University of Maine

The University of Maine is where Thad Beaumont’s academic work intersects with his attempt to confront George Stark. During a tense June visit, Thad heads for the English-Math Building not only to retrieve Honors-course applications but also to use an untapped telephone to reach Stark; the campus’s ordinary routines briefly frame a struggle already threatening his life and mind.

Setting and Academic Work

The relevant scenes center on the English-Math Building and its faculty parking area. Thad is a member of the university’s English Department, and his immediate professional pretext for coming in is the Honors course in creative writing, designated Eh-7A. Sixty students have applied—more than twice the number for the previous fall’s course. Thad intends to reduce the applicants to fifteen, the maximum enrollment he can take.

His wife, Liz Beaumont, questions why he must go to campus before July, especially since the semester has ended and he is not teaching summer classes. Thad explains that he wants to review the files, presenting the task as a way to avoid repeating the previous summer’s delay. The explanation is plausible, but incomplete: the applications provide a cover for a more urgent purpose.

Thad’s Visit and Its Hidden Purpose

Liz and the State Police officers assigned to protect the Beaumonts both oppose Thad’s trip, though for different reasons. The officers do not want to divide their watch team. Liz focuses on Thad’s injured hand and the risk that driving might reopen the wound, while her deeper concern is George Stark, whose presence dominates her thoughts.

Thad drives to campus with his left hand resting on the steering wheel and takes care not to strike it when he parks in a faculty slot behind the English-Math Building. He has already exceeded Stark’s deadline. Although he has previously made contact through automatic writing, that method involved severe pain and the frightening loss of control over his own body. More disturbing still, the episode brought the sparrows, which Thad increasingly associates with death and with forces beyond Stark himself.

The university office offers a different means of contact: a telephone Thad believes is not tapped. He is therefore traveling both to collect the Honors files and to reach Stark by phone. The familiar university errand and the supernatural crisis run side by side, making the practical destination part of Thad’s attempt to act before the threat escalates.

Campus Encounter and Narrative Role

At the parking area, Thad finds that the two large men accompanying him in a brown Plymouth have followed him to the building. He tells them he is going upstairs only briefly and suggests they remain outside. His light remark about the passing students gestures toward the campus’s ordinary social life, but the escort’s arrival dispels the quiet he had begun to enjoy.

The university setting also intersects with Alan Pangborn’s investigation. After receiving Thad’s approval, Dr. Hume in Orono tells Alan that Thad’s neurological tests are negative. Alan’s thoughts then return to Dr. Hugh Pritchard, who operated on Thad when he was eleven. Thus the campus visit occurs against both the present danger posed by Stark and unresolved questions surrounding Thad’s childhood medical history. The university is not merely a workplace: it is the point where Thad’s professional identity, police surveillance, and effort to reach the force haunting him converge.