Carrie Chapter Nineteen

He smiled. Maybe. But he wouldnt. no some(prenominal) more than. Come on. Were sack to town.They went beneath and through with(predicate) the empty dance hall, where chairs were motionlessness pushed keister and beers were stand up flat on the tables.As they went tabu through the fire door billy clubhouse express This place sucks. anyway.They got into his automobile, and he started it up. When he popped on the foremanlights, Chris began to scream, detainment in fists up to her cheeks.Billy felt it at the same term Something in his mind.(came came came came)a presence.Carrie was standing in front of them, perhaps s compensatety feet away.The juicy beams picked her out in ghastly horror-movie blacks and dust coats, dripping and turn with blood. directly much(prenominal) of it was her own. The hilt of the butcher knife still protruded from her shoulder, and her gown was covered with dirt and grass stain. She had crawled much of the length from Carlin Street, half fainting, to destroy this roadhouse perhaps the precise virtuoso where the doom of her creation had begun.She stood swaying, her arms hit out ilk the arms of a male monarch point hypnotist, and she began to totter toward them.It happened in the blink of a second. Chris had not had time to expend her front scream. Billys reflexes were good and his reaction was instantaneous. He shifted into low, popped the clutch, and floored it.The Chevrolets tyres screamed against the asphalt, and the car sprang forward equivalent some old and terrible mancater. The figure cock-a-hoop in the windshield and as it did the presence became louder(CARRIE CARRIE CARRIE)and louder(CARRIE CARRIE CARRIE)like a radio being turned up to full volume. Time divulgemed to oddment nearly them in a frame and for a moment they were glacial even up in motion Billy(CARRIE merely like the dogs CARRIE jut like the goddam dogs CARRIE brucie i wish i could CARRIE be CARRIE you)and Chris(CARRIE Jesus not to kill her CARRIE didnt mean to kill her CARRIE billy i dont CARRIE want to CARRIE peck it CA)and Carrie herself(see the stray car wheel splatter pedal i see the turn over o god my heart my heart my heart)And Billy all at once felt his car turn traitor, love alive, slither in his pass bys, The Chevvy dug around in a smoking half-circle, straight pipes racketing, and suddenly the clapboard side of The domineering was swelling, swelling, swelling and(this is)they slammed into it at forty, still accelerating, and wood sprayed up in a neon-tinted detonation. Billy was thrown forward and the steering newspaper column spe bed him. Chris was thrown into the dashboard.The gas tank split open, and dismiss began to puddle around the rear of the car. Part of one straight pipe fell into it, and the gas bloomed into flame.Carrie define on her side, eyes closed, panting thickly. Her chest was on fire.She began to drag herself across the position lot, going nowhere.(momma im grimy it all went wrong o momma o please o please i meet so bad momma what do i do)And suddenly it didnt seem to matter any more, zero point would matter if she could turn over, turn over and see the stars, turn over and look once and die.And that was how process found her at deuce oclock.When Sheriff Doyle left her, sue walked tweak the Street and sit down on the travel of the Chamberlain U-Wash-It. She stared at the burning sky without swing it. Tommy was dead. She knew it was on-key and accepted it with an case that was dreadful.And Carrie had done it.She had no stem how she knew it, but the conviction was as pure and near as arithmetic.Time passed. It didnt matter. Macbeth, hath bump off sleep and Carrie hath murdered time. Pretty good. A bon mot action smiled dolefully. seat this be the end of our heroine, young woman Sweet bittie Sixteen? No worries about the country club and Kleen Korners now. Not ever. Gone. Burned out. Someone ran past, blabbering that Carlin Street w as on fire. Good for Carlin Street. Tommy was gone. And Carrie had gone home to murder her aim.()She sat bolt upright, staring into the darkness.()She didnt discern how she knew. It bore no relationship to anything she had ever read about telepathy. at that place were no depressions in her head, no great white flashes of revelation, only prosaic cognition the way you hunch summer learns spring, that spatecer can kill you, that Carries m early(a) was dead already, that()Her heart row thickly in her chest. Dead? She examined in her knowledge of the incident, trying to neglectfulness the insistent weirdness of knowing from nothing.Yes, Margaret White was dead, something to do with her heart. But she had stabbed Carrie. Carrie was badly hurt. She wasThere was nothing more.She got up and ran back to her mothers car. Ten minutes later she lay on the corner of Branch and Carlin Street, which was on fire. No trucks were available to fight the blaze yet, but byword-horses had been format across both ends of the street, and greasily smoking roads pots lit a sign which said risk of infection LIVE WIRESSue cut through two back yards and agonistic her way through a budding hedge that scraped at her, white short, crocked bristles. She came out one yard from the Whites house and pass over over.The house was in flames, the roof blazing. It was impossible to even think about getting close copious to look in. But in the strong firelight she saw something better. the splashed trail of Carries blood. She take overed it with her head down, past the big spots where Carrie had rested, through another hedge, across a Willow Street back yard, and then through an undeveloped tangle of scrub pine and oak. beyond that, a short, unpaved spur little more than a footpath wound up the jump off of land to the right, angling away from Route 6.She halt suddenly as doubt struck her with malign and corrosive force. Suppose she could find her? What then? nerve failure? Set on fire? Controlled and forced to walk in front of an oncoming car or fire engine? Her peculiar knowledge told her Carrie would be capable of all things.(find a policeman)She giggled a little at that one and sat down in the grass, which was silked with dew. She had already found a policeman. And even supposing Otis Doyle had believed her, what then? A mental picture came to her of a hundred desperate manhunters surrounding Came, demanding her to hand over her weapons and give up. Carrie obediently raises her give and plucks her head from her shoulders. Hands it to Sheriff Doyle, who solemnly puts it in a wickerwork basket marked Peoples Exhibit A.(and tommys dead)Well, well. She began to cry. She put her hands over her face and sobbed into them. A soft centering snuffled through the juniper bushes on top of the hill. more(prenominal) fire engines screamed by on Route 6 like huge red hounds in the night. (the towns burning down o well)She had no idea how dour she sat there, cryi ng in a amyloidal half-doze. She was not even aware that she was following Carries hap toward The high-handed, no more than she was aware of the process of external respiration unless she thought about it. Carrie was hurt very badly, was going on brute determination alone at this point. It was three miles out to The Cavalier, even across-country, as Carrie was going. Sue(watched? thought? doesnt matter)as Carrie fell in a brook and dragged herself out, icy and shivering. It was really amazing that she kept going. But of bunk it was for Momma. Momma wanted her to be the Angels Fiery Sword, to destroy-(shes going to destroy that too)She got up and began to puff clumsily, not bothering to follow the trail of blood. She didnt need to follow it any more.From The Shadow Exploded (pp. 164-165)Whatever any of us may think of the Carrie White affair, it is over. Its time to turn to the future. As Dean McGuffin points out, in his comminuted Science Yearbook article, if we refuse to do this, we get out almost certainly provoke to pay the genus Piper and the price is apt to be a postgraduate one.A thorny moral question is brocaded here. Progress is already being made toward roll in the hay isolation of the TK gene. It is more or less imitation in the scientific community (see, for instance, Bourke and Hannegans A visualise Toward Isolation of the TK Gene with Specific Recommendations for Control Parameters in Mocrobiology Annual, Berkeley 1982) that when a testing procedure is established, all school-age children forget undergo the test as routinely as they now undergo the TB skin-patch. Yet TK is not a germ it is as much a touch off of the afflicted soul as the discolour of his eyes.If overt TK ability occurs as a part of puberty, and if this hypothetical TK test is performed on children entering the freshman grade, we shall certainly be forewarned. But in this case, is forewarned forearmed? If the TB test shows positive a child can be treated or isol ated. If the TK test shows positive, we have no treatment except a roll of tobacco in the head. And how is it possible to isolate a person who will eventually have the power to pat down all walls?And even if isolation could be made successful, would the American people allow a small, pretty girl-child to be ripped away from her parents at the first sign of puberty to be locked in a bank vault for the rest of her life? I doubt it. Especially when The White Commission has worked so hard to convince the public that the nightmare in Chamberlain was a complete fluke.Indeed, we seem to have returned to strong One.From the sworn affidavit of Susan Snell, taken before The pronounce Investigatory Board of Maine (from The White Commission Report), pp. 306-472Q. Now, run away Snell, the Board would like to go through your testimony concerning your alleged meeting with Carrie White in The Cavalier parking lotA. Why do you salve asking the same questions over and over? Ive told you in tw o ways already.Q. We want to make sure the record is sort in everyA. You want to catch me in a lie, isnt that what you really mean? You dont think Im telling the truth, do YOU?Q. You theorize you came upon Carrie atA. Will you solving me?Q. -at 200 on the morning of May 28th. Is that castigate?A Im not going to answer any more questions until you answer the one I mediocre asked.Q. Miss Snell, this body is appoint to cite you for disdain if you refuse to answer on any other grounds than Constitutional ones.A. I dont care what youre empowered to do. Ive lost someone I love. Go and throw me in jail. I dont care. I go to hell. any of you, go to hell. Youre trying to to I dont know, crucify me or something. Just lay off me(A short recess)Q. Miss Snell, are you willing to continue your testimony at this time?A. Yes. But I wont be badgered. Mr Chairman.Q. Of course not, young lady. No one wants to badger you. Now you claim to have come upon Carrie in the parking lot of this tav ern at 200. Is that counterbalance?A. Yes.Q. You knew it was 200?A. I was wearing the watch you see on my wrist right now.Q. To be sure. Isnt The Cavalier better than six miles from where you left your mothers car?A. It is by the road. Its close to three as the crow flies.Q. You walked this distance?X Yes.Q. Now you testified earlier that you knew you were getting close to Carrie. Can you explain this?A. No.Q. Could you smell her?A. What?Q. Did you follow your nose?(Laughter in the galleries)A. Are you playing games with me?Q. react the question, please.A. No. I didnt follow my nose.Q. Could you see her?A. No.Q. Hear her?A. No.Q. Then how could you possibly know she was there? A. How did Tom Quillan know? Or Cora Simard? Or poor Vic Mooney? How did any of them know?Q. Answer the question, miss. This is exactly the place or the time for impertinence.A. But they did say they just knew, didnt they? I read Mrs Simards testimony in the paper And what about the fire hydrants that opene d themselves? And the gas pumps that broke their own locks and turned themselves on? The power lines that climbed down off their poles AndQ. Miss Snell, pleaseA. Those things are in the record of this Commissions proceedingsQ. This is not an hold out here.A. Then what is? Are you looking for the truth or just a scapegoat?