coming out of a faint. She remembered a bout of gastroenteritis she’d had in college—everything inside her had either come up by the elevator or dropped down the chute—and near the end of it she had grayed out in one of the dorm toilet stalls. Coming back bad been like this, as if you were the same but some invisible painter was adding color to the world, bringing it first up to full and then to overfull. Colors shrieked at you. Everything looked plastic and phony, like a display in a department store window—SWING INTO SPRING, perhaps, or READY FOR THE FIRST KICKOFF.
Tad was cringing away from her, his eyes squeezed shut, the thumb of one hand in his mouth. The other hand was pressed against his hip pocket, where the Monster Words were. His respiration was shallow and rapid.
“Tad,” she said. “Honey, don’t worry.”
“Mommy, are you all right?” His voice was little more than a husky whisper.
“Yeah. So are you. At least we’re safe. This old car will go. Just wait and see.”
“I thought you were mad at me.”
She took him in her arms and hugged him tight She could smell sweat in his hair and the lingering undertone of Johnson’s No More Tears shampoo. She thought of that bottle sitting safely and sanely on the second shelf of the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. If only she could touch it! But all that was here was that faint, dying perfume.
“No, honey, not at you,” she said. “Never at you.”
Tad hugged her back. “He can’t get us in here, can he?”
“No.”
“He can’t . . . he can’t eat his way in, can he?”
“No.”
“I hate him,” Tad said reflectively. “I wish he’d die.”
“Yes. Me too.”
She looked out the window and saw that the sun was getting ready to go down. A superstitious dread settled into her at the thought. She remembered the childhood games of hide-and-seek that had always ended when the shadows joined each other and grew into purple lagoons, that mystic call drifting through the suburban streets of her childhood, talismanic and distant, the high voice of a child announcing suppers that were ready, doors ready to be shut against the night:
“Alleee-alleee-infree! Alleee-alleee-infree!”
The dog was watching her. It was crazy, but she could no longer doubt it. Its mad, senseless eyes were fixed unhesitatingly on hers.
No, you’re imagining it. It’s only a dog, and a sick dog at that. Things are bad enough without you seeing something in that dog’s eyes that can’t be there.
She told herself that. A few minutes later she told herself that Cujo’s eyes were like the eyes of some portraits which seem to follow you wherever you move in the room where they are hung.
But the dog was looking at her. And . . . and there was something familiar about it.
No, she told herself, and tried to dismiss the thought, but it was too late.
You’ve seen him before, haven’t you? The morning after Tad had the first of his bad dreams, the morning that the blankets and sheets were back on the chair, his Teddy on top of them, and for a moment when you opened the closet door you only saw a slumped shape with red eyes, something in Tad’s closet ready to spring, it was him, it was Cujo, Tad was right all along, only the monster wasn’t in his closet . . . it was out here. It was
(stop it)
out here just waiting to
(! YOU STOP IT DONNA !)
She stared at the dog and imagined she could hear its thoughts. Simple thoughts. The same simple pattern, repeated over and over in spite of the whirling boil of its sickness and delirium.
Kill THE WOMAN. Kill THE BOY. Kill THE WOMAN. Kill—
Stop it, she commanded herself roughly. It doesn’t think and it’s not some goddamned boogeyman out of a child’s closet. It’s a sick dog and that’s all it is. Next you’ll believe the dog is God’s punishment for committing—
Cujo suddenly got up—almost as if she had called him—and disappeared into the barn again.
(almost as if I called it)
She uttered a shaky, semi-hysterical laugh.
Tad looked up. “Mommy?”
“Nothing, hon.”
She looked at the dark maw of the garage-barn, then at the back door of the house. Locked? Unlocked? Locked? Unlocked? She thought of a coin rising in the air, flipping over and over. She thought of whirling the chamber drum of a pistol, five holes empty, one full. Locked? Unlocked?
The sun went down, and what was left of the day was a