Ben Hanscom and Arlene Hanscom

Ben Hanscom and his mother, Arlene Hanscom, live together in a small Derry apartment, their bond forged by the early death of Ben's father and the daily grind of survival. Arlene works forty hours a week in the spool-and-bale room at Stark's Mills in Newport, and after particularly dusty days she coughs so long and hard that Ben lies awake at night, frightened she might die and leave him an orphan or a state child. She is a hard woman who insists on having her own way, but Ben knows she is a good mother and loves her very much.

The Weight of Worry

After the murder of Veronica Grogan, Arlene takes Ben into the living room one evening and sits beside him on the couch, picking up his hands and looking intently into his face. She asks him if he is a fool, then tells him she worries that she is not doing right by him because he is on his own too much. She extracts a promise that he will be home by suppertime every day at six o'clock, warning that if he is late she will call the police and report him missing. To enforce this, she gives him a Timex watch with small silver numbers and an imitation-leather band, telling him to put it on, keep it on, wear it, wind it, mind it, and not lose it. She also forbids him from going around alone, insisting he go to the park or library with friends, unaware that Ben has no friends to accompany him.

The Unspoken Secret

When Arlene asks Ben if he has ever seen anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, he almost tells her about the mummy-clown he encountered on the frozen Canal in January. But some powerful intuition closes his mouth. Part of his silence comes from love—he intuits that it may be kinder to remain quiet—but another part comes from distrust. He knows she does not realize he has no friends, and he fears that if he tells her what he saw, she might make him stay inside all day as well as come home by six. So he withholds the story, saying only that he saw Mr. McKibbon rooting around in other people's garbage. She laughs at this, and the subject is closed. That night Ben lies awake, alternately putting his watch to his ear to listen to it tick and holding it close to his eyes to admire its ghostly radium dial, feeling loved and safe.

The Limits of Protection

Arlene's concern is genuine but limited by what she does not know. She tells Ben she has a pretty good idea what he and his friends are up to during summer vacation, but Ben thinks that if she does not know he has no friends, she probably does not know as much about his boyhood as she believes. Her rules—the curfew, the prohibition on going alone—are designed for a child who has the social network she assumes he has. Ben accepts her love and her watch, but he keeps the most dangerous truth of his summer hidden, protecting her from the knowledge that the monster she fears has already found her son.