Christine - Stephen King [196]
'And now Vandenberg and Darnell.'
'Yes. But that's not all.' She drank from her glass of ginger ale and then poured in more. The edge of the can chattered briefly against the rim of the glass. 'Christmas Eve, when I called you, my mom and dad went out for drinks at my dad's boss's house. And I started to get nervous. I was thinking about oh, I don't know what I was thinking about.'
'I think you do.'
She put a hand to her forehead and rubbed it, as if she was getting a headache. 'I suppose I do, I was thinking about that car being out. Her. Being out and getting them, But if she was out on Christmas Eve, I guess she had plenty to keep her busy without bothering my par - ' She slammed the glass down, making me jump. 'And why do I keep talking about that car as if it was a person?' she cried out, Tears had begun to spill down her checks. 'Why do I keep doing that?'
On that night, I saw all too clearly what comforting her could lead to. Arnie was between us - and part of myself was, too. I had known him for a long time. A long good time.
But that was then; this was now.
I got my crutches under me, thumped my way across to the couch, and plopped down beside her. The cushions sighed. It wasn't a raspberry, but it was close.
My mother keeps a box of Kleenex in the drawer of the little endtable. I pulled one out, looked at her, and pulled out a whole handful. I gave them to her and she thanked me. Then, not liking myself much, I put an arm around her and held her.
She stiffened for a moment and then let me draw her against my shoulder. She was trembling. We just sat that way, both of us afraid of even the slightest movement, I think. Afraid we might explode. Or something. Across the room, the clock ticked importantly on the mantelpiece. Bright winterlight fell through the bow windows that give a three-way view of the street. The storm had blown itself out by noon on Christmas Day, and now the hard and cloudless blue sky seemed to deny that there even was such a thing as snow - but the dunelike drifts rolling across lawns all up and down the street like the backs of great buried beasts confirmed it.
'The smell,' I said at last. 'How sure are you about that?'
'It was there!' she said, drawing away from me and sitting up straight. I collected my arm again, with a mixed sensation of disappointment and relief. 'It really was there a rotten, horrible smell,' She looked at me. 'Why? Have you smelled it too?'
I shook my head. I never had. Not really.
'What do you know about that car, the she asked. 'You know something. I can see it on your face.'
It was my turn to think long and hard, and oddly what came into my mind was an image of nuclear fission from, some science textbook. A cartoon. You don't expect to see cartoons in science books, but as someone once said to me, there are many devious twists and turns along the path of public education in point of fact, that someone had been Arnie himself. The cartoon showed two hotrod atoms speeding toward each other and then slamming together. Presto! Instead of a lot of wreckage (and atom ambulances to take away the dead and wounded neutrons), critical mass, chain reaction, and one hell of a big bang.
Then I decided the memory of that cartoon really wasn't odd at all. Leigh had certain information I hadn't had before. The reverse was also true. In both cases a lot of it was guesswork, a lot of it was subjective feeling and circumstance but enough of it was hard information to be really scary. I wondered briefly what the police would do if they knew what we did. I could guess: nothing. Could you bring a ghost to trial? Or a car?
'Dennis?'
'I'm thinking,' I said, 'Can't you smell the wood burning?'
'What do you know?' she asked again
Collision. Critical mass. Chain reaction. Kaboom.
The thing was, I was thinking, if we put our information together, we would have to do something or tell someone. Take some action. We -
I remembered my dream: the car sitting there in LeBay's garage, the motor revving up and then falling off, revving