Only intermittently do we see two of them in the same "present" scenes, and never more than that. Interestingly, we meet these four separately, and while their stories are concurrent in Dreamcatcher, we mostly follow them separately, as well.
Beaver is loveless and unhappy, Pete is an alcoholic, Henry is suicidal, and Jonesy is about to be hit by a car, shattering his hip and changing his life for the worse. All possess some sort of low-level psychic ability (clairvoyance and rudimentary telepathy, weaker forms of the abilities Johnny Smith utilized in The Dead Zone), and all are suffering. The start of Dreamcatcher finds our four protagonists - Jonesy, Henry, Pete, and Beaver - at crucial crossroads in their lives. Digging deeper, though, one finds King taking on subject matter he has never quite explored before, and forcing us to identify with and care about a type of damaged character we have never quite experienced in King's work. Beyond these "gross-out" portions, Dreamcatcher is a strangely pessimistic read, feeling in tone (if not subject matter) closer to the Richard Bachman books than most novels written under King's own name (off-concept titles like Cujo and Dolores Claiborne notwithstanding). At its start, it actively resists the reader, its early sequences concerned with body functions (things fart, belch, and smell rancid), and extended defecation imagery. While it is compelling and ultimately satisfying, it yields its rewards slowly, one of King's few novels that depend on a second read for full effect.
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