car that has just crashed through one must have sustained major damage, damage that simply couldn’t have been repaired overnight. And when he gets there, what does he find?
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 milometer 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 kerb 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 carburettor float sticks, a tyre 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 milometer 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.”
