Cujo

by Stephen King

  (or maybe she's with Kemp)

  That was crazy. She had said it was over and he believed it. He really did believe it. Donna didn't lie.

  (and she doesn't play around, either, right, champ?)

  He tried to dismiss it, but it was no good. The rat was loose and it was going to be busy gnawing at him for some time now. What would she have done with Tad if she had suddenly taken it into her head to go off with Kemp? Were the three of them maybe in some motel right now, some motel between Castle Rock and Baltimore? Don't be a chump, Trenton. They might--

  The band concert, that was it, of course. There was a concert at the Common bandstand every Tuesday night. Some Tuesdays the high school band played, sometimes a chamber music group, sometimes a local ragtime group that called themselves the Ragged Edge. That's where they were, of course--enjoying the cool and listening to the Ragged Edge belt their way through John Hurt's "Candy Man" or maybe "Beulah Land."

  (unless she's with Kemp)

  He drained his beer and started on another.

  Donna just stood outside the car for thirty seconds, moving her feet slightly on the gravel to get the pins and needles out of her legs. She watched the front of the garage, still feeling that if Cujo came, he would come from that way--maybe out of the mouth of the barn, maybe from around one of the sides, or perhaps from behind the farm truck, which looked rather canine itself by starlight--a big dusty black mongrel that was fast asleep.

  She stood there, not quite ready to commit herself to it yet. The night breathed at her, small fragrances that reminded her of how it had been to be small, and to smell these fragrances in all their intensity almost as a matter of routine. Clover and hay from the house at the bottom of the hill, the sweet smell of honeysuckle.

  And she heard something: music. It was very faint, almost not there, but her ears, almost eerily attuned to the night now, picked it up. Someone's radio, she thought at first, and then realized with a dawning wonder that it was the band concert on the Common. That was Dixieland jazz she was hearing. She could even identify the tune; it was "Shuffle Off to Buffalo." Seven miles, she thought. I never would have believed it--how still the night must bel How calm!

  She felt very alive.

  Her heart was a small, powerful machine flexing in her chest. Her blood was up. Her eyes seemed to move effortlessly and perfectly in their bed of moisture. Her kidneys were heavy but not unpleasantly so. This was it; this was for keeps. The thought that it was her life she was putting on the line, her very own real life, had a heavy, silent fascination. like a great weight which has reached the outermost degree of its angle of repose. She swung the car door shut--clunk.

  She waited, scenting the air like an animal. There was nothing. The maw of Joe Camber's barn-garage was dark and silent The chrome of the Pinto's front bumper twinkled dimly. Faintly, the Dixieland music played on, fast and brassy and cheerful. She bent down, expecting her knees to pop, but they didn't. She picked up a handful of the loose gravel. One by one she began to toss the stones over the Pinto's hood at the place she couldn't see.

  The first small stone landed in front of Cujo's nose, clicked off more stones, and then lay still. Cujo twitched a little. His tongue hung out. He seemed to be grinning. The second stone struck beyond him. The third struck his shoulder. He didn't move. THE WOMAN was still trying to draw him out.

  Donna stood by the car, frowning. She had heard the first stone click off the gravel, also the second. But the third . . . it was as if it had never come down. There had been no minor click. What did that mean?

  Suddenly she didn't want to run for the porch door until she could see that there was nothing lurking in front of the car. Then, yes. Okay. But . . . just to make sure.

  She took one step. Two. Three.

  Cujo got ready. His eyes glowed in the darkness.

  Four steps from the door of the car. Her heart was a drum in her chest.

  Now Cujo could see THE WOMAN'S hips and thighs: In a moment she would see him. Good. He wanted her to see him.

  Five steps from the door.

  Donna turned her head. Her neck creaked like the spring on an old screen door. She felt a premonition, a sense of low sureness. She turned her head, looking for Cujo. Cujo was there. He had been there all the time, crouched low, hiding from her, waiting for her, laying back in the tall bushes.

  Their eyes locked for a moment--Donna's wide blue ones, Cujo's muddy red ones. For a moment she was looking out of his eyes, seeing herself, seeing THE WOMAN--Was he seeing himself through hers?

  Then he sprang at her.

  There was no paralysis this time. She threw herself backward, fumbling behind her for the doorhandle. He was snarling and grinning, and the drool ran out between his teeth in thick strings. He landed where she had been and skidded stiff-legged in the gravel, giving her a precious extra second.

  Her thumb found the door button below the handle and depressed it. She pulled. The door was stuck. The door wouldn't open. Cujo leaped at her.

  It was as if someone had slung a medicine ball right into the soft, vulnerable flesh of her breasts. She could feel them push out toward her ribs--it hurt--and then she had the dog by the throat, her fingers sinking into its heavy, rough fur, trying to hold it away from her. She could hear the quickening sob of her respiration. Starlight ran across Cujo's mad eyes in dull semicircles. His teeth were snapping only inches from her face and she could smell a dead world on his breath, terminal sickness, senseless murder. She thought crazily of the drain backing up just before her mother's party, spurting green goo all over the ceiling.

  Somehow, using all her strength, she was able to fling him away when his back feet left the ground in another lunge at her throat. She beat helplessly behind her for the door button. She found it, but before she could even push it in, Cujo came again. She kicked out at him, and the sole of her sandal struck his muzzle, already badly lacerated in his earlier kamikaze charges at the door. The dog sprawled back on his haunches, howling out his pain and his fury.

  She found the button set in the doorhandle again, knowing perfectly well that it was her last chance, Tad's last chance. She pushed it in and pulled with all her might as the dog came again, some creature from hell that would come and come and come until she was dead or it was. It was the wrong angle for her arm; her muscles were working at cross-purposes, and she felt an agonizing flare of pain in her back above her right shoulderblade as something sprained. But the door opened. She had just time to fall back into the bucket seat, and then the dog was on her again.

  Tad woke up. He saw his mother being driven back toward the Pinto's center console; there was something in his mother's lap, some terrible, hairy thing with red eyes and he knew what it was, oh yes, it was the thing from his closet, the thing that had promised to come a little closer and a little closer until it finally arrived right by your bed, Tad, and yes, here it was, all right, here it was. The Monster Words had failed; the monster was here, now, and it was murdering his mommy. He began to scream, his hands clapped over his eyes.

  Its snapping jaws were inches from the bare flesh of her midriff. She held it off as best she could, only faintly aware of her son's screams behind her. Cujo's eyes were locked on her. Incredibly, his tail was wagging. His back legs worked at the gravel, trying to get a footing solid enough to allow him to jump right in, but the gravel kept splurting out from under his driving rear paws.

  He lunged forward, her hands slipped, and suddenly he was biting her, biting her bare stomach just below the white cotton cups of her bra, digging for her entrails--

  Donna uttered a low, feral cry of pain and shoved with both hands as hard as she could. Now she was sitting up again, blood trickling down to the waistband of her pants. She held Cujo with her left hand. Her right hand groped for the Pinto's doorhandle and found it. She began to slam the door against the dog. Each time she swept it forward into Cujo's ribs, there was a heavy whopping sound, like a heavy rug beater striking a carpet hung over a clothesline. Each time the
door hit him, Cujo would grunt, snorting his warm, foggy breath over her.

  He drew back a little to spring. She timed it and brought the door toward her again, using all of her failing strength. This time the door closed on his neck and head, and she heard a crunching sound. Cujo howled his pain and she thought, He must draw back now, he must, he MUST, but Cujo drove forward instead and his jaws closed on her lower thigh, just above her knee and with one quick ripping motion he pulled a chunk out of her. Donna shrieked.

  She slammed the door on Cujo's head again and again, her screams melting into Tad's, melting into a gray shockworld as Cujo worked on her leg, turning it into something else, something that was red and muddy and churned up. The dog's head was plastered with thick, sticky blood, as black as insect blood in the chancey starlight. Little by little he was forcing his way in again; her strength was on the ebb now.

  She pulled the door to one final time, her head thrown back, her mouth drawn open in a quivering circle, her face a livid, moving blur in the darkness. It really was the last time; there was just no more left.

  But suddenly Cujo had had enough.

  He drew back, whining, staggering away, and suddenly fell over on the gravel, trembling, legs scratching weakly at nothing. He began to dig at his wounded head with his right forepaw.

  Donna slammed the door shut and lay back, sobbing weakly.

  "Mommy--Mommy--Mommy--"

  "Tad . . . okay . . ."

  "Mommy!"

  ". . . Okay . . ."

  Hands: his on her, fluttering and birdlike; hers on Tad's face, touching, trying to assure, then falling back.

  "Mommy . . . home . . . please . . . Daddy and home . . . Daddy and home . . ."

  "Sure, Tad, we will . . . we will, honest to God, I'll get you there . . . we will . . ."

  No sense in the words. It was all right. She could feel herself fading back, fading into that gray shockworld, those mists in herself which she had never suspected until now. Tad's words took on a deep chaining sound, words in an echo chamber. But it was all right. It was--

  No. It wasn't all right.

  Because the dog had bitten her--

  --and the dog was rabid.

  Holly told her sister not to be foolish, to just dial her call direct, but Charity insisted on calling the operator and having it billed to her home number. Taking handouts, even a little thing like an after-six long-distance call, wasn't her way.

  The operator got her directory assistance for Maine and Charity asked for Alva Thornton's number in Castle Rock. A few moments later, Alva's phone was ringing.

  "Hello, Thornton's Egg Farms."

  "Hi, Bessie?"

  "Ayuh, 'tis."

  "This is Charity Camber. I'm calling from Connecticut. Is Alva right around handy?"

  Brett sat on the sofa, pretending to read a book.

  "Gee, Charity, he ain't. He's got his bowlin league t'night. They're all over to the Pondicherry Lanes in Bridgton. Somethin wrong?"

  Charity had carefully and consciously decided what she was going to say. The situation was a bit delicate. Like almost every other married woman in Castle Rock (and that was not to necessarily let out the single ones), Bessie loved to talk, and if she found out that Joe Camber had gone shooting off somewhere without his wife's knowledge as soon as Charity and Brett had left to visit her sister in Connecticut . . . why, that would be something to talk about on the party line, wouldn't it?

  "No, except that Brett and I got a little worried about the dog."

  "Your Saint Bernard?"

  "Ayuh, Cujo. Brett and I are down here visiting my sister while Joe's in Portsmouth on business." This was a barefaced lie, but a safe one; Joe did occasionally go to Portsmouth to buy parts (there was no sales tax) and to the car auctions. "I just wanted to make sure he got someone to feed the dog. You know how men are."

  "Well, Joe was over here yesterday or the day before, I think," Bessie said doubtfully. Actually, it had been the previous Thursday. Bessie Thornton was not a terribly bright woman (her great-aunt, the late Evvie Chalmers, had been fond of screaming to anyone who would listen that Bessie "wouldn't never pass none of those IQ tests, but she's goodhearted"), her life on Alva's chicken farm was a hard one, and she lived most fully during her "stories"--As the World Turns, The Doctors, and All My Children (she had tried The Young and the Restless but considered it "too racy by half"). She tended to be fuzzy on those parts of the real world that did not bear on feeding and watering the chickens, adjusting their piped-in music, candling and sorting eggs, washing floors and clothes, doing dishes, selling eggs, tending the garden. And in the winter, of course, she could have told a questioner the exact date of the next meeting of the Castle Rock SnoDevils, the snowmobile club she and Alva belonged to.

  Joe had come over on that day with a tractor tire he had repaired for Alva. Joe had done the job free of charge since the Cambers got all their eggs from the Thorntons at half price. Alva also harrowed Joe's small patch of garden each April, and so Joe was glad to patch the tire. It was the way country people got along.

  Charity knew perfectly well that Joe had gone over to the Thorntons' with the repaired tire the previous Thursday. She also knew that Bessie was apt to get her days mixed up. All of which left her in a pretty dilemma. She could ask Bessie if Joe had had a tractor tire with him when he came up "yesterday or the day before," and if Bessie said why yes, now that yon mention it, he did, that would mean that Joe hadn't been up to see Alva since last Thursday, which would mean that Joe hadn't asked Alva to feed Cujo, which would also mean that Alva wouldn't have any information about Cujo's health and well-being.

  Or she could just leave well enough alone and ease Brett's mind. They could enjoy the rest of their visit without thoughts of home intruding constantly. And . . . well, she was a little jealous of Cujo right about now. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Cujo was distracting Brett's attention from what could be the most important trip he ever took. She wanted the boy to see a whole new life, a whole new set of possibilities, so that when the time came, a few years from now, for him to decide which doors he wanted to step through and which ones he would allow to swing closed, he could make those decisions with a bit of perspective. Perhaps she had been wrong to believe she could steer him; but let him at least have enough experience to make up his mind for himself.

  Was it fair to let his worries about the damned dog stand in the way of that?

  "Charity? You there? I said I thought--"

  "Ayuh, I heard you, Bessie. He probably did ask Alva to feed him, then."

  "Well, I'll ask him when he gets home, Charity. And I'll let you know, too."

  "You do that. Thanks ever so much, Bessie."

  "Don't even mention it."

  "Fine. Good-bye." And Charity hung up, realizing that Bessie had forgotten to ask for Jim and Holly's phone number. Which was fine. She turned toward Brett, composing her face. She would say nothing that was a lie. She would not lie to her son.

  "Bessie said your dad was over to see Alva Sunday night," Charity said. "Must have asked him to take care of Cujo then."

  "Oh." Brett was looking at her in a speculative way that made her a little uneasy. "But you didn't talk to Alva himself."

  "No, he was out bowling. But Bessie said she'd let us know if--"

  "She doesn't have our number down here." Was Brett's tone now faintly accusatory? Or was that her own conscience talking?

  "Well, I'll call her back in the morning, then," Charity said, hoping to close the conversation and applying some salve to her conscience at the same time.

  "Daddy took a tractor tire over last week," Brett said thoughtfully. "Maybe Mrs. Thornton got mixed up on which day Daddy was there."

  "I think Bessie Thornton can keep her days straighter in her head than that," Charity said, not thinking so at all. "Besides, she didn't mention anything to me about a tractor tire."

  "Yeah, but you didn't ask her."

  "Go ahead and call her back, then!" Charity flashed
at him. A sudden helpless fury swept her, the same ugly feeling that had come when Brett had offered his wickedly exact observation about Holly and her deck of credit cards. When he had done that his father's intonation, even his father's pattern of speech, had crept into his voice, and it had seemed to her, then and now, that the only thing this trip was doing was to show her once and for all who Brett really belonged to--lock, stock, and barrel.

  "Mom--"

  "No, go ahead, call her back, the number's right here on the scratchpad. Just tell the operator to charge it to our phone so it won't go on Holly's bill. Ask Bessie all your questions. I only did the best I could."

  There, she thought with sad and bitter amusement. Just five-minutes ago I wasn't going to lie to him.

  That afternoon her anger had sparked anger in him. Tonight he only said quietly, "Naw, that's okay."

  "If you want, we'll call somebody else and have them go up and check," Charity said. She was already sorry for her outburst.

  "Who would we call?" Brett asked.

  "Well, what about one of the Milliken brothers?"

  Brett only looked at her.

  "Maybe that's not such a good idea," Charity agreed. Late last winter, Joe Camber and John Milliken had had a bitter argument over the charge on some repair work Joe had done on the Milliken brothers' old Chevy Bel Air. Since then, the Cambers and the Millikens hadn't been talking much. The last time Charity had gone to play Beano down at the Grange, she had tried to pass a friendly word with Kim Milliken, Freddy's daughter, but Kim wouldn't say a word to her; just walked away with her head up as if she hadn't been acting the slut with half the boys in Castle Rock High School.

  It occurred to her now how really isolated they were, up at the end of Town Road No. 3. It made her feel lonely and a little chilled. She could think of no one she could reasonably ask to go up to the place with a flashlight and hunt up Cujo and make sure he was okay.

  "Never mind," Brett said listlessly. "Probably stupid, anyway. He probably just ate some burdocks or something."

  "Listen," Charity said, putting an arm around him. "One thing you aren't is stupid. Brett. I'll call Alva himself in the morning and ask him to go up. I'll do it as soon as we get up. Okay?"