Duma Key

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Duma Key

Written by:	Stephen King
Central Theme:
Synopsis:
Genre(s):	Horror
First published:	January 22, 2008

In this novel by Stephen King, the retired company owner, Edgar Freemantle, gives an account of a chain of events that formed the strangest year in his life. Events that took place four years ago on the little Floridan island, Duma Key. However; the prelude to this, happens some months before, when Edgar is almost crushed to death in an accident with a crane, and as a result he loses his right arm, damages his hip, and suffers from loss of vocabulary and memory, and is prone to having intense and violent fits of anger, especially when the latter is causing him trouble.

Edgar's wife, Pam, leaves him after he harms her during his mood swings after the accident, and the depressed Edgar is playing with thoughts of suicide. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, advises him to try and settle down somewhere new for a year and cultivate his old hobby of sketching.

After browsing brochures Edgar feels strangely drawn to the island Duma Key, and with the help of Jack Cantori, a local college student, he moves into a rented house named Salmon Point (which Edgar nicknames "Big Pink") and starts drawing pencil-sketches and taking walks on the island, doing which he meets and befriends Jerome Wireman, a former lawyer and the caretaker and hired companion of Elizabeth Eastlake, an old woman who owns all the houses on Duma Key and suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

As he is drawing more and more pictures, Edgar starts feeling weird itchy sensitizations in his missing arm, and discovers that this is giving him the ability to make some really good, but also very spooky paintings, of which some appears to be windows into the past, while others can outright warp reality and initiate life. But is it really Edgar himself who is the mind behind these paintings, or is it something else? Something sinister? And could it somehow be related to the rumors about the terrible things that happened on Duma Key in the 1920s? And just who is the feminine figure in the red cloak who appears on Edgar's paintings?

Tropes used in Duma Key include:

• Soul Ship
• Amicable Exes: Up to a point, at least.
• An Arm and a Leg: Edgar loses his right arm in the accident.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Perse can not be killed, only weakened for a period, but Edgar is making damn sure that it will take her a while to return.
• Axe Crazy
• Bilingual Bonus: Edgar's cleaning lady at Big Pink, Juanita, calls his paintings asustador, which Jack Cantori translates as "scary." In fact, assustador--yes, there's an extra S at the beginning--is Portuguese, not Spanish, and translates as not only "scary," but "fearsome," "astounding," and, most ominously, "frightener."
• Bungled Suicide: After his wife and his daughter died, Wireman shot himself in the head, but survived.
• Creepy Child: Elizabeth is implied to have been one.
• Creepy Doll: Reba and her "sisters". Perse's physical manifestation also counts.
• Daddy's Girl: Ilse.
• Dark Secret: Of the Eastlake family, and you know, Perse, too.
• Don't Go in The Woods
• Everything Sounds Sexier In Spanish
• Evil Hand: It is more of a Supernatural Hand, but when you think about who is tapping into its powers from the shadows.
• Hope Spot: Edgar thinks he has saved his daughter, Ilse, from Perse...until he sees the tennis-balls floating ashore on the beach.
• Kill the Cutie: Ilse. Oh dear God, Ilse.
• Last-Name Basis: Edgar calls Wireman on his last name.
• Life Will Kill You: Wireman survives the encounter with Perse, only to die of a heart attack a few months later.
• Mad Artist: Edgar is not one by nature. But he suddenly is one when Perse is manipulating him.
• Meaningful Name: Perse. As in Persephone, queen of the dead.
• Normally I Would Be Dead Now: Edgar and Wireman.
• Parental Favoritism: Ilse is Edgar's preferred child, and Elizabeth was sort of always vying for her father's love.
• Red Sky, Take Warning
• Silver Bullet: Oh, alright, it actually is Silver Harpoon, but you get the point.
• Socialite: Elizabeth, in her youth, as well as Mary Ire.
• Spooky Painting
• You Should Have Died Instead