How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
His daughter, meanwhile, slept in enameled darkness within an abandoned freezer close to Dud Rogers—in the night world of her new existence, she found his advances among the heaped mounds of garbage very acceptable. (14.8)
Ruthie Crockett and Dud Rodgers are lying in darkness together. The night world here could be vampirism, but it could also just be the grave, where no one spurns everyone else, and everyone sleeps together.
Quote #8
In life she had been a cheerfully pretty girl who had missed the turn to beauty somewhere (perhaps by inches) not through any lack in her features but—just possibly— because her life had been so calm and unremarkable. But now she had achieved beauty. Dark beauty. Death had not put its mark on her. (14.326-327)
Susan used to be boring; now she's a dead vampire, and she's crazy hot. It's not clear whose eyes we're looking through here, but you get the uncomfortable sense that the novel's telling us more about Ben's preferences (or King's) than it really means to.
Quote #9
The skin yellowed, coarsened, blistered like old sheets of canvas. The eyes faded, filmed white, fell in. The hair went white and fell like a drift of feathers. The body inside the dark suit shriveled and retreated… For a moment a hideously animated scarecrow writhed beneath him, and Ben lunged out of the coffin with a strangled cry of horror… The fleshless skull whipped from side to side on the satin pillow. The nude jawbone opened in a soundless scream. (14.1248)
Barlow dies, aging in fast-forward. A lot of the death in this novel is about preservation. Sometimes, as with Danny Glick, it preserves perfect childhood, making sure you don't get any older. Barlow, who comes to 'Salem's Lot and ends up aging horribly, could be seen as the opposite of Ben, who comes to 'Salem's Lot to recapture his youth.