Biddeford

Biddeford is a coastal town in southern Maine that serves as a crucial waypoint in Rachel Creed's frantic journey back to Ludlow after her daughter Ellie's nightmare and her own growing dread. On the night after Gage's funeral, Rachel, having flown from Chicago to Boston and then rented a car, stops at a rest area on the Maine Turnpike in Biddeford. It is here, at approximately one o'clock in the morning, that she calls Jud Crandall from a pay phone, her voice carrying the distant hum of the wind on the line. She tells Jud she is at the Biddeford rest area, having missed her connecting flight in Boston and driven north, but she is not making the time she expected. Jud urges her to lay over in Portland, to check into a motel and get some sleep, warning her that if she dozes off behind the wheel she could kill herself. Rachel resists, but Jud insists she cannot be there for what might be happening, and he promises to tell her the whole story when she arrives. Reluctantly, Rachel agrees to Jud's advice, saying she will drive to Portland and lay over. This decision, made in Biddeford, is the last moment of relative safety for Rachel; she does not follow through, instead driving straight through the night, a choice that leads directly to her death at the hands of the resurrected Gage. Biddeford thus represents the threshold where Rachel's rational caution gives way to the irresistible pull of the Micmac burying ground's power, a force that has been manipulating events to bring her home at the precise moment of horror.