Tak (Stephen King)

Desperation

First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre	Horror
Publisher	Viking
Publication date	September 24, 1996
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	704
ISBN

Desperation is a horror novel by Stephen King. It was published in 1996 at the same time as its "mirror" novel, The Regulators. It was made into a TV film starring Ron Perlman, Tom Skeritt and Steven Weber in 2006. The two novels represent parallel universes relative to one another, and most of the characters present in one novel's world also exist in the other novel's reality, albeit in different circumstances.

Desperation is a story about several people who, while traveling along the desolated Highway 50 in Nevada, get abducted by Collie Entragian, the deputy of the fictional mining town of Desperation. Entragian uses various pretexts for the abductions, from an arrest for drug possession to "rescuing" a family from a nonexistent gunman. It becomes clear to the captives that Entragian has been possessed by an evil being named Tak, who has control over the surrounding desert wildlife and must change hosts to keep itself alive. They begin to fight for their freedom, sanity and lives before realizing that if they are ever to escape Desperation, they must trap Tak in the place from which he came.

The novel begins with Peter and Mary Jackson, a couple driving cross-country in Peter's sister's car after visiting their friends the Sodersons. Collie Entragian pulls over the Jacksons on the pretext of their missing rear license plate and arrests them for possession of marijuana after finding a baggie in the car trunk. Once they arrive at the Desperation Municipal Building where the holding cells are kept, Entragian shoots Peter in the stomach several times and leaves his body in the doorway before dragging Mary over a dead girl's body and up the stairs to jail.

Once thrown in jail, Mary meets the Carver family, Ralph, Ellen and their son David, who tell Mary that the girl on the stairs was their daughter Kirsten; Entragian pushed her down the stairs once the family arrived at the police station, breaking her neck. The other captive in the cells is Tom Billingsley, the town veterinarian and former councilman. Billingsley witnessed Entragian systematically murder almost every other person in the town of Desperation.

On the outskirts of town Johnny Edward Marinville, an aging author riding cross country on his motorcycle gathering material for a new book (a direct reference to King's own motorcycle trip) with his assistant Steve, comes to the attention of Entragian. Entragian plants the drug baggie found in Peter and Mary's car in one of his bike bags and bundles him into the patrol car. While Entragian is burying his bike, Johnny manages to get a call through to Steve on his cell phone; however, due to the bad transmission, he is unable to tell him to call the state police. Steve senses that his boss is in trouble and his hitchhiker, Cynthia, agrees that they need to locate Johnny and find out what has happened.