That game you play when you’re kids. Giant Step. A voice in my mind was saying, Cora, take one giant step over the live wires in the street.
And I was thinking May I? May I? One of them was still spitting a few sparks, but the other two looked dead. But you can’t tell. The third rail looks dead too. So I stood there, waiting for someone to come and nobody did. The house was still burning and the flames had spread to the lawn and the trees and the hedge beside it. But no fire trucks came.
Of course they didn’t. The whole west side was burning up by that time.
And I felt so faint. And at last I knew it was take the giant step or faint and so I took it, as big a giant step as I could, and the heel of my slipper came down not an inch from the last wire. Then I got over and went
around the end of one more wire and then I started to run. And that’s all I remember. When morning came I was lying on a blanket in the police station with a lot of other people. Some of them-a few-were kids in their prom get-ups and I started to ask them if they had seen Rhonda.
And they said … they s-s-said …
(A short recess)
Q.
You are personally sure that Carrie White did this?
A.
Yes.
Q.
Thank you, Mrs. Simard.
A.
I’d like to ask a question, if you please.
Q.
Of course.
A.
What happens if there are others like her? What happens to the world?
From The Shadow Exploded (p. 151):
By 12:45 on the morning of May 28, the situation in Chamberlain was critical. The school had burned itself out on a fairly isolated piece of ground, but the entire downtown area was ablaze. Almost all the city water in that area had been tapped, but enough was available (at low pressure) from Deighan Street water mains to save the business buildings below the intersection of Main and Oak streets.
The explosion of Tony’s Citgo on upper Summer Street had resulted in a ferocious fire that was not to be controlled until nearly ten o’clock that morning. There was water on Summer Street; there simply were no firemen or fire-fighting equipment to utilize it. Equipment was then on its way from Lewis-ton, Auburn, Lisbon, and Brunswick, but nothing arrived until one o’clock.
On Carlin Street, an electrical fire, caused by downed power lines, had begun. It was to eventually gut the entire north side of the street, including the bungalow where Margaret White gave birth to her daughter.
On the West End of town, just below what is commonly called Brickyard Hill, the worst disaster had taken place: the explosion of a
gas main and a resulting fire that raged out of control through most of the next day.
And if we look at these flash points on a municipal map (see page facing), we can pick out Carrie’s route-a wandering, looping path of destruction through the town, but one with an almost certain destination: home.
Something toppled over in the living room, and Margaret White straightened up, cocking her head to one side. The butcher knife glittered dully in the light of the flames. The electric power had gone off sometime before, and the only light in the house came from the fire up the street.
One of the pictures fell from the wall with a thump. A moment later the Black Forest cuckoo clock fell. The mechanical bird gave a small, strangled squawk and was still.
From the town the sirens whooped endlessly, but she could still hear the footsteps when they turned up the walk.
The door blew open. Steps in the hall.
She heard the plaster plaques in the living room (CHRIST, THE
UNSEEN GUEST; WHAT WOULD JESUS DO; THE HOUR
DRAWETH NIGH: IF TONIGHT BECAME JUDGMENT, WOULD
YOU BE READY) explode one after the other, like plaster birds in a shooting gallery.
(o i’ve been there and seen the harlots shimmy on wooden stages) She sat up on her stool like a very bright scholar who has gone to the head of the class. But her eyes were deranged.
The living-room windows blew outward.
The kitchen door slammed and Carrie walked in.
Her body seemed to have become twisted, shrunken, crone-like.
The prom dress was in tatters and flaps, and the pig blood had began to clot and streak. There was a smudge of grease on her forehead, and both knees were scraped and raw-looking.
“Momma,” she whispered. Her eyes were preternaturally bright, hawklike, but her mouth was trembling. If someone had been there to watch, he would have been struck by the resemblance between them.
Margaret White sat on her kitchen stool, the carving knife hidden among the folds of her dress in her lap.
“I should have killed myself when he put it in me,” she said clearly.
“After the first time, before we were married, he promised. Never again. He said we just . . . slipped. I believed him. I fell down and I lost the baby and that was God’s judgment. I felt that the sin had been expiated. By blood. But sin never dies. Sin . . . never. . . dies.” Her eyes glittered.
“Momma, I-”
“At first it was all right. We lived sinlessly. We slept in the same bed, belly to belly sometimes, and 0, I could feel the presence of the Serpent, but we. never. did. until.” She began to grin, and it was a hard, terrible grin. “And that night I could see him looking at me That Way.
We got down on our knees to pray for strength and he . .. touched me.
In that place. That woman place. And I sent him out of the house. He was gone for hours, and I prayed for him. I could see him in my mind’s eye, walking the midnight streets, wrestling with the devil as Jacob wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. And when he came back, my heart was filled with thanksgiving.”
She paused, grinning her dry, spitless grin into the shifting shadows of the room.
“Momma, I don’t want to hear it!”
Plates began to explode in the cupboards like clay pigeons.
“It wasn’t until he came in that I smelled the whiskey on his breath.
And he took me. Took me! With the stink of filthy roadhouse whiskey still on him he took me . . and I liked it!” She screamed out the last words at the ceiling. ‘I liked it 0 all that dirty fucking and his hands on me ALL OVER ME.”‘
“MOMMA!”
(!! MOMMA !!)
She broke off as if slapped and blinked at her daughter. “I almost killed myself,” she said in a more normal tone of voice. ‘And Ralph wept and talked about atonement and I didn’t and then he was dead and then I thought God had visited me with cancer; that He was turning my female parts into something as black and rotten as my sinning soul. But that would have been too easy. The Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. I see that now. When the pains began I went and got a knife-this knife-” she held it up “-and waited for you to come so I
could make my sacrifice. But I was weak and backsliding. I took this knife in hand again when you were three, and I backslid again. So now the devil has come home.”
She held the knife up, and her eyes fastened hypnotically on the glittering hook of its blade.
Carrie took a slow, blundering step forward.
“I came to kill you, Momma. And you were waiting here to kill me.
Momma, I… it’s not right, Momma. It’s not…
“Let’s pray,” Momma said softly. Her eyes fixed on Carrie 5 and there was a crazed, awful compassion in them. The firelight wa s brighter now, dancing on the walls like dervishes. “For the last time, let us pray.
“Oh Momma help me!” Carrie cried out.
She fell forward on her knees, head down, hands raised in supplication.
Momma leaned forward, and the knife came down in a shining arc.
Carrie, perhaps seeing out of the tail of her eye, jerked back, and instead of penetrating her back, the knife went into her shoulder to the hilt. Momma’s feet tangled in the legs of her chair, and she collapsed in a sitting sprawl.
They stared at each other in silent tableau.
Blood began to ooze from around the handle of the knife and to splash onto the floor.
Then Carrie said softly: “I’m going to give you a present, Momma.”
Margaret tried to get up, staggered, and fell back on her hands and knees. “What are you doing?” she croaked hoarsely.
“I’m picturing your heart, Momma,” Carrie said. “It’s easier when you see things in your mind. Your heart is a big red muscle. Mine goes faster when I use my power. But yours is going a little slower now. A little slower.”