Christine - Stephen King [190]
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 déjŕ 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