IMHO, Vera Donovan is one of King’s most intriguing characters, and he reveals very little about her background but implies there’s an interesting story there: her obsession with cleanliness, her phobia of the dustbunnies, Dolores’s suspicion she was once a cleaning woman herself, her immediate bonding with Dolores when she learns of the daughter being sexually abused, etc… Then there’s the supernatural scene with her.
Dolores isn’t remotely prone to flights of imagination and fantasy, yet she swears she hears Vera’s voice clear as a bell and as if she was standing next to her urging her on to kill Joe, even though Vera is miles away playing the gracious hostess to her eclipse guests. We know that the only other “vision” Dolores has is real- she’s mindlinked somehow to Jessie Burlingame in Gerald’s Game (which, IIRC, was intended as half of a double novel with DC), which implies that Vera speaking to her from miles away was also not just something she dreamed up.
I haven’t read a lot of King, but I do know that he cross-references his stories and reuses some of his characters, thus I was wondering the title: does Vera appear in any of his other stories or novels?
Also, I’ve never read Gerald’s Game. Is Dolores referenced in it (i.e. does Jessie see Dolores when Dolores is seeing her)?