Looking for a Stephen King short story/novella about vampires.

[raccoon]

I read it long ago, can't remember the title.

It took place in 19th century New England, had to do with a well-to-do property owner and his manservant, whose name was Calvin McCann. The story was told through the journals of both, and I remember the manservant writing about sounds he thought were "rats in the walls," which were really vampires.

Can anybody help me out here?

[DS1]

1. google that name you posted

[YOY]

2. "Jerusalem's Lot"

A short story connected to "Salem's Lot".

Inspired partially by HP Lovecraft..."The Rats in the Walls" is a great short story by HP Lovecraft and the line you mentioned is a homage to him. The Lovecraft story has nothing to do with Vampires, but is creepy as hell.

[raccoon]

4. Thank you & Ds1 as well.

"Jerusalem's Lot"

The kind of horror with which King is most often associated, that of things that go bump in the night, is well represented in his short-story collections. Two of the stories, "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road," are connected by setting and plot elements to King's novel 'Salem's Lot (1975). In "Jerusalem's Lot," set in 1850 and told in a series of letters and journal entries, Charles Boone, hoping to regain his strength after a serious illness, moves into his ancestral home along with his friend Calvin McCann. They hear noises in the walls and attribute them to rats, but they soon learn that the townspeople of Preacher's Corners believe otherwise.

(snip)

"Jerusalem's Lot" has all the trappings of horror in the gothic tradition: a house shunned by the townspeople, inexplicable noises behind the walls, an abandoned town, religion that has been twisted to serve evil, and a monster in the cellar. The tale, written originally for a college class in gothic fiction, is perhaps the only King story that takes place not in modern suburbia but in the past, in a setting somewhat akin to the lonely moors and castles of the gothic writers.

http://salempress.com/Store/samples/critical_survey_short_fiction/critical_survey_short_fiction_king.htm.

[doodadem]

5. The precursor to "Salem's Lot"

I'd have to go look thru my volumes of his short stories to see which one contained it.

[terryg11]

6. Night Shift

which is King's first collection of short stories if memory serves.

excellent story, Jerusalem's Lot

[Bitwit1234]

3. The only one I remember about vampires

is Salem's Lot...could that be it. They made it into a TV movie.