His mother's voice in his head: Don't let yourself get out of control, honey. She was dead and still wouldn't stop giving advice. Teach her a lesson, but make it a little one.
And he really might have managed to do that, but then her robe came open and she was naked underneath it. He could see the dark patch of hair over her breeding-farm, her goddam itchy breeding-farm that was all the f**king trouble, when you got right down to it those farms were all the f**king trouble in the world, and his head was throbbing, thudding, whamming, smashing, splitting. It: felt like it was going to go thermonuclear at any moment. A perfect little mushroom cloud would shoot out of each ear just before everything exploded above the neck, and Junior Rennie (who didn't know he had a brain tumor - wheezy old Dr Haskell had never even considered the possibility, not in an otherwise healthy young man hardly out of his teens) went crazy. It wasn't a lucky morning for Claudette Sanders or Chuck Thompson; in point of fact, it wasn't a lucky morning for anyone in Chester's Mill.
But few were as unlucky as the ex-girlfriend of Frank DeLesseps.
4
She did have two more semi-coherent thoughts as she leaned against the newel post and looked at his bulging eyes and the way he was biting his tongue - biting it so hard his teeth sunk into it.
He's crazy. I have to call the police before he really hurts me.
She turned to run down the front hall to the kitchen, where she would pull the handset off the wall phone, punch 911, and then just start screaming. She got two steps, then stumbled on the towel she'd wrapped around her hair. She regained her balance quickly - she had been a cheerleader in high school and those skills hadn't left her - but it was still too late. Her head snapped back and her feet flew out in front of her. He had grabbed her by her hair.
He yanked her against his body. He was baking, as if with a high fever. She could feel his heartbeat: quick-quick, running away with itself.
'You lying bitch!' he screamed directly into her ear. It sent a spike of pain deep into her head. She screamed herself, but the sound seemed faint and inconsequential compared to his. Then his arms were wrapped around her waist and she was being propelled down the hall at a manic speed, nothing but her toes touching the carpet. Something went through her mind about being the hood ornament on a runaway car, and then they were in the kitchen, which was filled with brilliant sunshine.
Junior screamed again. This time not with rage but pain.
5
The light was killing him, it was frying his howling brains, but he didn't let it stop him. Too late for that now.
He ran her straight into the Formica-topped kitchen table without slowing. It struck her in the stomach, then slid and slammed into the wall. The sugar bowl and the salt and pepper went flying. Her breath escaped her in a big woofing sound. Holding her around the waist with one hand and by the wet snaggles of her hair with the other, Junior whirled her and threw her against the Coldspot. She struck it with a bang that knocked off most of the fridge; magnets. Her face was dared and paper-pale. Now she was bleeding from her nose as well as her lower lip. The blood was brilliant against her white skin. He saw her eyes shift toward the butcher block filled with knives on the counter, and when she tried to rise, he brought his knee into the center of her face, hard. There was a muffled crunching sound, as if someone had dropped a big piece of china - a platter, maybe - in another room.
It's what I should have done to Dale Barbara, he thought, ard stepped back with the heels of his palms pressed against his throbbing temples. Tears from his watering eyes spilled down his cheeks. He had bitten his tongue badly - blood was streaming down his chin and pattering on the floor - but Junior wasn't aware of it. The pain in his head was too intense.
Angie lay facedown among the fridge magnets. The largest said WHAT GOES IN YOUR MOUTH TODAY SHOWS UP ON YOUR ASS TOMORROW. He thought she was out, but all at once she began to shiver all over. Her fingers trembled as it' she were preparing to play something complex on the piano. (Only instrument this bitch ever played is the skinflute, he thought.) Then her legs began to crash up and down, and her arms followed suit. Now Angie looked like she was trying to swim away from him. She was having a goddam seizure.
'Stop it!' he shouted. Then, as she voided herself: 'Step it! Stop doing that, you bitch!'
He dropped on his knees, one on each side of her head, which was now bobbing up and down. Her forehead repeatedly smacked the tile, like one of those camel jockeys saluting Allah.