Birdie Marsten was sprawled in a corner, legs splayed out, feet bare. Half her head had been blown away by a close-range shot from a thirty-ought-six."pg.50 Even though it is said that Birdie Marsten begged Hubie to shot her, having your head half blown off is not the most pleasant and natural way of dying.
Starker's death had to be the strangest and horrible death of all. He was nearly beat to death with an iron bed leg by Mark Petrie, "It struck Starker just above the temple He reached out and Mark hit him again. This time the pipe struck his bald skull just above the bulge of the forehead, and the was another gout of blood With a half groan, he began to hammer at Starker's clutching hand with the bed leg."pg.434 Then having your throat ripped out truly classifies that you are dead. "It was Startker, and he had been hung, upside down like a pig in a slaughtering pen, his throat ripped wide open. He had been bled white."pg.493 In reality if anyone were to get beat the way Starker did, you would be dead or in the process of dying. But any good horror novel or movie, that is not true. It follows the rules of horror were if something seems to be dead, it probably isn't.
Element two is dealt with the decaying of the body. The author has many occasions where he uses descriptions of rank and rotten odors. These are primarily used when characters of the story is approaching the Marsten house, which can also be viewed as "Hubie's Marsten's monument to evil."pg.176 The rancid odor is used to simply clarify to the reader that things are not normal. When the mail man, Larry McLeod, discoveries Birdie Marsten's body, the first thing he acknowledge is the stench of the remains of the decomposing corpse. " Larry had smelled something bad, like spoiled meat."pg.50 Ben Mears was another person who experienced the awful smell of decaying bodies. He was somewhat a special character because he had actually had more than one terrifying experience in the Marsten house.