Cujo Read online

  The return address on the package had been J. C. Whitney & Co. She knew what that was; her brother had gotten their catalogue in the mail when he was a teenager. They sold auto parts, accessories, customizing equipment. A package for Joe Camber from J. C. Whitney was the most natural thing in the world. But if he was here, he surely would have gotten his mail by now.

  Nobody home, she thought dispiritedly, and felt a weary sort of anger at Vie. He's always home, sure he is, the guy would put down roots in his garage if he could, sure he would, except when I need him.

  "Well, let's go see, anyhow," she said, opening her door.

  "I can't get my seatbelt unhooked," Tad said, scratching futilely at the buckle release.

  "Okay, don't have a hemorrhage, Tad. I'll come around and let you out."

  She got out, slammed her door, and took two steps toward the front of the car, intending to cross in front of the hood to the passenger side and let Tad out of his harness. It would give Camber a chance to come out and see who his company was, if he was here. She somehow didn't relish poking her head in on him unannounced. It was probably foolish, but since that ugly and frightening scene with Steve Kemp in her kitchen, she had become more aware of what it was to be an unprotected woman than she had since she was sixteen and her mother and father had let her begin dating.

  The quiet struck her at once. It was hot and so quiet that it was somehow unnerving. There were sounds, of course, but even after several years in Castle Rock, the most she could say about her ears was that they had slowly adapted from "city ears" to "town ears." They were by no means "country ears" . . . and this was the real country.

  She heard birdsong, and the harsher music of a crow somewhere in the long field which stretched down the flank of the hill they had just climbed. There was the sigh of a light breeze, and the oaks that lined the driveway made moving patterns of shadow around her feet. But she could not hear a single car engine, not even the faraway burp of a tractor or a baling machine. City ears and town ears are more closely attuned to man-made sounds; those that nature makes tend to fall outside the tightly drawn net of selective perception. A total lack of such sounds makes for unease.

  I'd hear him if he was working in the barn, Donna thought. But the only sounds that registered were her own crunching footfalls on the crushed gravel of the driveway and a low humming sound, barely audible--with no conscious thought at all, her mind placed it as the hum of a power transformer on one of the poles back by the road.

  She reached the front of the hood and started to cross in front of the Pinto, and that was when she heard a new sound. A low, thick growling.

  She stopped, her head coming up at once, trying to pinpoint the source of that sound. For a moment she couldn't, and she was suddenly terrified, not by the sound itself but by its seeming directionlessness. It was nowhere. It was everywhere. And then some internal radar--survival equipment, perhaps--turned on all the way, and she understood that the growling was coming from inside the garage.

  "Mommy?" Tad poked his head out his open window as far as the seatbelt harness would allow. "I can't get this damn old--"

  "Shhh!"

  (growling)

  She took a tentative step backward, her right hand resting lightly on the Pinto's low hood, her nerves on tripwires as thin as filaments, not panicked but in a state of heightened alertness, thinking: It didn't growl before.

  Cujo came out of Joe Camber's garage. Donna stared at him, feeling her breath come to a painless and yet complete stop in her throat. It was the same dog. It was Cujo. But--

  But oh my

  (oh my God)

  The dog's eyes settled on hers. They were red and rheumy. They were leaking some viscous substance. The dog seemed to be weeping gummy tears. His tawny coat was caked and matted with mud and--

  Blood, is that

  (it is it's blood Christ Christ)

  She couldn't seem to move. No breath. Dead low tide in her lungs. She had heard about being paralyzed with fear but had never realized it could happen with such totality. There was no contact between her brain and her legs. That twisted gray filament running down the core of her spine had shut off the signals. Her hands were stupid blocks of flesh south of her wrists with no feeling in them. Her urine went. She was unaware of it save for some vague sensation of distant warmth.

  And the dog seemed to know. His terrible, thoughtless eyes never left Donna Trenton's wide blue ones. He paced forward slowly, almost languidly. Now he was standing on the barnboards at the mouth of the garage. Now he was on the crushed gravel twenty-five feet away. He never stopped growling. It was a low, purring sound, soothing in its menace. Foam dropped from Cujo's snout. And she couldn't move, not at all.

  Then Tad saw the dog, recognized the blood which streaked its fur, and shrieked--a high piercing sound that made Cujo shift his eyes. And that was what seemed to free her.

  She turned in a great shambling drunk's pivot, slamming her lower leg against the Pinto's fender and sending a steely bolt of pain up to her hip. She ran back around the hood of the car. Cujo's growl rose to a shattering roar of rage and he charged at her. Her feet almost skidded out from under her in the loose gravel, and she was only able to recover by slamming her arm down on the Pinto's hood. She hit her crazybone and uttered a thin shriek of pain.

  The car door was shut. She had shut it herself, automatically, after getting out. The chromed button below the handle suddenly seemed dazzlingly bright, winking arrows of sun into her eyes. I'll never be able to get that door open and get in and get it shut, she thought, and the choking realization that she might be about to die rose up in her. Not enough time. No way.

  She raked the door open. She could hear her breath sobbing in and out of her throat. Tad screamed again, a shrill, breaking sound.

  She sat down, almost falling into the driver's seat. She got a glimpse of Cujo coming at her, hindquarters tensing down for the leap that would bring all two hundred pounds of him right into her lap.

  She yanked the Pinto's door shut with both hands, reaching over the steering wheel with her right arm, honking the horn with her shoulder. She was just in time. A split second after the door slammed closed there was a heavy, solid thud, as if someone had swung a chunk of stovewood against the side of the car. The dog's barking roars of rage were cut off cleanly, and there was silence.

  Knocked himself out, she thought hysterically. Thank God, thank God for that--

  And a moment later Cujo's foam-covered, twisted face popped up outside her window, only inches away, like a horror-movie monster that has decided to give the audience the ultimate thrill by coming right out of the screen. She could see his huge, heavy teeth. And again there was that swooning, terrible feeling that the dog was looking at her, not at a woman who just happened to be trapped in her car with her little boy, but at Donna Trenton, as if he had just been hanging around, waiting for her to show up.

  Cujo began to bark again, the sound incredibly loud even through the Saf-T-Glas. And suddenly it occurred to her that if she had not automatically rolled her window up as she brought the Pinto to a stop (something her father had insisted on: stop the car, roll up the windows, set the brake, take the keys, lock the car), she would now be minus her throat. Her blood would be on the wheel, the dash, the windshield. That one action, so automatic she could not even really remember performing it.

  She screamed.

  The dog's terrible face dropped from view.

  She remembered Tad and looked around. When she saw him, a new fear invaded her, drilling like a hot needle. He had not fainted, but he was not really conscious, either. He had fallen back against the seat, his eyes dazed and blank. His face was white. His lips had gone bluish at the corners.

  "Tad!" She snapped her fingers under his nose, and he blinked sluggishly at the dry sound. "Tad!"

  "Mommy," he said thickly. "How did the monster in my closet get out? Is it a dream? Is it my nap?"

  "It's going to be all right," she said, chilled by what he had sa
id about his closet nonetheless. "It's--"

  She saw the dog's tail and the top of its broad back over the hood of the Pinto. It was going around to Tad's side of the car--

  And Tad's window wasn't shut.

  She jackknifed across Tad's lap, moving with such a hard muscular spasm that she cracked her fingers on the window crank. She turned it as fast as she could, panting, feeling Tad squirming beneath her.

  It was three quarters of the way up when Cujo leaped at the window. His muzzle shot through the closing gap and was forced upward toward the ceiling by the closing window. The sound of his snarling barks filled the small car. Tad shrieked again and wrapped his arms around his head, his forearms crossed over his eyes. He tried to dig his face into Donna's belly, reducing her leverage on the window crank in his blind efforts to get away.

  "Momma! Momma! Momma! Make it stop! Make it go away!"

  Something warm was running across the backs of her hands. She saw with mounting horror that it was mixed slime and blood running from the dog's mouth. Using everything that she had, she managed to force the window crank through another quarter turn . . . and then Cujo pulled back. She caught just a glimpse of the Saint Bernard's features, twisted and crazy, a mad caricature of a friendly Saint Bernard's face. Then it dropped back to all fours and she could only see its back.

  Now the crank turned easily. She shut the window, then wiped the backs of her hands on her jeans, uttering small cries of revulsion.

  (oh Christ oh Mary Mother of God)

  Tad had gone back to that dazed state of semiconsciousness again. This time when she snapped her fingers in front of his face there was no reaction.

  He's going to have some complexes out of this, Oh God yes. Oh sweet Tad, if only I'd left you with Debbie.

  She took him by the shoulders and began to shake him gently back and forth.

  "Is it my nap?" he asked again.

  "No," she said. He moaned--a low, painful sound that tore at her heart. "No, but it's all right. Tad? It's okay. That dog can't get in. The windows are shut now. It can't come in. It can't get us."

  That got through and Tad's eyes cleared a little. "Then let's go home, Mommy. I don't want to be here."

  "Yes. Yes, we'll--"

  Like a great tawny projectile, Cujo leaped onto the hood of the Pinto and charged at the windshield, barking. Tad uttered another scream, his eyes bulging, his small hands digging at his cheeks, leaving angry red welts there.

  "It can't get us!" Donna shouted at him. "Do you hear me? It can't get in, Tad!"

  Cujo struck the windshield with a muffled thud, bounced back, and scrabbled for purchase on the hood. He left a series of new scratches on the paint Then he came again.

  "I want to go homer!" Tad screamed.

  "Hug me tight, Tadder, and don't worry."

  How insane that sounded . . . but what else was there to say?

  Tad buried his face against her breasts just as Cujo struck the windshield again. Foam smeared against the glass as he tried to bite his way through. Those muddled, bleary eyes stared into Donna's. I'm going to pull you to pieces, they said. You and the boy both. Just as soon as I find a way to get into this tin can, I'll eat you alive; I'll be swallowing pieces of you while you're still screaming.

  Rabid, she thought. That dog is rabid.

  With steadily mounting fear, she looked past the dog on the hood and at Joe Camber's parked truck. Had the dog bitten him?

  She found the horn buttons and pressed them. The Pinto's horn blared and the dog skittered back, again almost losing its balance. "Don't like that much, do you?" she shrieked triumphantly at it. "Hurts your ears, doesn't it?" She jammed the horn down again.

  Cujo leaped off the hood.

  "Mommy, pleeease let's go home."

  She turned the key in the ignition. The motor cranked and cranked and cranked . . . but the Pinto did not start. At last she turned the key off again.

  "Honey, we can't go just yet. The car--"

  "Yes! Yes! Now! Right now!"

  Her head began to thud. Big, whacking pains that were in perfect sync with her heartbeat.

  "Tad. Listen to me. The car doesn't want to start. It's that needle valve thing. We've got to wait until the engine cools off. It'll go then, I think. We can leave."

  All we have to do is get back out of the driveway and get pointed down the hill. Then it won't matter even if it does stall, because we can coast. If I don't chicken out and hit the brake, I should be able to make it most of the way back to the Maple Sugar Road even with the engine shut down . . . or . . .

  She thought of the house at the bottom of the hill, the one with the honeysuckle running wild all over the east side. There were people there. She had seen cars.

  People!

  She began to use the horn again. Three short blasts, three long blasts, three shorts, over and over, the only Morse she remembered from her two years in the Girl Scouts. They would hear. Even if they didn't understand the message, they would come up to see who was raising hell at Joe Camber's--and why.

  Where was the dog? She couldn't see him any more. But it didn't matter. The dog couldn't get in, and help would be here shortly.

  "Everything's going to be fine," she told Tad. "Wait and see."

  A dirty brick building in Cambridge housed the offices of Image-Eye Studios. The business offices were on the fourth floor, a suite of two studios were on the fifth, and a poorly air-conditioned screening room only big enough to hold sixteen seats in rows of four was on the sixth and top floor.

  On that early Monday evening Vie Trenton and Roger Breakstone sat in the third row of the screening room, jackets off, ties pulled down. They had watched the kinescopes of the Sharp Cereal Professor commercials five times each. There were exactly twenty of them. Of the twenty, three were the infamous Red Razberry Zingers spots.

  The last reel of six spots had finished half an hour ago, and the projectionist had called good night and gone to. his evening job, which was running films at the Orson Welles Cinema. Fifteen minutes later Rob 'Martin, the president of Image-Eye, had bade them a glum good night, adding that his door would be open to them all day tomorrow and Wednesday, if they needed him. He avoided what was in all three of their minds: The door'll be open if you think of something worth talking about.

  Rob had every right to look glum. He was a Vietnam vet who had lost a leg in the Tet offensive. He had opened I-E Studios in late 1970 with his disability money and a lot of help from his in-laws. The studio had gasped and struggled along since then, mostly catching crumbs from that well-stocked media table at which the larger Boston studios banqueted. Vie and Roger had been taken with him because he reminded them of themselves, in a way--struggling to make a go of it, to get up to that fabled corner and turn it. And, of course, Boston was good because it was an easier commute than New York.

  In the last sixteen months, Image-Eye had taken off. Rob had been able to use the fact that his studio was doing the Sharp spots to land other business, and for the first time things had looked solid. In May, just before the cereal had hit the fan, he sent Vie and Roger a postcard showing a Boston T-bus going away. On the back were four lovely ladies, bent over to show their fannies, which were encased in designer jeans. Written on the back of the card, tabloid style, was this message: IMAGE-EYE LANDS CONTRACT TO DO BUTTS FOR BOSTON BUSES; BILLS BIG BUCKS. Funny then. Not such a hoot now. Since the Zingers fiasco, two clients (including Cannes-Look Jeans) had canceled their arrangements with I-E. and if Ad Worx lost the Sharp account, Rob would lose other accounts in addition to Sharp. It had left him feeling angry and scared . . . emotions Vic understood perfectly.

  They had been sitting and smoking in silence for almost five minutes when Roger said in a low voice, "It just makes me want to puke, Vie. I see that guy sitting on his desk and looking out at me like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, taking a big bite of that cereal with the runny dye in it and saying, 'Nope, nothing wrong here,' and I get sick to my stomach. Physically sick to my stomach.
I'm glad the projectionist had to go. If I watched them one more time, I'd have to do it with an airsick bag in my lap."

  He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray set into the arm of his chair. He did look ill; his face had a yellowish sheen that Vic didn't like at all. Call it shellshock, combat fatigue, whatever you wanted, but what you meant was scared shitless, backed into a rathole. It was looking into the dark and seeing something that was going to eat you up.

  "I kept telling myself," Roger said, reaching for another cigarette, "that I'd see something. You know? Something. I couldn't believe it was as bad as it seemed. But the cumulative effect of those spots . . . it's like watching Jimmy Carter saying, 'I'll never lie to you.' " He took a drag from the new cigarette, grimaced, and stuffed it into the ashtray. "No wonder George Carlin and Steve Martin and fucking Saturday Night Live had a field day. That guy just looks so sanctimonious to me now . . . " His voice had developed a sudden watery tremble. He shut his mouth with a snap.

  "I've got an idea," Vie said quietly.

  "Yeah, you said something on the plane." Roger looked at him, but without much hope. "If you got one, let's hear it."

  "I think the Sharp Cereal Professor has to make one more spot," Vic said. "I think we have to convince old man Sharp of that. Not the kid. The old man."

  "What's the old prof gonna sell this time?" Roger asked, twisting open another button on his shirt. "Rat poison or Agent Orange?"

  "Come on, Roger. No one got poisoned."

  "Might as well have," Roger said, and laughed shrilly.

  "Sometimes I wonder if you understand what advertising really is. It's holding a wolf by the tail. Well, we lost our grip on this particular wolf and he's just about to come back on us and eat us whole."

  "Roger--"

  "This is the country where it's front-page news when some consumer group weighed the McDonald's Quarter Pounder and found out it weighed a little shy of a quarter pound. Some obscure California magazine publishes a report that a rear-end collision can cause a gas-tank explosion in Pintos, and the Ford Motor Company shakes in its shoes--"

  "Don't get on that," Vie said, laughing a little. "My wife's got a Pinto. I got problems enough."