Pages 157 - 173, the rest of Prayers: Good (?) God and Shiver Me Timbers

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What happened?  We meet the Mills' two ministers up close and icky-personal: apparent Good Guy Piper Libby of the First Congregational (the Congo), who still ministers to her flock though she's lost faith or belief in God, apparently with the loss of her familiy some months before ... and batshit crazy Lester Coggins of Holy Redeemer, who flagellates himself and has visions.  Yipes.  Also: the dead good Sherriff Perkins' widow (and here we thought we'd seen the last of that line) snoops in his computer and finds that her heroic if somewhat dead husband had been gathering evidence on Big Jim Rennie all along, and was working with the Fed to drop the hammer on him when his heart unfortunately and unexpectedly 'sploded.  WOnder what she'll do with that?  And briefly seen nurse Rusty Everett goes home to his wife and kids, only to find one of them in some kind of seizure, babbling about Pumpkins and avoiding Hallowe'en.  Okay, here comes the spooky part...

Hmm.  "Piper Libby" is very close to "Piper Laurie," the name of the actress who played Carrie's (Sissy Spacek's) religiously batshit crazy Mom in the movie version o Carrie some years back.  (John Travolta and Sissy Spacek.  Hard to even think of them in the same sentence these days.)  This time, her near-namesake in the sane Bible-thumper, while a close relative of Carrie's Mom is carryin' on just down the road.

King is clearly split on the positive nature of Christianity, though very clear on its great power.  He's had good guys -- literally world-savers -- as priests in Salem's Lot and the Gunslinger series; non-aligned but powerful Christers are wizard-level do-gooders in The Stand, but then Carrie's Mom and many others have used that same power for eeeeevil ends as well.  Here, he's standing 'em up right next to each other: Congo vs. the Redeemer.  And now we've got a second set of forebodinational doin's: Rusty's little boy is having convulsions about the Great Pumpking and Hallowe'en, The Right Batshit Rev. Coggins has been envisionated to look for "the blinded one who has gone mad."  Clearly weird-ass crapola is happening at the psychic as well as the physical level here.

And think about it: we're not even 24 hours into this disaster.