me waver in her. And not to jump ahead, but as time goes on and she’s still not there and they come to the conclusion of like, we’re running this society without her — I also felt sort of the same way.

Sarah: Well, and I think that’s the point. They were becoming too dependent on her and it was affecting her. It is one thing to be locked in through a process of discernment when you’re by yourself. You know, it’s super easy to discern when my kids aren’t here. But once you have hundreds of thousands of people all looking at you like, what should we do? Should we bury the body? Should we form a law enforcement agency? Should we be in charge? Do you want to be our president and veto everything? I can see how that would disrupt the signal, if you will. The idea that this is about her and God — this is not about her being the leader of this community. So she has to go and get back to that. And the fallout is big within the community, but largely positive, I felt like.

Sarah: I mean, from the moment this happens, you have so many people who want to go searching for her and save her, and they have to debate — should we go search for her? She left of her own accord, but she’s an old woman. And I think it was very interesting that in the face of all this debate, it became an opening for Harold to assert some leadership and build some goodwill with Stu and Ralph, and go look for her.

Laura: Except that, for the democracy of it all, you’ve removed your main check and balance. If you take away the person who has the veto power — she’s not in charge of everything, but she had that — someone has abdicated the throne here.

Sarah: No, that’s exactly it. You live in America in 2026. The temptation, when you have one person, to continue to consolidate power within that one person and make it easy on the rest of us who don’t have to go through the messy work of democracy — it’s oh so very tempting. The check is the people. The check is the other people on the committee — who are voting in concert right now, but that might not always be true.

Sarah: What we’ve seen over the last several years, several decades in America, is it’s just so easy to organize around, to just be like, well, we’re really just dealing with the one person in charge.

Laura: Our actual real-life America in 2026 moment in time is what has this top of mind for me — why it felt more prominent as a theme than maybe when I’ve read this in the past. I agree with what you’re saying theoretically, but I also feel like with Mother Abagail — she wasn’t trying to rule the whole thing, she was just a check, a balance, a veto power, because she does have a connection to the above. I mean, she wasn’t wanting it, but they wanted her to. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I hear what you’re saying about the power belonging with the people, but they haven’t established enough of a hierarchy or structure to check one another.

Sarah: We’re getting to the town meeting.

Laura: I know, but what I’m just trying to underline is that it does change the way I think about her character. It does, for me.

Harold, Franny, and the Return of Kojak

Sarah: They do decide to go search for her. There is a search party — Stu, Ralph, Harold. Harold goes on a real journey over the course of this section, and it starts here when they’re out in the middle of nowhere and he brings a gun and thinks about just killing Stu and Ralph right there. He’s a little bit disarmed by Stu’s kindness, but he’s still giving in to the dark impulses. He’s thinking constantly about his ledger — which could be some sort of psychic connection, because at the very moment he’s thinking about it on the search party, Franny’s breaking into his house to see if she can find confirmation that he, in fact, read her journal. She breaks into his basement and goes up into his living room, at which point Nadine Cross knocks on the door.

I just want to say — I hate scenes like this. I hate every moment in a horror movie where you’re sneaking around in the dark and you just know somebody. I’d rather just a chase scene. I’d rather a murder scene. I hate the tension of them.

Laura: I think Harold just plain chickened out on shooting Stu. He’s still a literal teenager. He’s even though he has now physically changed — he’s fit, lost his acne, looking different — in his mind he’s still this scared, nerdy, pimply kid who cannot shoot someone in the woods. I think he just plain chickened out, which — good. We’re all the better for it. Franny breaking into his house — again, not totally sure how consistent this is with her character and what we know about preggos.

Sarah: I was going to say, pregnant people are not looking to bring on a lot of risk. Though you could argue that hormonally it might make you do something crazy. But there is a lot of this — leaving an imprint in the store, with her shoe in the dust, because he gets home and realizes the door is open and sees the imprint. The way he was kind of trying to stalk her shoes at several points in the story — I was like, okay, we get it. I just think all of this, the thumbprint, the shoe print, is fitting together a little too neatly for me.

Laura: Yeah, this is the part of the story that is the most sort of bookish. We talked about this on the last episode

Sarah: — he would never write something like this now. He’s a much better writer.

Laura: The finding the smudge in her diary, and then her piecing it all together. This just seems very far-fetched. You know, this is a side note, but I am finding it very fascinating how people chose the houses that they chose. Harold’s house is far out, on the edge of town, dark, wood-paneled, shades drawn, door locked. For some reason I don’t totally understand, Franny and Stu have chosen some kind of an apartment. Tom Cullen’s house — to jump to the end of the section — they describe as really zany. They’re choosing their places of dwelling, and it’s just kind of interesting.

Sarah: Oh, it would be so fun to go into town and be like, where do I want to live? I can live anywhere.

Laura: Right! Why would you choose the random condo?

Sarah: Okay, the last section of this chapter is big. It is the Return of Kojak. Now, you tell me things reappear — I just want to confirm, this is not the Kojak from Kojak the novel.

Laura: Are you talking about Cujo?

Sarah: Oh, Cujo! I thought it was Kojak.

Laura: No, Kojak is a dog name. I think that is a famous dog name. I think there was a 70s, 80s TV detective named Kojak.

Sarah: I think that’s like a popular dog name at the time.

Sarah: Well, Kojak is a crime drama TV show. Telly Savalas. It aired on CBS from 1973 to 1978 — so again, super relevant when the book came out, and in the 90s people were like, what? But now that Kojak has made his hero’s journey from being abandoned by Glenn Bateman up in New England, following him to Nebraska, getting attacked by wolves, hiding out and recovering under Mother Abagail’s porch, and making it all the way to Boulder — maybe I will name my next dog Kojak. Because damn, brother, what a journey.

Laura: I know. If you’re a dog lover, this is kind of a heartbreaking part.

Sarah: Well, it’s the 90s movie. What is it with the two dogs and the cat? (Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey!)I watched it with my kids. It actually holds up pretty well. I also skipped the part that we start here with Glenn Bateman, where he’s musing about the passage of the age of rationalism. At the end of all this rationalism is a mass grave. And he says now we’ve moved into dark magic. And this is my favorite part — when he’s talking about Randall Flagg, he says: Maybe he’s just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. And I wrote — sounds like Elon Musk, no?

Laura: Yes, yes. Right? Little Jeff Bezos?

Sarah: There’s also a bit of foreshadowing when we’re talking about Kojak — did you catch it?

Laura: Yeah, he lives another sixteen years after Glenn Bateman.

Sarah: Yep. Also — was this dog a puppy, or is this dog supernatural? That’s a long time for a dog to live.

Chapter 53 - The Town Meeting

Sarah: Chapter 53, we’re to the town meeting. This was one of my favorite parts in this entire section.

Laura: It doesn’t surprise me.

Sarah: Not even just the meeting — this moment. Stu gets up here to start the meeting and the people cannot stop clapping. And Larry is watching all this. And he says: We’re applauding ourselves, Larry thought. We’re applauding the fact that we’re here alive together. Maybe we’re saying hello to the group of selfie-in. That’s so good. I loved it so much.

Laura: I thought that was really emotional. It reminded me of in Los Angeles the week of 9/11 — there was a thing at the Hollywood Bowl, which is the big outdoor amphitheater, and they played the national anthem, patriotic songs. This was the Friday after 9/11. And it was very much like what’s being described here, where people just stood and cheered and clapped and cried. I mean, so magnify that situation with what this would be — so much even more so. But if you’ve ever been to a church service where something like this is sort of happening, where there is this collective noise-making that’s really emotional and bonding at the same time.

Sarah: Well, and they do all those things — they adopt the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Franny leads them in singing the national anthem. But then, because this is Stephen King — we get Larry being like, yeah, but America’s gone. America was gone. We can do all this all we want. But America was gone. I thought that was very intense.

Laura: Isn’t it interesting what Larry’s doing in this section? First of all, we’re so invested in Larry in the first half of the book. We know so much of his backstory. We’re following him on the journey from New York to Boulder. Larry is a big part of The Stand. And now his relationship to the story and to the reader, I feel like has shifted a little. In the beginning where we’re getting to know Larry and he’s like a budding celebrity and he’s not a nice guy — we’re reading him kind of like a character. Well, now suddenly he seems as relatable as anyone else. He’s almost a stand-in for the reader in some ways. He’s having some skepticism. He’s observing the ad hoc committee. And we’re sort of seeing that observance for us — like every other section when you’re in it with Stu and Ralph and Glenn, you’re in it with them. And Larry is a little bit on the outside of the circle looking in.

Sarah: I like his growth. I like that you hear his internal debate. Because he’s even right up until the official vote like, oh my God, should I really be on this committee? I can just say I don’t want to do it. But Harold doesn’t give him a chance, because Harold raises up and nominates them as a block — Stu, Fran, Nick, Glenn, Ralph, Larry, and Susan — to become permanent Free Zone committee members. This wound that he nurses, the same committee he was excluded from. And Stu sort of recognizes what a power move this is — to shut down any sort of debate and be the one whose great idea it is to put them all on the permanent committee. And it passes.

Laura: Do you feel like this is how this would really go down?

Sarah: No. People love to debate. They’re so excited to be voting again — you think they’re just going to be like, okay? I mean, maybe, because he does say they spent hours and hours on Mother Abagail’s sudden disappearance. So maybe they were so concerned with her that they’d just speed past this part. That makes a little sense to me. And then they get this great moment with Judge Ferris, where they discuss her leaving and the Bible verses she wrote on the back of her note. Here, I thought this would be helpful — Erin Hicks Moon, who I know you know as well, has really converted me to the Message, which is the Bible in contemporary language. [LINK] So I looked up these two verses in contemporary language.

The first, Proverbs 11:1-3: Without good direction, people lose their way. God hates cheating in the marketplace. He loves it when business is above board. The stuck-up fall flat on their faces, but down-to-earth people stand firm. The integrity of the honest keeps them on track. The deviousness of crooks brings them to ruin.

And then Proverbs 21:28-31: A lying witness is unconvincing. A person who speaks truth is respected. Unscrupulous people fake it a lot. Honest people are sure of their steps. Nothing clever, nothing conceived, nothing contrived can get the better of God. Do your best. Prepare for the worst. Then trust God to bring victory.

Laura: That is some relevant language to what we’re facing here in the Free Zone. That’s much better than the old King James language he was using. I’ve got you, Mother Abagail. I’ve got what you’re laying down. I liked the chess-move piece of Harold just nominating the slate and having it go through — he gets to look like the hero even though he’s not even on the slate. My whole hesitation with this section, though, including that scene, is that Harold is a teenager.

Sarah: Right. Like, you buy Judge Ferris leading them through the scripture discussion. You buy that they would applaud Stu. But Harold — listen, we know Larry followed Harold’s son, but he was probably not the only one. Especially since they left signs in Nebraska where everybody was being drawn to Mother Abagail first. So maybe there’s this idea of people knowing him. Yeah, he’s a teenager, but he has this reputation or perception of a little bit more than that.

Laura: And maybe it’s because you and I both have teenage boys in our home and I’m just trying to imagine them leading a group of 800.

Sarah: My oldest — he could lead people now. He’s got whatever it takes to speak and have people follow. He’s got a little bit of his father’s competency that people just inherently trust, even at 16. So I buy it a little bit.

Sarah: So we go through the meeting, we go outside, Franny and Harold and Stu are talking, he’s staring at her feet again — I’m like, you’re wearing me down with this. Then after the meeting, Larry’s walking back with Lucy. They’re holding hands. Nadine — a lot of words are used to tell us that she doesn’t have any underwear or anything else on underneath her clothes. We have to visit that several times just in case y’all missed it. Nadine’s not wearing any panties. Okay. So she steps out of the shadows, scares both of them, Lucy is like, son of a bitch — I loved Lucy in this scene. She was like, oh, I knew it, fine, and she just runs into the house. He’s left alone with Nadine, who basically breaks down and is like, let’s do this. And you feel this desperation. She says some language like, this is my last chance. He’s kind of caught off guard. He’s freaked out. But, amazingly, says absolutely no. I’m going back in to Lucy. Which I think means our little boy’s growing up.

Laura: Well, that didn’t surprise me, actually — that he turns her down. I think we’ve seen this in Larry. He makes the right choice here. He’s been wanting to make the right choice all along. He knows he misstepped with Rita, or he feels like he did. He is in redemption mode. What I was more surprised by is this is where we see Nadine, who has lived her whole adulthood waiting on this dark man to take her virginity. She isn’t totally clear what she’s waiting on until recently — but now she’s pretty clear what it is. She has been holding out, and now she has suddenly decided to throw that away. She is risking her whole twisted view of salvation. She has wavered on the dark man. We’re going to see this from both her and Harold. I feel like you just can’t be that clear on what’s coming unless you’re completely disconnected from reality like Trashcan Man. You can’t be that clear on how scary he is and what this means and not have a moment of wavering.

Laura: That’s getting to what I think this whole book is about in some ways. The wavering is natural. But Larry turning her down — which she thought was a sure thing, let’s be clear, she’d completely made this decision to give it all up to Larry — which screws her up. Him turning it down, on his own trajectory and for his own reasons, gets to the heart of what I actually think The Stand is about, which is fate, destiny. You can’t escape your path in some ways. Even if you try to change your mind and redirect and pivot — the world doesn’t let her. Larry doesn’t let her.

Sarah: But that’s such a paradoxical situation to illustrate, because it does feel like Larry is choosing a different fate. It would have been easy for him to follow who he had been and just go, okay, cool. Especially — can I just say — after he describes Lucy as having a movie magazine mind. Fucking ouch, man.

Laura: I know, right?

Sarah: That is such an insult. I think that that goes

Laura: — that’s not fate, that’s personality or something. Fate is the choices that you make.

Sarah: But that’s what I mean. He didn’t choose the way he used to choose. He’s stepping up and setting a new course for himself. At the same time, Harold and Nadine seem powerless too.

Laura: Well, their powerlessness and power goes in and out. All of them, by the way, goes in and out of wavering, staying on their path, trying to pivot and being sort of unable to.

Sarah: And it’s really brilliant of Stephen King because — since you’re in LA, I know you’ll love this example — it’s how I feel about Warner Brothers, Paramount, Netflix. I don’t want anybody to head in. You know what I’m saying? Because you’re like, oh, don’t do it, Larry. But you’re like, no, kind of do it, Larry, because then she won’t be a virgin for the dark man. And maybe then — you want what’s best, but there’s no great outcome here.

Laura: Right. But I think that is, again, the root of the story — how other people play a part in your fate or don’t. Other people’s decisions, other people on their own path. If you’re asking yourself an existential question of, can I be derailed from my path? Can I sabotage myself? I mean, we all have stories where maybe yes, but then you’re like, I don’t know — maybe that was the plan all along. You didn’t really sabotage yourself. That was the path.

Sarah: It does feel like this is not playing out equally on the good and the bad. It does feel like it’s much, much harder for Harold and Nadine to pull themselves out than it is for Stu and Larry and all these people to stay on their path.

Nadine’s Ouija Board

Laura: Well, that’s why I think in this section, the character — I read this aloud, so it’s very hard to know how to pronounce his last name, but the character of Charlie Impening, or whatever his name is, who defects in the night. He tries to sort of challenge the slate or whatever. He’s kind of just a little bit of a disruptor or a contrarian. When it doesn’t work in the community meeting, everything’s moving along, clipping along at its path — Charlie defects. He leaves in the night. He doesn’t cause a big drama about it. He’s just like, yeah, I’m not on this path. He goes, ostensibly, toward Vegas. And there’s this one throwaway line — they’re like, we don’t know how many other people have also come to that same conclusion. Maybe they’re in the middle. They’re not instantly drawn to Vegas. They aren’t instantly attracted to the dark man and his dreams.

Sarah: They’re independent voters, Laura. They’re swing voters.

Laura: They have changed their direction.

Sarah: Well, I don’t think it’s a throwaway. But first we have to tackle Nadine’s Ouija board flashback. Oh my gosh. So intense. So the planchette — which I didn’t know was the name for the pointer in the Ouija board — she grabs one and goes out to this amphitheater alone. And you’re like, what the hell are you about to do? But she has this memory from her college days where she walks in on some girls using a Ouija board, puts her hands on it, and it spells out this incredibly terrifying message about how she’s going to be the queen in the house of the dead. All these other girls are like, what the hell? And you understand that she is there to accept messages from Randall Flagg. And wouldn’t you know — right after that she goes and moves in with Harold.

Laura: My daughter, who’s a teenage girl, was at a sleepover. Her group of friends went through a phase where they played with a Ouija board, and I was like, absolutely no. I didn’t let her do it. I made her come home. We don’t do that. I do not F with dark magic. I do not.

Sarah: You don’t.

Laura: I do not.

Sarah: Do you do tarot cards?

Laura: Nope. I mean, I have. I actually should say — years ago I did a tarot reading, and I’m not anti-tarot necessarily. I’d say I’m neutral on tarot. Ouija boards, I won’t do it.

Laura: My daughter’s name is Lucy. I was like, you got to come home. And she knew it. She didn’t even beg. And then they went through this phase, maybe a couple of months, where this was happening at the sleepovers, and my daughter was like, I can’t.

Sarah: I have never played with a Ouija board. I have had a tarot reading that was incredibly cool — for a listener who’s a Wiccan and who does tarot readings. I thought it was really cool.

Sarah: Have you ever been to New Orleans? New Orleans is full of dark magic.

Laura: Yes. And what’s weird is I like New Orleans a lot. I really love it there. I believe it. I don’t hate it. I just don’t tempt it. I don’t play around with it.

Sarah: You take it seriously.

Laura: And I actually don’t want those messages. So I avoid them for myself, but I also don’t want my teenage daughter messing with them either. Maybe because I have a respect for it or whatever.

Sarah: I found this scene really creepy. But it was interesting — again, there’s so much of Nadine that I think is conflicting. The fact that she’s supposed to be queen of the dead this whole time, and she’s picking up random children along the journey and taking care of them, but then once they don’t need her anymore, then she’s got to go move in with Harold. It’s just — it’s so gross.

Chapter 54 - The Committee Meeting, Burial Committee, and Harold’s New Path

Sarah: The morning after this exhausting town meeting, they hold a private secret session where Glenn posits a very controversial idea — at least to Franny — which is that Stu needs to be the sheriff and that basically they need to start detaining people who could be leaving and trying to flee to Vegas and sharing intel. As these people consider themselves founding fathers and mothers of the Free Zone, it reminded me very much of Benjamin Franklin’s quote: Those that will sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither security nor liberty. But they are struggling with this. He says, you know, if we have law enforcement without a court system, that isn’t justice. So they know what they’re talking about. But I think because they’ve already broken the seal — as it was with sending the spies on perhaps a suicide mission — they’re getting more and more comfortable with decisions that involve some really unfortunate trade-offs.

Laura: I just think it is so human nature to want to jail people. To contain people, to silence them, to cage them. I’m not saying it’s not justified in some cases — if you had someone who was perpetrating harm upon one another, sure. But their excuse for jailing the Charlie Impenings who were sneaking away — I was like, I don’t know. Are we even there yet? You guys don’t have electricity or water and we’re going to jail people first? It just felt so human nature to me.

Sarah: A couple things. One — I think setting the stage here, as we know, two of these sleeper cells are now sleeping together with Harold and Nadine. And you’re like, oh crap. So there could be a place where Harold and Nadine are ready to go off and join the dark man, and the Free Zone people are like, not so fast. We don’t let people leave now. It’s smart knowing what we know, that they do have these sleeper cells in this city. But I think he’s doing a lot here — because the other interesting contrast is you have this group of people in a house making these calls, while some people are just doing the hard, dirty, manual work of burying people. That’s what society is actually built on — people who are ready to just do the work, not create scenarios in which they protect everybody from something hard. They’re actually doing the hard thing. And I thought that was a really smart contrast.

And Harold, who was excluded from this committee, is the one out there with the burial committee doing the hard work.

Laura: Do you mean Hawk?

Sarah: Hawk! Where he gains this new nickname. And he likes the nickname. And again, you see these glimmers of redemption — like, I could just turn away. I could lean in. These people like me. They’re not making fun of me. They need me.

Laura: Because you know what will transform a heart? Belonging. And that is what he’s starting to feel — belonging, value. He has a nickname, people are clapping him on the back. He felt like his town meeting chess move was strategic, which it actually was, but he was maybe surprised by people thinking so highly of him. He’s never had that in his whole life. And it is putting him in conflict.

Sarah: You know what else will transform a heart?

Laura: Sex.

Sarah: Apparently a really, really good blowjob, some anal sex thrown in for fun, some kinky play with honey — this is all that Nadine offers, along with the oh but we can’t do the real thing. Who cares, just a little. This is my favorite. And she’s like, it’s just a small thing, what’s the big deal? And he was like, how would you know, you’re a virgin? And she says:

I know because sex is life and small, and life is tiresome — time spent in a variety of waiting rooms. You might have your little glories here, Harold, but to what end? On the whole, it will be humdrum, slipping down life, and you’ll always remember me with my shirt off and you’ll always wonder what I would have looked like with everything off.

Sarah: What a bleak, nihilistic view of life. Time spent in a waiting room. That is not my experience. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church. It is an important couple inches, man. It makes all the difference. It’s all pretty empty if you can’t do the real thing. Just saying.

Laura: He does seem after — not the main thing, but after they spend a few nights playing around with what they are able to do — he seems conflicted by it. Like he likes it in the moment and then he feels gross about it. Yeah, because this chapter ends with him succumbing to his destiny. I wrote “boo” across the bottom of the page. But in Chapter 55, he wakes up and he’s kind of like — and you’re like, yeah. But again, he wrote this before True Love Waits, but I want to be like, whoever wrote this has lived through True Love Waits. And even Nadine, where she’s like, how pure am I going to be if you’re letting Harold do everything six ways to Sunday for me but this?

Laura: She also really does want it, but she can’t. And there is a resistance. She is having to exert a self-control.

Sarah: Nadine definitely — over the course of this section, at one point she looks up and feels like she sees Randall Flagg’s face in the window. And Larry Underwood hears boot clicking as she’s walking away after she’s sort of offered herself to him.

Laura: That is just straight leave room for the Holy Spirit kind of language.

Sarah: And he shows up in the amphitheater and controls the Ouija board with her. Her presence is clearly, to me, the number one antenna — the strongest signal that is connected to the dark man. Well, I don’t know. I say that, but we’re about to get to the hypnosis of Tom Cullen, so maybe I’ve spoken a little too soon.

Tom Cullen’s Prophecy and Judge Ferris

Sarah: Before we get to Tom, in Chapter 55 we sit down with Judge Ferris as he’s about to leave on his adventure. Man, I love him so much.

Laura: Me too. He’s literally one of my favorite characters.

Sarah: He says: I wonder if we need to reinvent the whole tiresome business of gods and saviors and ever afters before we reinvent the flushing toilet. It’s so good. He knows what Larry’s going to ask before he asks it. He was like, yep, I’m ready. Let’s do this. What a cool guy. This book makes me really think about how not strategic I am in my life. Like everyone’s figured out — oh, so we’re going to have to send spies, right?

Laura: That would not have occurred to me. I wouldn’t even be in Boulder. We wouldn’t have to make the call.

Laura: I’ve been thinking about that too. I don’t know if I would have gotten to the spies as quickly as they did. But I do, especially as I’ve gotten older, have more of a security mindset. Thinking about where’s the weak point here. Though if I were in the Free Zone, I would only be obsessed about how that baby’s going to get out of Franny.

Sarah: See, I wouldn’t think about that. I’d be like, babies come out all the time. They have for thousands of years. It’ll be okay.

Laura: But I am thinking so much more about — it’s really bothering me that we’re now approaching a thousand people in the Free Zone, maybe even tipped over a thousand, and they’re trying to tell me there’s not a single doctor there.

Sarah: You guys got a doctor in there somewhere. Come on. All you got is a vet? No. Well, here’s what they should have done. They should have maybe asked Tom while he was under hypnosis, because he was full of information. He channeled something other. When they said that line — the voice of the man forever denied — I was like, ooh, Steven, that’s really, really good. They put him under hypnosis using a phrase from previous sessions that drops him into this form. And he’s the Other Tom. He has incredible psychic clarity. He knows that the dark man’s true name is Legion, calls him Legion, King of Nowhere. He’s terrified of him. Confirms that Mother Abagail is still alive, but that she’s not right with God and that she will die on the wrong side of the river. Which is exactly the moment when Ralph is like, I don’t want to hear anymore.

Sarah: But he says, I am God’s Tom. And he also says that Randall Flagg, Legion, is afraid of them. He’s afraid of us. He’s afraid of inside. What the hell does that mean?

Laura: I wondered — and I’m going to try to say this sensitively — of those among us whose brain works differently, like Tom’s, is closer to God in some way. It’s giving telepathy tapes. Not only these other senses — because we already got from Tom that he was closer to God in some ways — but this is like a sixth sense, seventh sense, eighth sense of something.

Sarah: I don’t know, but I would have spent all day there with him. They cut it off pretty quick. I’m like, dude, ask him some more questions. Just ask him what happens. I’m very stressed about this.

Laura: I’m back with Franny in the original conversation around this — I am mad that they are sending Tom West.

Sarah: I like Nick enough, I’m willing to trust his instincts here. And someone like Stu mentions this perception that people with different mental abilities have a connection. I think you see this a lot in folk art — there are a lot of really famous, prolific folk artists of differing mental abilities and capacities. And I believe in consciousness and shared consciousness to a certain extent. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that somebody who perceives the world so differently would have a different channel of consciousness.

So overall, I really like this scene. It is hard to hear them instruct him to kill someone if he comes along a single person. That is — giving him all these instructions to send him out on this really, really dangerous mission.

Laura: What gave me a little bit of a squidge is when he becomes God’s Tom and he’s speaking with a totally different voice, speaking completely articulately. Then it almost becomes like possession.

Sarah: They have that moment where they’re like, are you the Tom we know? Almost like — you have to tell us if you’re Randall Flagg just taking over his body right now. You got to tell us.

Sarah: That didn’t seem to be what it was to me. It did seem like he was tapping something. He just has access to a different radio channel. I think Stephen King’s overall argument with the dreams is that when something changes your life and your ability to move about in the status quo dramatically, all of us — through trauma or whatever you want to call it — can suddenly tap something different and deeper. That’s why our subconscious, through the act of dreaming, is calling up these images and connecting to Mother Abagail and having dreams about the dark man. If you’re someone like Tom Cullen, who lives in a perpetual, much altered state with regards to your perception of reality, of course he has a different capacity to tap into this subconscious other realm.

Laura: I like what he’s positing here. I think it’s really interesting. And I also think collective consciousness — which is a lot of what this story is exploring with the dreams and Tom and even Nadine — the collective consciousness that is available to us, that seems to only come out under a world-shattering event. This was something talked about a lot in the 70s, and I feel like it fell out of favor. But now, maybe just my algorithm, as world events are really tenuous right now in 2026 — my algorithm is serving up a lot of collective consciousness content. It is kind of a conversation people are having again.

Sarah: Well, even though I found this section tedious in parts, when I went back through it and definitely through the course of our conversation — Stephen King is doing some really interesting work here. Some of the questions he’s posing are fascinating and the pieces he’s laying in place — I can’t say I loved every page of putting them in their place, but I’m excited to see what comes next. It’s about to get real is my intuition right now.

Laura: I agree. This might not have been the most enjoyable reading section, but some really important things are building and happened. We’re really building on the layers of these characters that we’re getting to know now in a completely different way, now that they’re at the Free Zone and they’re not in immediate trauma traveling. It’s just been a shift.

Sarah: Well, and the best part of all these interesting questions is that we get to talk about them together in two days — Wednesday, April 22nd at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. We’re going to have our book club meeting. The other ones have been so fun. We have so many interesting things to discuss, particularly after this section. We hope that you will subscribe at slowread.substack.com and join us on Wednesday night for our April book club meeting. No spoilers — we’ll be talking at this meeting through this section, into Chapter 55. Come with your opinions, your thoughts, bring us your Ouija board stories.

Laura: Yes! And until then — see you on the other side.

Sarah: See you on the other side.

Next Up: Book club meeting on Wednesday, April 22nd at 6 p.m. Pacific / 9 p.m. Eastern — covering through Chapter 55. Subscribe at slowread.substack.com to join!