Christine (56 page)

On the other side of this low mountain (but also known as the Heights), was a fairly old middle-class neighborhood where houses forty and fifty years old were slowly mellowing. As this area began to thin out into countryside, Heights Avenue became County Road No. 2.

At ten-thirty on that Christmas Eve, a 1958 two-tone Plymouth moved up Heights Avenue, its lights cutting through the snow-choked, raving dark. Long-time natives of the Heights would have said that nothing—except maybe a four-wheel-drive—could have gotten up Heights Avenue that night, but Christine moved along at a steady thirty miles an hour, headlights probing, wipers moving rhythmically back and forth, totally empty within. Its fresh tracks where alone, and in places they were almost a foot deep. The steady wind filled them in quickly. Now and again her front bumper and hood would explode through the ridged back of a snowdrift, nosing the powder aside easily.

Christine passed the Stanson Road turnoff and the Embankment, where Arnie and Leigh had once trysted. She reached the top of Liberty Heights and headed down the far side, at first through black woods cut only by the white ribbon that marked the road, then past the suburban houses with their cosy living-room lights and, in some cases, their cheery trim of Christmas lights. In one of these houses, a young man who had just finished playing Santa and who was having a drink with his wife to celebrate, happened to glance out and see headlights passing by. He pointed it out to her.

"If that guy came over the Heights tonight," this young man said with a grin, "he must have had the devil riding shotgun."

"Never mind that," she said. "Now that the kids are taken care of, what do
I
get from Santa?

He grinned. "We'll think of something."

Farther down the road, almost at the point where the Heights ceased being the Heights, Will Darnell sat in the living room of the simple two-storey frame house he had owned for thirty years. He was wearing a bald and fading blue terrycloth robe over his pyjama bottoms, his huge sack of stomach pushing out like a swollen moon. He was watching the final conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge to the side of Goodness and Generosity, but not really seeing it. His mind was once more sifting through the pieces of a puzzle that grew steadily more fascinating: Arnie, Welch, Repperton, Christine. Will had aged a decade in the week or so since the bust. He had told that cop Mercer that he would be back doing business at the same old stand in two weeks, but in his heart he wondered. It seemed that lately his throat was always slimy from the taste of that goddam aspirator.

Arnie, Welch Repperton… Christine

"
Boy!
" Scrooge hailed down from his window, a caricature of the Christmas Spirit in his nightgown and cap. "Is the prize turkey still in the butcher's window?"

"Wot?" the boy asked. "The one as big as I am?"

"Yes, yes," Scrooge answered, giggling wildly. It was as if the three spirits had, instead of saving him, driven him mad. "The one as big as you are!"

Arnie, Welch, Repperton… LeBay?

Sometimes he thought it was not the bust that had tired him out and made him feel so constantly beaten and afraid. That it was not even the fact that they had busted his pet accountant or that the Federal tax people were in on it and were obviously loaded for bear this time. The tax people weren't the reason that he had begun scanning the street before going out mornings; the State Attorney General's Office didn't have anything to do with the sudden glances he had begun throwing back over his shoulder when he was driving home nights from the garage.

He had gone over what he had seen that night—or what he thought he had seen—again and again, trying to convince himself that it was absolutely not real or that it absolutely was. For the first time in years he found himself doubting his own senses. And as the event receded into the past, it became easier to believe he had fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing.

He hadn't seen Arnie since the bust, or tried to call him on the telephone. At first he had thought to use his knowledge about Christine as a lever to keep Arnie's mouth shut if the kid weakened and took a notion to talk—God knew the kid could go a long way toward sending him to jail if he cooperated with the cops. It wasn't until after the police had landed everywhere that Will realized how much the kid knew, and he had had a few panicky moments of self-appraisal (something else that was upsetting because it was so foreign to his nature): had
all
of them known that much? Repperton, and all the hoody Repperton clones stretching back over the years? Could he actually have been so stupid?

No, he decided. It was only Cunningham. Because Cunningham was different. He seemed to understand things almost intuitively. He wasn't all brag and booze and bullshit. In a queer way, Will felt almost fatherly toward the boy—not that he would have hesitated to cut the kid loose if it started to look as if he was going to rock the boat.
And not that I'd hesitate now,
he assured himself.

On the TV, a scratchy black-and-white Scrooge was with the Cratchets. The film was almost over. The whole bunch of them looked like loonies, and that was the truth, but Scrooge was definitely the worst. The look of mad joy in his eye was not so different from the last look in the eye of a man Will had known twenty years before, a fellow named Everett Dingle who had gone home from the garage one afternoon and murdered his entire family.

Will lit a cigar. Anything to take the taste of the aspirator out of his mouth, that rotten taste. Lately it seemed harder than ever to catch his breath. Damned cigars didn't help, but he was too old to change now.

The kid hadn't talked—at least not yet he hadn't. They had turned Henry Buck, Will's lawyer had told him; Henry, who was sixty-three and a grandfather, would have denied Christ three times if they had promised him a dismissal Or even a suspended sentence in return. Old Henry Buck was sicking up everything he knew, which fortunately wasn't a great deal. He knew about the fireworks and cigarettes, but that had only been two rings of what had been, at one time, a six- or seven-ring circus encompassing booze, hot cars, discount firearms (including a few machine-guns sold to gun nuts and homicidal hunters who wanted to see if one "would really tear up a deer like I heard"), and stolen antiques from New England. And in the last couple of years, cocaine. That had been a mistake; he knew it now. Those Colombians down in Miami were as crazy as shithouse rats. Come to think of it, they
were
shithouse rats. Thank
Christ
they hadn't caught the kid holding a pound of coke.

Well, they were going to hurt him this time—how much or how little depended a great deal on that weird seventeen-year-old kid, and maybe on his weird car. Things were as delicately balanced as a house of cards, and Will hesitated to do or say anything, for fear he would change things for the worse. And there was always the possibility that Cunningham would laugh in his face and call him crazy.

Will got up, cigar clamped in his jaws, and shut off his television set. He should go to bed, but maybe he would have a brandy first. He was always tired now, but sleep came hard.

He turned toward the kitchen… and that was when the horn began to honk outside. The sound came over the howl of the wind in short, imperative blasts.

Will stopped cold in the kitchen doorway and belted his robe closed across his big stomach. His face was sharp and rapt and alive, suddenly the face of a much younger man. He stood there a moment longer.

Three more short, sharp honks.

He turned back, taking the cigar from his mouth, and walked slowly across the living room. An almost dreamlike sense of
déjà vu
washed over him like warm water. Mixed with it was a feeling of fatalism. He knew it was Christine out there even before he brushed the curtain back and looked out, She had come for him, as he supposed he knew she might.

The car stood at the head of his turnaround driveway, little more than a ghost in the membranes of blowing snow. Its lights shone out in widening cones that at last disappeared into the storm. For a moment it seemed to Will that someone was behind the wheel, but he blinked again and saw that the car was empty. As empty as it had been when it returned to the garage that night.

Whonk. Whonk. Whonk-whonk.

Almost as if it were talking.

Will's heart thudded heavily in his chest. He turned abruptly to the phone. The time had come to call Cunningham after all. Call him and tell him to bring his pet demon to heel.

He was halfway there when he heard the car's engine scream. The sound was like the shriek of a woman who scents treachery. A moment later there was a heavy crunch.

Will went back to the window and was in time to see the car backing away from the high snowbank that fronted the end of his driveway. Its bonnet, sprayed with clods of snow, had crimped slightly. The engine revved again. The rear wheels spun in the powdery snow and then caught hold. The car leaped across the snowy road and struck the snowbank again. More snow exploded up and raftered away on the wind like cigar smoke blown in front of a fan.

Never do it,
Will thought.
And even if you get into the driveway, what then? You think I'm going to come out and play?

Wheezing more sharply than ever, he went back to the phone, looked up Cunningham's home number, and started to dial it. His fingers jittered, he misdialled, swore, hit the cutoff buttons, started again.

Outside, Christine's engine revved. A moment later there was a crunch as she hit the embankment for the third time. The wind wailed and snow struck the big picture window like dry sand. Will licked his lips and tried to breathe slowly. But his throat was closing up; he could feel it.

The phone began to ring on the other end. Three times, Four.

Christine's engine screamed. Then the heavy thud as she hit the snowbank the passing ploughs had piled up at both ends of Will's semicircular driveway.

Six rings. Seven. Nobody some.

"Shit on it," Will whispered, and slammed the phone back down. His face was pale, his nostrils flared wide, like the nostrils of an animal scenting fire upwind. His cigar had gone out. He threw it on the carpet and groped in his bathrobe pocket as he hurried back to the window. His hand found the comforting shape of his aspirator, and his fingers curled around its pistol grip.

Headlights shone momentarily in his face, nearly blinding him, and Will raised his free hand to shield his eyes. Christine hit the snowbank again. Little by little she was bludgeoning her way through to the driveway. He watched her back up across the road and wished savagely for a plough to come along now and hit the damned thing broadside.

No plough came. Christine came again instead, engine howling, lights glaring across his snow-covered lawn. She struck the snowbanks pushing mounds of snow violently to either side. The front end canted up and for a moment Will thought she was going to come right over what was left of the frozen, hard-packed embankment. Then the rear wheels lost traction and spun frantically.

She backed up.

Will's throat felt as if its bore was down to a pinhole. His lungs strained for air. He took the aspirator out and used it. The police. He ought to call the police. They could come. Cunningham's '58 couldn't get him. He was safe in his house. He was—

Christine came again, accelerating across the road, and this time she hit the bank and came over it easily, front end at first tilting up, splashing the front of his house with light, then crashing back down. She was in the driveway. Yes, all right, but she could come no further, she… it…

Christine never slowed. Still accelerating, she crossed the semicircular driveway on a tangent, ploughed through the shallower, looser snow of the side yard, and roared directly at the picture window where Will Darnell stood looking out.

He staggered backward, gasping hard, and tripped over his own easy chair.

Christine hit the house. The picture window exploded, letting in the shrieking wind. Glass flew in deadly arrows, each of them reflecting Christine's headlamps. Snow blew in and danced over the rug in erratic corkscrews. The headlights momentarily illuminated the room with the unnatural glare of a television studio, and then she withdrew, her front bumper dragging, her hood popped up, her grille smashed into a chrome-dripping grin full of fangs.

Will was on his hands and knees, gagging harshly for breath, his chest heaving. He was vaguely aware that, had he not tripped over his chair and fallen down, he probably would have been cut to ribbons by flying glass. His robe had come undone and flapped behind him as he got to his feet. The wind streaming in the window picked up the
TV Guide
from the little table by his chair, and the magazine flew across the room to the foot of the stairs, pages riffling. Will got the telephone in both hands and dialled 0.

Christine reversed along her own tracks through the snow. She went all the way back to the flattened snowback at the entrance to the driveway. Then she came forward, accelerating rapidly, and as she came the bonnet immediately began to uncrimp, the grille to regenerate itself. She slammed into the side of the house below the picture window again. More glass flew; wood splintered and groaned and creaked. The big window's low ledge cracked in two, and for a moment Christine's windscreen, now cracked and milky, seemed to peer in like a giant alien eye.

"Police," Will said to the operator. His voice was hardly there; it was all wheeze and whistle. His bathrobe flapped in the cold blizzard wind coming in through the shattered window. He saw that the wall below the window was nearly shattered. Broken chunks of lathing protruded like fractured bones. It couldn't get in, could it?
Could
it?

"I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to speak up," the operator said. "We seem to have a very bad connection."

Police,
Will said, but this time it wasn't even a whisper; only a hiss of air. Dear God, he was strangling, he was choking; his chest was a locked bank vault. Where was his aspirator?