Albert Carson

Albert Carson was the head librarian of the Derry Public Library from 1914 to 1960, an extraordinary tenure that made him a living repository of the town's hidden history. When Mike Hanlon began researching Derry's past in the early 1980s, he sought out Carson, who was then in his nineties and dying of throat cancer. Carson dismissed the standard town histories as worthless and directed Hanlon to the works of Branson Buddinger and the folklorist Sandy Ives, telling him to "throw em in the wastebasket" first, then read them. He advised Hanlon to chase down old-timers and fill notebooks with names and addresses, warning that the truths he would uncover "may disturb your sleep."

The Warning

Carson knew far more than he would say. When Hanlon pressed him about whether Derry was "not right," Carson responded with a long, evasive meditation on the word "right," describing the town's history as a rambling old mansion with secret passages and locked rooms. "Some of the rooms are locked, but there are keys... there are keys," he said. He warned Hanlon that he might think he had stumbled on the worst of Derry's secrets, "but there is always one more. And one more. And one more." When Hanlon asked directly about the twenty-seven-year cycle of violence, Carson confirmed he knew of it, adding that Buddinger had known too—and that Buddinger had committed suicide. He grasped Hanlon's wrist and said, "This is nothing you want to mess into. There are things here in Derry that bite. Let it go." When Hanlon said he could not, Carson replied simply: "Then beware."

Death and Legacy

Carson died the summer before Mike Hanlon made his phone calls to the Losers' Club, at the age of ninety-one. His final warning to Hanlon—to let the investigation go—echoes throughout the novel as a measure of the danger Hanlon knowingly courts. Carson's role is that of the gatekeeper who opens the door to forbidden knowledge but refuses to step through it himself, leaving the burden of action to a younger generation.