Christine

by Стивен Кинг

  She got out of Petunia, and I can close my eyes now and see her as she was then, in that clean and silent moment just before everything went terribly wrong—a tall, pretty girl with long blond hair the colour of raw honey, slim hips, long legs, and those striking, Nordic cheekbones, now wearing a ski-parka and faded Lee Riders, moving with a dancer’s grace. I can still see it and I still dream about it, because of course while we were busy setting up Christine, she was busy setting us up—that old and infinitely wise monster. Did we really think we could outsmart her so easily? I guess we did.

  My dreams are in terrible slow motion. I can see the softly lovely motion of her hips as she walks; I can hear the hollow click of her Frye boots on the oil-stained cement floor; I can ever hear the soft, dry whish-whish of her parka’s quilted inner lining brushing against her blouse. She’s walking slowly and her head is up—now she is the animal, but no predator; she walks with the cautious grace of a zebra approaching a waterhole at dusk. It is the walk of an animal that scents danger. I try to scream to her through Petunia’s windscreen. Come back, Leigh, come back quick, you were right, you heard something, she’s out there now, out there in the snow with her headlights off, crouched down, Leigh, come back!

  She stopped suddenly, her hands tensing into fists, and that was when sudden savage circles of light sprang to life in the snowy dark outside. They were like white eyes opening.

  Leigh froze, hideously exposed on the open floor. She was thirty feet inside the door and slightly to the right of centre. She turned toward the headlights, and I could see the dazed, uncertain expression on her face.

  I was just as stunned, and that first vital moment passed unused. Then the headlights sprang forward and I could see the dark, low-slung shape of Christine behind them; I could hear the mounting, furious howl of her engine as she leaped toward us from across the street where she had been waiting all along—maybe even since before dark. Snow tunnelled back from her roof and skirted across her windscreen in filmy nets that were almost instantly melted by the defroster. She hit the tarmac leading up to the entrance, still gaining speed. Her engine was a V-8 scream of rage.

  “Leigh!” I screamed, and clawed for Petunia’s ignition switch.

  Leigh broke to the right and ran for the wall-button. Christine roared inside as she reached it and pushed it. I heard the rattle-rumble of the overhead door descending on its track.

  Christine came in angling to the right, going for Leigh. She dug a great clout of dry wood and splinters from the wall. There was a metallic screech as part of her right bumper pulled loose—a sound like a drunk’s scream of laughter. Sparks cascaded across the floor as she went into a long, slewing turn. She missed Leigh, but she wouldn’t when she went back; Leigh was stuck in that right-hand corner with nowhere to hide. She might be able to make it outside, but I was terribly afraid that the door wasn’t coming down fast enough to cut off Christine. The descending door might peel off her roof, but that wouldn’t stop her and I knew it.

  Petunia’s engine bellowed and I dragged out the headlight button. Her brights came on, splashing over the closing door, and over Leigh. She was backed up against the wall, her eyes wide. Her parka took on a weird, almost electric blue colour in the headlights, and my mind informed me with sickening and clinical accuracy that her blood would look purple.

  I saw her glance upward for a moment and then back down at Christine.

  The Fury’s tyres screamed violently as she leaped at Leigh. Smoke rose from the new black marks on the concrete, and I just had time to register the fact that there were people inside of Christine: a whole carload of them.

  At the same instant that Christine roared toward her, Leigh leaped upward with a big ungainly Jack-in-the-box spring. My mind, seeming to run at a speed approaching light, wondered for a moment if she was intending to leap right over the Plymouth, as if, instead of Fryes, she wore boots of the seven-league variety.

  Instead, she caught and gripped the rusted metal struts which supported an overhead shelf about nine feet above the floor, over three feet above her head. This shelf skirted all four walls. On the night Arnie and I had first brought Christine in, that entire shelf had been crammed with recapped tyres and old baldies waiting to be recapped—in some funny way it had reminded me of a well-stocked library shelf. Now it was mostly empty. Holding those angled struts, Leigh swung her jeaned legs up like a kid who means to throw his legs right over his own shoulders—what we used to call skinning the cat in grammar school. Christine’s snout smashed into the wall directly below her. If she had been any slower getting her legs up, they would have been mashed off at the knees. A piece of chrome flew. Two of the remaining tyres tumbled from the shelf and bounced crazily on the cement like giant rubber doughnuts.

  Leigh’s head smashed back against the wall with battering, dazing force as Christine reversed, all four of her tyres laying rubber and squirting blue smoke.

  And what was I doing “all this time,” you wonder? It wasn’t all that time, that is my answer. Even as I used the O-Cedar mop to depress Petunia’s clutch and gear into first, the overhead door was just thumping down. All of it had happened in the space of seconds.

  Leigh was still holding onto the struts supporting the tyre shelf, but now she only hung there, head down, dazed.

  I let the clutch out, and a cold part of my mind took over: Easy, man—if you pop the clutch and stall this fucker, she’s dead.

  Petunia rolled. I revved the engine up to a bellow and let the clutch out all the way. Christine roared at Leigh again, her hood crimped almost double from her first hit, bright metal showing through the broken paint at the sharpest points of bend. It looked as if her hood and grille had grown shark’s teeth.

  I hit Christine three-quarters of the way toward the front and she slid around, one of her tyres pulling off the rim. The ’58 slammed into a litter of old bumper jacks and junk parts in one corner; there was a booming crash as she struck the wall, and then the hot sound of her engine, revving and falling off, revving and falling off. The entire left front end was bashed in—but she was still running.

  I slammed on Petunia’s brake with my right foot and barely managed to avoid crushing Leigh myself. Petunia’s engine stalled. Now the only sound in the garage was Christine’s screaming engine.

  “Leigh!” I screamed over it. “Leigh, run!”

  She looked over at me groggily, and now I could see sticky braids of blood in her hair—it was as purple as I had expected. She let go of the struts, landed on her feet, staggered, and went to one knee.

  Christine came for her. Leigh got up, took two wobbling steps, and got on her blind side, behind Petunia. Christine swerved and struck the truck’s front end. I was thrown roughly to the right. Pain roared through my left leg.

  “Get up!” I screamed at Leigh, trying to lean even farther over and open the door. “Get up!”

  Christine backed off, and when she came again she cut hard to the right and went out of my line of vision around the back of Petunia. I caught just a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror bolted outside the driver’s side window. Then I could only hear the scream of her tyres.

  Barely conscious, Leigh simply wandered off, holding both hands laced to the back of her head. Blood trickled through her fingers. She walked in front of Petunia’s grille toward me and then just stopped.

  I didn’t have to see in order to know-what was going to happen next. Christine would reverse again, back to my side, and then crush her against the wall.

  Desperately, I shoved the clutch in with the mop and keyed the engine again. It turned over, coughed, stalled. I could smell gasoline in the air, heavy and rich. I had flooded the engine.

  Christine reappeared in the rearview mirror. She came at Leigh, who managed to stumble backward just out of reach. Christine slammed nose-on into the wall with crunching force. The passenger door popped open and the horror was complete; the hand not clutching the mop-handle went to my mouth and I screamed through it.

  Sitti
ng on the passenger side like a grotesque life-sized doll was Michael Cunningham. His head, lolling limply on the stalk of his neck, snapped over to one side as Christine reversed to make another try at Leigh, and I saw his face had the high, rosy colour of carbon monoxide poisoning. He hadn’t taken my advice. Christine had gone to the Cunninghams’ house first, as I had vaguely suspected she might. Michael came home from school and there she was, standing in the driveway, his son’s restored 1958 Plymouth. He had gone to it, and somehow Christine had… had gotten him. Had he maybe gotten in just to sit behind the wheel for a moment, as I had that day in LeBay’s garage? He might have. Just to see what vibrations he could pick up. If so, he must have picked up some terrible vibes indeed during his last few minutes on earth. Had Christine started herself up? Driven herself into the garage? Maybe. Maybe. And had Michael discovered that he could neither turn off the madly revving engine or get out of the car? Had he maybe turned his head and perhaps seen the true guiding spirit of Arnie’s ’58 Fury, lounging in the shotgun seat, and fainted in terror?

  It didn’t matter now. Leigh was all that mattered.

  She had seen, too. Her screams, high, despairing, and shrill, floated in the exhaust-stinking air like hysterically bright balloons. But it had, at least, cut through her daze.

  She turned and ran for Will Darnell’s office, blood splattering behind her in dime-sized drops as she went. Blood was soaking into the collar of her parka—too much blood.

  Christine backed up, laying rubber and leaving a scatter of glass behind. As she pulled around in a tight circle to go after Leigh, centrifugal force pulled the passenger door shut again—but not before I saw Michael’s head loll back the other way.

  Christine held still for a moment, her nose pointed toward Leigh, her engine revving. Perhaps LeBay was savouring the instant before the kill. If so, I’m glad, because if Christine had gone for her right away, she would have been killed then. But as it was, I had an instant of time, I turned the key again, babbling something aloud—a prayer, I guess—and this time Petunia’s engine coughed into life. I let the clutch out and stepped down on the accelerator as Christine leaped forward again. This time I struck her right side. There was a shrill scream of tearing metal as Petunia’s bumper punched through her mudguard. Christine heeled over and smashed against the wall. Glass broke. Her engine raced and raved. Behind the wheel, LeBay turned toward me, grinning with hate.

  Petunia stalled again.

  I rattled off a string of every curse I knew as I grabbed for the key again. If not for my goddam leg, if not for the fall I’d taken in the snow, this would be over now; it would just be a matter of cornering her and smashing her to pieces against the cinderblock.

  But even as I cranked Petunia’s engine, keeping my foot off the gas to keep from stalling her again, Christine began to reverse with an ear-splitting squeal of metal. She backed out from between Petunia’s grille and the wall, leaving a twisted chunk of her red body behind, baring her right front tyre.

  I got Petunia going and found reverse. Christine had backed all the way down to the far end of the garage. All her headlights were out. Her windscreen was smashed into a galaxy of cracks. The bent hood seemed to sneer.

  Her radio was blasting. I could hear Ricky Nelson singing “Waitin in School”.

  I stared around for Leigh and saw her in Will’s office, looking out into the garage. Her blond hair was matted with blood. More blood ran down the left side of her face and soaked into her jacket. Bleeding too damn much, I thought incoherently. Bleeding too damn much, even for a head wound.

  Her eyes widened and she pointed past me, her lips moving soundlessly behind the glass.

  Christine came roaring straight up the empty floor, gaining speed.

  And the hood was uncrimping, straightening out and down to cover the motor cavity again. Two of the headlights flickered, then came back strong. The mudguard and the right-hand side of her body—I only caught a glimpse, but I swear it’s true—they were… reknitting themselves, red metal appearing from nowhere and slipping down in smooth automotive curves to cover the right front tyre and the right side of the engine compartment again. The cracks in the windscreen were running inward and disappearing. And the tyre that had been pulled off its rim looked as good as new.

  It all looks as good as new, I thought. God help us.

  She was going directly for the wall between the garage and the office. I let the mop-handle off the clutch fast, hoping to interpose the tanker’s body, but Christine got past me. Petunia backed into nothing but thin air. Oh, I was doing great. I backed all the way across the floor and crashed into the dented tool-lockers ranged there. They crashed to the floor with dull metallic janglings. Through the windscreen I saw Christine hit the wall between the garage and Will’s office. She never slowed; she went full speed ahead.

  I’ll never forget those next few moments—they remain hypnotically clear in my memory, as if seen through a magnifying crystal. Leigh saw Christine coming and stumbled backward. Her bloody hair was matted to her head. She fell over Will’s swivel chair. She hit the floor, out of sight behind his desk. An instant later—and I mean the barest instant—Christine slammed into the wall. The big window Will had used to keep track of the comings and goings out in his garage exploded inward. Glass flew like a cluster of deadly spears. Christine’s front end bulged with the impact. The hood popped up and then tore off, flying back over the roof to land on the concrete with a metallic sound that was much like the sound the falling tool-lockers had made.

  Her windscreen shattered. Michael Cunningham’s body flew through the jagged opening, legs trailing, his head a grotesque flattened football. He was catapulted through Will’s window; he struck Will’s desk with a heavy grainsack thud and skidded over onto the floor. His shoes stuck up.

  Leigh began to scream.

  Her fall had probably saved her from being badly lacerated or killed by the flying glass, but when she rose from behind the desk her face was contorted with horror, and utter hysteria had its hold on her. Michael had skidded from the desk and his arms had looped themselves over her shoulders and as Leigh struggled to her feet she appeared to be waltzing with the corpse. Her screams were like fireballs. Her blood, still flowing, sparkled deadly bright. She dumped Michael and ran for the door.

  “Leigh, no!” I screamed, and slammed down the clutch with the mop again. The handle snapped cleanly in two, leaving me with a stump five inches long. “Ohhhh—SHIT!” Christine reversed away from the broken window, leaving water, antifreeze, and oil puddled on the floor.

  I stamped down on the clutch with my left foot, barely feeling the pain now, bracing my left knee with my left hand as I worked the gearstick.

  Leigh tore the office door open and ran out.

  Christine turned toward her, its smashed, snarling snout sighting down on her.

  I revved Petunia’s engine and roared at her, and as that damned car from hell grew in the windscreen, I saw the purple, swollen face of a child pressed to the rear window, watching me, seeming to beg me to stop.

  I struck her hard. The boot lid popped up and gaped like a mouth. The rear end heeled around and Christine went skidding sideways past Leigh, who fled with her eyes seeming to swallow her face. I remember the spray of blood along the fur fringe of her parka’s hood, tiny droplets like an evil fall of dew.

  I was in it now. I was in the peak seat. Even if they had to take my leg off at the groin when this was done, I was going to drive.

  Christine hit the wall and bounced back. I stamped the clutch, rammed the gearstick into reverse, backed up ten feet, stamped the clutch again, rammed it back into first. Engine revving, Christine tried to pull away along the wall. I cut to the left and hit her again, crushing her almost wasp-waisted in the middle. The doors popped out of their frames at the top and the bottom. LeBay was behind the wheel, now a skull, now a decayed and stinking cameo of humanity, now a hale and hearty man in his fifties with a crew-cut turning white. He stared out at me with
his devil’s grin, one hand on the wheel, one balled into a fist that he shook at me.

  And still her engine would not die.

  I got into reverse again, and now my leg was white iron and the pain was all the way up to my left armpit. The hell it was. The pain was everywhere. I could feel it

  (Michael, Jesus why didn’t you stay in the house) in my neck, in my jaw in my

  (Arnie? Man, I am so sorry I wish I wish) temples. The Plymouth—what remained of her—lunged drunkenly down the side of the garage, spraying tools and junk metal, pulling out struts and dumping the overhead shelves. The shelves hit the concrete with flat, clapping sounds that echoed like demon applause.

  I stamped the clutch again and floored the gas. Petunia’s engine bellowed, and I hung onto the wheel like a man trying to stay aboard a bucking mustang. I hit her on the right side and smashed the body clear off the rear axle, driving it into the door, which shivered and rattled. I went up over the wheel, which slammed into my belly and drove the breath out of me and dumped me back into my seat, gasping.

  Now I saw Leigh, cowering in the far corner, her hands clapped to her face, dragging it down into a witch’s mask.

  Christine’s engine was still running.

  She dragged herself slowly down toward Leigh, like an animal whose rear legs have been broken in a trap. And even as she went I could see her regenerating, coming back: a tyre that suddenly popped up full and plump, the radio aerial that unjointed itself with a silvery twinggg! sound, the accretion of metal around the ruined rear end.

  “Stay dead!” I screamed at it. I was crying, my chest heaving. My leg wouldn’t work anymore. I braced it with both hands and jammed it onto the clutch. My vision went hazy and grey with the white-metal agony. I could almost feel the bones grating.

  I raced the engine, got first gear again, and charged it; and as I did I heard LeBay’s voice for the first and only time, high and cheated and full of a terrible, unquenchable fury: