'Yes.'
   He laughed and got out. She was about to open the door when he opened it for her. 'Don't be nervous,' he mid. 'You're like Galatea.'
   'Who?'
   'Galatea. We read about her in Mr Evers' class. She turned from a drudge into a beautiful woman and nobody even knew her.'
   She considered it. 'I want them to know me,' she said finally.
   'I don't blame you. Come on.'
   George Dawson and Frieda Jason were standing by the Coke machine. Frieda was in an orange tulle concoction, and looked a little like a tuba. Donna Thibodeau was taking tickets at the door along with David Bracken. They were both National Honour Society members, part of Miss personal Gestapo, and they wore white slacks and red blazers – the school colours. Tina Blake and Norma Watson were handing out programmes and seating people inside according to their chart. Both of them were dressed in black, and Carrie supposed they thought they were very chic, but to her they looked like cigarette girls in an old gangster movie.
   All of them turned to look at Tommy and Carrie when they came in, and for a moment there was a stiff, awkward silence. Carrie felt a strong urge to wet her lips and controlled it. Then George Dawson said:
   'Gawd, you look queer, Ross.'
   Tommy smiled. 'When did you come out of the treetops, Bomba?'
   Dawson lurched forward with his fists up, and for a moment Carrie felt stark terror. In her keyed-up state, she came within an ace of picking George up and throwing him across the lobby. Then she realized it was an old game, often played, well-loved.
   The two of them sparred in a growing circle. Then George, who had been tagged twice in the ribs, began to gobble and yell:– 'Kill them Congs! Get them Gooks! Pongee sticks! Tiger cages!' and Tommy collapsed his guard, laughing.
   'Don't let it bother you,' Frieda said, tilting her letteropener nose and strolling over. 'If they kill each other, I'll dance with you.'
   'They look too stupid to kill,' Carrie ventured. 'Like dinosaurs.' And when Frieda grinned, she felt something very old and rusty loosen inside her. A warmth came with At. Relief. Ease.
   'Where'd you buy your dress?' Frieda asked. 'I love it.'
   'I made it.'
   'Made it?' Frieda's eyes opened in unaffected surprise. 'No shit!'
   Carrie felt herself blushing furiously. 'Yes I did. I … I like to sew. I got the material at John's in Andover. The pattern is really quite easy.'
   'Come on,' George said to all of them in general. 'Band's gonna start.' He rolled his eyes and went through a limber, satiric buck-and-wing. 'Vibes, vibes, vibes. Us Gooks love them big Fender viyyybrations.'
   When they went in, George was doing impressions of Flash Bobby Pickett and mugging. Carrie was telling Freida about her dress, and Tommy was grinning, hands stuffed in his pockets. Spoiled the lines of his dinner jacket Sue would be telling him, but fuck it, it seems to be working. So far it was working fine.
   He and George and Frieda had less than two hours to live.


   From The Shadow Exploded (p. 132):
   The White Commission's stand on the trigger of the whole affair – two buckets of pig blood on a beam over the stage – seems to be overly weak and vacillating, even in light of the scant concrete proof. If one chooses to believe the hearsay evidence of Nolan's immediate circle of friends (and to be brutally frank, they do not seem intelligent enough to lie convincingly), then Nolan took this part of the conspiracy entirely out of Christine Hargensen's hands and acted on his own initiative …


   He didn't talk when he drove; he liked to drive. The operation gave him a feeling of power that nothing could rival, not even fucking.
   The road unrolled before them in photographic blacks and whites, and the speedometer trembled just past seventy. He came from what the social workers called a broken home; his father had taken off after the failure of a badly managed gas-station venture when Billy was twelve, and his mother had four boyfriends at last count. Brucie was in greatest favour right now. He was a Seagram's 7 man. She was turning into one ugly bag, too.
   But the car: the car fed him power and glory from its own mystic lines of force. It made him someone to be reckoned with, someone with mana. It was not by accident that he had done most of his balling in the back seat. The car was his slave and his god. It gave, and it could take away. Billy had used it to take away many times. On long, sleepless nights when his mother and Brucie were fighting, Billy made popcorn and went out cruising for stray dogs. Some mornings he let the car roll, engine dead, into the garage he had constructed behind the house with its front bumper dripping.
   She knew his habits well enough by now and did not bother making conversation that would simply be ignored anyway. She sat beside him with one leg curled under her, gnawing a knuckle. The fights of the cars streaking past them on 302 gleamed softly in her hair, streaking it silver.
   He wondered how long she would last. Maybe not long after tonight. Somehow it had all led to this, even the early part, and when it was done the glue that had held them together would be thin and might dissolve, leaving them to wonder how it could have been in the first place. He thought she would start to look less like a goddess and more like the typical society bitch again, and that would make him want to belt her around a little. Or maybe a lot. Rub her nose in it.
   They breasted the Brickyard Hill and there was the high school below them, the parking lot filled with plump, glistening daddies' cars. He felt the familiar gorge of disgust and hate rise in his throat. We'll give them something
   (a night to remember)
   all right. We can do that.
   The classroom wings were dark and silent and deserted; the lobby was lit with a standard yellow glow, and the bank of glass that was the gymnasium's east side glowed with a soft, orangey light that was ethereal, almost ghostly. Again the bitter taste, and the urge to throw rocks.
   'I see the lights, I see the party fights,' he murmured.
   'Huh?' She turned to him, startled out of her own thoughts.
   'Nothing.' He touched the nape of her neck. 'I think I'm gonna let you pull the string.'
   Billy did it by himself, because he knew perfectly well that he could trust nobody else. That had been a hard lesson, much harder than the ones they taught you in school, but he had learned it well. The boys who had gone with him to Henty's place the night before had not even known what he wanted the blood for. They probably suspected Chris was involved, but they could not even be sure of that.
   He drove to the school minutes after Thursday night had become Friday morning and cruised by twice to make sure it was deserted and neither of Chamberlain's two police cars was in the area.
   He drove into the parking lot with his lights off and swung around in back of the building. Further back, the football field glimmered beneath a thin membrane of ground fog.
   He opened the trunk and unlocked the ice chest. The blood had frozen solid, but that was all right. It would have the next twenty-four hours to thaw.
   He put the buckets on the ground, then got a number of tools from his kit. He stuck them in his back pocket and grabbed a brown bag from the seat. Screws clinked inside.
   He worked without hurry, with the easeful concentration of one who is unable to conceive of interruption. The gym where the dance was to be held was also the school auditorium, and the small row of windows looking toward where he had parked opened on the backstage storage area.
   He selected a flat tool with a spatulate end and slid it through the small jointure between the upper and lower panes of one window. It was a good tool. He had made it himself in the Chamberlain metal shop. He wriggled it until the window's slip lock came free. He pushed the window up and slid in.
   It was very dark. The predominant odour was of old paint from the Dramatic Club canvas flats. The gaunt shadows of Band Society music stands and instrument cases stood around like sentinels. Mr Downer's piano stood in one corner.
   Billy took a small flashlight out of the bag and made his way to the stage and stepped through the red velvet curtains. The gym floor, with its painted basketball lines and highly varnished surface, glimmered at him like an amber lagoon. He shone his light on the apron in front of the curtain. There, in ghostly chalk fines, someone had drawn the floor silhouette of the King and Queen thrones which would be placed the following day. Then the entire apron would be strewn with paper flowers … why, Christ only knew.
   He craned his neck and shone the beam of his light up into the shadows. Overhead, girders crisscrossed in shadowy lines. The girders over the dance floor had been sheathed in crepe paper, but the arm directly over the apron hadn't been decorated. A short draw curtain obscured the girders up there, and they were invisible from the gym Floor. The draw curtain also hid a bank of lights that would highlight the gondola mural.
   Billy turned off the flashlight, walked to the left-hand edge of the apron, and mounted a steel-runged ladder bolted to the wall. The contents of his brown bag, which he had tucked into his shirt for safety, jingled with a strange, hollow jolliness in the deserted gymnasium.
   At the top of the ladder was a small platform. Now, as he faced outward toward the apron, the stage flies were to his right, the gym itself on his left. In the flies the Dramatic Club props were stored, some of them dating back to the 1920’s. A bust of Pallas, used in some ancient dramatic version of Poe's 'Me Raven,' stared at Billy with blind, floating eyes from atop a rusting bedspring Straight ahead, a steel girder ran out over the apron. Lights to be used against the mural were bolted to the bottom of it.
   He stepped out on to it and walked effortlessly, without fear, over the drop. He was humming a popular tune under his breath. The beam was inch-thick with dust, and he left long shuffling tracks. Halfway he stopped, dropped to his knees, and peered down.
   Yea. With the help of his light he could make out the chalk lines of the apron directly below. He made a soundless whistling.
   (bombs away)

   He X'd the precise spot in the dust, then beam-walked back to the platform. No one would be up here between now and the Ball; the lights that shone on, the mural and on the apron where the King and Queen would be crowned
   (they'll get crowned all right)
   were controlled from a box backstage. Anyone looking up from directly below would be blinded by those same lights. His arrangements would be noticed only if someone went up into the flies for something. He didn't believe anyone would. It was an acceptable risk.
   He opened the brown bag and took out a pair of Playtex rubber gloves, put them on, and then took out one of two small pulleys he had purchased yesterday. He had gotten them at a hardware store in Boxford, just to be safe. He popped a number of nails into his mouth like cigarettes and got the hammer. Still humming around his mouthful of nails, he fixed the pulley neatly in the corner above the platform. Beside it he fixed a small eyehole screw.
   He went back down the ladder, crossed backstage, and climbed another ladder not far from where he had come in. He was in the loft – sort of a catchall school attic. Here there were stacks of old yearbooks, moth-eaten athletic uniforms, and ancient textbooks that had been nibbled by mice.
   Looking left, he could shine his light over the stage flies and spotlight the pulley he had just put up. Turning right, cool night air played on his face, from a vent in the wall. Still humming, he took out the second pulley and nailed it up.
   He went back down, crawled out the window he had forced, and got the two buckets of pig blood. He had been about his business for a half hour, but it showed no signs of thawing. He picked the buckets up and walked back to the window, silhouetted in the darkness like a farmer coming back from the first milking. He lifted them inside and went in after.
   Beam-walking was easier with a bucket in each hand for balance. When he reached his dust-marked X, he put the buckets down, peered at the chalk marks on the apron once more, nodded, and walked back to the platform. He thought about wiping the buckets on his last trip out to them – Kenny's prints would be on them, Don's and Steve's as well – but it was better not to. Maybe they would have a little surprise on Saturday morning. The thought made his lips quirk.
   The last item in the bag was a coil of jute twine. He walked back out to the buckets and tied the handles of both with running slipknots. He threaded the screw, then the pulley. He threw the uncoiling twine across to the left, and then threaded that one. He probably would not have been amused to know that, in the gloom of the auditorium, covered and streaked with decades-old dust, grey kitties flying dreamily about his crow's nest hair, he looked like a hunched, half-mad Rube Goldberg intent upon creating the better mousetrap.
   He piled the slack twine on top of a stack of crates within reach of the vent. He climbed down for the last time and dusted off his hands. The thing was done.
   He looked out the window, then wriggled through and thumped to the ground. He closed the window, reinserted his jimmy, and closed the lock as far as he could. Then he went back to his car.
   Chris said chances were good that Tommy Ross and the White bitch would be the ones under the buckets; she had been doing a little quiet promoting among her friends That would be good, if it happened. But, for Billy, any of the others would be all right too.
   He was beginning to think that it would be all right if it was Chris herself.
   He drove away.


   From My Name Is Susan Snell (p. 48):
   Carrie went to see Tommy the day before the prom. She was waiting outside one of his classes and he said she looked really wretched, as if she thought he'd yell at her to stop hanging around and stop bugging him.
   She said she had to be in by eleven-thirty at the latest, or her momma would be worried. She said she wasn't going to spoil his time or anything, but it wouldn't be fair to worry her momma.
   Tommy suggested they stop at the Kelly Fruit after and grab a root beer and a burger. All the other kids would be going to Westover or Lewiston, and they would have the place to themselves. Carrie's face fit up, he said. She told him that would be fine. Just fine.
   This is the girl they keep caning a monster. I want you to keep that firmly in mind. The girl who could be satisfied with a hamburger and a dime root beer after her only school dance so her momma wouldn't be worried...


   The first thing that struck Carrie when they walked in was Glamour. Not glamour but Glamour. Beautiful shadows rustled about in chiffon, lace, silk, satin. The air was redolent with the odour of flowers, the nose was constantly amazed by it. Girls in dresses with low backs, with scooped bodices showing actual cleavage, with Empire waists. Long skirts, pumps. Blinding white dinner jackets, cumberbunds, black shoes that had been spitshined.
   A few people were on the dance floor, not many yet, and in the soft revolving gloom they were wraiths without substance. She did not really want to see them as her classmates. She wanted them to be beautiful strangers.
   Tommy's hand was firm on her elbow. 'The mural's nice,' he said.
   'Yes,' she agreed faintly.
   It had taken on a soft nether light under the orange spots, the boatman leaning with eternal indolence against his tiller while the sunset blazed around him and the buildings conspired together over urban waters. She knew with suddenness and ease that this moment would be with her always, within hand's reach of memory.
   She doubted if they all sensed it – they had seen the world-but even George was silent for a minute as they looked, and the scone, the smell, even the sound of the band playing a faintly recognizable movie theme, was locked forever in her, and she was at peace. Her soul knew a moment's calm, as if it had been uncrumpled and smoothed under an iron.
   'V 'George yelled suddenly, and led Frieda out on to the floor. He began to do a sarcastic jitterbug to the old-timey big-band music, and someone catcalled over to him. George blabbered, leered, and went into a brief arms-crossed Cossack routine that nearly landed him on his butt.
   Carrie smiled. 'George is funny,' she said.
   'Sure he is. He's a good guy. There are lots of good people around. Want to sit down?'
   'Yes,' she said gratefully.
   He went back to the door and returned with Norma Watson, whose hair had been pulled into a huge, teased explosion for the affair.
   'It's on the other SIDE,' she said, and her bright gerbel's eyes picked Carrie up and down, looking for an exposed strap, an eruption of pimples, any news to carry back to the door when her errand was done. 'That's a LOVELY dress, Carrie. Where did you EVER get it?'
   Carrie told her while Norma led them around the dance floor to their table. She exuded odours of Avon soap, Woolworth's perfume, and Juicy Fruit gum.
   There were two folding chairs at the table (looped and beribboned with the inevitable crepe paper), and the table itself was decked with crepe paper in the school colours. On top was a candle in a wine bottle, a dance programme, a tiny gilded pencil, and two party favours – gondolas filled with Planters Mixed Nuts.
   'I can't get OVER it,' Norma was saying. 'You look so DIFFERENT.' She cast an odd, furtive look at Carrie's face and it made her feel nervous. 'You're positively GLOWING. What's your SECRET?'
   'I'm Don MacLean's secret lover,' Carrie said. Tommy sniggered and quickly smothered it. Norma's smile slipped a notch, and Carrie was amazed by her own wit and audacity. That's what you looked like when the joke was on you. As though a bee had stung your rear end. Carrie found she liked Norma to look that way. It was distinctly unchristian.
   'Well, I have to get back,' she said. 'Isn't it EXCITING, Tommy?' Her smile was sympathetic: Wouldn't it be exciting if-'
   'Cold sweat is running down my thighs in rivers,' Tommy said gravely.
   Norma left with an odd, puzzled smile. It had not gone the way things were supposed to go. Everyone knew how things were supposed to go with Carrie. Tommy sniggered again.
   'Would you like to dance?' he asked.
   She didn't know how, but wasn't ready to admit to that yet. 'Let's just sit for a minute.'
   While he held out her chair, she saw the candle and asked Tommy if he would light it. He did. Their eyes met over its flame. He reached out and took her hand. And the band played on.


   From The Shadow Exploded (pp. 133-134):
   Perhaps a complete study of Carrie's mother will be undertaken someday, when the subject of Carrie herself becomes more academic. I myself might attempt it, if only to gain access to the Brigham, family tree. It might be extremely interesting to know what odd occurrences one might come across two or three generations back…
   And there is, of course, the knowledge that Carrie went home on Prom Night. Why? It is hard to tell just how sane Carrie's motives were by that time. She may have gone for absolution and forgiveness, or she may have gone for the express purpose of committing matricide. In any event, the physical evidence seems to indicate that Margaret White was waiting for her…


   The house was completely silent.
   She was gone.
   At night.
   Gone.

   Margaret White walked slowly from her bedroom into the living room. First had come the flow of blood and the filthy fantasies the Devil sent with it. Then this hellish Power the Devil had given to her. It came at the time of the blood and the time of hair on the body, of course. Oh, she knew about the Power. Her own grandmother had it. She had been able to light the fireplace without even stirring from her rocker by the window. It made her eyes glow with
   (thou shalt not suffer a witch to live)
   a kind of witch's light. And sometimes, at the supper table the sugar bowl would whirl madly like a dervish. Whenever it happened, Gram would cackle crazily and drool and make the sign of the Evil Eye all around her. Sometimes she panted like a dog on a hot day, and when she died of a heart attack at sixty-six, senile to the point of idiocy even at that early age, Carrie had not even been a year old. Margaret had gone into her bedroom not four weeks after Gram's funeral and there her girl-child had lain in her crib, laughing and gurgling, watching a bottle that was dangling in thin air over her head.
   Margaret had almost killed her then. Ralph had stopped her.
   She should not have let him stop her.
   Now Margaret White stood in the middle of the living room. Christ on Calvary looked down at her with his wounded, suffering, reproachful eyes. The Black Forest cuckoo clock ticked. It was ten minutes after eight.
   She had been able to feel, actually feel the Devil's Power working in Carrie. It crawled all over you, lifting and pulling like evil, tickling little fingers. She had set out to do her duty again when Carrie was three, when she had caught her looking in sin at the Devil's slut in the next yard over. Then the stones had come, and she had weakened. And the power had risen again, after thirteen years. God was not mocked.
   First the blood, then the power,
   (you sign your name you sign it in blood)
   now a boy and dancing and he would take her to a roadhouse after, take her into the parking lot, take her into the back seat, take her Blood, fresh blood. Blood was always at the root of it, and only blood could expiate it.
   She was a big woman with massive upper arms that had swarfed her elbows to dimples, but her head was surprisingly small on the end of her strong, corded neck. It had once been a beautiful face. It was still beautiful in a weird, zealous way. But the eyes had taken on a strange, wandering cast, and the lines had deepened cruelly around the denying but oddly weak mouth. Her hair, which had been almost all black a year ago, was now almost white.
   The only way to kill sin, true black sin, was to drown it in the blood of
   (she must be sacrificed)
   a repentant heart. Surely God understood that, and had laid His finger upon her. Had not God Himself commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac up upon the mountain?
   She shuffled out into the kitchen in her old and splayed slippers, and opened the kitchen utensil drawer. The knife they used for carving was long and sharp and arched in the middle from constant honing. She sat down on the high stool by the counter, found the sliver of whetstone in its small aluminium dish, and began to scrub it along the gleaming edge of the blade with the apathetic, fixated attention of the damned.
   The Black Forest cuckoo clock ticked and ticked and finally the bird jumped out to call once and announce eight-thirty.
   In her mouth she tasted olives.

   THE SENIOR CLASS PRESENTS SPRING BALL 79
   May 27,1979
   Music by The Billy Bosman, Band
   Music by Josie and the Moonglows
   ENTERTAINMENT
   'Cabaret' – Baton Twirling by Sandra Stenchfield
   '500 Miles'
   'Lemon Tree'
   'Mr Tambourine Man'
   Folk Music by John Swithen and Maureen Cowan 'The Street Where You Live'
   'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head'
   Ewen High School Chorus
   'Bridge Over Troubled Waters'
   CHAPERONES
   Mr Stephens, Miss Geer, Mr and Mrs Lublin, Miss Desjardin
   Coronation at 10:00 P.M.
   Remember, its YOUR prom; make it one to remember always!

   When he asked her the third time, Carrie had to admit that she didn't know how to dance. She didn't add that, now that the rock band had taken over for a half-hour set, she would feel out of place gyrating on the floor.
   (and sinful)
   yes, and sinful.
   Tommy nodded, then smiled. He leaned forward and told her that he hated to dance. Would she like to go around and visit some of the other tables? Trepidation rose thickly in her throat, but she nodded. Yes, that would be nice. He was seeing to her. She must see to him (even if he really did not expect it); that was part of the deal. And she felt dusted over with the enchantment of the evening. She was suddenly hopeful that no one would stick out a foot or slyly paste a kick-me-hard sign on her back or suddenly squirt water in her face from a novelty carnation and retreat cackling while everyone laughed and pointed and catcalled.
   And if there was enchantment, it was not divine but pagan.
   'Carrie?' a voice said hesitantly.
   She had been so wrapped up in watching the band and the dance floor and the other tables that she hadn't seen anyone coming at all. Tommy had gone to get them punch.

   She turned around and saw Miss Desjardin.
   For a moment the two of them merely looked at each other, and the memory travelled between them, com
   (she saw me she saw me naked and screaming and bloody)
   without words or thought. It was in the eyes.
   Then Carrie said shyly: 'You look very pretty, Miss Desjardin.'
   She did. She was dressed in a glimmering silver sheath, a perfect complement to her blonde hair, which was up. A simple pendant hung around her neck. She looked very young, young enough to be attending rather than chaperoning.
   `Thank you.' She hesitated, then put a gloved hand on Carrie's arm. 'You are beautiful,' she said, and each word carried a peculiar emphasis.
   Carrie felt herself blushing again and dropped her eyes to the table. 'It's awfully nice of you to say so. I know I'm not … not really … but thank you anyway.'
   'It's true,' Desjardin said. 'Carrie, anything that happened before … well, it's all forgotten. I wanted you to know that.'
   'I can't forget it,' Carrie said – She looked up. The words that rose to her lips were: I don't blame anyone any more. She bit them off. It was a lie. She blamed them all and always would, and she wanted more than anything else to be honest. 'But it's over with. Now it's over with.'
   Miss Desjardin smiled, and her eyes seemed to catch and hold the soft mix of lights in an almost liquid sparkling. She looked across toward the dance floor, and Carrie followed her gaze.
   'I remember my own prom,' Desjardin said softly. 'I was two inches taller than the boy I went with when I was in my heels. He gave me a corsage that clashed with my gown. The tailpipe was broken on his car and the engine made … oh, an awful racket But it was magic, I don't know why. But I've never had a date like it, ever again.' She looked at Carrie. 'Is it like that for you?'
   'It's very nice,' Carrie said.
   'And is that all?'
   'No. There's more. I couldn't tell it all. Not to anybody.'
   Desjardin smiled and squeezed her arm. 'You'll never forget it,' she said. 'Never.'
   'I think you're right.'
   'Have a lovely time, Carrie.'
   'Thank you.'
   Tommy came up with two Dude cups of punch as Desjardin left, walking around the dance floor toward the chaperones' table.
   'What did she want?' he asked, putting the Dude caps down carefully.
   Carrie, looking after her, said: 'I think she wanted to say she was sorry.'
   (momma untie your apron strings i'm getting big)
   and she wanted it that way.
   'Look,' he said as they got up.
   Two or three stagehands were sliding the King and Queen thrones from the wings while Mr Lavoie, the head custodian, directed them with hand motions toward preset marks on the apron. She thought they looked quite Arthurian, those thrones, dressed all in blinding white, strewn with real flowers as well as huge crepe banners.
   'They're beautiful,' she said.
   'You're beautiful,' Tommy said, and she became quite sure that nothing bad could happen this night – perhaps they themselves might even be voted King and Queen of the Prom. She smiled at her own folly.

   It was nine o'clock.
   Sue Snell sat quietly in the living room of her house, hemming a dress and listening to the Jefferson Airplane Long John Silver album. It was old and badly scratched, but soothing.
   Her mother and father had gone out for the evening. They knew what was going on, she was sure of that, but they had spared her the bumbling talks about how proud they were of Their Girl, or how glad they were that she was finally Growing Up. She was glad they had decided to leave her alone, because she was still uncomfortable about her own motives and afraid to examine them too deeply, lest she discover a jewel of selfishness glowing and winking at her from the black velvet of her subconscious.
   She had done it; that was enough; she was satisfied.
   (maybe he'll fall in love with her)
   She looked up as if someone had spoken from the hallway, a startled smile curving her lips. That would be a fairy-tale ending, all right. The Prince bends over the Sleeping Beauty, touches his lips to hers.
   Sue, I don't know how to tell you this but
   The smile faded.
   Her period was late. Almost a week late. And she had always been as regular as an almanac.
   The record changer clicked; another record dropped down. In the sudden, brief silence, she heard something within her turn over. Perhaps only her soul.

   It was nine-fifteen.
   Billy drove to the far end of the parking lot and pulled into a stall that faced the asphalt ramp leading to the highway. Chris started to get out and he jerked her back. His eyes glowed ferally in the dark.
   'What?' she said with angry nervousness.
   'They use a P.A. system to announce the King and Queen,' he said. Then one of the bands will play the school song. That means they're sitting there in those thrones, on target.'
   'I know all that. Let go of me. You're hurting.'
   He squeezed her wrist tighter still and felt small bones grind. It gave him a grim pleasure. Still, she didn't cry out. She was pretty good.
   'You listen to me. I want you to know what you're getting into. Pull the rope when the song is playing. Pull it hard. There will be a little slack between the pulleys, but not much. When you pull it and feel those buckets go, run. You don't stick around to hear the screams or anything else. This is out of the cute-little-joke league. This is criminal assault, you know? They don't fine you. They put you in jail and throw the key over their shoulder.'
   It was an enormous speech for him.
   Her eyes only glared at him, full of defiant anger.
   'Dig it?'
   'Yes.'
   'All right. When the-buckets go, I'm going to run. When I get to the car, I'm going to drive away. If you're there, you can come. If you're not, I'll leave you. If I leave you and you spill your guts, I'll kill you. Do you believe me'
   'Yes. Take your fucking hand off me.'
   He did. An unwilling shadow-grin touched his face. May. 'It's going to be good.'
   They got out of the car.

   It was almost nine-thirty.
   Vic Mooney, President of the Senior Class, was calling jovially into the mike.. 'All right, ladies and gennelmen. Take your seats, please. Its time for the voting. We're going to vote for the King and Queen.'
   'This contest insults women!' Myra Crewes called with uneasy good nature.
   'It insults men, too!' George Dawson called back, and there was general laughter. Myra was silent. She had made her token protest.
   'take your seats, please!' Vic was smiling into the mike, and blushing furiously, fingering a pimple on his chin. The huge Venetian boatman behind him looked dreamily over Vic's shoulder. 'Time to vote.'
   Carrie and Tommy sat down. Tina Blake and Norma Watson were circulating mimeographed ballots, and when Norma dropped one at their table and breathed 'Good LUCK!' Carrie picked up the ballot and studied it. Her mouth popped open.
   'Tommy, we're on here!'
   'Yeah, I saw that,' he said. 'The school votes for single candidates and their dates get sort of shanghaied into it. Welcome aboard. Shall we decline?'
   She bit her lip and looked at him. 'Do you want to decline?'
   'Hell, no,' he said cheerfully. 'If you win, all you do is sit up there for the school song and one dance and wave a sceptre and look like a goddam idiot. They take your picture for the yearbook so everyone can see you look like a goddam idiot.'
   'Who do we vote for?' She looked doubtfully from the ballot to the tiny pencil by her boatful of nuts. 'They're more your crowd than mine.' A chuckle escaped her. 'In fact, I don't really have a crowd.'
   He shrugged. 'Let's vote for ourselves. To the devil with false modesty.'
   She laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound was almost entirely foreign to her. Before she could think, she circled their names, third from the top. The tiny pencil broke in her hand, and she gasped. A splinter had scratched the pad of one finger, and a small bead of blood welled.
   'You hurt yourself?'
   'No.' She smiled, but suddenly it was difficult to smile. The sight of the blood was distasteful to her. She blotted it away with her napkin. 'But I broke the pencil and it was a souvenir. Stupid me.'
   `There's your boat,' he said, and pushed it toward her. 'Toot, toot.' Her throat closed, and she felt sure she would weep and then be ashamed. She did not, but her eyes glimmered like prisms and she lowered her head so he would not see.
   The band was playing catchy fill-in music while the Honour Society ushers collected the folded-over ballots. They were taken to the chaperones' table by the door, where Vic and Mr Stephens and the Lublins counted them. Miss Geer surveyed it all with grim gimlet eyes.
   Carrie felt an unwilling tension worm into her, tightening muscles in her stomach and back. She held Tommy's hand tightly. It was absurd, of course. No one was going to vote for them. The stallion, perhaps, but not when harnessed in tandem with a she-ox. It would be Frank and Jessica or maybe Don Farnham and Helen Shyres. Or – hell!
   Two piles were growing larger than the others. Mr Stephens finished dividing the slips and all four of them took turns at counting the large piles, which looked about the same. They put their heads together, conferred, and counted once more. Mr Stephens, nodded, thumbed the ballots once more like a man about to deal a hand of poker, and gave them back to Vic. He climbed back on stage and approached the mike. The Billy Bosman Band played a flourish. Vic smiled nervously, harrumphed into the mike, and blinked at the sudden feedback whine. He nearly dropped the ballots to the floor, which was covered with heavy electrical cables, and somebody snickered.
   'We've sort of hit a snag,' Vic said artlessly. 'Mr Lublin says this is the first time in the history of the Spring Ball-' 'How far does he go back?' someone behind Tommy mumbled. 'Eighteen hundred?'
   'We've got a tie.'
   This got a murmer from the crowd. 'Polka dots or striped?' George Dawson called, and there was some laughter. Vic gave a twitchy smile and almost dropped the ballots again.
   'Sixty-three votes for Frank Grier and Jessica MacLean, and sixty-three votes for Thomas Ross and Carrie White.'
   This was followed by a moment of silence, and then sudden, swelling applause. Tommy looked across at his date. Her head was lowered, as if in shame, but he had a sudden feeling.
   (carrie carrie carrie)
   not unlike the one he had had when he asked her to the prom. His mind felt as if something alien was moving in there, calling Carrie's name over and over again. As if
   'Attention!' Vic was calling. 'If I could have your attention, please.' The applause quieted. 'We're going to have a run-off ballot. When the people passing out the slips of paper get to you, please write the couple you favour on it.'
   He left the mike, looking relieved.
   The ballots were circulated; they had been hastily torn from leftover prom programmes. The band played unnoticed and people talked excitedly.
   'They weren't applauding for us,' Carrie said, looking up. The thing he had felt (or thought he had felt) was gone 'It couldn't have been for us.'
   'Maybe it was for you.'
   She looked at him, mute.

   'What's taking it so long?' she hissed at him. 'I beard them clap. Maybe that was it. If you fucked up-' The length of jute cord hung between them limply, untouched since Billy had poked a screwdriver through the vent and lifted it out.
   'Don't worry,' he said calmly. 'They'll play the school song. They always do.'
   'But-'
   'Shut up. You talk too fucking much.' The tip of his cigarette winked peacefully in the dark.
   She shut. But
   (oh when this is over you're going to get it buddy maybe you'll go to bed with lover's nuts tonight)
   her mind ran furiously over his words, storing them. People did not speak to her in such a manner. Her father was a lawyer.

   It was seven minutes to ten.
   He was holding the broken pencil in his hand, ready to write, when she touched his wrist lightly, tentatively.
   'Don't . .'
   'What?'
   'Don't vote for us,' she said finally.
   He raised his eyebrows quizzically. 'Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound. That's what my mother always says.'
   (mother)
   A picture rose in her mind instantly, her mother droning endless prayers to a towering, faceless, columnar God who prowled roadhouse parking lots with a sword of fire in one hand. Terror rose in her blackly, and she had to fight with all her spirit to hold it back. She could not explain her dread, her sense of premonition. She could only smile helplessly and repeat: 'Don't. Please.'
   The Honour Society ushers were coming back, collecting folded slips. He hesitated a moment longer, then suddenly scrawled Tommy and Carrie on the ragged slip of paper. 'For you,' he said. 'Tonight you go first-class.'
   She could not reply, for the premonition was on her, her mother's face.

   The knife slipped from the whetstone, and in an instant it had sliced the cup of her palm below the thumb.
   She looked at the cut. It bled slowly, thickly, from the open lips of the wound running out of her hand and spotting the worn linoleum of the kitchen floor. Good, then. It was good. The blade had tasted flesh and let blood. She did not bandage it but tipped the flow over the cutting edge, letting the blood dull the blade's edge, then she began to sharpen again, heedless of the droplets which splattered her dress.
   If thine right eye offend thee, pluck it out
   If it was a hard scripture, it was also sweet and good. A fitting scripture for those who lurked in the doorway shadows of one-night hotels and in the weeds behind bowling alleys.
   Pluck it out
   (oh and the nasty music they play)
   Pluck it
   (the girls show their underwear how it sweats how it sweats blood)
   out
   The Black Forest cuckoo began to strike ten and
   (cut her guts out on the floor)
   if thine right eye offend thee, pluck it out

   The dress was done and she could not watch the television or take out her books or call Nancy on the phone. There was nothing to do but sit on the sofa facing the blackness of the kitchen window and feel some nameless sort of fear growing in her like an infant coming to dreadful term.
   With a sigh she began to massage her arms absently. They were cold and prickly. It was twelve after ten and there was no reason, really no reason, to feel that the world was coming to an end.

   The stacks were higher this time, but they still looked exactly the same. Again, three counts were taken to make sure. Then Vic Mooney went to the mike again. He paused a moment, relishing the blue feel of tension in the air, and then announced simply:
   `Tommy and Carrie win. By one vote.'
   Dead silence for a moment, then applause filled the hall again, some of it not without satiric overtones. Carrie drew in a startled, smothered gasp, and Tommy again felt (but for only a second) that weird vertigo in his mind
   (carrie carrie carrie carrie)
   that seemed to blank out all thought but the name and image of this strange girl he was with. For a fleeting second he was literally scared shitless.
   Something fell on the floor with a clink, and at the same instant the candle between them whiffed out.
   Then Josie and the Moonglows were playing a rock version of Pomp and Circumstance, the ushers appeared at their table (almost magically; all this had been rehearsed meticulously by Miss Geer who, according to rumour, ate slow and clumsy ushers for lunch), a sceptre wrapped in aluminium foil was thrust into Tommy's hand, a robe with a lush dog-fur collar was thrown over Carrie's shoulders, and they were being led down the centre aisle by a boy and a girl in white blazers. The band blared. The audience applauded. Miss Geer looked vindicated. Tommy Ross was grinning bemusedly.
   They were ushered up the steps to the apron, led across to the thrones, and seated. Still the applause swelled. The sarcasm in it was lost now; it was honest and deep, a little frightening. Carrie was glad to sit down. It was all happening too fast. Her legs were trembling under her and suddenly, even with the comparatively high neck of her gown, her breasts
   (dirtypillows)
   felt dreadfully exposed. The sound of the applause in her ears made her feel woozy, almost punch-drunk. Part of her was actually convinced that all this was a dream from which she would wake with mixed feeling of loss and relief.
   Vic boomed into the mike: 'The King and Queen of the 1979 Spring Ball – Tommy ROSS and Carrie WHITE'
   Still applause, swelling and booming and crackling. Tommy Ross in the fading moments of his life now, took Carrie's hand and grinned at her, thinking that Suzie's intuition had been very right. Somehow she grinned back. TOMMY
   (she was right and i love her well i love this one too this carrie she is beautiful and it's right and i love all of them the light the light in her eyes)
   and Carrie
   (can't see them the lights are too bright i can hear them but can't see them the shower remember the shower o momma it's too high i think i want to get down o are they laughing and ready to throw things to point and scream with laughter i can't see them i can't see them it's all too bright)
   and the beam above them.
   Both bands, in a sudden and serendipitous coalition of rock and brass, swung into the school song. The audience rose to its feet and began to sing, still applauding.

   It was ten-o-seven.
   Billy had just flexed his knees to make the Joints pop. Chris Hargensen stood next to him with increasing aura of nervousness. Her hands played aimlessly along the seams of the jeans she had worn and she was biting the softness of her lower lip, chewing at it, making it a little ragged.
   'You think they'll vote for them?, Billy said softly.
   'They will,' she said. 'I set it up.' it won't even be close. Why do they keep applauding? What's going on in there?'
   'Don't ask me, babe.
   The school song suddenly roared out, full and strong on the soft May air, and Chris jumped as if stung. A soft gasp of surprise escaped her
   All rise for Thomas Ewen Hiiiiyyygh...
   'Go on,' he said. 'They're there.' His eyes glowed softly in the dark. The odd half-grin had touched his features.
   She licked her lips. They both stared at the length of jute cord.
   We will raise your banners to the skyyyyy
   'Shut up,' she whispered. She was trembling, and he thought that her body had never looked so lush or exciting. When this was over he was going to have her until every other time she'd been had was like two pumps with a fags little finger. He was going on her like a raw cob through butter.
   'No guts, babe?'
   He leaned forward. 'I won't pull it for you, babe. It can sit there till bell freezes.'
   With pride we wear the red and whiiyyyte
   A sudden smothered sound that might have been a scream came from her mouth, and she leaned forward and pulled violently on the cord with both hands. It came loose with slack for a moment, making her think that Billy had been having her on all this time, that the rope was attached to nothing but thin air. Then it snubbed tight, held for a second, and then came through her palm harshly, leaving a thin burn.
   she began.
   The music inside came to a jangling, discordant halt. For a moment ragged You continued oblivious, and then they stopped. Then was a beat of silence, and then someone screamed. Silence again.
   They stared at each other in the dark, frozen by the actual act as thought never could have done. Her very breath turned to glass in her throat.
   Then, inside, the laughter began.

   It was ten twenty-five, and the feeling had been getting worse and worse. Sue stood in front of the gas range on one foot, waiting for the milk to begin steaming so she could dump in the Nestle's. Twice she had begun to go upstairs and put on a nightgown and twice she had stopped, drawn for no reason at all to the kitchen window that looked down Brickyard Hill and the spiral of Route 6 that led into town.
   Now, as the whistle mounted atop the town hall on Main Street suddenly began to shriek into the night, and falling in cycles of panic, she did not evert immediately to the window, but only tamed the heat oft under the milk so it would not burn.
   The town hall whistle went off every day at twelve noon and that was all, except to call the volunteer fire department during grass-fire season in August and September. It was strictly for major disasters and its sound was dreamy and terrifying in the empty house.
   She went to the window, but slowly. The shrieking of the whistle rose and fell, rose and fell. Somewhere, horns were beginning to blast, as if for a wedding. She could see her reflection in the darkened glass, lips parted, eyes wide, and then the condensation of her breath obscured it.
   A memory, half-forgotten, came to her. As children in grammar school, they had practised air-raid drills. When the teacher clapped her hands and said, 'The town whistle is blowing,' you were supposed to crawl under your desk and put your hands over your head and wait, either for the all-clear or for enemy missiles to blow you to powder. Now, in her mind, as clearly as a leaf pressed in plastic,
   (the town whistle is blowing)
   she heard the words clang in her mind
   Far below, to the left, where the high school parking lot was – the ring of sodium are lamps made it a sure landmark, although the school building itself was invisible in the dark – a spark glowed as if God has struck a flint-and-steel.
   (that's whew the oil tanks are)
   The spark hesitated, then bloomed orange. Now you could see the school, and it was on fire.
   She was already on her way to the closet to get her coat when the first dull, booming explosion shook the floor under her feet and made her mother's china rattle in the cupboards.

   From We Survived the Black Prom, by Norma Watson (Published in the August, 1980, issue of The Reader's Digest as a 'Drama in Real Life' article):
   … and it happened so quickly that no one really knew what was happening. We were all standing and applauding and singing the school song. Then – I was at the usher's table just inside the main doors, looking at the stage – there was a sparkle as the big lights over the stage apron reflected on something metallic. I was standing with Tina Blake and Stella Horan, and I think they saw it, too.
   All at once there was a huge red splash in the air. Some of it hit the mural and ran in long drips. I knew right away, even before it hit them, that it was blood. Stella Horan thought it was paint, but I had a premonition, just like the time my brother got hit by a hay truck.
   They were drenched. Carrie got it the worst. She looked exactly like she had been dipped in a bucket of red paint. She just sat there. She never moved. The band that was closest to the stage, Josie and the moonglows, got splattered. The lead guitarist had a white instrument, and it splattered all over it.
   I say: 'My God, that's blood!'
   When I said that, Tina screamed. It was very loud, and it rang out clearly in the auditorium.
   People had stopped singing and everything was completely quiet. I couldn't move. I was rooted to the spot. I looked up and there were two buckets dangling high over the thrones, swinging and banging together. They were still dripping. All of a sudden they fell, with a lot of loose string paying out behind them. One of them hit Tommy Ross on the head. It made a very loud noise, like a gong.
   That made someone laugh. I don't know who it was, but it wasn't the way a person laughs when they see something funny and gay. It was raw and hysterical and awful.
   At the same instant, Carrie opened her eyes wide.
   That was when they all started laughing. I did too. God help me. It was so … weird.
   When I was a little girl I had a Walt Disney storybook called Song of the South, and it had that Uncle Remus story about the tarbaby in it. There was a picture of the tarbaby sitting in the middle of the road, looking like one of those old-time Negro minstrels with the blackface and great white eyes. When Carrie opened her eyes it was like that. They were the only part of her that wasn't completely red. And the light had gotten in them and made them glassy. God help me, but she looked for all the world like Eddie Cantor doing that pop-eyed act of his.
   That was what made people laugh. We couldn't help it. It was one of those things where you laugh or go crazy. Carrie had been the butt of every joke for so long, and we all felt that we were part of something special that night. It was as if we were watching a person rejoin the human race, and I for one thanked the Lord for it. And that happened. That horror.
   And so there was nothing else to do. It was either laugh or cry, and who could bring himself to cry over Carrie after all those years?
   She just sat there, staring out at them, and the laughter kept swelling, getting louder and louder. People were holding their bellies and doubling up and pointing at her. Tommy was the only one who wasn't looking at her. He was sort of slumped over in his seat as if lied gone to sleep. You couldn't tell he was hurt, though: he was splashed, too bad.
   And then her face … broke, I don't know how else to describe it. She put her hands up to her face and halfstaggered to her feet. She almost got tangled in her own feet and fell over, and that made people laugh even more. Then she sort of … hopped off the stage. It was like watching a big red frog hopping off a lily pad. She almost fell again, but kept on her feet.
   Miss Desjardin came running over to her, and she wasn't laughing any more. She was holding out her arms to her. But then she veered off and hit the wall beside the stage – It was the strangest thing. She didn't stumble or anything. It was as if someone had pushed her, but there was no one there.
   Carrie ran through the crowd with her hands clutching her face, and somebody put his foot out. I don't know who it was, but she went sprawling on her face. leaving a long red streak on the floor. And she said, 'Ooof!' I remember that. It made me laugh even harder, hearing Carrie say Oof like that. She started to crawl along the floor and then she got up and ran out. She ran right past me. You could smell the blood. It smelled like something sick and rotted.
   She went down the stairs two at a time and then out the doors. And was gone.
   The laughter just sort of faded off, a little at a time. Some people were still hitching and snorting. Lennie Brock had taken out a big white handkerchief and was wiping his eyes. Sally McManus looked all white, like she was going to throw up, but she was still giggling and she couldn't seem to stop. Billy Bosnan was just standing there with his little conductor's stick in his hand and shaking his head. Mr Lublin was sitting by Miss Desjardin and calling for a Kleenex. She had a bloody nose.
   You have to understand that all this happened in no more than two minutes. Nobody could put it all together. We were stunned. Some of them were wandering around, talking a little, but not much. Helen Shyres burst into tears, and that made some of the others start up.
   Then someone yelled: 'Call a doctor! Hey, call a doctor quick!'
   It was Josie Vreck. He was up on the stage, kneeling by Tommy Ross, and his face was white as paper. He tried to pick him up, and the throne fell over and Tommy rolled on to the floor.
   Nobody moved. They were all just staring. I felt like I was frozen in ice. My God, was all I could think. My God, my God, my God. And then this other thought crept in, and it was as if it wasn't my own at all. I was thinking about Carrie. And about God. It was all twisted up together, and it was awful.
   Stella looked over at me and said: 'Carrie's back.'
   And I said: 'Yea, that's right.'
   The lobby doors all slammed shut. The sound was like hands clapping. Somebody in the back screamed, and that started the stampede. They ran for the doors in a rush. I just stood there, not believing it. And when I looked, just before the first of them got there and started to push, I saw Carrie looking in, her face all smeared, like an Indian with war paint on.
   She was smiling.
   They were pushing at the doors, hammering on them, but they wouldn't budge. As more of them crowded up to them, I could see the first ones to get there being battered against them, grunting and wheezing. They wouldn't open, and those doors are never locked. It's a state law.
   Mr Stephens and Mr Lublin waded in, and began to pull them away, grabbing jackets, shorts, anything. They were all screaming and burrowing like cattle. Mr Stephens slapped a couple of girls and punched Vic Mooney in the eye. They were yelling for them to go out the back fire doors. Some did. Those were the ones who lived.
   That's when it started to rain … at least, that's what I thought it was at first. There was water falling all over the place. I looked up and all the sprinklers were on, all over the gym. Water was hitting the basketball court and splashing. Josie Vreck was yelling for the guys in his band to turn off the electric amps and mikes quick, but they were all gone. He jumped down from the stage.
   The panic at the doors stopped. People backed away, looking up at the ceiling. I heard somebody – Don Farnham, I think-say: 'This is gonna wreck the basketball court.'
   A few other people started to go over and look at Tommy Ross. All at once I knew I wanted to get out of there. I took Tina Blake's hand and said, 'Let's run. Quick.'
   To get to the fire doors, you had to go down a short corridor to the left of the stage. There were sprinklers there too, but they weren't on. And the doors were open – I could see a few people running out. But most of them were just standing around in little groups, blinking at each other. Some of them were looking at the smear of blood where Carrie fell down, the water was washing it away.
   I took Tina's hand and started to pull her toward the EXIT sign. At that same instant there was a huge flash of light, a scream, and a horrible feedback whine. I looked around and saw Josie Vreck holding on to one of the mike stands. He couldn't let go. His eyes were bugging out and his hair was on end and it looked like he was dancing. His feet were sliding around in the water and smoke started to come out of his shirt.
   He fell over on one of the amps – they were big ones, five or six feet high – and it fell into the water. The feedback went up to a scream that was head-splitting, and then there was another sizzling flash and it stopped. Josie's shirt was on fire.
   'Run!' Tina yelled at me. 'Come on, Norma, Please!'
   We ran out into the hallway, and something exploded backstage – the main power switches, I guess. For just a second I looked back. You could see right out on to the stage, where Tommy's body was, because the curtain was up. All the heavy light cables were in the air, flowing and jerking and writhing like snakes out of an Indian fakir's basket. Then one of them pulled in two. There was a violent flash when it hit the water, and then everybody was screaming at once.
   Then we were out the door and running across the parking lot. I think I was screaming. I don't remember very well. I don't remember anything very well after they started screaming. After those high-voltage cables hit that water-covered floor …


   For Tommy Ross, age eighteen, the end came swiftly and mercifully and almost without pain.
   He was never even aware that something of importance was happening. There was a clanging, clashing noise that he associated momentarily with
   (there go the milk buckets)
   a childhood memory of his Uncle Galen's farm and then with
   (somebody dropped something)
   the band below him. He caught a glimpse of Josie Vreck looking over his head
   (what have i got a halo or something)
   and then the quarter-full bucket of blood struck him. The raised lip along the bottom of the rim struck him on top of the head and
   (hey that hurt)
   he went swiftly down into unconsciousness. He was still sprawled on the stage when the fire originating in the electrical equipment of Josie and the Moonglows spread to the mural of the Venetian boatman, and then to the rat warren of old uniforms, books, and papers backstage and overhead.
   He was dead when the oil tank exploded a half hour later.


   From the New England AP ticker, 10:46 P.M.:
   CHAMBERLAIN, MAINE (AP)
   A FIRE IS RAGING OUT OF CONTROL AT EWEN (U-WIN) CONSOLIDATED HIGH SCHOOL AT THIS TIME. A SCHOOL DANCE WAS IN PROGRESS AT THE TIME OF THE OUTBREAK WHICH IS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEENELECTRICAL IN ORIGIN. WITNESSES SAY THAT THE SCHOOL'S SPRINKLER SYSTEM WENT ON WITHOUT WARNING, CAUSING A SHORT-CIRCUIT IN THE EQUIPMENT OF A ROCK BAND. SOME WITNESSES ALSO REPORT BREAKS IN MAIN POWER CABLES. IT IS BELIEVED THAT AS MANY AS ONE HUNDRED AND TEN PERSONS MAY BE TRAPPED IN THE BLAZING SCHOOL GYMNASIUM. FIRE FIGHTING EQUIPMENT FROM THE NEIGHBOURING TOWNS OF WESTOVER, MOTTON, AND LEWISTON HAVE REPORTEDLY RECEIVED REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE AND ARE NOW OR SHORTLY WILL BE EN ROUTE. AS YET, NO CASUALTIES HAVE BEEN REPORTED. ENDS.
   10:46 Pm MAY 27 6904D AP



   From the New England AP ticker, 11:22 P.M.
   URGENT
   CHAMBERLAIN, MAINE (AP)
   A TREMENDOUS EXPLOSION HAS ROCKED THOMAS EWIN (U-WIN) CONSOLIDATED HIGH SCHOOL IN THE SMALL MAINE TOWN OF CHAMBERLAIN. THREE CHAMBERLAIN FIRE TRUCKS, DISPATCHED EARLIER TO FIGHT A BLAZE AT THE GYMNASIUM WHERE A SCHOOL PROM WAS TAKING PLACE, HAVE ARRIVED TO NO AVAIL. ALL FIRE HYDRANTS IN THE AREA HAVE BEEN VANDALIZED, AND WATER PRESSURE FROM CITY MAINS IN THE AREA FROM SPRING STREET TO GRASS PLAZA IS REPORTED TO BE NIL. ONE FIRE OFFICIAL SAID. 'THE DAMN THINGS WERE STRIPPED OF THEIR NOZZLES, THEY MUST HAVE SPOUTED LIKE GUSHERS WHILE THOSE KIDS WERE BURNING.' THREE BODIES HAVE BEEN RECOVERED SO FAR. ONE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS THOMAS B. MEARS, A CHAMBERLAIN FIREMAN. THE TWO OTHERS WERE APPARENT PROM GOERS. THREE MORE CHAMBERLAIN FIREMEN HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO MOTTON RECEIVING HOSPITAL SUFFERING FROM MINOR BURNS AND SMOKE INHALATION. IT IS BELIEVED THAT THE EXPLOSION OCCURRED WHEN THE FIRE REACHED THE SCHOOL'S FUEL-OIL TANKS, WHICH ARE SITUATED NEAR THE GYMNASIUM. THE FIRE ITSELF IS BELIEVED TO HAVE STARTED IN POORLY INSULATED ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT FOLLOWING A SPRINKLER SYSTEM MALFUNCTION. ENDS.
   11:22 PM MAY 27 70119E AP


   Sue had only a driver's permit, but she took the keys to her mother's car from the pegboard beside the refrigerator and ran to the garage. The kitchen clock read exactly 11:00.
   She flooded the car on her first try, and forced herself to wait before trying again. This time the motor coughed and caught, and she roared out of the garage heedlessly, dinging one fender. She turned around, and the rear wheels splurted gravel. Her mother's '77 Plymouth swerved on to the road, almost fishtailing on to the shoulder and making her feel sick to her stomach. It was only at this point that she realized she was moaning deep in her throat, like an animal in a trap.
   She did not pause at the stop sign that marked the intersection of Route 6 and the Back Chamberlain Road. Fire sirens filled the night in the cast, where Chamberlain bordered Westover, and from the south behind her Motton.
   She was almost at the base of the hill when the school exploded.
   She jammed on the power brakes with both feet and was thrown into the steering wheel like a rag doll. The tyres wailed on the pavement. Somehow she fumbled the door open and was out, shading her eyes against the glare.
   A gout of flame had ripped skyward, trailing a nimbus of fluttering steel roof panels, wood, and paper. The smell was thick and oily. Main Street was lit as if by a flashgun. In that terrible hallway between seconds, she saw that the entire gymnasium wing of Ewen High was a gutted, flaming ruin.
   Concussion struck a moment later, knocking her backwards. Road litter blew past her on a sudden and tremendous rush, along with a blast of warm air that reminded her fleetingly of
   (the smell of subways)
   a trip she had taken to Boston the year before. The windows of Bill's Home Drugstore and the Kelly Fruit Company jingled and fell inward.
   She had fallen on her side, and the fire lit the street with hellish noonday. What happened next happened in slow motion as her mind ran steadily onward
   (dead are they all dead carrie why think carrie)
   at its own clip. Cars were rushing toward the scene, and some people were running in robes, nightshorts, pyjamas. She saw a man come out of the front door of Chamberlain's combined police station and courthouse. He was moving slowly. The cars were moving slowly. Even the people running were moving slowly.
   She saw the man on the police-station steps cup his hands around his mouth and scream something; unclear' over the shrieking town whistle, the fire sirens, the monster-mouth of fire. Sounded like:
   'Heyret! Don't hey that ass!'
   The street was all wet down there. The light danced on the water' Down by Teddy's Amoco station.
   '-hey, that's-'
   And then the world exploded.

  From the sworn testimony of Thomas K. Quillan, taken before The State Investigatory Board of Maine in connection with the events of May 27-28 in Chamberlain, Maine (abridged version which follows is from Black Prom: The White Commission Report, Signet Books: New York, 1980):
   Q. Mr Quillan, are you a resident of Chamberlain?
   A. Yes.
   Q. What is your address?
   A. I got a room over the pool hall. That's where I work. I mop the floors, vacuum the tables, work on the machines-pinball machines, you know.
   Q. Where were you on the night of May twenty-seventh at 10.30 P.M., Mr Quillan?
   A. Well . . . actually, I was in a detention cell at the police station. I get paid on Thursdays, see. And I always go out and get bombed. I go out to The Cavalier, drink some Schlitz, play a little poker out back. But I get mean when I drink. Feels Eke the Roller Derby's going on in my head. Bummer, hub? Once I conked a guy over the head with a chair and
   Q. Was it your habit to go to the police station when you felt these fits of temper coming on?
   A. Yeah. Big Otis, he's a friend of mine.
   Q. Are you referring to Sheriff Otis Doyle of this county?
   A. Yeah. He told me to pop in any time I started feeling mean. The night before the prom, a bunch of us guys were in the back room down at The Cavalier playing stud poker and I got to thinking Fast Marcel Dubay was cheating. I would have known better sober – a Frenchman's idea of pullin' a fast one is to look at his own cards – but that got me going. I'd had a couple of beers, you know, so I folded my hand and went on down to the station. Plessy was catching, and he locked me right up in Holding Cell number 1. Plessy's a good boy. I knew his mom, but that was many years ago.
   Q. Mr Quillan, do you suppose we could discuss the night of the twenty-seventh? 10:30 P.M.?
   A. Ain't we?
   Q. I devoutly hope so. Continue.
   A. Well, Plessy locked me up around quarter to two on Friday morning, and I popped right Off to sleep. Passed out, you might say. Woke up around four o'clock the next afternoon, took three Alka-Seltzers, and went back to sleep. I got a knack, that way. I can sleep until my hangover's all gone. Big Otis says I should find out how I do it and take out a patent. He says I could save the world a lot of pain.
   Q. I'm sure you could, Mr Quillan. Now when did you wake up again?
   A. Around ten o'clock on Friday night. I was pretty hungry, so I decided to go get some chow down at the diner.
   Q. They left you all alone in an open cell?
   A. Sure. I'm a fantastic guy when I'm sober. In fact, one time
   Q. Just tell the committee what happened when you left the cell.
   A. The fire whistle went of, that's what happened. Scared the beJesus out of me. I ain't heard that whistle at night since the Viet Nam war ended. So I ran upstairs and sonofabitch, there's no one in the office. I say to myself, hot damn, Plessy's gonna get it for this. There's always supposed to be somebody catching, in case there's a callin. So I went over to the window and looked out.
   Q. Could the school be seen from that window?
   A. Yeah. People were running around and yelling. And that's when I saw Carrie White.
   Q. Had you ever seen Carrie White before?
   A. Nope.
   Q. Then how did you know it was she?
   A. That's hard to explain.
   Q. Could you see her clearly?
   A. She was standing under a street light, by the fire hydrant on the corner of Main and Spring.
   Q. Did something happen?
   A. I guess to Christ. The whole top of the hydrant exploded of three different ways. Left, right, and straight up to heaven.
   Q. What time did this … uh … malfunction occur?
   A. Around twenty to eleven. Couldn't have been no later.
   Q. What happened then?
   A. She started downtown. Mister, she looked awful. She was wearing some kind of party dress, what was left of it, and she was all wet from that hydrant and covered with blood. She looked like she just crawled out of a car accident. But she was grinning. I never saw such a grin. It was like a death's head. And she kept looking at her hands and rubbing them on her dress, trying to get the blood off and thinking she'd never get it off and how she was going to pour blood on the whole town and make them pay. It was awful stuff
   Q. How would you have any idea what she was thinking?
   A. I don't know. I can't explain.
   Q. For the remainder of your testimony, I wish you would stick to what you saw, Mr Quillan.
   A. Okay. There was a hydrant on the corner of Grass Plaza, and that one went, too. I could see that one better. The big lug nuts on the sides were unscrewing themselves. I saw that happening. It blew, just like the other one. And she was happy. She was saying to herself, that'll give 'em a shower, that'll … whoops, sorry. The fire trucks started to go by then, and I lost track of her. The new pumper pulled up to the school and they started on those hydrants and saw they wasn't going to get no water. Chief Burton was hollering at them, and that's when the school exploded. Je-sus.
   Q. Did you leave the police station?
   A. Yeah. I wanted to find Plessy and tell him about that crazy broad and the fire hydrants. I glanced over at Teddy's Amoco, and I seen something that made my blood run cold. All six gas pumps was off their hooks. Teddy Duchamp's been dead since 1968, God love him but his boy locked those pumps up every night just like Teddy himself used to do. Every one of them Yale padlocks was hanging busted by their hasps. The nozzles were laying on the tarmac, and the automatic feeds was set on every one. Gas was pouring out on to the sidewalk and into the street. Holy mother of God, when I seen that, my balls drew right up. Then I saw this gay running along with a lighted cigarette.
   Q. What did you do?
   A. Hollered at him. Something like Hey! Watch that cigarette! Hey, don't, that's gas! He never heard me. Fire wrens and the town whistle and cars rip-assing up and down the street, I don't wonder. I saw he was going to pitch it, so I started to duck back inside.
   Q. What happened next?
   A. Next? Why, next thing, the Devil came to Chamberlain …


   When the buckets fell, she was at first only aware of a loud, metallic clang cutting through the music, and then she was deluged in warmth and wetness. She closed her eyes instinctively. There was a grunt from beside her, and in the part of her mind that had come so recently awake, she sensed brief pain.
   (tommy)
   The music came to a crashing, discordant halt, a few voices hanging on after it like broken strings, and in the sudden deadness of anticipation, filling the gap between event and realization, like doom, she heard someone say quite clearly:
   'My God, that's blood.'
   A moment later, as if to ram the truth of it home, to make it utterly and exactly clear, someone screamed.
   Carrie sat with her eyes closed and felt the black bulge of terror rising in her mind. Momma had been right, after all. They had taken her again gulled her again, made her the butt again. The horror of it should have been monotonous, but it was not; they had gotten her up here, up here in front of the whole school, and had repeated the shower-room scene … only the voice had said
   (my god that's blood)
   something too awful to be contemplated. If she opened her eyes and it was true, oh, what then? What then?
   Someone began to laugh, a solitary, affrightened hyena sound, and she did open her eyes, opened them to see who it was and it was true, the final nightmare, she was red and dripping with it, they had drenched her in the very secretness of blood, in front of all of them and her thought
   (oh…i … COVERED– with it)
   was coloured a ghastly purple with her revulsion and her shame. She could smell herself and it was the stink of blood. the awful wet, coppery smell. In a flickering kaleidoscope of images she saw the blood running thickly down her naked thighs, hear the constant beating of the shower on the tiles, felt the soft patter of tampons and napkins against her skin as voices exhorted her to plug it UP, tasted the plump, fulsome bitterness of horror. They had finally given her the shower they wanted.
   A second voice joined the first, and was followed by a third – girl's soprano giggle – a fourth, a fifth, six, a dozen, all of them, all laughing. Vic Mooney was laughing. She could see him. His face was utterly frozen, shocked, but that laughter issued forth just the same.
   She sat quite still, letting the noise wash over her like surf. They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil. In this one she would bite a poison apple, be attacked by trolls, be eaten by tigers.
   They were laughing at her again.
   And suddenly it broke. The horrible realization of how badly she had been cheated came over her, and a horrible, soundless cry
   (they're LOOKING at me)
   tried to come out of her. She put her hands over her face to hide it and staggered out of the chair. Her only thought was to run, to get out of the light, to let the darkness have her and hide her.
   But it was like trying to run through molasses. Her traitor mind had slowed time to a crawl; it was as if God had switched the whole scene from 78 rpm to 33 1/3. Even the laughter seemed to have deepened and slowed to a sinister bass rumble.
   Her feet tangled in each other, and she almost fell of the edge of the stage. She recovered herself, bent down, and hopped down to the floor. The grinding laughter swelled louder. It was like rocks rubbing together.
   She wanted not to see, but she did see; the lights were too bright and she could see all their faces. Their mouths, their teeth, their eyes. She could see her own gorestreaked hands in front of her face.
   Miss Desjardin was running toward her, and Miss Desjardin's face was filled with lying compassion. Carrie could be beneath the surface to where the real Miss Geer was giggling and chuckling with rancid old-maid ribaldry. Miss Desjardin's mouth opened and her voice issued forth, horrible and slow and deep:
   'Let me help you, dear. Oh I am so sor-'
   She struck out at her

  (flex)
   and Miss Desjardin went flying to rattle off the wall at the side of the stage and fall into a heap.
   Carrie ran. She ran through the middle of them. Her hands were to her face but she could see through the prison of her fingers, could see them, how they were, beautiful, wrapped in light, swathed in the bright, angelic robes of Acceptance. The shined shoes, the clear faces, the careful beauty-parlour hairdos, the glittery gowns. They stepped back from her as if she was plague, but they kept laughing, then, a foot was stuck slyly out
   (o yes that comes next o yes)
   and she fell over on her hands and knew and began to crawl, to crawl along the floor with her blood-clotted hair hanging in her face, crawling like St Paul on the Damascus Road, whose eyes had been blinded by the light. Next someone would kick her ass.
   But no one did and then she was scrabbling to her feet again. Things began to speed up. She was out through the door, out into the lobby, then flying down the stairs that she and Tommy had swept up so grandly two hours ago.
   (tommy's dead full price paid full price for bringing a plague into the place of light)
   She went down them in great, awkward leaps, with the sound of the laughter flapping around her like black birds.
   Then, darkness.
   She fled across the school's wide front lawn, losing both of her prom slippers and fleeing barefoot. The closely cut school lawn was like velvet, lightly dusted with dewfall, and the laughter was behind her. She began to calm slightly.
   Then her feet did tangle and she fell at full length out by the flagpole. She lay quiescent, breathing raggedly, her hot face buried in the cool grass. The tears of shame began to flow, as hot and as heavy as that first flow of menstrual blood had been. They had beaten her, bested her, once and for all time. It was over.
   She would pick herself up very soon now, and sneak home by the back streets, keeping to the shadows in case someone came looking for her, find Momma, admit she had been wrong
   (! NO !)
   The steel in her – and there was a great deal of it suddenly rose up and cried the word out strongly. The closet? The endless, wandering prayers? The tracts and the cross and only the mechanical bird in the Black Forest cuckoo clock to mark off the rest of the hours and days and years and decades of her life?
   Suddenly, as if a videotape machine had been turned on in her mind, she saw Miss Desjardin running toward her, and saw her thrown out of her way like a rag doll as she used her mind on her, without even consciously thinking of it.
   She rolled over on her back, eyes staring wildly at the stars from her painted face. She was forgetting
   (! THE POWER !)
   It was time to teach them a lesson. Time to show them a thing or two. She giggled hysterically. It was one of Momma's pet phrases.
   (momma coming home putting her purse down eyeglasses flashing well i guess i showed that elt a thing or two at the shop today)
   There was the sprinkler system. She could turn it on, turn it on easily. She giggled again and got up, began to walk barefoot back toward the lobby doors. Turn on the sprinkler system and close all the doors. Look in and let them see her looking in, watching and laughing while the shower ruined their dresses and their hairdos and took the shine off their shoes. Her only regret was that it couldn't be blood.
   The lobby was empty. She paused halfway up the stairs and FLEX, the doors all slammed shut under the concentrated force she directed at them the pneumatic door-closers snapping of. She heard some of them scream and it was music, sweet soul music.
   For a moment nothing changed and then she could feel them pushing against the doors, wanting them to open. The pressure was negligible. They were trapped
   (trapped)
   and the word echoed intoxicatingly in her mind. They were under her thumb, in her power. Power! What a word that was!
   She went the rest of the way up and looked in and George Dawson was smashed up against the glass, struggling, pushing, his face distorted with effort. There were others behind him, and they all looked like fish in an aquarium.
   She glanced up and yes, there were the sprinkler pipes, with their tiny nozzles like metal daisies. The pipes went through small holes in the green cinderblock wall. There were a great many inside, she remembered. Fire laws, or something.
   Fire laws. In a flash her mind recalled
   (black thick cords like snakes)
   the power cords strung all over the stage. They were out of the audience's sight, hidden by the footlights, but she had had to step carefully over them to get to the throne. Tommy had been holding her arm.
   (fire and water)
   She reached up with her mind, felt the pipes, traced them Cold; full of water. She tasted iron in her mouth, cold wet metal, the taste of water drank from the nozzle of a garden hose.
   Flex
   For a moment nothing happened. Then they began to back away from the doors, looking around. She walked to the small oblong of glass in the middle door and looked inside.
   It was raining in the gym.
   Carrie began to smile.
   She hadn't gotten all of them, only some. But she found that by looking up at the sprinkler system with her eyes, she could trace its course more easily with her mind. She began to turn on more of the nozzles, and more. Yet it wasn't enough. They weren't crying yet, so it wasn't enough
   (hurt them then hurt them)
   There was a boy up on the stage by Tommy, gesturing wildly and shouting something. As she watched, he climbed down and ran toward the rock band's equipment. He caught hold one of the microphone stands and was transfixed. Carrie watched, amazed, as his body went through a nearly motionless dance of electricity. His feet shuffled in the water, his hair stood up in spikes, and his mouth jerked open, like the mouth of a fish. He looked funny. She began to laugh.
   (by christ then let them all look funny)
   And in a sudden, blind thrust, she yanked at all the power she could feel.
   Some of the lights puffed out. There was a dazzling flash somewhere as a live power cord hit a puddle of water. There were dull thumps in her mind as circuit breakers went into hopeless operation. The boy who had been holding the mike stand fell over on one of his amps and there was an explosion of purple sparks and then the crepe bunting that faced the stage was burning.
   Just below the thrones, a live 220-volt electricity cable was crackling on the floor and beside it Rhonda Simard was doing a crazed puppet dance in her green tulle formal. Its full skirt suddenly blazed into flame and she fell forward, still jerking.
   It might have been at that moment that Carrie went over the edge. She leaned against the doors, her heart pumping wildly, yet her body as cold as ice cubes. Her face was livid, but dull red fever spots stood on each cheek. Her head throbbed thickly, and conscious thought was lost.
   She reeled away from the doors, still holding them shut, doing it without thought or plan. Inside the fire was brightening and she realized dimly that the mural must have caught on fire.
   She collapsed on the top step and put her head down on her knees, trying to slow her breathing. They were trying to get out the doors again, but she held them shut easily that alone was no strain. Some obscure sense told her that a few were getting out the fire doors, but let them. She would get them later. She would get all of them. Every last one.
   She went down the stairs slowly and out the front doors, still holding the gymnasium doors closed. It was easy. All you had to do was see them in your mind.
   The town whistle went off suddenly, making her scream and put her hands in front of her face
   (the whistle it's just the fire whistle)
   for a moment. Her mind's eye lost sight of the gymnasium doors and some of them almost got out. No, no. Naughty. She slammed them shut again, catching somebody's fingers – it felt like Dale Norbert – in the jamb and severing one of them.
   She began to reel across the lawn again, a scarecrow fig with bulging eyes, toward Main Street. On her right was dowtown – the department store, the Kelly Fruit, the beauty parlour and barbershop, gas stations, police station, fire station
   (they'll put out my fire)
   But they wouldn't. She began to giggle and it was an insane sound: triumphant, lost, victorious, terrified. She came to the first hydrant and tried to twist the huge painted lug nut on the side.
   (ohuh)
   It was heavy. It was very heavy. Metal twisted fight to balk here. Didn't matter.
   She twisted harder and felt it give. Then the other side. Then the top. Then she twisted all three at once, standing back, and they unscrewed in a flash. Water exploded outward and upward, one of the lug nuts flying five feet in front of her at suicidal speed. It hit the street, caromed high into the air, and was gone. Water gushed with white pressure in a cruciform pattern.
   Smiling, staggering, her heart beating at over two hundred per minute, she began to walk down toward Grass Plaza. She was unaware that she was scrubbing her bloodied hands against her dress like Lady Macbeth, or that she was weeping even as she laughed, or that one hidden part of her mind was keening over her final and utter ruin.
   Bemuse she was going to take them with her, and there was going to be a great burning, until the land was full of its stink.
   She opened the hydrant at Grass Plaza, and then began to walk down to Teddy's Amoco. It happened to be the first gas station she came to, but it was not the last


   From the sworn testimony of Sheriff Otis Doyle, taken before The State Investigatory Board of Maine (from The White Commission Report), pp. 29-31:
   Q. Sheriff, where were you on the night of May twentyseventh?
   A. I was on Route 179, known as Old Bentown Road, investigating an automobile accident. This was actually over the Chamberlain town line and into Durham, but I was assisting Mel Crager, who is the Durham constable.
   Q. When were you first informed that trouble had broken out at Ewen High School?
   A. I received a radio transmission from Officer Jacob Plessy at 10:21.
   Q. What was the nature of the radio call?
   A. Officer Plessy said there was trouble at the school, but he didn't know if it was serious or not. There was a lot of shouting going on, he said, and someone had pulled a couple of fire alarms. he said He was going over to try and determine the nature of the trouble.
   Q. Did he say the school was on fire?
   A. No, sir.
   Q. Did you ask him to report back to you?
   A. I did.
   Q. Did Officer Plessy report back?
   A. No. He was killed in the subsequent explosion of Teddy's Amoco gas station on the corner of Main and Summer.
   Q. When did you next have a radio communication concerning Chamberlain?
   A. At 10:42. I was at that time returning to Chamberlain with a suspect in the back of my car – a drunk driver. As I have said, the case was actually in Mel Crager's town, but Durham has no jail. When I got him to Chamberlain, we didn't have much of one, either.
   Q. What communication did you receive at 10.42?
   A. I got a call from the State police that had been relayed from the Motton Fire Department The State Police dispatcher said there was a fire and an apparent riot at Ewen High School, and a probable explosion. No one was sure of anything at that time. Remember, it all happened in a space of forty minutes.
   Q. We understand that Sheriff. What happened then?
   A. I drove back to Chamberlain with siren and flasher. I was trying to raise Jake Plessy and not having any luck. That's when Tom Quillan came on and started to babble about the whole town going up in flames and no water.
   Q. Do you know what time that was?
   A. Yes, sir. I was keeping a record by then. It was 10.58.
   Q. Quillan, claims the Amoco station exploded at 11:00.
   A. I'd take the average, sir. Call it 10:59.
   Q. At what time did you arrive in Chamberlain?
   A. At 11: 10 P.M.
   Q. What was your immediate impression upon arriving, Sheriff Doyle?
   A. I was stunned. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
   Q. What exactly were you seeing?
   A. The entire upper half of the town's business section was burning. The Amoco station was gone. Woolworth's was nothing but a blazing frame. The fire had spread to three wooden store fronts next to that – Duffy's Bar and Grille, The Kelly Fruit Company, and the billiard parlour. The heat was ferocious. Sparks were flying on to the roofs of The Maitland Real Estate Agency and Doug Brann's Western Auto Store. Fire trucks were coming in, but they could do very little. Every fire hydrant on that side of the street was stripped. The only tracks doing any business at all were two old volunteer fire department pumpers from Westover. and about all they could do was wet the roofs of the surrounding buildings. And of course the high school. It was just … gone. Of course it's fairly isolated – nothing close enough to it to burn – but my God, all those kids inside … all those kids …
   Q. Did you meet Susan Snell upon entering town?
   A. Yes, sir. She flagged me down.
   Q. What time was this?
   A. Just as I entered … 11:12, no later.
   Q. What did she say?
   A. She was distraught. She'd been in a minor car accident – skidding – and she was barely making sense. She asked me if Tommy was dead. I asked her who Tommy was, but she didn't answer. She asked me if we had caught Carrie yet.
   Q. The Commission is extremely interested in this part of your testimony, Sheriff Doyle.
   A. Yes, sir, I know that.
   Q. How did you respond to her question?
   A. Well, there's only one Carrie in town as far as I know, and that's Margaret White's daughter. I asked her if Carrie had something to do with the fires. Miss Snell told me Carrie had done it. Those were her words. 'Carrie did it. Carrie did it.' She said it twice.
   Q. Did she say anything else?
   A. Yes, sir. She said: 'They've hurt Carrie for the last time.'
   Q. Sheriff, are you sure she didn't say: 'We've hurt Carrie for the last time?'
   A. I am quite sure.
   Q. Are you positive? One hundred per cent?
   A. Sir, the town was burning around our heads. I
   Q. Had she been drinking?
   A. I beg pardon?
   Q. Had she been drinking? You said she had been involved in a car smash.
   A. I believe I said a minor skidding accident.
   Q. And you can't be sure she didn't say we instead Of they?
   A. I guess she might have, but
   Q. What did Miss Snell do then?
   A. She burst into tears. I slapped her.
   Q. Why did you do that?
   A. She seemed hysterical.
   Q. Did she quiet eventually?
   A. Yes, sir. She quieted down and got control of herself pretty well, in light of the fact that her boy friend was probably dead.
   Q. Did you interrogate her?
   A. Well, not the way you'd interrogate a criminal, if that's what you mean. I asked her if she knew anything about what had happened. She repeated what she had already said, but in a calmer way. I asked her where she had been when the trouble began, and she told me that she had been at home.
   Q. Did you interrogate her further?
   A. No, sir.
   Q. Did she say anything else to you?
   A. Yes, sir. She asked me – begged me – to find Carrie White.
   Q. What was your reaction to that?
   A. I told her to go home.
   Q. Thank you, Sheriff Doyle.

  Vic Mooney lurched out of the shadows near the Bankers Trust drive-in office with a grin on his face. It was a huge and awful grin, a Cheshire cat grin, floating dreamily in the fireshot darkness like a trace memory of lunacy. His hair, carefully slicked down for this emcee duties, was now sticking up in a crow's nest. Tiny drops of blood were branded across his forehead from some unremembered fall in his mad flight from the Spring Ball. One eye was swelled purple and screwed shut. He walked into Sheriff Doyle's squad car, bounced back like a pool ball, and grinned in at the drunk driver dozing in the back, then he turned to Doyle, who had just finished with Sue Snell. The fire cast wavering shadows of light across everything, turning the world into the maroon tones of dried blood.
   As Doyle turned, Vic Mooney clutched him. He clutched Doyle as an amorous swam might clutch his lady in a hug dance. He clutched Doyle with both arms and squeezed him, all the while goggling upward into Doyle's face with his great crazed grin.
   'Vic-' Doyle began.
   'She pulled all the plugs,' Vic said lightly,
   'Pulled all the plugs and turned on the water and buzz, buzz, buzz.'
   'Vic-'
   'We can't let 'em. Oh no. NoNoNo. We can't. Carrie pulled all the plugs. Rhonda Simard burnt up. Oh Jeeeeeeeeeesuuuuuuuuusss-'
   Doyle slapped him twice, calloused palm cracking flatly on the boy's face. The scream died with shocking suddenness, but the grin remained, like an echo of evil. It was loose and terrible.
   'What happened?' Doyle said roughly. 'What happened at the school?'
   'Carrie,' Vic Muttered. 'Carrie happened at the school. She. . .'He trailed of and grinned at the ground.
   Doyle gave him three brisk shakes. Vic's teeth clicked together like castanets.
   'What about Carrie?'
   'Queen of the Prom,' Vic muttered. 'They dumped blood on her and Tommy.'
   'What-'
   It was 11: 15. Tony's Citgo on Summer Street suddenly exploded with a great, coughing roar. The street went daylight that made them both stagger back against the police car and shield their eyes. A huge, oily cloud of fire climbed over the elms in Courthouse Park, lighting the duck pond and the Little League diamond in scarlet. Amid the hungry crackling roar that followed Doyle could hear glass and wood and hunks of gas-station cinderblock rattling back to earth. A secondary explosion followed, making them wince again. He still couldn't get it straight
   (my town this is happening in my town)
   that this was happening in Chamberlain, in Chamberlain, for God's sake, where he drank iced tea on his mother's sun porch and refereed PAL basketball and made one last cruise out Route 6 past The Cavalier before turning in at 2:30 every morning. His town was burning UP.
   Tom Quillan came out of the police station and ran down the sidewalk to Doyle's cruiser. His hair was standing up every which way, he was dressed in dirty green work fatigues and an undershirt and he had his loafers on the wrong feet, but Doyle thought he had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. Tom Quillan was as much Chamberlain as anything, and he was there intact.
   'Holy God,' he panted. 'Did you see that?'
   'What's been happening?' Doyle asked curtly.
   'I been monitorin' the radio,' Quillan said, 'Motton and Westover wanted to know if they should send ambulances and I said hell yes, send everything. Hearses too. Did I do right?'
   'Yes.' Doyle ran his hands through his hair. 'Have you seen Harry Block?' Block was the town's Commissioner of Public Utilities, and that included water.
   'Nope. But Chief Deighan says they got water in the old Rennet Block across town. They're laying hose now. I collared some kids, and they're settin' up a hospital in the police station. They're good boys, but they're gonna get blood on your floor, Otis.'
   Otis Doyle felt unreality surge over him. Surely this conversation couldn't be happening in Chamberlain. Couldn't.
   'That's all right, Tommy. You did right. You go back there and start calling every doctor in the phone book. I'm going over to Summer Street.'
   'Okay, Otis. If you see that crazy broad, be careful.'
   'Who?' Doyle was not a barking man, but now he did.
   Tom Quillan flinched back. 'Carrie, Carrie White.'
   'Who? How do you know?'
   Quillan blinked slowly. 'I dunno. It just sort of … came to me.'


   From the national AP ticker, 11:46 Pm:
   CHAMBERLAIN, MAINE (AP)
   A DISASTER OF MAJOR PROPORTIONS HAS STRUCK THE TOWN OF CHAMBERLAIN, MAINE TONIGHT. A FIRE, BELIEVED TO HAVE BEGUN AT EWEN (U-WIN) HIGH SCHOOL DURING A SCHOOL DANCE, HAS SPREAD TO THE DOWNTOWN AREA, RESULTING IN MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS THAT HAVE LEVELLED MUCH OF THE DOWNTOWN AREA. A RESIDENTIAL AREA TO THE WEST OF THE DOWNTOWN AREA IS ALSO REPORTED TO BE BURNING. HOWEVER, MOST CONCERN AT THIS TIME IS OVER THE HIGH SCHOOL WHERE A JUNIOR-SENIOR PROM WAS BEING HELD. IT IS BELIEVED THAT MANY OF THE PROM-GOERS WERE TRAPPED INSIDE. AN ANDOVER FIRE OFFICIAL SUMMONED TO THE SCENE SAID THE KNOWN TOTAL OF DEAD STOOD AT SIXTY-SEVEN. MOST OF THEM HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. ASKED HOW HIGH THE TOTAL MIGHT GO HE SAID: 'WE DON'T KNOW. WE'RE AFRAID TO GUESS. THIS IS GOING TO BE WORSE THAN THE COCONUT GROVE.' AT LAST REPORT THREE FIRES WERE RAGING OUT OF CONTROL IN THE TOWN. REPORTS OF POSSIBLE ARSON ARE UNCONFIRMED. ENDS.
   11:56 PM MAY 27 8943F AP


   There were no more AP reports from Chamberlain. At 12:06 AM., a Jackson Avenue gas main was opened. At 12:17, an ambulance attendant from Motton tossed out a cigarette butt as the rescue vehicle sped toward Summer Street.
   The explosion destroyed nearly half a block at a stroke, including the offices of The Chamberlain Clarion. By 12:18 A.M.. Chamberlain was cut off from the country that slept in reason beyond.
   At 12:10, still seven minutes before the gas-main explosion, the telephone exchange experienced a softer explosion: a complete jam of every town phone line still in operation. The three harried girls on duty stayed at their posts but were utterly unable to cope. They worked with expressions of wooden horror on their faces, trying to place unplaceable calls.
   And so Chamberlain drifted into the streets.
   They came like an invasion from the graveyard that lay in the elbow creek formed by the intersection of The Bellsqueeze Road and Route 6; they came in white nightgowns and in robes, as if in winding shrouds. They came in pyjamas and curlers (Mrs Dawson, she of the now-deceased son who had been a very funny fellow, came in a mudpack as if dressed for a minstrel show); they came to see what happened to their town, to see if it was indeed lying burnt and bleeding. Many of them also came to die.
   Carlin Street was thronged with them, a riptide of them, moving downtown through the hectic light in the sky, when Carrie came out of the Carlin Street Congregational Church, where she had been praying.
   She had gone in only five minutes before, after opening the gas main (it had been easy; as soon as she pictured it lying there under the street it had been easy), but it seemed like hours. She had prayed long and deeply, sometimes aloud, sometimes silently. Her heart thudded and laboured. The veins on her face and neck bulged. Her mind was filled with the huge knowledge of POWERS, and of an ABYSS. She prayed in front of the altar, kneeling in her wet and torn and bloody gown, her feet bare and dirty and bleeding from a broken bottle she had stepped on. Her breath sobbed in and out of her throat, and the church was filled with groanings and swayings and sunderings as psychic energy sprang from her. Pews fell, hymnals flew, and a silver Communion set cruised silently across the vaulted darkness of the nave to crash into the far wall. She prayed and there was no answering. No one was there – or if there was, He/It was cowering from her. God had turned His face away, and why not? This horror was as much His doing as hers. And so she left the church, left it to go home and find her momma and make destruction complete.
   She paused on the lower step, looking at the flocks of people streaming toward the centre of town. Animals. Let them burn, then. Let the streets be filled with the smell of their sacrifice. Let this place be called racca, ichabod, wormwood.
   Flex
   And power transformers atop lightpoles bloomed into nacreous purple light, spitting catherine-wheel sparks. High-tension wires fell into the streets in pick-up-sticks tangles and some of them ran, and that was bad for them because now the whole street was littered with wires and the stink began, the burning began. People began to scream and back away and touched the cables and went into jerky electrical dances. Some had already slumped into the street, their robes and pyjamas smouldering.
   Carrie turned back and looked fixedly at the church she had just left. The heavy door suddenly swung shut, as if in a hurricane wind.
   Carrie turned towards home.


   From the sworn testimony of Mrs Cora Simard, taken before The State Investigatory Board (from The White Commission Report). pp. 217-218:
   Q. Mrs Simard, the Board, understands that you lost your daughter on Prom Night, and we sympathise with you deeply. We will make this as brief as possible.
   A. Thank you. I want to help if I can, of course.
   Q. Were you on Carlin Street at approximately 12.12 when Carietta White came out of the First Congregational Church on that street?
   A. Yes.
   Q. Why were you there?
   A. My husband had to be in Boston over the weekend on business and Rhonda was at the Spring Ball. I was home alone watching TV and waiting up for her. I was watching the Friday Night Movie when the town hall whistle went off, but I didn't connect that with the dance. But then the explosion … I didn't know what to do. I tried to call the police but got a busy signal after the first three numbers. I … I…Then …
   Q. Take your time, Mrs Simard. All the time you need.
   A. I was getting frantic. There was a second explosion – Teddy's Amoco station, I know now – And I decided to go downtown and see what was happening. There was a glow in the sky, an awful glow. That was when Mrs Shyres pounded on the door.
   Q. Mrs Georgette Shyres?
   A. Yes, they live around the corner. 217 Willow. That's just of Carlin Street. She was pounding and calling: 'Cora, are you in there? Are you in there?' I went to the door. She was in her bath-robe and slippers. Her feet looked cold. She said they had called Auburn to see if they knew anything and they told her the school was on fire. I said: 'Oh dear God, Rhonda's at the dance.'
   Q. Is this when you decided to go downtown with Mrs Shyres?
   A. We didn't decide anything. We just went. I put on a pair of slippers – Rhonda's, I think. They had little white puffballs on them. I should have worn my shoes, but I wasn't thinking. I guess I'm not thinking now. What do you want to hear about my shoes for?
   Q. You tell it in your own way, Mrs Simard.
   A. T-Thank you. I gave Mrs Shyres some old jacket that was around, and we went.
   Q. Were there many people walking down Carlin street?
   A. I don't know. I was too upset. Maybe thirty. Maybe more.
   Q. What happened?
   A. Georgette and I were walking toward Main Street, holding hands just like two little girls walking across a meadow after dark. Georgette's teeth were clicking. I remember that. I wanted to ask her to stop clicking her teeth, but I thought it would be impolite. A block and a half from the Congo Church, I saw the door open and I thought: Someone has gone in to ask God's help. But a second later I knew that wasn't true.
   Q. How did you know? It would be logical to assume just what you first assumed, wouldn't it?
   A. I just knew.
   Q. Did you know the person who came out of the church?
   A. Yes. It was Carrie White.
   Q. Had you ever seen Carrie White before?
   A. No. She was not one of my daughter's friends.
   Q. Had you ever seen a picture of Carrie White?
   A. No.
   Q. And in any case, it was dark and you were a block and a half from the church.
   A. Yes, sir.
   Q. Mrs Simard, how did you know it was Carrie White?
   A. I just knew.
   Q. This knowing, Mrs Simard: was it like a light going on in your head?
   A. No, sir.
   Q. What way it
   A. I can't tell you. It faded away the way a dream does. An hour after you get up you can only remember you had a dream. But I knew.
   Q. Was there an emotional feeling that went with this knowledge?
   A. Yes. Horror.
   Q. What did you do then?
   A. I turned to Georgette and said: ‘There she is. Georgette said: 'Yes, that's her.' She started to say something else, and then the whole street was lit up by a bright glow and there were crackling noises and then the power lines started to fall into the street, some of them spitting live sparks. One of them hit a man in front of us and he b-burst into flames. Another man started to run and he stepped on one of them and his body just arched backward, as if his back had turned into elastic. And then he fell down. Other people were screaming and running, just running blindly, and more and more cables fell. They were strung all over the place like snakes. And she was glad about it. Glad! I could feel her being glad. I knew I had to keep my head. The people who were running were getting electrocuted. Georgette said: 'Quick, Cora. Oh God, I don't want to get burned alive.' I said, 'Stop that. We have to use our heads, Georgette, or we'll never use them again.' Something foolish like that. But she wouldn't listen. She let go of my hand and started to ran for the sidewalk. I screamed at her to stop – there was one of those heavy main cables broken off right in front of us – but she didn't listen. And she … she… oh, I could smell her when she started to burn. Smoke just seemed to burst out of her clothes and I thought: that's what it must be like when someone gets electrocuted. The smell was sweet like pork. Have any of you ever smelled that? Sometimes I smell it in my dreams. I stood still, watching Georgette Shyres turn black. There was a big explosion over in the West End – the gas main, I suppose – but I never even noticed it. I looked around and I was all alone. Everyone else had either run away or was burning. I saw maybe six bodies. They were like piles of old rags. One of the cables had fallen on to the porch of a house to the left, and it was catching on fire. I could hear the old-fashioned shake shingles popping like Corn. it seemed like I stood there a long time, telling myself to keep my head. It seemed like hours. I began to be afraid that I would faint and fall on one of the cables, or that I would panic and start to run. Like … like Georgette. So then I started to walk. One step at a time. The street got even brighter, because of the burning house. I stepped over two live wires and went around a body that wasn't much more than a puddle. I-I-I had to look to see where I was going. There was a wedding ring on the body's hand, but it was all black. All black. Jesus, I was Oh dear Lord. I stepped over another one and then there were three, all at once. I just stood there looking at them. I thought if I got over those I'd be all right but … I didn't dare. Do you know what I kept thinking of? 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 P May P 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 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. 15 1):
   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.
   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 Lewiston, 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 eventually to 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 caned 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 dammed and Carrie walked in.
   Her body seemed to have become twisted, shrunken, cronelike. 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'
   'At first it was all right. We lived sinlessly. We slept in the same bed, belly to belly sometimes, and O, 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 o 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's and there was a crazed, awful compassion in them. The fire light was brighter now, dancing on the walls Up 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 on to 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 your is going a little slower now. A little slower.'
   Margaret tried to get up again, failed, and forked the sign of the evil eye at her daughter.
   'A little slower, Momma. Do you know what the present is, Momma? What you always wanted. Darkness. And whatever God lives there.'
   Margaret White whispered: 'Our father, Who art in heaven-'
   'Slower, Momma. Slower.'
   '-hallowed be Thy name-'
   'I can see the blood draining back into you. Slower.'
   '-Thy Kingdom come-'
   'Your feet and hands like marble, like alabaster. White.'
   '-Thy will be done-'
   'My will, Momma. Slower!'
   '-on earth-'
   'Slower.'
   '-as … as … as it…'
   She collapsed forward, hands twitching.
   '-as it is in heaven.'
   Carrie whispered: 'Full stop.'
   She looked down at herself, and put her hands weakly around the haft of the knife.
   (no o no that hurts that's too much hurt)
   She tried to get up, failed, then pulled herself up by Momma's stool. Dizziness and nausea washed over her. She could taste blood, bright and slick, on the back of her throat. Smoke, acrid and choking, was drifting in through the windows now. The flames had reached next door; even now sparks would be lighting softly on the roof that rocks had punched brutally through a thousand years before.
   Carrie went out the back door, staggered across the lawn, and rested
   (where's my momma)
   against a tree. There was something she was supposed to do. Something about
   (roadhouses parking lots)
   the Angel with the Sword. The Fiery Sword.
   Never mind. It would come to her.
   She crossed by back yards to Willow Street and then crawled up the embankment to Route 6.
   It was 1: 15 A.M.

   It was 11:20 P.M. when Christine Hargensen and Billy Nolan got back to The Cavalier. They went up the back stairs, down the hall, and before she could do more than turn on the lights, he was yanking at her blouse.
   'For God's sake let me unbutton it-'
   'To hell with that.'
   He ripped it suddenly down the back. The cloth tore with a sudden hard sound. One button popped free and winked on the bare wood floor. Honky-tonkin' music came faintly up to them, and the building vibrated subtly with the clumsy-enthusiastic dancing of farmers and truckers and millworkers and waitresses and hairdressers, of the greasers and their townie girl friends from Westover and Motton.
   'Hey-'
   'Be quiet.'
   He slapped her, rocking her head back. Her eyes took on a flat and deadly shine.
   'This is the end, Billy.' She backed away from him, breasts swelling into her bra, flat stomach pumping, legs long and tapering in her jeans; but she backed toward the bed. 'It's over.'
   'Sure,' he said. He lunged for her and she punched him, a surprising hard punch that landed on his cheek.
   He straightened and twitched his head a little. 'You gave me a shiner, you bitch.'
   'I'll give you more.'
   'You're goddam right you will.' They stared at each other, panting, glaring. Then he began to unbutton his shirt, a little grin beginning on his face.
   'We got it on, Charlie. We really got it on.' He called her Charlie whenever he was pleased with her. It seemed to be, she thought with a cold blink of humour, a generic term for good cunt.
   She felt a little smile come to her own face, relaxed a little, and that was when he whipped his shirt across her face and came in low, butting her in the stomach like a goat, tipping her on to the bed. The springs screamed. She pounded her fists helplessly on his back.
   'Get off me! Get off me! Get off me! You fucking greaseball, get off me!'
   He was grinning at her, and with one quick, hard yank her zipper was broken, her hips free.
   'Call your daddy?' he was grunting. 'That what you gonna do? Huh? Huh? That it, ole Chuckie? Call big ole legal beagle daddy? Huh? I woulda done it to you, you know that? I woulda dumped it all over your fuckin squash. You know it? Huh? Know it? Pig blood for pigs, right? Right on your motherfucking squash. You-'
   She had suddenly ceased to resist. He paused, staring down at her, and she had an odd smile on her face. 'You wanted it this way all along, didn't you? You miserable little scumbag. That's right, isn't it? You creepy little onenut low-cock dinkless wonder.'
   His grin was slow, crazed. 'It doesn't matter.'
   'No,' she said. 'It doesn't.' Her smile suddenly vanished, the cords on her neck stood out as she hawked back – and spat in his face.
   They descended into a red, thrashing unconsciousness. Downstairs the music thumped and wheezed ('I'm poppin little white pills an my eyes are open wide/Six days on the road and I'm gonna make it home tonight!'), c/w, full throttle, very loud, very bad, five-man band wearing sequined cowboy shirts and new pegged jeans with bright rivets, occasionally wiping mixed sweat and Vitalis from their brows, lead guitar, rhythm, steel, dobro guitar, drums; no one heard the town whistle, or the first explosion, or the second; and when the gas main blew and the music stopped and someone drove into the parking lot and began to yell the news, Chris and Billy were asleep.
   Chris woke suddenly and the clock on the night table said five minutes of one. Someone was pounding on the door.
   'Billy!' the voice was yelling. 'Get up! Hey! Hey!'
   Billy stirred, rolled over, and knocked the cheap alarm clock on to the floor. 'What the Christ?' he said thickly, and sat up. His back stung. The bitch had covered it with long scratches. He'd barely noticed it at the time, but now decided he was going to have to send her home bowlegged. Just to show her who was boss.
   Silence struck him. Silence. The Cavalier did not close until two; as a matter of fact, he could still see the neon twinkling and flicking through the dusty garret window. Except for the steady pounding
   (something happened)
   the place was a graveyard.
   'Billy, you in there? Hey!'
   'Who is it?' Chris whispered. Her eyes were glittering and watchful in the intermittent neon.
   'Jackie Talbot,' he said absently, then raised his voice. 'What?'
   'Lemme in, Billy. I got to talk to you!'
   Billy got up and padded to the door, naked. He unlocked the old-fashioned hook-and-eye and opened it.
   Jackie Talbot burst in. His eyes were wild and his face was smeared with soot. He had been drinking it up with Steve and Henry when the news came at ten minutes of twelve. They had gone back to town in Henry's elderly Dodge convertible, and had seen the Jackson Avenue gas main explode from the vantage point of Brickyard Hill. When Jackie had borrowed the Dodge and started to drive back at 12:30, the town was a panicky shambles.
   'Chamberlain's burning up,' he said to Billy. 'Whole fuckin town. The school's gone. The Centre's gone. West End blew up – gas. And Carlin Street's on fire. And they're saying Carrie White did it!'
   'Oh God,' Chris said. She started to get out of bed and grope for her clothes. 'What did-'
   'Shut up,' Billy said mildly, 'or I'll kick your ass.' He looked at Jackie again and nodded for him to go on.
   'They seen her. Lots of people seen her. Billy, they say she's all covered with blood. She was at that fuckin prom tonight… Steve and Henry didn't get it but … Billy, did you … that pig blood … was it-'
   'Yeah,' Billy said.
   'Oh, no.' Jackie stumbled back against the doorframe. His face was a sickly yellow in the light of the one hall lightbulb. 'Oh Jesus, Billy, the whole town-.'
   'Carrie trashed the whole town? Carrie White? You're full of shit.' He said it calmly, almost serenely. Behind him, Chris was dressing rapidly.
   'Go and look out the window,' Jackie said.
   Billy went over and looked out. The entire eastern horizon had gone crimson, and the sky was alight with it. Even as he looked, three fire trucks screamed by. He could make out the names on them in the glow of the street light that marked The Cavalier's parking lot.
   'Son of a whore,' he said. 'Those trucks are from Brunswick.'
   'Brunswick?' Chris said. 'That's forty miles away. That can't be . . .'
   Billy turned back to Jackie Talbot. 'All right. What happened?'
   Jackie shook his head. 'Nobody knows, not yet. It started at the high school. Carrie and Tommy Ross got the King and Queen, and then somebody dumped a couple of buckets of blood on them and she ran out. Then the school caught on fire, and they say nobody got out. Then Teddy's Amoco blew up, then that Mobil station on Summer Street-!'
   'Citgo.' Billy corrected. 'It's a Citgo.'
   'Who the fuck cares?' Jackie screamed. 'It was her, every place something happened it was her! And those buckets … none of us wore gloves…'
   'I'll take care of it,' Billy said.
   'You don't get it, Billy. Carrie
   'Get out.'
   'Billy-'
   'Get out or I'll break your arm and feed it to you.'
   Jackie backed out of the door warily.
   'Go home. Don't talk to nobody. I'm going to take care of everything.'
   'All right,' Jackie said. 'Okay. Billy, I just thought-'
   Billy slammed the door.
   Chris was on him in a second. 'Billy what are we going to do that bitch Carrie oh my Lord what are we going to-'
   Billy slapped her, getting his whole arm into it, and knocked her on to the floor. Chris sat sprawled in stunned silence for a moment, and then held her face and began to sob.
   Billy put on his pants, his tee shirt, his boots. Then he went to the chipped porcelain washstand in the corner, clicked on the light, wet his head, and began to comb his hair, bending down to see his reflection in the spotted, ancient mirror. Behind him, wavy and distorted, Chris Hargensen sat on the floor, wiping blood from her split lip.
   'I'll tell you what we're going to do,' he said. 'We're going into town and watch the fires. Then we're coming home. You're going to tell your dear old daddy that we were out to The Cavalier drinking beers when it happened. I'm gonna tell my dear ole mummy the same thing. Dig.'
   'Billy, your fingerprints,' she said. Her voice was muffled, but respectful.
   'Their fingerprints,' he said. 'I wore gloves.'
   'Would they tell?' she asked. 'If the police took them in and questioned them-'
   'Sure,' he said. 'They'd tell.' The loops and swirls were almost right. They glistened in the light of the dun, flyspecked globe like eddies on deep water. His face was calm, reposeful. The comb he used was a battered old Ace, clotted with grease. His father had given it to him on – his eleventh birthday, and not one tooth was broken in it. Not one