The Court of the Crimson King

The Court of the Crimson King is the name Ed Deepneau gives to the domain of the malevolent entity that has seized control of his mind and actions. It is not a physical place but a metaphysical realm of pure evil, a space where the entity's will is absolute and where it confronts those who oppose its plans. For Ralph Roberts, the Court manifests as a terrifying psychological trap, a space that weaponizes his deepest fears and most traumatic memories to paralyze and destroy him.

Nature and Manifestation

The Court of the Crimson King is a realm of pure malevolence, a space where the entity's will is absolute. When Ralph enters it, he finds himself in a nightmarish version of his childhood home on Richmond Street in Mary Mead. The entity, which Ed calls the Crimson King, is a shape-shifter that can assume any form to exploit its victim's vulnerabilities. It first appears to Ralph as his dead mother, Bertha Roberts, knitting a red afghan in her bentwood rocker, using her familiar voice and commands—"Pay attention to your mother" and "Mind me, now"—to try to control him. The illusion is reinforced by the appearance of the old kitchen linoleum, the Angora cat Futzy, and the painting "Christ, the Unseen Visitor" that hung on the wall. However, Ralph notices discrepancies: his mother never knitted, the Christ figure looks coldly furious rather than kind, and the creature's skin becomes rough and scaly, with whiskers bristling at the corners of its mouth.

The Queenfish and the Crimson King

As the illusion deepens, the entity transforms into a monstrous catfish, a form that taps into Ralph's most traumatic childhood memory: at age seven, he hooked a huge catfish from the Kenduskeag River in the Barrens, and the dying fish clamped its mouth on his fingers. His older brother Johnny had warned him that the whiskers were poison, and Ralph had been paralyzed with terror. The Queenfish, as it calls itself, gloats that shape-changing is "a time-honored custom in Derry" and that it can be whatever it wants. It leans toward Ralph, its whiskers beading with fluid, and threatens to paralyze him. Ralph realizes that the entity is trying to envelop him in a deathbag, a web woven from his sickest fears, from which there is no retreat.

Ralph's Escape and the Conduit

Ralph recognizes that he cannot retreat from the deathbag; he must run forward so hard and fast that he rips right through the other side. He reaches into his pocket and grips one of Lois Chasse's earrings, holding the sharp prong between his fingers. As the Queenfish lunges, Ralph drives the earring into one of its bulging black eyes. The creature shrieks and transforms into the Crimson King himself—a tall, coldly handsome man with glaring red eyes, seated on a throne carved from dull orange rock. Ralph then triggers the booby-trap that Clotho and Lachesis had planted in his arm: a scar that goes white-hot and releases an expanding ripple of energy. A titanic green flash explodes around him, and a conduit opens above them, revealing darkness shot through with conflicting swirls and rays of color. The wind blows the Crimson King up toward it like a leaf in a chimney-flue. Ralph understands that if he looks into those swirling colors—the deadlights—death would be the best outcome, so he squeezes his mind shut. A moment later, the Court is gone, and Ralph finds himself kneeling on thin air beside the Cherokee airplane, the Civic Center rushing up toward him below.