Sue knelt, took her by one arm and the unhurt shoulder, and gently turned her onto her back.
Carrie moaned thickly, and her eyes fluttered. The perception of her in Sue’s mind sharpened, as if a mental picture was coming into focus.
(who’s there)
And Sue, without thought, spoke in the same fashion: (me sue snell)
Only there was no need to think of her name. The thought of herself as herself was neither words nor pictures. The realization suddenly brought everything up close, made it real, and compassion for Carrie broke through the dullness of her shock.
And Carrie, with faraway, dumb reproach:
(you tricked me you all tricked me)
(carrie i don’t even know what happened is tommy) (you tricked me that happened trick trick trick 0 dirty trick) The mixture of image and emotion was staggering, indescribable.
Blood. Sadness. Fear. The latest dirty trick in a long series of dirty tricks: they flashed by in a dizzying shuffle that made Sue’s mind reel
helplessly, hopelessly. They shared the awful totality of perfect knowledge.
(carrie don’t don’t don’t hurts me)
Now girls throwing sanitary napkins, chanting, laughing, Sue’s face mirrored in her own mind: ugly, caricatured, all mouth, cruelly beautiful.
(see the dirty tricks see my whole life one long dirty trick) (look carrie look inside me)
And Carrie looked.
The sensation was terrifying. Her mind and nervous system had become a library. Someone in desperate need ran through her, fingers trailing lightly over shelves of books, lifting some out, scanning them, putting them back, letting some fall, leaving the pages to flutter wildly (glimpses that’s me as a kid hate him daddy 0 mommy wide lips 0
teeth bobby pushed me 0 my knee car want to ride in the car we’re going to see aunt cecily mommy come quick i made pee) in the wind of memory; and still on and on, finally reaching a shelf marked TOMMY, subheaded PROM. Books thrown open, flashes of experience, marginal notations in all the hieroglyphs of emotion, more complex than the Rosetta Stone.
Looking. Finding more than Sue herself had suspected-love for Tommy, jealousy, selfishness, a need to subjugate him to her will on the matter of taking Carrie, disgust for Carrie herself, (she could take better care of herself she does look just like a GODDAM TOAD)
hate for Miss Desjardin, hate for herself.
But no ill will for Carrie personally, no plan to get her in front of everyone and undo her.
The feverish feeling of being raped in her most secret corridors began to fade. She felt Carrie pulling back, weak and exhausted.
(why didn’t you just leave me alone)
(carrie I)
(momma would be alive i killed my momma i want her o it hurts my chest hurts my shoulder o 0 0 i want my momma) (carrie i)
And there was no way to finish that thought, nothing there to complete it with. Sue was suddenly overwhelmed with terror, the worse
because she could put no name to it. The bleeding freak on this oil-stained asphalt suddenly seemed meaningless and awful in its pain and dying.
(o momma i’m scared momma MOMMA)
Sue tried to pull away, to disengage her mind, to allow Carrie at least the privacy of her dying, and was unable to. She felt that she was dying herself and did not want to see this preview of her own eventual cnd.
(carrie let me GO)
(Momma Momma Momma 00000000000000 0000000000) The mental scream reached a flaring, unbelievable crescendo and then suddenly faded. For a moment Sue felt as if she were watching a candle flame disappear down a long, black tunnel at a tremendous speed.
(she’s dying 0 my god i’m feeling her die)
And then the light was gone, and the last conscious thought had been
(momma i’m sorry where)
and it broke up and Sue was tuned in only on the blank, idiot frequency of the physical nerve endings that would take hours to die.
She stumbled away from it, holding her arms out in front of her like a blind woman, toward the edge of the parking lot. She tripped over the knee-high guard rail and tumbled down the embankment. She got to her feet and stumbled into the field, which was filling with mystic white pockets of ground mist. Crickets chirruped mindlessly and a whippoorwill
(whippoorwill somebody’s dying)
called in the great stillness of morning.
She began to run, breathing deep in her chest, running from Tommy, from the fires and explosions, from Carrie, but mostly from the final horror-that last lighted thought carried swiftly down into the black tunnel of eternity, followed by the blank, idiot hum of prosaic electricity.
The after-image began to fade reluctantly, leaving a blessed, cool darkness in her mind that knew nothing. She slowed, halted, and became aware that something had begun to happen. She stood in the middle of the great and misty field, waiting for realization.
Her rapid breathing slowed, slowed, caught suddenly as if on a thorn-And suddenly vented itself in one howling, cheated scream.
As she felt the slow course of dark menstrual blood down her thighs.
PART THREE
_____________
WRECKAGE
WESTOVER MERCY HOSPITAL/REPORT OF DECEASE
Name White
Carietta
________N. by RN
(Last)
(First)
(Middle)
Address 47 Carlin Street_________
Chamberlain, Maine 02249
Emergency Room None Ambulance__#16
Treatment administered None
D.O.A. _X________
YES NO
Time of Death May 28, 1979 – 2:00 AM (approx.)
Cause of Death Hemorrhage, shock, coronary Occlusion and/or coronary thrombosis
(possible)
Person identifying deceased SusanD.Snell___________
19 Back Chamberlain Road Chamberlain, Maine 02249
Next of kin None
Body to be released to State of Maine
Doctor in attendance
Harold Kuebler MD
Pathologist FM
From the national AP ticker, Friday, June 5, 1979: CHAMBERLAIN, MAINE (AP)
STATE OFFICIALS SAY THAT THE DEATH TOLL IN
CHAMBERLAIN STANDS AT 409, WITH 49 STILL LISTED AS
MISSING.
INVESTIGATION CONCERNING CARIETTA WHITE AND
THE SO-CALLED “TK” PHENOMENA CONTINUES AMID
PERSISTENT RUMORS THAT AN AUTOPSY ON THE WHITE
GIRL HAS UN- COVERED CERTAIN UNUSUAL
FORMATIONS IN THE CEREBRUM AND CEREBELLUM OF
THE BRAIN. THIS STATE’S GOVERNOR HAS APPOINTED A BLUE-RIBBON COMMITTEE TO STUDY THE ENTIRE
TRAGEDY. ENDS.
FINAL JUNE 5 0303N AP
From The Lewiston Daily Sun, Sunday, September 7 (p.3): The Legacy of TK:
Scorched Earth and Scorched Hearts
CHAMBERLAIN-Prom Night is history now. Pundits have been saying for centuries that time heals all wounds, but the hurt of this small western Maine town may be mortal. The residential streets are still there on the town’s East Side, guarded by graceful oaks that have stood for two hundred years. The trim saltboxes and ranch styles on Morin Street and Brickyard Hill are still neat and undamaged. But this New England pastoral lies on the rim of a blackened and shattered hub, and many of the neat houses have FOR SALE signs on their front
lawns. Those still occupied are marked by black wreaths on front doors.
Bright-yellow Allied vans and orange U-Hauls of varying sizes are a common sight on Chamberlain’s streets these days.
The town’s major industry, Chamberlain Mills and Weaving, still stands, untouched by the fire that raged over much of the town on those two days in May. But it has only been running one shift since June 4th, and according to mill president William A. Chamblis, further lay-offs are a strong possibility. “We have the orders,” Chamblis said, “but you can’t run a mill without people to punch the time clock. We don’t have them. I’ve gotten notice from thirty-four men since August 15th. The only thing we can see to do now is close up the dye house and job our work out. We’d hate to let the men go, but this thing is getting down to a matter of financial survival.”
Roger Fearon has lived in Chamberlain for twenty-two years, and has been with the mail for eighteen of those years. He has risen during that time from a third-floor bagger making seventy-three cents an hour to dye-house foreman; yet he seems strangely unmoved by the possibility of losing his job. “I’d lose a damned good wage,” Fearon said. “It’s not something you take lightly. The wife and I have talked it over. We could sell the house-it’s worth $20,000 easy-and although we probably won’t realize half of that, we’ll probably go ahead and put it up. Doesn’t matter. We don’t really want to live in Chamberlain any more. Call it what you want, but Chamberlain has gone bad for us.”
Fearon is not alone. Henry Kelly, proprietor of a tobacco shop and soda fountain called the Kelly Fruit until Prom Night leveled it, has no plans to rebuild. “The kids are gone,” he shrugs. “If I opened up again, there’d be too many ghosts in too many corners. I’m going to take the insurance money and retire to St. Petersburg.”
A week after the tornado of ’54 had cut its path of death and destruction through Worcester, the air was filled with the sound of hammers, the smell of new timber, and a feeling of optimism and human resilience. There is none of that in Chamberlain this fall. The main road has been cleared of rubble and that is about the extent of it.