Christine - Stephen King [215]
We still lived here, but the area had stopped being known as Mapleway Estates by 1963 or '64 at the latest.
Out of the car, I was looking at my own house on my own perfectly normal street - just another part of Libertyville, Pa. I looked back at Arnie, half-expecting to see LeBay again, taxi-driver from hell with his benighted cargo of the long-dead.
But it was only Arnie, wearing his high school jacket with his name sewn over the left breast, Arnie looking too pale and too alone, Arnie with a can of beer propped against his crotch.
'Good night, man.'
'Goodnight,' I said. 'Be careful going home. You don't want to get picked up.'
'I won't,' he said. 'You take care, Dennis.'
'I will.'
I shut the door. My horror had changed to a deep and terrible sorrow - it was as if he had been buried. Buried alive. I watched Christine pull away from the kerb and head off down the street. I watched until she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Then I started up the walk to the house. The walk was clear. My dad had scattered most of a ten-pound bag of Halite over it with me in mind.
I was three-quarters of the way to the door when a greyness seemed to drift over me like smoke and I had to stop and put my head down and try to hold onto myself. I could faint out here, I thought dimly, and then freeze to death on my own front walk where once Arnie and I had played hopscotch and jacks and statue-tag.
At last, little by little, the greyness started to clear. I felt an arm around my waist. It was Dad in his bathrobe and slippers.
'Dennis, are you okay?'
Was I okay? I had been driven home by a corpse.
'Yeah,' I said. 'Got a little dizzy. Let's get in. You'll freeze your butt off.'
He walked up the steps with me, his arm still circling my waist. I was glad to have it.
'Is Mom still up?' I asked.
'No - she saw the New Year in, and then she and Ellie went to bed. Are you drunk, Dennis?'
'No.'
'You don't look good,' he said, slamming the door behind us.
I uttered a crazy little shriek of laughter, and things went grey again but only briefly this time. When I came back, he was looking at me with tight concern.
'What happened over there?'
'Dad - '
'Dennis, you talk to me!'
'Dad, I can't.'
'What is it with him? What's wrong with him, Dennis?'
I only shook my head, and it wasn't just the craziness of it, or fear for myself. Now I was afraid for all of them - my dad, my mom, Elaine, Leigh's folks. Coldly and sanely afraid.
Just stay on my side, Dennis. You know what happens to shitters who don't.
Had I really heard that?
Or had it been in my mind only?
My father was still looking at me.
'I can't.'
'All right,' he said. 'For now. I guess. But I need to know one thing, Dennis, and I want you to tell me. Do you have any reason to believe that Arnie was involved some way with Darnell's death, and the deaths of those boys?'
I thought of LeBay's rotting, grinning face, the flat pants poked up by something that could only have been bones.
'No,' I said, and that was almost the truth. 'Not Arnie.'
'All right,' he said. 'You want a hand up the stairs?'
'I can make it okay. You go to bed yourself, Dad.'
'Yeah. I'm going to. Happy New Year, Dennis - and if you want to tell me, I'm still here.'
'Nothing to tell,' I said.
Nothing I could tell.
'Somehow,' he said, 'I doubt that.'
I went up and got into bed and left the light on and didn't sleep at all. It was the longest night of my life, and several times I thought of getting up and going in with my mom and dad, the way I had done when I was small. Once I actually caught myself getting out of bed and groping for my crutches. I lay back down again. I was afraid for all of them, yes, right. But that wasn't the worst. Not anymore.
I was afraid of losing my mind. That was the worst.
The sun was just poking over the horizon when I finally dropped off and dozed uneasily for three or four hours. And when I woke