How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
If you met Franklin's pickup on the road, you forgot it the instant it was gone from your rear-view mirror. If you happened to see their shack with its tin chimney sending a pencil line of smoke into the white November sky, you overlooked it… Franklin's brother was Derek Bodin… and Derek had nearly forgotten that Franklin was still alive and in town. He had progressed beyond black sheepdom; he was totally grey. (10.201)
Franklin is a kind of vampire himself: people don't see him or remember him, because they've decided he's not there. The town's memory is selective; bits get rubbed out. Ben remembers bits that have been forgotten, which is either his doom or his salvation, depending on how you look at it.
Quote #8
Corey Bryant sank into a great forgetful river, and that river was time, and its waters were red. (10.341)
This is Corey turning into a vampire—which means he's dead. The past in this vision is a kind of shoal of dead bodies, hungry for company. But it's appealing, too, just like Ben finds the Marsten House appealing. The past is a comfort, and also it wants to eat you.
Quote #9
Where had he seen a face like that before? And it came to him, in the moment of the most extreme terror he had ever known. It was the face of Mr. Flip, his own personal bogeyman, the thing that hid in the closet during the day and came out after his mother closed the bedroom door. (14.476)
King, in this book and others, often cuts between whatever nasty thing is happening to his characters and links it to some childhood fear. These memory glimpses are disjointed: Mr. Flip could be Ben's memory, or Mark's, as easily as Callahan's. The flashbacks are less about character development and more about showing you where the book is coming from—the sort of childhood terrors that power the adult imagination.