Cujo Read online

  Donna and Tad, he thought. They're safe.

  "Hello?"

  "Vic, it's Roger."

  "Roger?" He sat up. His shirt was plastered to his body. Half his mind was still asleep and grappling with that dream. The light was too strong. The heat . . . it had been relatively cool when he went to sleep. Now the bedroom was an oven. How late was it? How late had they let him sleep? The house was so silent.

  "Roger, what time is it?"

  "Time?" Roger paused. "Why, Just twelve o'clock. What--"

  "Twelve? Oh, Christ. . . . Roger, I've been asleep."

  "What's happened, Vic? Are they back?"

  "They weren't when I went to sleep. That bastard Masen promised--"

  "Who's Masen?"

  "He's in charge of the investigation. Roger, I have to go. I have to find out--"

  "Hold on, man. I'm calling from Summers. I've got to tell you. There was a telegram from Sharp in Cleveland. We're keeping the account."

  "What? What?" It was all going too fast for him. Donna . . . the account . . . Roger, sounding almost absurdly cheerful.

  "There was a telegram here when I came in. The old man and his kid sent it to Image-Eye and Rob forwarded it here. You want me to read it?"

  "Give me the gist."

  "Old man Sharp and the kid apparently came to the same conclusion using different chains of logic. The old man sees the Zingers thing as a replay of the Alamo-we're the good guys standing on the battlements, standing by to repel the boarders. All got to stick together, all for one and one for all."

  "Yeah, I knew he had that in him," Vic said, rubbing the back of his neck. "He's a loyal old bastard. That's why he came with us when we left New York."

  "The kid would still like to get rid of us, but he doesn't think this is the right time. He thinks it would be interpreted as a sign of weakness and even possible culpability. Can you believe it?"

  "I could believe anything coming from that paranoid little twerp."

  "They want us to fly to Cleveland and sign a new two-year contract. It's not a five-year deal, and when it's up the kid's almost sure to be in charge and we'll undoubtedly be invited to take a long walk off a short dock, but two years . . . it's enough time, Vic! In two years we'll be on top of it! We can tell them--"

  "Roger, I've got to--"

  "--to take their lousy pound cake and pound it up their asses! They also want to discuss the new campaign, and I think they'll go for the Cereal Professor's swan song, too."

  "That's great, Roger, but I've got to find out what the Christ has been happening with Donna and Tad."

  "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was a lousy time to call, but I couldn't keep it to myself, man. I would have busted like a balloon."

  "There's no bad time for good news," Vic said. All the same, he felt a stab of jealousy, as painful as a sliver of sharpened bone, at the happy relief in Roger's voice, and a bitter disappointment that he couldn't share in Roger's feelings. But maybe it was a good omen.

  "Vic, call me when you hear, okay?"

  "I will, Rog. Thanks for the call."

  He hung up, slipped into his loafers, and went downstairs. The kitchen was still a mess--it made his stomach do a slow and giddy rollover just to look at it. But there was a note from Masen on the table, pegged down with a salt shaker.

  Mr. Trenton,

  Steve Kemp has been picked up in a western Massachusetts town, Twickenham. Your wife and son are not, repeat, are not, with him. I did not wake you with this news because Kemp is standing on his right to remain silent. Barring any complication, he will be brought directly to the Scarborough S.P. barracks for charging on vandalism and possession of illegal drugs. We estimate him here by 11:30 A.M. If anything breaks, I'll call you soonest.

  Andy Masen

  "Fuck his right to remain silent," Vic growled. He went into the living room, got the number of the Scarborough State Police barracks, and made the call.

  "Mr. Kemp is here," the duty officer told him. "He got here about fifteen minutes ago. Mr. Masen is with him now. Kemp's called a lawyer. I don't think Mr. Masen can come to the--"

  "You never mind what he can or can't do," Vic said. "You tell him it's Donna Trenton's husband and I want him to shag his ass over to the phone and talk to me."

  A few moments later, Masen came on the line.

  "Mr. Trenton, I appreciate your Concern, but this brief time before Kemp's lawyer gets here can be very valuable."

  "What's he told you?"

  Masen hesitated and then said, "He's admitted to the vandalism. I think he finally realized this thing was a lot heavier than a little nose candy stashed in the wheel well of his van. He admitted the vandalism to the Massachusetts officers who brought him over here. But he claims that nobody was home when he did it, and that he left undisturbed."

  "You don't believe that shit, do you?"

  Masen said carefully, "He's quite convincing. I couldn't say that I believe anything right now. If I could just ask him a few more questions--"

  "Nothing came of Camber's Garage?"

  "No. I sent Sheriff Bannerman up there with instructions to call in immediately if Mrs. Trenton had been there or if her car was there. And since he didn't call back in--"

  "That's hardly definitive, is it?" Vic asked sharply.

  "Mr. Trenton, I really must go. If we hear any--"

  Vic slammed the telephone down and stood breathing rapidly in the hot silence of the living room. Then he went slowly to the stairs and mounted them. He stood in the upstairs hall for a moment and then went into his son's room. Tad's trucks were lined up neatly against the wall, slant-parking style. Looking at them hurt his heart. Tad's yellow slicker was hung on the brass hook by his bed, and his coloring books were piled neatly on his desk. His closet door was open. Vic shut it absently and, barely thinking about what he was doing, put Tad's chair in front of it.

  He sat on Tad's bed, hands dangling between his legs, and looked out into the hot, bright day.

  Dead ends. Nothing but dead ends, and where were they?

  (dead ends)

  Now there was an ominous phrase if ever one had been coined. Dead ends. As a boy Tad's age he had been fascinated with dead-end roads, his mother had told him once. He wondered if that sort of thing was inherited, if Tad was interested in dead-end roads. He wondered if Tad was still alive.

  And it suddenly occurred to him that Town Road No. 3, where Joe Camber's Garage stood, was a dead-end road.

  He suddenly looked around and saw that the wall over the head of Tad's bed was bare. The Monster Words were gone. Now why had he taken those? Or had Kemp taken them for some weird reason of his own? But if Kemp had been in here, why hadn't he trashed Tad's room as he had those downstairs?

  (dead ends and Monster Words)

  Had she taken the Pinto up to Camber's? He remembered the conversation they'd had about the balky needle valve only vaguely. She was a little scared of Joe Camber, hadn't she said that?

  No. Not Camber. Camber only wanted to mentally undress her. No, it was the dog she was a little scared of. What was his name?

  They had joked about it. Tad. Tad calling the dog.

  And again he heard Tad's phantom, ghostly voice, so hopeless and lost in this too-empty, suddenly creepy room: Cujo . . . heere, Cujo . . . Cooojo . . .

  And then something happened which Vic never spoke of to anyone in the rest of his life. Instead of hearing Tad's voice in his mind he was actually hearing it, high and lonely and terrified, a going-away voice that war coming from inside the closet.

  A cry escaped Vic's throat and he pushed himself up on Tad's bed, his eyes widening. The closet door was swinging open, pushing the chair in front of it, and his son was crying "Coooooooo--"

  And then he realized it wasn't Tad's voice; it was his own tired, overwrought mind making Tad's voice from the thin scraping sound of the chair legs on the painted plank floor. That was all it was and--

  --and there were eyes in the closet, he saw eyes, red and sunken and terrible
--

  A little scream escaped his throat. The chair tipped over for no earthly reason. And he saw Tad's teddybear inside the closet, perched on a stack of sheets and blankets. It was the bear's glass eyes he had seen. No more.

  Heart thumping heavily in his throat, Vic got up and went to the closet. He could smell something in there, something heavy and unpleasant. Perhaps it was only mothballs--that smell was certainly part of it--but it smelled . . . savage.

  Don't be ridiculous. It's just a closet. Not a cave. Not a monster lair.

  He looked at Tad's bear. Tad's bear looked back at him, unblinking. Behind the bear, behind the hanging clothes, all was darkness. Anything could be back in there. Anything. But, of course, nothing was.

  You gave me a scare, bear, he said.

  Monsters, stay out of this room, the bear said. Its eyes sparkled. They were dead glass, but they sparkled.

  The door's out of true, that's all, Vic said. He was sweating; huge salty drops ran slowly down his face like tears.

  You have no business here, the bear replied.

  What's the matter with me? Vic asked the bear. Am I going crazy? Is this what going crazy is like?

  To which Tad's bear replied: Monsters, leave Tad alone.

  He closed the closet door and watched, as wide-eyed as a child, as the latch lifted and popped free of its notch. The door began to swing open again.

  I didn't see that. I won't believe I saw that.

  He slammed the door and put the chair against it again. Then he took a large stack of Tad's picturebooks and put them on the chair's seat to weight it down. This time the door stayed closed. Vic stood there looking at the closed door, thinking about dead-end roads. Not much traffic on dead-end roads. All monsters should live under bridges or in closets or at the ends of dead-end roads. It should be like a national law.

  He was very uneasy now.

  He left Tad's room, went downstairs, and sat on the back steps. He lit a cigarette with a hand that shook slightly and looked at the gunmetal sky, feeling-the sense of unease grow. Something had happened in Tad's room. He wasn't sure what it had been, but it had been something. Yeah. Something.

  Monsters and dogs and closets and-garages and dead-end roads.

  Do we add these up, teacher? Subtract them? Divide? Fractionate?

  He threw his cigarette away.

  He did believe it was Kemp, didn't he? Kemp had been responsible for everything. Kemp had wrecked the house. Kemp had damn near wrecked his marriage. Kemp had gone upstairs and shot his semen onto the bed Vic and his wife had slept in for the last three years. Kemp had torn a great big hole in the mostly comfortable fabric of Vic Trenton's life.

  Kemp. Kemp. AN Steve Kemp's fault. Let's blame the Cold War and the hostage situation in Iran and the depletion of the ozone layer on Kemp.

  Stupid. Because not everything was Kemp's fault, now, was it? The Zingers business, for instance; Kemp had had nothing to do with that. And Kemp could hardly be blamed for the bad needle valve on Donna's Pinto.

  He looked at his old Jag. He was going to go somewhere in it. He couldn't stay here; he would go crazy if he stayed here. He should get in the car and beat it down to Scarborough. Grab hold of Kemp and shake him until it came out, until he told what he had done with Donna and Tad. Except by then his lawyer would have arrived, and, incredible as it seemed, the lawyer might even have sprung him.

  Spring. It was a spring that held the needle valve in place. If the spring was bad, the valve could freeze and choke off the flow of gasoline to the carb.

  Vic went down to the Jag and got in, wincing at the hot leather seat. Get rolling quick. Get some cool in here.

  Get rolling where?

  Camber's Garage, his mind answered immediately.

  But that was stupid, wasn't it? Masen had sent Sheriff Bannerman up there with instructions to report immediately if anything was wrong and the cop hadn't reported back so that meant--

  (that the monster got him)

  Well, it wouldn't hurt to go up there, would it? And it was something to do.

  He started the Jag up and headed down the hill toward Route 117, still not entirely sure if he was going to turn left toward 1-95 and Scarborough or right toward Town Road No. 3.

  He paused at the stop sign until someone in back gave him the horn. Then, abruptly, he turned right. It wouldn't hurt to take a quick run up to Joe Camber's. He could be there in fifteen minutes. He checked his watch and saw that it was twenty past twelve.

  The time had come, and Donna knew it.

  The time might also have gone, but she would have to live with that--and perhaps die with it. No one was going to come. There was going to be no knight on a silver steed riding up Town Road No. 3--Travis McGee was apparently otherwise engaged.

  Tad was dying.

  She made herself repeat it aloud in a husky, choked whisper: "Tad's dying."

  She had not been able to create any breeze through the car this morning. Her window would no longer go down, and Tad's window let in nothing but more heat. The one time she had tried to unroll it more than a quarter of the way, Cujo had left his place in the shade of the garage and had come around to Tad's side as fast as he could, growling eagerly.

  The sweat had now stopped rolling down Tad's face and neck. There was no more sweat left. His skin was dry and hot. His tongue, swelled and dead-looking, protruded over his bottom lip. His breathing had grown so faint that she could barely hear it. Twice she had had to put her head against his chest to make sure that he still breathed at all.

  Her condition was bad. The car was a blast furnace. The metalwork was now too hot to touch, and so was the plastic wheel. Her leg was a steady, throbbing ache, and she no longer doubted that the dog's bite had infected her with something. Perhaps it was too early for rabies--she prayed to God it was--but the bites were red and inflamed.

  Cujo was not in much better shape. The big dog seemed to have shrunk inside his matted and blood-streaked coat. His eyes were hazy and nearly vacant, the eyes of an old man stricken with cataracts. Like some old engine of destruction. now gradually beating itself to death but still terribly dangerous, he kept his watch. He was no longer foaming; his muzzle was a dried and lacerated horror. It looked like a gouged chunk of igneous rock that had been coughed out of the hotbed of an old volcano.

  The old monster, she thought incoherently, keeps his watch still.

  Had this terrible vigil been only a matter of hours, or had it been her whole life? Surely everything that had gone before had been a dream, little more than a short wait in the wings? The mother who had seemed to be disgusted and repulsed by all those around her, the well-meaning but ineffectual father, the schools, the friends, the dates and dances-they were all a dream to her now, as youth must seem to the old. Nothing mattered, nothing was but this silent and sunstruck dooryard where death had been dealt and yet more death waited in the cards, as sure as aces and eights. The old monster kept his watch still, and her son was slipping, slipping, slipping away.

  The baseball bat. That was all that remained to her now.

  The baseball bat and maybe, if she could get there, something in the dead man's police car. Something like a shotgun.

  She began to shift Tad into the back, grunting and puffing, fighting the waves of dizziness that made her sight gray over. Finally he was in the hatchback, as silent and still as a sack of grain.

  She looked out his window, saw the baseball bat lying in the high grass, and opened the door.

  In the dark mouth of the garage, Cujo stood up and began to advance slowly, head lowered, down the crushed gravel toward her.

  It was twelve thirty when Donna Trenton stepped out of her Pinto for the last time.

  Vic turned off the Maple Sugar Road and onto Town Road No. 3 just as his wife was going for Brett Camber's old Hillerich & Bradsby in the weeds. He was driving fast, intent on getting up to Camber's so he could turn around and go to Scarborough, some fifty miles away. Perversely, as soon as he had made his decision to
come out here first, his mind began dolefully telling him that he was on a wild goosechase. On the whole, he had never felt so impotent in his life.

  He was moving the Jag along at better than sixty, so intent on the road that he was past Gary Pervier's before he realized that Joe Camber's station wagon had been parked there. He slammed on the Jag's brakes, burning twenty feet of rubber. The Jag's nose dipped toward the road. The cop might have gone up to Camber's and found nobody home because Camber was down here.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the road was empty, and backed up quickly. He wheeled the Jag into Pervier's driveway and got out.

  His feelings were remarkably like those of Joe Camber himself when, two days before, Joe had discovered the splatters of blood (only now these were dried and maroon-colored) and the smashed bottom panel of the screen door. A foul, metallic taste flooded Vic's mouth. This was all a part of it. Somehow it was all a part of Tad's and Donna's disappearance.

  He let himself in and the smell hit him at once-the bloated, green smell of corruption. It had been a hot two days. There was something halfway down the hall that looked like a knocked-over endtable, except that Vie was mortally sure that it wasn't an endtable. Because of the smell. He went down to the thing in the hall and it wasn't an endtable. It was a man. The man appeared to have had his throat cut with an extremely dull blade.

  Vie stepped back. A dry gagging sound came from his throat. The telephone. He had to call someone about this.

  He started for the kitchen and then stopped. Suddenly everything came together in his mind. There was an instant of crushing revelation; it was like two half pictures coming together to make a three-dimensional whole.

  The dog. The dog had done this.

  The Pinto was at Joe Camber's. The Pinto had been there all along. The Pinto and--

  "Oh my God, Donna--"

  Vic turned and ran for the door and his car.

  Donna almost went sprawling; that was how bad her legs were. She caught herself and grabbed for the baseball bat, not daring to look around for Cujo until she had it tightly held in her hands, afraid she might lose her balance again. If she had had time to look a little farther--just a little-she would have seen George Bannerman's service pistol lying in the grass. But she did not.