Carrie

by Stephen King

The ultimate horror, for him as it was for Dickens, is human cruelty, and especially cruelty to children.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows, ha ha ha!”

Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow.

What none of them knew, of course, was that Carrie White was telekinetic.

Carrie stood among them stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color.

Carrie turned off the shower. It died in a drip and a gurgle. It wasn't until she stepped out that they all saw the blood running down her leg.

At sixteen, the elusive stamp of hurt was already marked clearly in her eyes.

Carrie flinched away. At the same instant, a rack of softball bats in the corner fell over with a large, echoing bang. They rolled every which way, making Desjardin jump.

Miss Desjardin cried out with surprise, and it occurred to her (the whole damn place is falling in) that this kind of thing always seemed to happen around Carrie when she was upset, as if bad luck dogged her every step.

If only she could make something like that happen whenever she liked. (just did)

Her mind had . . . had . . . she groped for a word. Had flexed. That was not just right, but it was very close. There had been a curious mental bending, almost like an elbow curling a dumbbell. That wasn't exactly right either, but it was all she could think of. An elbow with no strength. A weak baby muscle. Flex.

There had been other times when Momma had kept her in the closet for as long as a day at a stretch—when

Jesus watches from the wall, But his face is cold as stone, And if he loves me As she tells me Why do I feel so all alone?

She thought of imps and familiars and witches (am i a witch momma the devil's whore) riding through the night, souring milk, overturning butter churns, blighting crops while They huddled inside their houses with hex signs scrawled on Their doors.

In the wake of two hundred deaths and the destruction of an entire town, it is so easy to forget one thing: We were kids. We were kids. We were kids trying to do our best. . . .

She did not know if her gift had come from the lord of light or of darkness, and now, finally finding that she did not care which, she was overcome with an almost indescribable relief, as if a huge weight, long carried, had slipped from her shoulders.

The plumbing ripped loose and still spurting, like arteries ripped free of flesh.

He and George and Frieda had less than two hours to live.

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)

The high beams picked her out in ghastly horror-movie blacks and whites, dripping and clotted with blood. Now much 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 distance from Carlin Street, half fainting, to destroy this roadhouse—perhaps the very one where the doom of her creation had begun.

Time passed. It didn't matter. Macbeth hath murdered sleep and Carrie hath murdered time.

Four hundred and forty are now known dead, eighteen more still unaccounted for. And sixty-seven of the dead were Ewen High School Seniors on the verge of graduation. It is this, perhaps, more than anything else, that has taken the guts out of Chamberlain.

The over-all impression is one of a town that is waiting to die. It is not enough, these days, to say that Chamberlain will never be the same. It may be closer to the truth to say that Chamberlain will simply never again be.

Annie was giggeling and laffing but I was a little skared. Some of them marbles was going right up & down. It remined me of gramma, do you remember when the law came up that time after Pete and there guns flew out of there hands and grammie just laffed and laffed. And she use to be able to make her rocker go even when she wasen in it. It gave me a reel bad turn to think on it. I shure hope she don't get heartspels like grammie did, remember?