Sean Dorsey – Outside Reading 3 - ‘The Library Cop’ by Stephen King (In Four Past Midnight)

‘The Library Cop’ is a story about a monster that produces through illusion that what people (in particular susceptible children) fear the most and then feasts on that fear. This ‘emotional vampire’ resides in a library where it holds book meetings with the local kids, and a select few are feasted upon during said meetings (it more or less is a shorter version of Stephen King’s It, if anyone has read that story). The significance of the title is found in the main character’s having been raped by a police officer when he was a child; the monster recreates this figure of terror in the form of a monstrous police officer that hounds the main character for a book that he has checked out and subsequently lost. It recounts how the characters are forced to face not necessarily their essence but the corruption within it and, though it does so through supernatural means, the characterization is strong enough such to create a very harrowing and emotional journey for the reader. Could such confrontation be seen as a good thing or is the risk too high? Another thing that struck me while reading it was the idea of invasion: the illusionary cop appears at the main character’s door one day and the description of its outline in the window and then the way in which it brutally invades the character’s home (which is no doubt a parallel to the rape, now that I think about it) is I think one of the most terrifying, horrific things that can happen to a person (though I definitely do not intend to trivialize rape), and there are of course many accounts where victims could not live in that place anymore. What is it that makes such a thing so terrible , besides of course the destruction of the sense of safety a home provides?