Stephen King, the world’s scariest writer outside of the guy who does the warnings in pharmaceutical packages, announced he has begun what he believes will be his greatest horror novel. Titled “Bank Sematary,” it is the story of Frank Baulson, a small-town banker who does his best to save the mortgages of the local townfolk, then buries the foreclosed ones (mortgages, that is – although he considered both) in his back yard – only to have them come back to life in a horrific and monstrous form to terrorize Wall Street, Washington and everyone on the planet except the one man who can save them all … Warner Puffet.
“The story came to me in a nightmare after watching President Bush’s speech on the bailout,” says King. “Not only did it make me wet the bed, I shredded the sheets, decapitated the headboard and strangled my clock radio until Don Imus spoke no more. I haven’t had that much fun since I quit drinking!”
The horror master denies the book sounds a lot like one of his early hits, “Pet Sematary.” “That was about a dead cat that comes back to life,” says King. “There’s no cats in Bank Sematary … except for the one Baulson sacrifices to god of free markets, Adam Smith. It doesn’t come back to life, but Baulson does get some help from its invisible paw.” King refused to say how Puffet saves the world, except for one hint: “It involves junk bonds, solar energy and the pinkie finger of Federal Reserve Chairman Ken Kernanke.”
King is rushing to complete the book before vampire novelist Anne Rice returns to the genre with her own novel about the Wall Street financial crisis called “The Vampire Subprime.”