Christine, Page 56

  She was going directly for the wall between the garage and the office. I let the mop-handle off the clutch fast, hoping to interpose the tanker's body, but Christine got past me. Petunia backed into nothing but thin air. Oh, I was doing great. I backed all the' way across the floor and crashed into the dented tool-lockers ranged there. They crashed to the floor with dull metallic janglings. Through the windshield I saw Christine hit the wall between the garage and Will's office. She never slowed; she went full speed ahead.

  I'll never forget those next few moments--they remain hypnotically clear in my memory, as if seen through a magnifying crystal. Leigh saw Christine coming and stumbled backward. Her bloody hair was matted to her head. She fell over Will's swivel chair. She hit the floor, out of sight behind his desk. An instant later--and I mean the barest instant-- Christine slammed into the wall. The big window Will had used to keep track of the comings and goings out in his garage exploded inward. Glass flew like a cluster of deadly spears. Christine's front end bulged with the impact. The hood popped up and then tore off, flying back over the roof to land on the concrete with a metallic sound that was much like the sound the falling tool-lockers had made.

  Her windshield shattered, and Michael Cunningham's body flew through the jagged opening, legs trailing, his head a grotesque flattened football. He was catapulted through Will's window; he struck Will's desk with a heavy grainsack thud and skidded over onto the floor. His shoes stuck up.

  Leigh began to scream.

  Her fall had probably saved her from being badly lacerated or killed by the flying glass, but when she rose from behind the desk her face was contorted with horror, and utter hysteria had its hold on her. Michael had skidded from the desk and his arms had looped themselves over her shoulders and as Leigh struggled to her feet she appeared to be waltzing with the corpse. Her screams were like firebells. Her blood, still flowing, sparkled deadly bright. She dumped Michael and ran for the door.

  "Leigh, no!" I screamed, and slammed down the clutch with the mop again. The handle snapped cleanly in two, leaving me with a stump five inches long. "Ohhhh-SHIT!"

  Christine reversed away from the broken window, leaving water, antifreeze, and oil puddled on the floor.

  I stamped down on the clutch with my left foot, barely feeling the pain now, bracing my left knee with my left hand as I worked the gearshift.

  Leigh tore the office door open and ran out.

  Christine turned toward her, its smashed, snarling snout sighting down on her.

  I revved Petunia's engine and roared at her, and as that damned car from hell grew in the windshield, I saw the purple, swollen face of a child pressed to the rear window, watching me, seeming to beg me to stop.

  I struck her hard. The trunk-lid popped up and gaped like a mouth. The rear end heeled around and Christine went skidding sideways past Leigh, who fled with her eyes seeming to swallow her face. I remember the spray of blood along the fur fringe of her parka's hood, tiny droplets like an evil fall of dew.

  I was in it now. I was in the peak seat. Even if they had to take my leg off at the groin when this was done, I was going to drive.

  Christine hit the wall and bounced back. I stamped the clutch, rammed the gearshift into reverse, backed up ten feet, stamped the clutch again, rammed it back into first. Engine revving, Christine tried to pull away along the wall. I cut to the left and hit her again, crushing her almost wasp-waisted in the middle. The doors popped out of their frames at the top and the bottom. LeBay was behind the wheel, now a skull, now a decayed and stinking cameo of humanity, now a hale and hearty man in his fifties with a crew-cut turning white. He stared out at me with his devil's grin, one hand on the wheel, one balled into a fist that he shook at me.

  And still her engine would not die.

  I got into reverse again, and now my leg was white iron and the pain was all the way up to my left armpit. The hell it was. The pain was everywhere. I could feel it

  (Michael Jesus why didn't you stay in the house)

  in my neck, in my jaw in my

  (Arnie? Man, I am so sorry I wish I wish)

  temples. The Plymouth--what remained of her--lunged drunkenly down the side of the garage, spraying tools and junk metal, pulling out struts and dumping the overhead shelves. The shelves hit the concrete with flat, clapping sounds that echoed like demon applause.

  I stamped the clutch again and floored the gas. Petunia's engine bellowed, and I hung onto the wheel like a man trying to stay aboard a bucking mustang. I hit her on the right side and smashed the body clear off the rear axle, driving it into the door, which shivered and rattled. I went up over the wheel, which slammed into my belly and drove the breath out of me and dumped me back into my seat, gasping.

  Now I saw Leigh, cowering in the far corner, her hands clapped to her face, dragging it down into a witch's mask.

  Christine's engine was still running.

  She dragged herself slowly down toward Leigh, like an animal whose rear legs have been broken in a trap. And even as she went I could see her regenerating, coming back: a tire that suddenly popped up full and plump, the radio antenna that unjointed itself with a silvery twingggg! sound, the accretion of metal around the ruined rear end.

  "Stay dead!" I screamed at it. I was crying, my chest heaving. My leg wouldn't work anymore. I braced it with both hands and jammed it onto the clutch. My vision went hazy and gray with the white-metal agony. I could almost feel the bones grating.

  I raced the engine, got first gear again, and charged it; and as I did I heard LeBay's voice for the first and only time, high and cheated and full of a terrible, unquenchable fury:

  "You SH1TTER! Fuck off, you miserable SH1TTER! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

  "You should have left my friend alone," I tried to yell--but all that would come out was a tearing, wounded gasp.

  I hit it squarely in the rear end, and the gas tank ruptured as the back of the car accordioned inward and upward in a kind of metal mushroom. There was a yellow lick of fire. I shielded my face with my hands --but then it was gone. Christine sat there, a refugee from a demolition derby. Her engine ran choppily, missed, fired again, and then died.

  The place was silent except for the bass rumble of Petunia's engine.

  Then Leigh was running across the floor, screaming my name over and over, crying. I was suddenly, stupidly aware that I was wearing her pink nylon scarf around the arm of my jacket.

  I looked down at it, and then the world grayed out again.

  I could feel her hands on me, and then there was nothing but darkness as I fainted.

  I came to about fifteen minutes later, my face wet and blessedly cool. Leigh was standing on Petunia's driver's-side running board, mopping my face with a wet rag. I caught it in one hand, tried to suck it, and then spat. The rag tasted strongly of oil.

  "Dennis, don't worry," she said. "I ran out into the street . . . stopped a snowplow . . . scared the poor man out of ten years of his life, I think . . . all this blood . . . he said . . . an ambulance . . . he said he'd, you know. . . Dennis, are you all right?"

  "Do I look all right?" I whispered.

  "No," she said, and burst into tears.

  "Then don't"--I swallowed past a painful dry lump in my throat-- "don't ask stupid questions. I love you."

  She hugged me clumsily.

  "He said he'd call the police, too," she said.

  I barely heard her. My eyes had found the twisted, silent hulk that was Christine's remains. And hulk was the right word; she hardly looked like a car at all anymore. But why hadn't she burned? A hubcap lay off to one side like a dented silver tiddlywink.

  "How long since you stopped the plow?" I asked hoarsely.

  "Maybe five minutes. Then I got the rag and dipped it in that bucket over there. Dennis . . . thank God it's over."

  Punk! Punk! Punk!

  I was still looking at the hubcap.

  The dents were popping out of it.

  Abruptly it flicked up on its rim and rolled toward the c
ar like a huge coin.

  Leigh saw it too. Her face froze. Her eyes widened and began to bulge. Her lips mouthed the word No but no sound came out.

  "Get in here with me," I said in a low voice, as if it could hear us. How do I know?--perhaps it could. "Get in on the passenger side. You're going to run the gas while I run the clutch with my right foot."

  "No . . ." This time it was a hissing whisper. Her breath came in whining little gasps. "No. . . no. . ."

  The wreckage was quivering all over. It was the most eerie, most terrible thing I have ever seen in my life. It was quivering all over, quivering like an animal that is not. . . quite . . . dead. Metal tapped nervously against metal. Tie rods clicked jittery jazz rhythms against their connectors. As I watched, a bent cotter-pin lying on the floor straightened itself and did half a dozen cartwheels to land in the wreckage.

  "Get in," I said.

  "Dennis, I can't." Her lips quivered helplessly. "I can't. . . no more . . . that body . . . that was Arnie's father. I can't, no more, please--"

  "You have to," I said.

  She looked at me, glanced affrightedly back at the obscenely quivering remains of that old whore LeBay and Arnie had shared, and then came around Petunia's front end. A piece of chrome tumbled and scratched her leg deeply. She screamed and ran. She clambered up into the cab and pushed over beside me. "Wh-what do I do?"

  I hung halfway out of the cab, holding onto the roof, and pushed the clutch down with my right foot. Petunia's engine was still running. "Just gun the gas and keep it gunned," I said. "No matter what."

  Steering with my right hand, holding on with my left, I let the clutch out and we rolled forward and smashed into' the wreckage, smashing it, scattering it. And in my head I seemed to hear another scream of fury.

  Leigh clapped her hands to her head. "I can't, Dennis! I can't do it! It--it's screaming!"

  "You've got to do it," I said. Her foot had come off the gas and now I could hear sirens in the night, rising and falling. I grabbed her shoulder and a sickening blast of pain ripped up my leg. "Leigh, nothing has changed. You've got to."

  "It screamed at me!"

  "We're running out of time and it still isn't done. Just a little more."

  "I'll try," she whispered, and stepped on the gas again.

  I shifted into reverse. Petunia rolled back twenty feet. I clutched again, got first. . . and Leigh suddenly cried out. "Dennis, no! Don't! Look!"

  The mother and the little girl, Veronica and Rita, were standing in front of the smashed and dented hulk of Christine, hand in hand, their faces solemn and sorrowing.

  "They're not there," I said. "And if they are, it's time they went back"--more pain in my leg and the world went gray--"back to where they belong. Keep your foot on it."

  I let out the clutch and Petunia rolled forward again, gaining speed. The two figures did not disappear as TV and movie ghosts do; they seemed to stream out in every direction, bright colors fading to wash pinks and blues . . . and then they were totally gone.

  We slammed into Christine again, spinning what was left of her around. Metal shrieked and tore.

  "Not there," Leigh whispered. "Not really there. Okay. Okay, Dennis."

  Her voice was coming from far down a dark hallway. I fetched up reverse and back we went. Then forward. We hit it; we hit it again. How many times? I don't know. We just kept slamming into it, and every time we did, another jolt of pain would go up my leg and things would get a little bit darker.

  At last I looked up blearily, and saw that the air outside the door seemed full of blood. But it wasn't blood; it was a pulsing red light reflecting off the falling snow. People were rattling at the door out there.

  "Is it good enough?" Leigh asked me.

  I looked at Christine--only it wasn't Christine anymore. It was a spread-out pile of twisted, gored metal, puffs of upholstery, and glittering broken glass.

  "Have to be," I said. "Let them in, Leigh."

  And while she went, I fainted again.

  Then there were a series of confused images; things that came into focus for a while and then faded or disappeared completely. I can remember a stretcher being rolled out of the back of an ambulance; I can remember its sides being folded up, and how the overhead fluorescents put cold highlights on its chrome; I can remember someone saying, "Cut it, you have to cut it off so we can at least look at it"; I can remember someone else--Leigh, I think--saying, "Don't hurt him, please, don't hurt him if you can help it"; I can remember the roof of an ambulance . . . it had to be an ambulance because at the periphery of my vision were two suspended IV bottles; I can remember a cool swab of antiseptic and then the sting of a needle.

  After that, things became exceedingly weird. I knew, somewhere deep inside, that I was not dreaming--the pain proved that, if it proved nothing else--but all of it seemed like a dream. I was pretty well doped, and that was part of it. . . but shock was part of it too. No fake, Jake. My mother was there, crying, in a room that looked sickeningly like the hospital room in which I had spent the entire autumn. Then my father was there, and Leigh's dad was with him, and their faces were both so tight and grim they looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee as Franz Kafka might have written them. My father bent over me and said in a voice like thunder reverberating through cotton batting: "How did Michael get there, Dennis?" That's what they really wanted to know: how Michael got there. Oh, I thought, oh my friends, I could tell you stories . . .

  Then Mr. Cabot was saying, "What did you get my daughter into, boy?" I seem to remember replying, "It's not what I got her into, it's what she got you out of," which I still think was pretty witty under the circumstances, doped up the way I was and all.

  Elaine was there briefly, and she seemed to be holding a Yodel or a Twinkie or something mockingly out of my reach. Leigh was there, holding her filmy nylon scarf out and asking me to raise my arm so she could tie it on. But I couldn't; my arm was like a lead bar.

  Then Arnie was there, and of course that had to be a dream.

  Thanks, man, he said, and I noticed with something like terror that the left lens of his glasses were shattered. His face was okay, but that broken lens . . . it scared me. Thanks. You did okay. I feel better now. I think things are going to be okay now.

  No sweat, Arnie, I said--or tried to say--but he was gone.

  It was the next day--not the twentieth, but Sunday, January twenty-first--that I started to come back a little. My left leg was in a cast up in its old familiar position again amid all the pulleys and weights. There was a man I had never seen before sitting to the left of my bed, reading a paperback John D. MacDonald story. He saw me looking at him and lowered his book.

  "Welcome back to the land of the living, Dennis," he said mildly, and deliberately marked his place in the book with a matchbook cover. He put the book in his lap and folded his hands over it

  "Are you a doctor?" I asked. He sure wasn't Dr. Arroway, who had taken care of me last time; this guy was twenty years younger and at least fifty pounds leaner. He looked tough.

  "State Police Inspector," he said. "Richard Mercer is my name. Rick, if you like." He held out his hand, and stretching awkwardly and carefully, I touched it. I couldn't really shake it My head ached and I was thirsty.

  "Look," I said. "I don't really mind talking to you, and I'll answer all of your questions, but I'd like to see a doctor." I swallowed. He looked at me, concerned, and I blurted out, "I need to know if I'm ever going to walk again."

  "If what that fellow Arroway says is the truth," Mercer said, "you'll be able to get around in four to six weeks. You didn't break it again, Dennis. You severely strained it; that was what he said. It swelled up like a sausage. He also said you were lucky to get off so cheap."

  "What about Arnie?" I asked. "Arnie Cunningham? Do you know--"

  His eyes flickered.

  "What is it?" I asked. "What is it about Arnie?"

  "Dennis," he said, and then hesitated. "I don't know if this is the time."

  "Ple
ase. Is Arnie . . . is he dead?"

  Mercer sighed. "Yes, he's dead. He and his mother had an accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, in the snow. If it was an accident"

  I tried to talk and couldn't. I motioned for the pitcher of water on the bedtable, thinking how dismal it was to be in a hospital room and know exactly where everything was. Mercer poured me a glass and put the straw with the elbow-bend in it. I drank, and it got a little bit better. My throat, that is. Nothing else seemed better at all.

  "What do you mean, if it was an accident?"

  Mercer said, "It was Friday evening, and the snow just wasn't that heavy. The turnpike classification was two--bare and wet, reduced visibility, use appropriate caution. We guess, from the force of impact, that they weren't doing much more than forty-five. The car veered across the median and struck a semi. It was Mrs. Cunningham's Volvo wagon. It exploded."

  I closed my eyes. "Regina?"

  "Also DOA. For whatever it's worth, they probably didn't--"

  "--suffer," I finished. "Bullshit. They suffered plenty." I felt tears and choked them back. Mercer said nothing. "All three of them," I muttered. "Oh Jesus Christ, all three."

  "The driver of the truck broke his arm. That was the worst of it for him. He said that there were three people in the car, Dennis."

  "Three!"

  "Yes. And he said they appeared to be struggling." Mercer looked at me frankly. "We're going on the theory that they picked up a bad-news hitchhiker who escaped after the accident and before the troopers arrived."

  But that was ridiculous, if you knew Regina Cunningham, I thought. She would no more pick up a hitchhiker than she would wear slacks to a faculty tea. The things you did and those you never did were firmly set in Regina Cunningham's mind. As if in cement, you could say.

  It had been LeBay. He couldn't be both places at once, that was the thing. And at the end, when he saw how things were going in Darnell's Garage, he had abandoned Christine and had tried to go back to Arnie. What had happened then was anyone's guess. But I thought then--and do now--that Arnie fought him--and earned at least a draw.

  "Dead," I said, and now the tears did come. I was too weak and low to stop them. I hadn't been able to keep him from getting killed, after all. Not the last time, not when it really mattered. Others, maybe, but not Arnie.