Cujo

by Stephen King

  She hadn't told because Holly had entrenched herself in her upper-middle-class suburban life like a watchful soldier in a foxhole. She hadn't told because horrified anger could not solve her problems. She hadn't told because no one likes to look like a freak in a sideshow, living through the days and weeks and months and years with an unpleasant, uncommunicative, sometimes frightening man. Charity had discovered there were things you didn't want to tell. Shame wasn't the reason. Sometimes it was just better--kinder--to keep up a front.

  Mostly she hadn't told because these things were her problems. What happened to Brett was her problem . . . and over the last two days she had come more and more to believe that what he did with his life would depend less on her and Joe in the final reckoning than it would on Brett himself.

  There would be no divorce. She would continue to fight her unceasing guerrilla war with Joe for the boy's soul . . . for whatever good that would do. In her worry over Brett's wanting to emulate his father, she had perhaps forgotten--or overlooked--the fact that there comes a time when children stand in judgment and their parents--mother as well as father--must stand in the dock. Brett had noticed Holly's ostentatious display of credit cards. Charity could only hope Brett would notice that his father ate with his hat on . . . among other things.

  The dawn was brightening. She took her robe from the back of the door and put it on. She wanted a shower but would not take one until the others in the house were stirring. The strangers. That was what they were. Even Holly's face was strange to her now, a face that bore only a faint resemblance to the snapshots in the family albums she had brought with them . . . even Holly herself had looked at those photographs with a faint air of puzzlement.

  They would go back to Castle Rock, back to the house at the end of Town Road No. 3, back to Joe. She would pick up the threads of her life, and things would continue. That would be best.

  She reminded herself to call Alva just before seven o'clock, when he would be at breakfast.

  It was just past 6 A.M. and the day was coming bright when Tad had his convulsion.

  He had awakened from an apparently sound sleep around 5:15 and had roused Donna from a low doze, complaining of being hungry and thirsty. As if he had pressed a button deep down inside her, Donna had become aware for the first time that she was hungry too. The thirst she had been aware of--it was more or less constant--but she could not remember actually thinking of food since sometime yesterday morning. Now she was suddenly ravenous.

  She soothed Tad as best she could, telling him hollow things that no longer meant anything real to her one way or another--that people would show up soon, the bad dog would be taken away, they would be rescued.

  The real thing was the thought of food.

  Breakfasts, for instance, take breakfasts: two eggs fried in butter, over easy if you don't mind, waiter. French toast. Big glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice so cold that moisture beaded the glass. Canadian bacon. Home fries. Bran flakes in cream with a sprinkle of blueberries on top--bloobies, her father had always called them, another one of those comic irrationalities that had irritated her mother out of all proportion.

  Her stomach made a loud rumbling sound, and Tad laughed. The sound of his laughter startled her and pleased her with its unexpectedness. It was like finding a rose growing in a rubbish heap, and she smiled back. The smile hurt her lips.

  "Heard that, huh?"

  "I think you must be hungry too."

  "Well, I wouldn't turn down an Egg McMuffin if someone threw it my way."

  Tad groaned, and that made them both laugh again. In the yard, Cujo had pricked up his ears. He growled at the sound of their laughter. For a moment he made as if to get to his feet, perhaps to charge the car again; then he settled wearily back on his haunches, head dropping.

  Donna felt that irrational lift in her spirits that almost always comes with daybreak. Surely it would be over soon; surely they had passed the worst. All the luck had been against them, but sooner or later even the worst luck changes.

  Tad seemed almost his old self. Too pale, badly used, terribly tired in spite of his sleep, but still indubitably the Tadder. She hugged him, and he hugged her back. The pain in her belly had subsided somewhat, although the scrapes and gouges there had a puffy, inflamed look. Her leg was worse, but she found she was able to flex it, although it hurt to do so and the bleeding started again. She would have a scar.

  The two of them talked for the next forty minutes or so Donna, hunting for a way to keep Tad alert and to also pass the time for both of them, suggested Twenty Questions. Tad agreed eagerly. He had never been able to get enough of the game; the only problem had always been getting one or the other of his parents to play it with him. They were on their fourth game when the convulsion struck.

  Donna had guessed some five questions ago that the subject of the interrogation was Fred Redding, one of Tad's daycamp chums, but had been spinning things out.

  "Does he have red hair?" she said.

  "No, he's . . . he's . . . he's . . ."

  Suddenly Tad was struggling to catch his breath. It came and went in gasping, tearing whoops that caused fear to leap up her throat in a sour, coppery-tasting rush.

  "Tad? Tad?"

  Tad gasped. He clawed at his throat, leaving red lines there. His eyes rolled up, showing only the bottoms of the irises and the silvery whites.

  "Tad!"

  She grabbed him, shook him. His Adam's apple went up and down rapidly, like a mechanical bear on a stick. His hands began to flop aimlessly about, and then they rose to his throat again and tore at it. He began to make animal choking sounds.

  For a moment Donna entirely forgot where she was. She grabbed for the doorhandle, pulled it up, and shoved the door of the Pinto open, as if this had happened while she was in the supermarket parking lot and there was help close by.

  Cujo was on his feet in an instant. He leaped at the car before the door was more than half open, perhaps saving her from being savaged at that instant. He struck the opening door, fell back, and then came again, snarling thickly. Loose excrement poured onto the crushed gravel of the driveway.

  Screaming, she yanked the door closed. Cujo leaped at the side of the car again, bashing the dent in a little deeper. He reeled back, then sprang at the window, thudding off it with a dull cracking sound. The silver crack running through the glass suddenly developed half a dozen tributaries. He leaped at it again and the Saf-T-Glas starred inward, still holding together but sagging now. The outside world was suddenly a milky blur.

  If he comes again--

  Instead, Cujo withdrew, waiting to see what she would do next.

  She turned to her son.

  Tad's entire body was jerking, as if with epilepsy. His back was bowed. His buttocks came out of the seat, thumped back, rose again, thumped back. His face was taking on a bluish color. The veins in his temples stood out prominently. She had been a candy-striper for three years, her last two in high school and the summer following her freshman year at college, and she knew what was happening here. He had not swallowed his tongue; outside of the more purple mystery novels, that was impossible. But his tongue had slid down his throat and was now blocking his windpipe. He was choking to death in front of her eyes.

  She grabbed his chin in her left hand and yanked his mouth open. Panic made her rough, and she heard the tendons in his jaw creak. Her probing fingers found the tip of his tongue incredibly far back, almost to where his wisdom teeth would be if they ever grew out. She tried to grip it and couldn't; it was wet and slippery as a baby eel. She tried to tweeze it between her thumb and forefinger, only faintly aware of the lunatic race of her heart. I think I'm losing him, she thought. Oh my dear God, I think I'm losing my son.

  Now his teeth suddenly clashed down, drawing blood from her probing fingers and from his own cracked and blistered lips. Blood ran down his chin. She was hardly aware of the pain. Tad's feet began to rattle a mad tattoo against the floormat of the Pinto. She groped for the tip of his to
ngue desperately. She had it . . . and it slipped through her fingers again.

  (the dog the goddamned dog it's his fault goddam dog goddam hellhound I'LL KILL YOU I SWEAR TO GOD)

  Tad's teeth clamped down on her fingers again, and then she had his tongue again and this time she did not hesitate: she dug her fingernails into its spongy top and underside and pulled it forward like a woman pulling a windowshade down; at the same time she put her other hand under his chin and tipped his head back, creating the maximum airway. Tad began to gasp again--a harsh, rattling sound, like the breathing of an old man with emphysema. Then he began to whoop.

  She slapped him. She didn't know what else to do, so she did that.

  Tad uttered one final tearing gasp, and then his breathing settled into a rapid pant She was panting herself. Waves of dizziness rushed over her. She had twisted her bad leg somehow, and there was the warm wetness of fresh bleeding.

  "Tad!" She swallowed harshly. "Tad, can you hear me?"

  His head nodded. A little. His eyes remained closed.

  "Take it as easy as you can. I want you to relax."

  ". . . want to go home . . . Mommy . . . the monster . . ."

  "Shhh, Tadder. Don't talk, and don't think about monsters.

  Here." The Monster Words had fallen to the floor. She picked the yellow paper up and put it in his hand. Tad gripped it with panicky tightness. "Now concentrate on breathing slowly and regularly, Tad. That's the way to get home. Slow and regular breaths."

  Her eyes wandered past him and once again she saw the splintery bat, its handle wrapped in friction tape, lying in the high weeds at the right side of the driveway.

  "Just take it easy, Tadder, can you try to do that?"

  Tad nodded a little without opening his eyes.

  "Just a little longer, hop. I promise. I promise."

  Outside, the day continued to brighten. Already it was warm. The temperature inside the small car began to climb.

  Vic got home at twenty past five. At the time his wife was pulling his son's tongue out of the back of his mouth, he was walking around the living room, putting things slowly and dreamily to rights, while Bannerman, a State Police detective, and a detective from the state Attorney General's office sat on the long sectional sofa drinking instant coffee.

  "I've already told you everything I know," Vic said. "If she isn't with the people you've contacted already, she's not with anybody." He had a broom and a dustpan, and he had brought in the box of Hefty bags from the kitchen closet. Now he let a panful of broken glass slide into one of the bags with an atonal jingle. "Unless it's Kemp."

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Vic couldn't remember ever being as tired as he was now, but he didn't believe he would be able to sleep unless someone gave him a shot. He wasn't thinking very well. Ten minutes after he arrived the telephone had rung and he had sprung at it like an animal, not heeding the A.G.'s man's mild statement that it was probably for him. It hadn't been; it was Roger, wanting to know if Vic had gotten there, and if there was any news.

  There was some news, but all of it was maddeningly inconclusive. There had been fingerprints all over the house, and a fingerprint team, also from Augusta, had taken a number of sets from the living quarters adjacent to the small stripping shop where Steven Kemp had worked until recently. Before long the matching would be done and they would know conclusively if Kemp had been the one who had turned the downstairs floor upside down. To Vic it was so much redundancy; he knew in his guts that it had been Kemp.

  The State Police detective had run a make on Kemp's van. It was a 1971 Ford Econoline, Maine license 641-644. The color was light gray, but they knew from Kemp's landlord--they had routed him out of bed at 4 A.M.--that the van had desert murals painted on the sides: buttes, mesas, sand dunes. There were two bumper stickers on the rear, one which said SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS and one which said RONALD REAGAN SHOT J.R. A very funny guy, Steve Kemp, but the murals and the bumper stickers would make the van easier to identify, and unless he had ditched it, he would almost certainly be spotted before the day was out. The MV alert had gone out to all the New England states and to upstate New York. In addition, the FBI in Portland and Boston had been alerted to a possible kidnapping, and they were now running Steve Kemp's name through their files in Washington. They would find three minor busts dating back to the Vietnam war protests, one each for the years 1968-1970.

  "There's only one thing about all of this that bothers me," the A.G.'s man said. His pad was on his knee, but anything Vic could tell he had already told them. The man from Augusta was only doodling. "If I may be frank, it bothers the shit out of me." "

  "What's that?" Vic asked. He picked up the family portrait, looking down at it, and then tilted it so the shattered glass facing tumbled into the Hefty bag with another evil little jingle.

  "The car. Where's your wife's car?"

  His name was Masen--Masen with an "e," he had informed Vic as they shook hands. Now he went to the window, slapping his pad absently against his leg. Vic's battered sports car was in the driveway, parked to one side of Bannerman's cruiser. Vic had picked it up at the Portland Jetport and dropped off the Avis car he had driven north from Boston.

  "What's that got to do with it?" Vic asked.

  Masen shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Maybe everything. Probably nothing, but I just don't like it. Kemp comes here, right? Grabs your wife and son. Why? He's crazy. That's reason enough. Can't stand to lose. Maybe it's even his twisted idea of a joke."

  These were all things Vic himself had said, repeated back almost verbatim.

  "So what does he do? He bundles them into his Ford van with the desert murals on the sides. He's either running with them or he's holed up somewhere. Right?"

  "Yes, that's what I'm afraid--"

  Masen turned from the window to look at him. "So where's her car?"

  "Well--" Vic tried hard to think. It was hard. She was very tired. "Maybe--"

  "Maybe he had a confederate who drove it away," Masen said. "That would probably mean a kidnapping for ransom. If he took them on his own, it was probably just a crazy spur-of-the-moment thing. If it was a kidnapping for money, why take the car at all? To switch over to? Ridiculous. That Pinto's every bit as hot as the van, if a little harder to recognize. And I repeat, if there was no confederate, if he was by himself, who drove the car?"

  "Maybe he came back for it," the State Police detective rumbled. "Stowed the boy and the missus and came back for her car."

  "That would present some problems without a confederate," Masen said, "but I suppose he could do it. Take them someplace close and walk back for Mrs. Trenton's Pinto, or take them someplace far away and thumb a ride back. But why?"

  Bannerman spoke for the first time. "She could have driven it herself."

  Masen swung to look at him, his eyebrows going up.

  "If he took the boy with him--" Bannerman looked at Vic and nodded a little. "I'm sorry, Mr. Trenton, but if Kemp took the boy with him, belted him in, held a gun on him, and told your wife to follow close, and that something might happen to the boy if she tried anything clever, like turning off or flashing her lights--"

  Vic nodded, feeling sick at the picture it made.

  Masen seemed irritated with Bannerman, perhaps because he hadn't thought of the possibility himself. "I repeat: to what purpose?"

  Bannerman shook his head. Vic himself couldn't think of a single reason why Kemp would want Donna's car.

  Masen lit a Pall Mall, coughed, and looked around for an ashtray.

  "I'm sorry," Vic said, again feeling like an actor, someone outside himself, saying lines that had been written for him. "The two ashtrays in here were broken. I'll get you one from the kitchen."

  Masen walked out with him, took an ashtray, and said, "Let's go out on the steps, do you mind? It's going to be a bitch of a hot day. I like to enjoy them while they're still civilized during July."

  "Okay," Vic said listlessly.

  He glanced at the thermo
meter-barometer screwed to the side of the house as they went out . . . a gift from Donna last Christmas. The temperature already stood at 73. The needle of the barometer was planted squarely in the quadrant marked FAIR.

  "Let's pursue this a little further," Masen said. "It fascinates me. Here's a woman with a son, a woman whose husband is away on a business trip. She needs her car if she's going to get around very well. Even downtown's half a mile away and the walk back is all uphill. So if we assume that Kemp grabbed her here, the car would still be here. Try this, instead. Kemp comes up and trashes the house, but he's still furious. He sees them someplace else in town and grabs them. In that case, the car would still be in that other place. Downtown, maybe. Or in the parking lot at the shopping center."

  "Wouldn't someone have tagged it in the middle of the night?" Vic asked.

  "Probably," Masen said. "Do you think she herself might have left it somewhere, Mr. Trenton?"

  Then Vic remembered. The needle valve.

  "You look like something just clicked," Masen said.

  "It didn't click, it clunked. The car isn't here because it's at the Ford dealership in South Paris. She was having carburetor trouble. The needle valve in there kept wanting to jam. We talked about it on the phone Monday afternoon. She was really pissed off and upset about it. I meant to make an appointment for her to get it done by a local guy here in town, but I forgot because . . ."

  He trailed off, thinking about the reasons why he had forgotten.

  "You forgot to make the appointment here in town, so she would have taken it to South Paris?"

  "Yeah, I guess so." He couldn't remember exactly what the run of the conversation had been now, except that she had been afraid the car would seize up while she was taking it to be fixed.

  Masen glanced at his watch and got up. Vic started to rise with him.

  "No, stay put. I just want to make a quick phone can. I'll be back."

  Vic sat where he was. The screen door banged closed behind Masen, a sound that reminded him so much of Tad that he winced and had to grit his teeth against fresh tears. Where were they? The thing about the Pinto not being here had only been momentarily promising after all.