Skip to content

Marblehead, Massachusetts

Marblehead, Massachusetts is the small colonial coastal town near Salem that is the setting of The Summer Service: a place struck by an offshore explosion, then by a storm, a worm-borne sickness and a cult-run town government, before the National Guard seals it off.
Type Location (town)
Aliases Marblehead
Region Massachusetts coast, a couple of miles from Salem
Governed by A Board of Selectmen dominated by the Sons of Adam
Status Sealed by the National Guard as of Summer Service 06
First appearance Radford Horror 08

Description

The task force's file describes a preserved colonial seaside town, a couple of miles from Salem, with sea-monster lore, including a tentacled worm monster said to drag people under (Radford Horror 08). In Summer Service 01, Rita looks it up and finds it is about three miles long. The town has one church, one high school, one elementary school, one grocery store, one CVS, one cemetery, a historic district, a fort, a town hall, swampy areas, a radio tower to the north and a crowded harbor of yachts, fishing boats and lobster boats. Andre compares its size with Socorro, New Mexico. It was once enthusiastic about Prohibition (Summer Service 01).

Real Marblehead is run by selectmen, a fact Andre points out; in the campaign the board is a church-linked body with an eleven-seat meeting room (Summer Service 04). Locals are touchy about fish, and Briggs tells the team to "stick to good old Mickey D's" (Summer Service 01).

Notable places within

History of events there

Before the arc

An unexplained offshore explosion blows out windows in town and sickens residents. The case file in Radford Horror 08 says it happened about a month earlier and that an EPA/USGS field team sent to check for a seabed gas leak has gone missing (Radford Horror 08). In Summer Service 01, Briggs says the fish have been washing up dead for a week and a half since the blast, which fits poorly with the case file's month; the episodes do not reconcile the two (Summer Service 01). See The Marblehead explosion and EPA/USGS survey team.

Radford Horror 08

The team drives from Hoboken through Stamford, Bridgeport, Boston, Revere and Swampscott and checks in at the Ram and Arms Inn. The innkeeper mentions "fellas from the government" a week earlier, hands over the missing team's belongings and the team finds their field journal (Radford Horror 08).

Summer Service 01

The team interviews the sick, finds a severed arm on the beach, attends the church service and meets the preacher Shaw (Summer Service 01).

Summer Service 03

Huell finds Shaw's wrecked house. Andrew dreams of a dead gray man warning him off the water. The team learns the poison is a synthetic nerve agent close to VX, discovers the worms in the communion wine, and finds the lighthouse basement. A tropical depression arrives and Diane reports that the CDC, FEMA and the NCEH are calling; the town is under a chemical-weapon alert (Summer Service 03). The unrecorded Summer Service 02 involved a dive in an experimental submarine that found a stealth wreck and a lit vessel; this is known only from the team's recaps in Summer Service 03 (Summer Service 03); see The stealth wreck.

Summer Service 04

In the storm, shopkeepers board their windows, a nuclear weapon is delivered and the selectmen's meeting reveals that the town's government is the church (Summer Service 04).

Summer Service 05

Tropical Storm Andrew 2 floods the bridge to the island and washes out roads. The team destroys the infected Arnold Weathers and his dog, and escapes a 4 a.m. attack by the congregation and the police (Summer Service 05).

Summer Service 06

The Guard arrives in force. The team fires the Davy Crockett at the angel thing near the nuclear plant, and the Guard seals the town. Murals in City Hall, the church literature, a cover story of "terrorists" and a medical effort of mass deworming follow (Summer Service 06).

Later mentions

In Radford Horrors 01, Yeltsin tells the Biz that Soviet detectors recorded a cosmic microwave background surge "last year" traced to Marblehead, and the Biz sticks to a story that the military handled it. Dante (as Kurt) refers to "the angel we nuked" there. Diane also knows of submarines that went missing while the team was at Marblehead (Radford Horrors 01).

Inhabitants

Amos Shaw, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, Jester, Ma Gramoire, Briggs, the Scott family, Esteban, Madeline and Arnold Weathers, plus the Marblehead police and the congregation.

Trivia

  • A McDonald's here sells Halloween Happy Meal toys in June 1992.
  • The storm's name, "Andrew 2", doubles as a gag on Andrew Howard's name.

Appearances