Ben comes back to ’salem’s Lot to finish what he started the first time he entered the Marsten House. On that occasion, he fled without really confronting and absorbing death as represented by the house and the manifestation of Hubie Marsten. Ben’s story is a delayed coming-of-age. It is about the reason he never completed his coming-of-age at the usual stage of life. He was too young when he first went into the house, and he left the Lot when he was 11, before he had a chance to resolve that first encounter with death. Ben imagines himself completing the coming-of age that was interrupted when he had to leave.

The problem with that plan is that Ben is no longer a boy. Mark Petrie plays the role of young Ben. By taking Mark under his wing and getting him safely through his own coming-of-age experience, Ben is able to complete his own symbolic leap into adulthood. Together they confronted face down death.

Ben as a child may have been the only person to enter the Marsten House in the 10 years since it was abandoned. Likely none of the boys who dared him to go in had been inside themselves.