The two cops nodded. They were also staring at Vic Trenton in a very cautious way, as if whatever he had might be catching.

He opened both doors of the Pinto. He had to tug long and hard at Donna's; the dog had dented it in a way he wouldn't have believed.

Her purse was in there. Her shirt. The shirt had a jagged tear in it, as if maybe the dog had taken a chomp out of it. There was some empty Slim Jim wrappers on the dashboard and Tad's Thermos bottle, smelling of sour milk. Tad's Snoopy lunchbox. His heart gave a heavy, horrid wrench at the sight of that, and he wouldn't allow himself to think of what that meant in terms of the future - if there was any future after this terrible hot day. He found one of Tad's sneakers.

Tadder, he thought. Oh Tadder.

The strength went out of his legs and he sat down heavily on the passenger scat, looking between his legs at the strip of chrome at the bottom of the doorframe. Why? Why had something like this been allowed to happen? How could so many events have conspired together?

His head was suddenly throbbing violently. His nose closed with tears and his sinuses began to pound. He snorted the tears back and passed a hand over his face. It occurred to him that, counting Tad, Cujo had been responsible for the deaths of at least three people, more than that if the Cambers were discovered to be among his victims. Did the cop he had covered with the blanket have a wife and children? Probably.

If I'd gotten here even an hour earlier. If I hadn't gone to sleep His mind cried: I was so sure it was Kemp! So sure!

If I'd gotten here just fifteen minutes earlier, would that have beenenough? If I hadn't talked to Roger so long, would Tad be alivenow? When did he die? Did it really happen at all? And how am Isupposed to deal with it for the rest of my life without going mad?

What's going to happen to Donna?

Another police car pulled up. One of the cops got out of it and conferred with one of the cops waiting for Vic. The latter stepped forward and said quietly. 'I think we ought to go, Mr.. Trenton.

Quentin here says there are reporters on the way. You don't want to talk to any reporters just now.'

'No,' Vic agreed, and started to get up. As he did, he saw a bit of yellow at the very bottom of his field of vision. A bit of paper poking out from under Tad's seat. He pulled it out and saw it was the Monster Words he had written to case Tad's mind at bedtime.

The sheet was crumpled and ripped in two places and badly stained with sweat; along the deep creases it was nearly transparent.

Monsters, stay out of this room!

You have no business here.

No monsters under Tad's bed!

You can't fit under there.

No monsters hiding in Tad's closet!

It's too small in there.

No monsters outside of Tad's window!

You can't hold on out there.

No vampires, no werewolves, no things that bite.

You have no business here.

Nothing will touch Tad, or hurt Tad, all this ni---

He could read no more. He crumpled the sheet of paper up and threw it at the dead dog's body. The paper was a sentimental lie, it's sentiments as inconstant as the color in that stupid runny-dyed cereal. It was all a lie. The world was full of monsters, and they were all allowed to bite the innocent and the unwary.

He let himself be led to the police car. They drove him away, as George Bannerman and Tad Trenton and Donna Trenton had been driven away before him. After a while, a veterinarian came in a panel truck. She looked at the dead dog, then donned long rubber gloves and brought out a circular bone saw. The cops, realizing what she was going to do, turned away.

The vet cut off the Saint Bernard's head and put it in a large white plastic garbage bag. Later that day it was forwarded to the State Commissioner of Animals, where the brain would be tested for rabies.

So Cujo was gone, too.

It was quarter to four that afternoon when Holly called Charity to the telephone. Holly looked mildly worried. 'It sounds like somebody official,' she said. About an hour earlier, Brett had given in to Jim Junior's endless supplications and had accompanied his young cousin down to the playground at the Stratford Community Center.

Since then the house had been silent except for the women's voices as they talked over old times - the good old times, Charity amended slightly. The time Daddy had fallen off the haytruck and gone into a great big cowflop in Back Field (but no mention of the times he had beaten them until they couldn't sit down in payment for some real or imagined transgression); the time they had snuck into the old Met Theater in Lisbon Falls to see Elvis in Love Me Tender (but not the time Momma had had her credit cut off at the Red & White and had backed out of the grocery in tears, leaving a full basket of provisions behind and everybody watching); how Red Timmins from up the road was always trying to kiss Holly on their walk back from school (but not how Red had lost an arm when his tractor turned turtle on him in August of 1962). The two of them had discovered it was all right to open the closets ... as long as you didn't poke too far back in them. Because things might still be lurking there, ready to bite.

Twice, Charity had opened her mouth to tell Holly that she and Brett would be going home tomorrow, and both times she had closed it again, trying to think of a way she could say it without leading Holly to believe they didn't like it here.

Now the problem was momentarily forgotten as she sat at the telephone table, a fresh cup of tea beside her. She felt a little anxious - nobody likes to get a telephone call while they're on vacation from someone who sounds official.

'Hello?' she said.

Holly watched her sister's face go white, listened as her sister said,

'What? What? No ... no! There must be some mistake. I tell you, there must

She fell silent, listening to the telephone. Some dreadful news was being passed down the wire from Maine,- Holly thought. She could see it in the gradually tightening mask of her sister's face, although she could hear nothing from the phone itself except a series of meaningless squawks.

Bad news from Maine. To her it was an old story. It was all right for her and Charity to sit in the sunny morning kitchen, drinking tea and eating orange sections and talking about sneaking into the Met Theater. It was all right, but it didn't change the fact that every day she could remember of her childhood had brought a little piece of bad news with it, each piece a part of her early life's jigsaw, the whole picture so terrible that she would not really have minded if she had never seen her older sister again. Torn cotton underpants that the other girls at school made fun of. Picking potatoes until her back ached and if you stood up suddenly the blood rushed out of your head so fast you felt like you were going to faint. Red Timmins - how carefully she and Charity had avoided mentioning Red's arm, so badly crushed it had to be amputated, but when Holly heard she had been glad, so glad. Because she remembered Red throwing a green apple at her one day, hitting her in the face, making her nose bleed, making her cry. She remembered Red giving her Indian rubs and laughing. She remembered an occasional nourishing dinner of Shedd's Peanut Butter and Cheerios when things were particularly bad. She remembered the way the outhouse stank in high summer, that smell was shit, and in case you should wonder, that wasn't a good smell.

Bad news from Maine. And somehow, for some crazed reason she knew they would never discuss even if they both lived to be a hundred and spent the last twenty old-maid years together, Charity had elected to stick with that life. Her looks were almost entirely

gone. There were wrinkles around her eyes. Her breasts sagged; even in her bra they sagged. There were only six years between them, but an observer might well

have thought it was more like sixteen. And worst of all, she seemed totally unconcerned about dooming her lovely, intelligent boy to a similar life ... unless he got smart, unless he wised up. For the tourists, Holly thought with an angry bitterness that all the good years had not changed, it was Vacationland. But if you came from the puckies, it was day after day of bad news. Then one day you looked in the mirror and the face looking back at you was Charity Camber's face. And now there was more dreadful news from Maine, that home of all dreadful news. Charity was hanging up the telephone. She sat staring at it, her hot tea steaming beside her.

'Joe's dead,' she announced suddenly.

Holly sucked in breath. Her teeth felt cold. Why did you come? she felt like shrieking. I knew you'd bring it all with you, and sure enough, you did.

'Oh, honey,' she said, 'are you sure?'

'That was a man from Augusta. Name of Masen. From the Attorney General's office, Law Enforcement Division.'

'Was it ... was it a car accident?

Charity looked directly at her then, and Holly was both shocked and terrified to see that her sister did not look like someone who has just received dreadful news; she looked like someone who has just received good news. The lines in her face had smoothed out.

Her eyes were blank ... but was it shock behind that blankness or the dreamy awakening of possibility?

If she had seen Charity Camber's face when she had checked the numbers on her winning lottery ticket, she might have known.

'Charity?'

'It was the dog,' Charity said. 'It was Cujo.'