Christine (65 page)

Only Christine, without so much as a ding in her fender.

That led to another deduction, one that explained why Junkins had never put a stakeout on the car, I hadn't been able to understand that, because he must have suspected that Christine was involved. But in the end, logic had ruled him—and perhaps it had killed him, as well. Junkins hadn't put a stakeout on her because Christine's alibi, while mute, was every bit as iron-clad as those of her owner. If he had inspected Christine immediately following the murder of Will Darnell, Junkins must have concluded that the car could not have been involved, no matter how persuasive the evidence to the contrary seemed.

Not a scratch on her. And why not? It was just that Junkins hadn't had all the facts. I thought about the odometer that ran backward, and Arnie saying,
Just a glitch
. I thought of the nest of cracks in the windscreen that had seemed to grow smaller and draw inward—as if they were running backward too. I thought of the haphazard replacement of parts that seemed totally without rhyme or reason. Last of all, I thought of my nightmare ride home on Sunday night—old cars that looked new clumped up at the curb outside houses where parties were going on, the Strand Theatre intact again in all of its yellow brick solidity, the half-built development that had been completed and occupied by Libertyville suburbanites twenty years ago.

Just a glitch.

I thought that not knowing about that glitch was what had really killed Rudolph Junkins.

Because, look: if you own a car long enough, things wear out no matter how well You take care of it, and they usually go randomly. A car comes off the assembly line like a newborn baby, and just like a newborn, it starts rolling down an Indian gauntlet of years. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune crack a battery here, bust a tie-rod there, freeze a bearing somewhere else. The carburetor float sticks, a tire blows, there's an electrical short, the upholstery starts getting ratty.

It's like a movie. And if you could run the film backward—

"Will there be anything else, sir?" the Records Clerk asked from behind me, and I nearly screamed.

Mom was waiting for me in the main lobby, and she chattered most of the way home about her writing and her new class, which was disco dancing. I nodded and replied in most of the right places. And I thought that if Junkins
had
brought in his technicians, his high-powered auto specialists from Harrisburg, they had probably overlooked an elephant while looking for a needle. I couldn't blame them, either. Cars just don't run backward, like a movie in reverse. And there are no such things as ghosts or revenants or demons preserved in Quaker State motor oil.

Believe in one, believe in all
, I thought, and shuddered.

"Want to turn up the heater, Denny?" Mom asked brightly.

"Would you, Mom?"

I thought of Leigh, who was due back tomorrow. Leigh with her lovely face (enhanced by those slanting, almost cruel cheekbones), her young and sweetly luscious figure that had not yet been marred by the forces of time or gravity; like that long-ago Plymouth that had rolled out of Detroit on a carrier in 1957, she was, in a sense, still under warranty. Then I thought of LeBay, who was dead and yet undead, and I thought of his lust (but was it lust? or just a need to spoil things?). I thought of Arnie saying with calm assurance that they were going to be married. And then, with a helpless clarity, I saw their wedding night. I saw her looking up into the darkness of some motel room and seeing a rotting grinning corpse poised over her. I heard her screams as Christine, a Christine still festooned with crepe streamers and soaped-on JUST MARRIED signs, waited faithfully outside the closed and locked door. Christine—or the terrible female force that animated her—would know Leigh wouldn't last long and she, Christine, would be around when Leigh was gone.

I closed my eyes to block the images out, but that only intensified them.

It had begun with Leigh wanting Arnie and had progressed logically enough to Arnie wanting her back. But it hadn't stopped there, had it? Because now LeBay had Arnie… and
he
wanted Leigh.

But he wasn't going to have her. Not if I could help it. That night I called George LeBay.

"Yes, Mr Guilder," he said, He sounded older, tireder. "I remember you very well. I talked your ear off in front of my unit in what I believe may have been the most depressing motel in the universe. What can I do for you?" He sounded as though he hoped I wouldn't require too much.

I hesitated. Did I tell him that his brother had come back from the dead? That not even the grave had been able to end his hate of the shitters? Did I tell him he had possessed my friend, had picked him out as unerringly as Arnie had picked out Christine? Did we talk about mortality, and time, and rancid love?

"Mr Guilder? Are you there?"

"I've got a problem, Mr LeBay. And I don't know exactly how to tell you about it. It concerns your brother."

Something new came into his voice then, something tight and controlled. "I don't know what sort of a problem you could have that would concern him. Rollie's dead."

"That's just it." Now I was unable to control my own voice. It trembled up to a higher octave and then drifted back down again. "I don't think he is."

"What are you talking about?" His voice was taut, accusing… and fearful. "If this is your idea of a joke, I assure you it's in the poorest possible taste."

"No joke. Just let me tell you some of the stuff that's happened since your brother died."

"Mr Guilder, I have several sets of papers to correct, and a novel I want to finish, and I really don't have time to indulge in—"

"Please," I said. "Please, Mr LeBay, please help me, and help my friend."

There was a long, long pause, and then LeBay sighed. "Tell your tale," he said, and then, after a brief pause, he added, "Goddam you."

I passed the story along to him by way of modern long-distance cable; I could imagine my voice going through computerized switching stations full of miniaturized circuits, under snow-blanketed wheatfields, and finally into the ear of this man.

I told him about Arnie's trouble with Repperton, Buddy's expulsion and revenge; I told him about the death of Moochie Welch; what had happened at Squantic Hills; what had happened during the Christmas Eve storm. I told him about windscreen cracks that seemed to run backward and a odometer that did for sure. I told him about t e radio that seemed to receive only WDIL, the oldies station, no matter where you set it—that brought a soft grunt of surprise from George LeBay. I told him about the handwriting on my casts, and how the one Arnie had done on Thanksgiving night matched his brother's signature on Christine's original registration form. I told him about Arnie's constant use of the word "shitters". The way he had started combing his hair like Fabian, or one of those other fifties greaseballs. I told him everything, in fact, except what had happened to me on my ride home early on New Year's morning. I had intended to, but I simply could not do it. I never let that out of myself until I wrote all of this down four years later.

When I finished, there was a silence on the line.

"Mr LeBay? Are you still there?"

"I'm here," he said finally. "Mr Guilder—Dennis—I don't intend to offend you, but you must realize that what you are suggesting goes far beyond any possible psychic phenomena and extends into… "He trailed off.

"Madness?"

"That isn't the word I would have used. From what you say, you were involved in a terrible football accident. You were in the hospital for two months, and in great pain for some of that time. Now isn't it possible that your imagination—"

"Mr LeBay," I said "did your brother ever have a saying about the little tramp?"

"What?"

"The little tramp. Like when you throw a ball of paper at the wastebasket and hit it, you say "Two points." Only instead of that, "Watch me put it up the little tramp's ass." Did your brother ever say that?"

"How did you know that?" And then, without giving me time to answer: "He used the phrase on one of the occasions when you met him, didn't he?"

"No.

"Mr Guilder, you're a liar."

I said nothing. I was shaking, weak-kneed. No adult had ever said that to me in my whole life.

"Dennis, I'm sorry. But my brother is dead. He was an unpleasant, possibly even an evil human being, but he is dead and all of these morbid fancies and fantasies "Who was the little tramp?" I managed.

Silence.

"Was it Charlie Chaplin?"

I didn't think he was going to reply at all. Then, at last, heavily, he said, "Only at second hand. He meant Hitler. There was a passing resemblance between Hitler and Chaplin's little tramp. Chaplin made a movie called
The Great Dictator
. You've probably never even seen it. It was a common enough name for him during the war years, at any rate. You would be much too young to remember. But it means nothing."

It was my turn to remain silent.

"It means nothing!" he shouted. "Nothing! It's vapors and suggestions, nothing more! You must see this!"

"There are seven people dead over here in western Pennsylvania," I said. "That's not just vapors. There are the signatures on my casts. They're not vapors, either. I saved them, Mr LeBay. Let me send them to you. Look at them and tell me if one of them isn't your brother's handwriting."

"It could be a knowing or unknowing forgery."

"If you believe that, get a handwriting expert. I'll pay for it."

You could do that yourself."

"Mr LeBay," I said, "I don't need any more convincing."

"But what do you want from me? To share your fantasy? I won't do that. My brother is dead. His car is just a car." He was lying. I felt it. Even through the telephone I felt it.

"I want you to explain something you said to me that night we talked."

"What would that be?" He sounded wary.

I licked my lips. "You said he was obsessed and angry, but he wasn't a monster. At least, you said, you didn't, think he was. Then it seemed like you changed the subject completely but the more I think about it, the more I think you didn't change the subject at all. The next thing you said was that he never put a mark on either of them."

"Dennis, really. I—"

"Look, if you were going to say something, for Christ's sake, say it now!" I cried. My voice cracked. I wiped my forehead, and my hand came away slimy with sweat. "This is no easier for me than it is for you, Arnie's fixated on this girl, her name is Leigh Cabot, only I don't think it's Arnie who's fixated on her at all, I think it's your brother, your dead brother,
now talk to me, please!
"

He sighed.

"Talk to you?" he said. "
Talk
to you? To talk about these old events no, these old suspicions… that would be almost the same as to shake a sleeping fiend, Dennis. Please, I know nothing."

I could have told him that the fiend was already awake, but he knew that.

"Tell me what you suspect."

"I'll call you back."

"Mr LeBay… please…"

"I'll call you back, " he said. "I've got to call my sister Marcia in Colorado."

"If it will help, I'll call—"

"No, she would never talk to you. We've only talked of it to each other once or twice, if that. I hope your conscience is clear on this matter, Dennis. Because you are asking us to rip open old scars and make them bleed again. So I'll ask you once more: how sure are you?"

"Sure," I whispered.

"I'll call you back," he said, and hung up.

Fifteen minutes went past, then twenty. I went around the room on my crutches, unable to sit still. I looked out the window at the wintry street, a study in blacks and whites. Twice I went to the telephone and didn't pick it up, afraid he would be trying to get me at the same time, even more afraid that he wouldn't call back at all. The third time, just as I put my hand on it, it rang. I jerked back as if stung, and then scooped it up.

"Hi?" Ellie's breathless voice said from downstairs. "Donna?"

"Is Dennis Guilder—" LeBay's voice began, sounding older and more broken than ever.

"I've got it, Ellie," I said,

"Well, who cares?" Ellie said pertly, and hung up.

"Hello, Mr LeBay," I said. My heart was thudding hard.

"I spoke to her," he said heavily. "She tells me only to use my own judgement. But she is frightened. Together, you and I have conspired to frighten an old lady who has never hurt anyone and has nothing whatever to do with this."

"In a good cause," I said.

"Is it?"

"If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have called you," I said. "Are you going to talk to me or not, Mr LeBay?"

"Yes," he said. "To you, but to no one else. If you should tell someone else, I would deny it. You understand?"

"Yes."

"Very well," he sighed. "In our conversation last summer, Dennis, I told you one lie about what happened and one lie about what I—what Marcy and I—felt about it. We lied to ourselves. If it hadn't been for you, I think we could have continued to lie to ourselves about that—that incident by the highway—for the rest of our lives."

"The little girl? LeBay's daughter?" I was holding the phone tightly, squeezing it.

"Yes," he said heavily. "Rita."

"What really happened when she choked?"

"My mother used to call Rollie her changeling," Le Bay said. "Did I tell you that?"

"No."

"No, of course not. I told you I thought your friend would be happier if he got rid of the car, but there is only so much a person can say in defense of one's beliefs, because the irrational… it creeps in…

He paused. I didn't prompt him. He would tell, or he wouldn't. It was as simple as that.

"My mother said he was a perfectly good baby until he was six months old. And then… she said that was when Puck came, She said Puck took her good baby for one of his jokes and replaced him with a changeling. She laughed when she said it. But she never said it when Rollie was around to hear, and her
eyes
never laughed, Dennis. I think… it was her only explanation for what he was, for why he was so untouchable in his rage… so single-minded in his few simple purposes.