(dead ends and Monster Words)
Had she taken the Pinto up to Camber's? He remembered the conversation they'd had about the balky needle valve only vaguely.
She was a little scared of Joe Camber, hadn't she said that?
No. Not Camber. Camber only wanted to mentally undress her.
No, it was the dog she was a little scared of. What was his name?
They had joked about it. Tad. Tad calling the dog.
And again he heard Tad's phantom, ghostly voice, so hopeless and lost in this too-empty, suddenly creepy room: Cujo ... heere, Cujo
... Coooojo ...
And then something happened which Vic never spoke of to anyone in the rest of his life. Instead of hearing Tad's voice in his mind he was actually hearing it, high and lonely and terrified, a going-away voice that was coming from inside the closet.
A cry escaped Vic's throat and he pushed himself up on Tad's bed, his eyes widening. The closet door was swinging open, pushing the chair in front of it, and his son was crying 'Coooooooooo ..
And then he realized it wasn't Tad's voice; it was his own tired, overwrought mind making Tad's voice from the thin scraping sound of the chair legs on the painted plank floor. That was all it was and - and there were eyes in the closet, he saw eyes, red and sunken and terrible A little scream escaped his throat. The chair tipped over for no earthly reason. And he saw Tad's teddybear inside the closet, perched on a stack of sheets and blankets. It was the bear's glass eyes he had seen. No more.
Heart thumping heavily in his throat, Vic got up and went to the closet. He could smell something in there, something heavy and unpleasant. Perhaps it was only mothballs - that smell was certainly part of it - but it smelled ... savage.
Don't be ridiculous. It's just a closet. Not a cave. Not a monsterlair.
He looked at Tad's bear. Tad's bear looked back at him, unblinking. Behind the bear, behind the hanging clothes, all was darkness. Anything could be back there. Anything. But, of course, nothing was.
You gave me a scare, bear, he said.
Monsters, stay out of this room, the bear said. Its eyes sparkled.
They were dead glass, but they sparkled.
The door's out of true, that's all, Vic said. He was sweating; huge salty drops ran slowly down his face like tears.
You have no business here, the bear replied.
What's the matter with me? Vic asked the bear. Am I going crazy?
Is this what going crazy is like?
To which Tad's bear replied: Monsters, leave Tad alone.
He closed the closet door and watched, as wide-eyed as a child, as the latch lifted and popped free of its notch. The door began to swing open again.
I didn't see that. I won't believe I saw that.
He slammed the door and put the chair against it again. Then he took a large stack of Tad's picturebooks and put them on the chair's seat to weight it down. This time the door stayed closed. Vic stood there looking at the closed door, thinking about dead-end roads.
Not much traffic on dead-end roads. All monsters should five
under bridges or in closets or at the ends of dead-end roads. It should be a national law.
He was very uneasy now.
He left Tad's room, went downstairs, and sat on the back steps. He lit a cigarette with a hand that shook slightly and looked at the gunmetal sky, feeling the sense of unease grow. Something had happened in Tad's room. He wasn't sure what it had been, but it had been something. Yeah. Something.
Monsters and dogs and closets and garages and dead-end roads.
Do we add these up, teacher? Subtract them? Divide?
Fractionate?
He threw his cigarette away.
He did believe it was Kemp, didn't he? Kemp had been responsible for everything. Kemp had wrecked the house. Kemp had damn near wrecked his marriage. Kemp had gone upstairs and shot his semen onto the bed Vic and his wife had slept in for the last three years. Kemp had tom a great big hole in the mostly comfortable fabric of Vic Trenton's life.
Kemp. Kemp. All Steve Kemp's fault. Let's blame the Cold War and the hostage situation in Iran and the depletion of the ozone layer on Kemp.
Stupid. Because not everything was Kemp's fault, now, was it? The Zinger's business, for instance; Kemp had had nothing to do with that. And Kemp could hardly be blamed for the bad needle valve on Donna's Pinto.
He looked at his old jag. He was going to go somewhere in it. He couldn't stay here; he would go crazy if he stayed here. He should get in the car and beat it down to Scarborough. Grab hold of Kemp and shake him until it came out, until he told what he had done with Donna and Tad. Except by then his lawyer would have
arrived, and, incredible as it seemed, the lawyer might even have sprung him.
Spring. It was a spring that held the needle valve in place. If the spring was bad, the valve could freeze and choke off the flow of gasoline to the carb.
Vic went down to the jag and got in, wincing at the hot leather seat. Get rolling quick. Get some cool in here.
