1991
The search is called off for Henry Deaver because of the low temperatures. Sheriff Alan Pangborn is in his truck, listening to the report about Henry on the radio, then loads a revolver. As the sun rises, Alan takes his thermos, gets out of his truck and hikes through the woods probing at the snow with a stick. He finally hits something and digs up... a dead deer. Sighing, Alan covers it over and continues his search. He stops at the side of a lake for a break and drinks some coffee, and hears something moaning in the forest. Young Henry is standing in the middle of the frozen lake, and Alan runs out to get him.
2018
In Castle Rock, Dale Lacy is in his kitchen making breakfast in bed for his wife. His wife Martha comes in and Dale serves her breakfast. He dresses and they talk about his forced retirement due to the prison buyout. Dale drives to work, smiling as he passes through the Castle Rock neighborhoods. Once he's out of town, Dale pulls over and ties one end of a rope to a tree. He ties the other end into a noose and hesitantly puts it around his neck, and then prepares to drive his car off of the nearby cliff. He sees a dog come out of the forest and looks at it for a minute. The dog barks at Dale, and he accelerates the car and drives off the cliff. The rope snaps tight, yanking his head off, and the car plunges into the water below. The bumper with Dale's Shawshank Prison sticker on it is the last thing to disappear into the black waters.
Later at Shawshank, the prisoners march into the field. New warden Porter pulls up, and Lieutenant Chesterton escorts her in escorts her in past the guards. A younger guard follows them and Chesterton explains that Shawshank has lost four wardens. The guard, Dennis Zalewski, speaks up briefly about which blocks are open and closed. He describes how Dale left an entire block unoccupied for 33 years, but doesn't know why.
As Dennis leaves, he talks to his fellow guard Reeves about why Dale would have killed himself when he had a severance package to look forward to. They open up the sealed block and find the block singed from the fire 33 years ago. Reeves lies down on a bunk to take a nap, and Dennis goes on ahead and counts the beds for Porter. He finds footprints in the ash and follows them, and comes to a vault door. Dennis opens it and finds another vault door in the floor. The guard opens it and sees a ladder descending down into a shaft. Dennis drops his notebook and has no choice but to climb down after it.
When Dennis reaches the bottom, he thinks that he hears something moving in the darkness. No one responds to his call, and he picks up his notebook. Dennis spots a chair and a can of cigarette butts, and trains his flashlight around and sees someone looking back at him. Frightened, Dennis crawls up the stairs.
The guards do a count of the prisoners and confirm that they're all there. Chesterton has Dennis take his discovery to the medical ward, but the young man doesn't respond to any questions like who he is or how he came to be there. The doctor takes his fingerprints and then Dennis escorts the prisoner to the shower and has to show him how it works.
Dennis and Reeves go back down the shaft and discover that the prisoner--the Kid--was locked up in what appears to be a water tank. Dennis realizes that the can of coffee butts is gone.
In her office, Porter looks at the cigarette butts and then the photo of Dale on the wall.
Porter's assistant Boyd tells her that there's no record of the Kid in the records. Porter figures that it's a PR disaster, and figures that they should check it out before they make any calls.
Dennis wonders if they should let the Kid go if they can't figure out who he is , but Reeves tells him that they won't. The doctor administers eye drops to the Kid to help him adjust to the light.
Later, Porter visits the Kid and asks who he is. The Kid doesn't respond at first, but then says the name "Henry Deaver". Dennis and Reeves are watching, and Reeves says that the Kid isn't Harry. Meanwhile, the Kid says Henry's full name and stares off into space.
Henry is in a Texas court addressing a jury, arguing for reasonable doubt on behalf of his client Leanne, an abused woman who killed her alcoholic husband. He describes how his client will be executed. Later, Henry meets with Leanne as she has her last meal. He warns that the Fifth Circuit will rule against them and the governor is a long shot. Leanne asks Henry what his first memory is, and he remembers Alan carrying him back to his truck and the radio playing "24 Hours from Tulsa". She wonders where their memories go when they die, Henry asks if that's what she's afraid of, and Leanne says that's what she wants.
Alan tells a young Henry that he's a friend of his mother's, and discovers that he has no frostbite despite over a day in the snow.
Henry attends Leanne's execution and watches as they give her a lethal injection. Afterward, he collects Leanne's belongings. An alarm goes off and a guard tells Henry that Leanne is alive again. He runs into the observation chamber and pounds on the window, telling the guards that they can't kill Leanne again. They close the curtain and Henry pounds on the window.
Later, Henry goes home to Doc's Lizard Bowl.
Boyd tells Porter that Henry ran away as a child and caused a big ruckus because people thought he had gone missing. They found Henry's father, his back broken. Henry claimed that he couldn't remember anything, and Castle Rock blamed him for his father's death. Dennis brings Porter coffee, and listens as she says that they're not going to involve a criminal defense attorney. Boyd suggests that they put the Kid with a psychopathic roommate who is in for a life sentence.
Henry watches a boy feed a chicken to an alligator. The alligator comes over to the fence and snaps its teeth, and the boy walks off with the chicken. Henry gets a call from Denis, who is calling anonymously and tells him about the Kid. He says that no one else is going to help the Kid and he's at Shawshank, and hangs up when Henry asks for his name.
In Castle Rock, real estate agent Molly Strand drives up to a high school student, Dean Merrill, and says that she has a job for him. She hands him some money for her "condition", and Dean gives her a packet of drugs. Once Dean leaves, Molly drives through town and sees Henry getting off the bus from Texas. She stares at him in shock and then quickly drives away so that he doesn't see her.
Henry gets his luggage and goes to the local inn. Meanwhile, Molly pulls over and takes the drug Dean gave her. She puts the remainder in her glove compartment and sits back.
Henry walks down the street, and a man calls him "Killer". The lawyer comes to the town church and discovers that the adjoining cemetery is gone, cemented over. Surprised, Henry enters the church and looks at a photo of Reverend M. Deaver on the wall. The plaque says that the reverend died in 1991.
As Alan drives Henry home, he tells the boy that he should have frozen to death during the 11 days that he was gone. He asks Henry what happened, and Henry says that he doesn't remember. Alan asks if he knows what happened to his father, and Henry doesn't respond. The sheriff goes into the house that they've arrived at, and his adoptive mother Ruth and his father come out to greet him. The boy looks at a small white figurine in his hand, and then closes it as Ruth runs up and hugs him in relief.
Henry returns to his childhood home and finds the lawn overgrown. He goes inside and finds food burning on the stove. Henry quickly turns off the burner and sees Ruth in the back yard. He goes out and finds her putting de-icing salt down. Henry reminds her that he called her that morning, but Ruth doesn't seem to recognize him. She goes inside and Henry follows her, explaining that he had to fly in for a work thing. He reminds her that she has a nurse, Constance, paid for with Medicare. Ruth tells him that she's dead and Henry hears someone moving upstairs.
Alan comes down and Ruth reminds Harry who Alan is. He asks Henry what brought him home, and says that he and Ruth enjoy each other's companionship. When Henry wonders where his father's body and the cemetery are, Alan explains that the church made some investments that didn't pay off so they parceled off the land, and they moved the bodies to a plot near the airport. Ruth gave her permission to move the body, and Alan signed for it and deposited the distress settlement. Ruth comes back in and then goes off, shocked.
At Shawshank, the Kid stares off into space. A mouse comes into the room and the Kid watches as it skitters across the room to the mousetrap. The trap goes off, killing it.
Henry enters Shawshank and tells the guard that one of his prisoners asked for him. The guard calls ahead, and Porter soon learns that Henry is there. She tells Boyd that her job is to fix things. She meets with Henry and gives him the prison roster, and Henry offers his condolences about Dale's death. Henry says that his father was a preacher and visited in the 80s, and Porter explains that the prison was bought out by her company and Dale couldn't handle the forced retirement. The warden is surprised that Henry flew from Texas to Maine on an anonymous call, and suggests that he was pranked. As Henry leaves, Porter says that Maine got rid of the death penalty 150 years ago, and admits that she knows that Henry is a capital lawyer. She offers her condolences on Leanne's death, and Henry leaves.
As Henry leaves the prison, he sees Dennis supervising a prison baseball game. Dennis looks back at him and then nervously looks away.
That night at the Deaver house, Henry goes to his old room. He finds a phot of himself and his adoptive parents.
Dennis is in the monitor room, glancing at the monitors while reading a novel.
Henry looks out the window and sees a power line going into the upstairs of a house. Going back downstairs, he finds a newspaper laying out with an article about Dale's death. Alan is on the couch and calls Henry over, and Henry asks if he knew Dale. The former sheriff says that they weren't buddies, and Henry asks why Dale killed him. Alan explains that being a warden isn't always a happy job, and Henry tells him about the call he received and how the Kid was locked up in a cage rather than a cell. Henry figures that Alan is covering something up, and Alan describes how Dale killed himself where Alan found Henry in 1991.
Mandy goes to her cellar, takes out an egg timer, and looks at a missing-child poster of Henry.
Henry drives through Castle Rock.
Mandy takes out a jacket and looks at it for a moment, and then puts it back in its box. The timer has run out.
Dennis finds a bug in his coffee and removes it.
Henry drives to the cliff and finds the shrine commemorating Dale's death.
Dennis glances back at the monitors and discovers that the Kid is gone from the ward. He checks the other monitors and sees the prison filled with the corpses of dead guards, and the Kid on one monitor staring up at the camera.
Henry looks up at the sky and then walks to the edge of the cliff. He remembers Alan asking him how he survived eleven days in winter. As he looks out at the lake, Henry is unaware that his younger self is standing behind him. He finally turns but there's nothing there except his car.
Dale sits in the cage smoking, and tells the Kid that when they find him, he should ask for Henry. He then climbs out, leaving the Kid in the dark.
Written by Gadfly on Jul 28, 2018