Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 31

Epilogue

We are back in the present day, 1983. Dennis has finished his tale of what happened to his best friend Arnie Cunningham. But Dennis’s story is not quite done.

Nor is Christine’s.

Five days after the battle with Christine in Darnell’s garage, they buried the Cunninghams in a family plot. At the service, Rick Mercer tells Dennis that he had some men dump Christine into the crusher behind Darnell’s. One of the men received a bad cut. The man said that the car bit him.

And Leigh? Dennis and she did not live happily ever after. They gave it a go for two years, but found that Arnie (and Christine and Roland D. LeBay) were still between them. It was impossible for them to continue. Leigh left college and moved to Taos, New Mexico, with her husband. Dennis finished college and teaches junior high history. His memories of Arnie are still there, but fading a little each year.

What haven’t faded are the dreams. In his dreams, Christine and Roland D. LeBay are still there, still angry, still hungry.

One more thing… a stray newspaper item that made it onto the Associated Press wire. It seems that out in California, a young man was killed at a drive-in theater he worked at. Some maniac drove his car right through the snack bar after the theater had closed for the night. The young man’s name? Sandor Galton. Perhaps called “Sandy” for short.

Dennis imagines Sandy Galton’s death in California leading to LeBay’s sister in Colorado leading to Leigh in New Mexico leading to George LeBay in Ohio leading back to Dennis.

Christine and LeBay…

Their single-minded purpose…

Their unending fury…

Whelp… we done did it, Blog-o-weeners. We finished Christine by Stephen King. What did yinz think? Personally, I think it’s a pretty good story. Maybe a bit over long — especially that middle section — but overall it works for me.

Maybe I’m just an easy touch? That could be. I always try to approach a book or movie or whatever with an open mind and open heart. I mean… sure… the wonky geography of the book and Dennis and Arnie’s insane love of the Philadelphia Phillies made me madder than a wet hen, but I’m willing to forego any beef I may have with our beloved author because I really dig this epilogue.

I love that since Christine (the car) is a revenant from the 1950s, Christine (the novel) ends on a note similar to a monster movie from the same time period. Think: The Blob being airlifted to the Arctic and the words “The End” morphing into a big, fat question mark. That’s what we have here.

I also like that what causes Dennis to think that Christine has returned from the dead is a newspaper article he just happened to read. You know how I feel about other media showing up in novels and short stories.

In fact, I would have been even happier if the entire article was printed in the book as is. Kind of like the story of Momson, Vermont, in ‘Salem’s Lot. It would have been even more fun if it was a cover story of a tabloid newspaper that Dennis happens to see while in the grocery store checkout line.

One other touch that I quite like is the direction in which Dennis imagines Christine travels. Beginning with Sandy Galton’s murder in California (and Sandy getting flattened in a drive-in theater is another great nod to the monster movies of the 1950s), Christine would have to travel from west to east to reach Dennis. West to east — against the sun. In essence, Christine and LeBay would be traveling back in time to finish slaking the thirst of their shared vengeance.

One bummer about our ending, however, is the fate of Leigh Ackerman (née Cabot). Oh, I’m not talking about her and Dennis breaking up. (I can totally understand that.) I’m not disappointed in her for leaving college early to get married. (It happens. I guess.) I’m certainly not displeased about where she and her hubby end up living. (Taos, New Mexico, is a bee-yoo-tee-ful area of the United States. Lot of artists live there. Dennis Hopper lived there.)

(Maybe ol’ Dennis liked living in Taos a little too much, if you catch my drift.)

No, what burns my biscuits is that Leigh leaves college, gets married, and moves to Taos so she can sell Amway.

What now?

Founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos (yes… that DeVos), Amway (short for “American Way,” natch) is a multi-level marketing company (or MLM for short) that sells health, beauty, and home care products.

Amway has been investigated many times over the years in various countries for alleged fraudulent business practices. In India, in the early 2000s, Amway was identified as a pyramid scheme and its product offerings a masquerade. Some Amway distributor groups have been accused of using “cult-like” tactics to attract new distributors and keep them involved and committed. Allegations include resemblance to a Big Brother organization with a paranoid attitude toward insiders critical of the organization and seminars resembling religious revival meetings.

Naturally, all that hasn’t stopped the company from being a force in U.S. politics. (In fact, it’s probably helped.) Amway is a major contributor to the Republican Party and GOP candidates. (Of course, they are.)

C’mon, Leigh… you can do better! Why not just join The Church of the Sub-Genius, for cryin’ out loud?

Well, it looks like we are almost at the end of the road. It’s been thirty-one days since you took a chance and stuck out your thumb, hoping for a ride. Sure, we took the long way around, but sometimes its the journey and not the destination, amirite? I think we’ve had a pretty good time together. In fact, I had such a good time that I wanna leave you with a little something.

Earlier in our trip, I mentioned that newer editions of Christine did not include the snippets of rock’n roll song lyrics at the head of each chapter. I promised to make a list of all those songs that Stephen King used — and paid good money to use! So… here ya go!

Eddie Cochran - “Somethin' Else”

The Coasters - “Yakety Yak”

Charlie Ryan - “Hot Rod Lincoln”

Beach Boys - “This Car Of Mine”

Jand & Dean - “Surf City”

Glenn Frey - “Partytown”

Bo Diddley - “Road Runner”

Steve Miller Band - “Mercury Blues”

Moon Martin - “Cadillac Walk”

The Beatles - “Drive My Car”

Bruce Springsteen - “Cadillac Ranch”

The Modern Lovers - “Roadrunner”

Chuck Berry - “Maybelline”

Elvis Costello - “Less Than Zero”

Steely Dan - “Deacon Blues”

Beach Boys - “Little Deuce Coupe”

Chuck Berry - “My Mustang Ford”

Janis Joplin - “Mercedes Benz”

Beach Boys - “Shut Down"

Chuck Berry - “No Money Down”

Moon Martin - “She's In Love With My Car”

The Modern Lovers - “Roadrunner”

Chuck Berry - “No Particular Place To Go”

Woody Guthrie - “Riding In My Car”

Bruce Springsteen - “Racing In The Street”

Nervous Norvus - “Transfusion”

The Medallions - “Buick 59"

The Who - “Magic Bus”

Chuck Berry - “You Can't Catch Me”

Bo Diddley - “Who Do You Love"

Bruce Springsteen - “Racing In The Street”

Beach Boys - “409”

Bo Diddley - “Ride On, Josephine”

The Clash - “Brand New Cadillac”

ZZ Top - “Mexican Blackbird”

The Inmates - “I Can’t Sleep”

Howlin’ Wolf - “Ridin’ in the Moonlight”

Chuck Berry - “No Money Down”

Charlie Ryan - “Hot Rod Lincoln”

Beach Boys - “Custom Machine"

Bob Seger - “Mary Lou”

Bruce Springsteen - “Ramrod”

Bruce Springsteen - “Cadillac Ranch”

Bob Dylan - “From A Buick 6”

Beach Boys - “A Young Man Is Gone”

Mark Dinning - “Teen Angel”

Bruce Springsteen - “Wreck On The Highway”

The Doors - “Riders On The Storm"

Jan & Dean - “Dead Man's Curve”

J Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers - “Last Kiss”

Robert Creeley - “I Know A Man”

I am sure some enterprising soul out there has already created a playlist of these songs on some music app out there. Alas, I am not that enterprising soul. Instead, I am taking it upon myself to track down these songs in a more physical form — especially the Moon Martin tracks. I loved those songs!

One last story before I let you out on the sidewalk in front of your house. It’s a quickie, I promise, and one that you might get a kick out of. Have you ever heard the old one about the fellow who ran out of gas and hitched a ride with a mysterious driver who ended up being… a ghost!

Heh-heh-

Oh… you’ve heard that one before? What’s that? You have a story for me? It’s about a guy who picks up a mysterious hitchhiker late one night…

G-G-Gee… I-I-I never heard that one b-b-before. It’s pretty good. Wh-Wh-Where did you say you lived again? This is the address you gave me, but this is the local cemetery. That can’t be right, can it—

Say! Where did you get to? I didn’t even hear the door open and close.

Whelp… let’s just chalk this up to experience, shall we, Blog-o-weeners? You pick up enough hitchhikers, you’re bound to pick up a ghost every so often, amirite? That’s just plain old statistics. 

In the meantime, next time you’re driving the dark back roads around Libertyville and you see someone with their thumb out looking for a ride, maybe you’ll remember what happened here tonight. After all…

Oh, yes… one more thing…

Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 30

Part 3: Chapter 51

It is nearly noon, and Dennis and Leigh point Petunia towards Darnell’s Garage. On the way, they stop at a phone booth to call the Cunningham house to find out if Arnie has made plans to leave Libertyville. Michael answers and is frantic. Arnie, he tells Dennis, has told Regina that he has finally come to his senses about college. He wants to visit Penn State — today! Regina is over the moon, and she agrees. The two of them are leaving that afternoon. Dennis tells Michael to talk to his own father, and then the two of them are to convince Leigh’s family  of what’s going to happen. Then, they are all to gather together at the Cabot’s sturdy brick house. He tells Michael to tell them all to stay off the roads when Arnie and Regina leave town. He also tells Michael that under no conditions should he approach Christine if he sees her.

While opening the garage door at Darnell’s, Dennis falls and re-injures his leg. The pain is excruciating. Unable to work Petunia’s clutch with his left leg, Dennis downs a handful of painkillers and builds a makeshift lever out of a mop handle. While they wait, Dennis lays out his plan: at dusk, they will open the door to the garage. When Christine enters Darnell’s, Leigh (hiding from sight) will step out of the garage as she hits the button of the automatic door opener. With the heavy duty door shut behind her, Christine will be trapped. Dennis will use Petunia to batter Christine to death.

Dennis falls asleep while they wait. When he wakes up, it is dark and snowing harder. Leigh exits Petunia to walk towards her hiding place. Before she can reach it, Christine, who was laying in wait just outside the garage, pins her in place with her headlights. Christine leaps forward to run Leigh down. Before she can, however, Leigh hits the button and closes the door. Christine is trapped inside, but so is Leigh.

Fighting the truck’s clutch, Dennis manages to protect Leigh, who wanders about the garage dazedly after hitting her head during her initial escape. After being struck by Petunia, Christine’s passenger door opens to reveal the corpse of Michael Cunningham. Dennis rams Christine again, and he sees the grinning face of Roland LeBay sitting behind the wheel.

As Christine tries again and again to get at Leigh, Dennis sees that all the damage he has caused her is quickly repairing itself. Dennis sends Petunia into Christine again and again, crushing Christine with every impact. LeBay screams his defiance, but Dennis keeps driving the truck into Christine until her engine dies. Then, he passes out.

Dennis comes to with Leigh leaning over him. While he was passed out, she tells him, she ran outside and stopped a snow plow. She told the driver to call the police. While they wait for the cops, Christine starts to rejuvenate, the dents in her chassis smoothing out, her tires inflating, her engine revving. Together, Dennis and Leigh get Petunia rolling again. Just as they set to batter Christine into submission one last time, the ghosts of LeBay’s wife and daughter appear. Ignoring them, Dennis smashes into Christine again and again and again until she is nothing but a spread-out pile of junk.

Days later, Dennis comes to in the hospital. Sitting in his hospital room is State Police Inspector Rick Mercer. Mercer gives Dennis the good news that his fall outside Darnell’s hadn’t re-broken his leg. He also passes along the bad news that Arnie and his mother were killed in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Witnesses seem to think that there was a fight happening in the car between Arnie and a third person. Police chalk it up to a hitchhiker the Cunninghams had picked up, but Dennis knows it was LeBay. Giving up on Christine when it seemed as though she was lost, LeBay had tried to take back possession of Arnie. Arnie, however, had fought him off and, being the consummate chess player he was, had at least earned a draw…

There we have it, Blog-o-weeners. Oh, I know we still have one more day to go, but that’s just the dénouement. For all intents and purposes, Chapter 51 is the real end of Christine — in every sense of the word.

I like that King gives Arnie one last chance to be something of a hero. Sacrificing himself (and his mother) to rid the world of Roland D. LeBay is a proper end. I think we had all known for some time now that things would not end well for him. He was just too far gone. So, at the end, as King would say in another, earlier novel, Arnie made his stand.

In John Carpenter’s film adaptation of Christine, because there is no Roland LeBay character, Arnie is more culpable in Christine’s murders. In fact, for the final showdown in the film, Christine doesn’t ride alone. Arnie is there with her as an active participant. I prefer the more tragic depiction of Arnie in the book. This isn’t to say that Arnie has no responsibility for what happened. He had plenty of moments of clarity, where he knew what he was doing was wrong. It’s just that his addiction to Christine was just too strong for him to fight. One wonders if this is the way that King himself saw his own addiction and his own end.

I mentioned before that in earlier editions of Christine, King used lyrics from rock’n roll songs as epigraphs at the heads of each chapter. These songs — by artists such Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, and Moon Martin (a new favorite of mine!) — were almost exclusively about cars in some way. Here, in Chapter 51, we don’t get a snippet of a rock’n roll song, we get an entire poem by Robert Creeley.

Who now?

Born in 1926, American poet Robert White Creeley wrote more than sixty books in his lifetime. He entered Harvard in 1943, but left briefly to serve in the American Field Service in Burma and India in 1944–1945. He returned to Harvard in 1946, but left again to earn his BA from Black Mountain College in 1955.

Located in North Carolina, Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 and ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational philosophy, emphasizing holistic learning and the study of art as central to a liberal arts education. While at Black Mountain, Creeley met and worked with a group of writers and artists who formed the core of the so-called Black Mountain poets. (Though many of their number thought the idea of their forming a special group or poetical movement ridiculous.) These poets formed the backbone of the American avant-garde and post-modern movement for years to come. They included Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn.

My favorite thing about Creeley was how supportive of any artist he was regardless of fame or affiliation. Being responsive to the needs of others appeared to be essential to his personal ethics, and he seemed to take this responsibility extremely seriously, in both his life and his craft. He believed in artists helping artists, I guess.

Speaking of literature, Leigh finds examples in Darnell’s bathroom of another great American literary tradition: the sex book. When Leigh presents Dennis with the mop handle, he asks her where she found it:

“‘In the bathroom,’ she said, and wrinkled her nose.

‘Bad in there?’

‘Dirty, reeking of cigars, and there’s a whole pile of moldy books in the corner. The kind they sell at those little hole-in-the-wall stores.’

So that was what Darnell left behind him, [Dennis] thought: an empty garage, a pile of Beeline Books, and a phantom reek of Roi-Tan cigars.’” (473-4)

Beeline Books began life in the early 1960s publishing racy, pop-culture books. (Think: sexy spoofs of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. entitled The Girl from B.U.S.T.) They didn’t get into the type of books that Leigh and Dennis discover in Darnell’s bathroom (Good lord! Choke!) until the late-1960s after other publishers such as Greenleaf and Grove Press had won their own censorship battles. Beeline continued to provide men who could read with one hand with a steady production of sex books well into the 1990s.

Another type of literature altogether is being read by Rick Mercer as he waits for Dennis to wake up in the hospital.

Born in 1916 in Sharon, Pennsylvania, (which is about 70 miles north of Pittsburgh, close to the Ohio state border), John Dann MacDonald was best known for his crime and suspense novels, especially those starring his character Travis McGee. MacDonald also wrote the novel The Executioners (1957), which was filmed twice as Cape Fear, once in 1962 and again in 1991, and adapted in this past year as a television series.

Stephen King is a big admirer of John D. MacDonald’s, calling him “the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.” King first encountered MacDonald’s work in 1959 with Murder in the Wind. He said that it taught him that it was possible to 

“[tell] the truth about life even while you were writing for the popular market, so often regarded by those self-esteeming English profs as a market made up of closet sadists, lowbrow truck-drivers, and bored housewives. But even at twelve, with no more experience of life than a rural upbringing could afford, I knew the feel of the real when it touched me in that book. How could I, or anyone, not feel it? Murder in the Wind did not reach out and touch you; it grabbed you, jerked you into a dark alley, and assaulted you.”

In the lead up to publishing his first collection of short stories, Night Shift (1978), King’s editor and mentor Bill Thompson asked him who he would like to write the introduction. King answered automatically, “John D. MacDonald.” Thompson thought that was a great idea, but King did not think it was likely to happen.

Much to his delight, however, MacDonald told him that he would read the stories and, if he liked them, would send along the introduction. A few weeks later, he did just that. Written at a time before Stephen King had become “Stephen King” and before MacDonald and King had ever met, King never forgot the man’s generosity. It is obvious that MacDonald’s short piece — a discussion of the art of writing, as well as the art of being a writer — was done because he honestly liked the stories, as well as the craft wielded by the man behind them.

I can’t believe that tomorrow is the final day of Blog-o-ween 2026. It has been one helluva long haul, but we finally made it. Well, almost… you still have to read the book’s Epilogue. It’s only six pages. You should be able to finish it up while I hit that bookstore next to the motel.

Don’t look at me like that. I just want to see if they have a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

One last thing before we call it a night… Dennis mentions that the triple funeral for the Cunningham family was

“reported [as] a tragic and bizarre fairy tale — father killed in driveway car accident while mother and son are killed on Pennsylvania turnpike. Paul Harvey used it on his program.” (496)

Who now?

Paul Harvey Aurandt was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1918. For over fifty years on ABC News Radio, Harvey’s broadcasts reached as many as 24 million people per week. He was carried on 1,350 commercial radio stations, on 400 American Forces Network stations, and in 300 newspapers.

Harvey’s most famous creation was a Monday-through-Saturday radio program entitled The Rest of the Story. That phrase — “…and now you know the rest of the story.” — had been a part of Harvey’s newscasts since before the Second World War. The Rest of the Story premiered on May 10, 1976. It consisted of true stories on a variety of subjects with some key element of the story held back until the end. These broadcasts always concluded with a variation on the tagline, “And now you know… the rest of the story.”

Unfortunately, Harvey was also a friend of both FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and US Senator Joseph McCarthy. Harvey would often submit copies of his radio scripts to Hoover for the man’s approval. Harvey was also a ardent supporter of McCarthy’s campaign to expose and expel communists from American society and government. So, I guess I can end this post by saying, “And now you know…”

Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 29

Part 3: Chapter 50

After his confrontation with Arnie in the school parking lot, Dennis heads to Johnny Pomberton’s place to pick up Petunia. Who is Petunia? She is a large tanker truck with a 20,000 gallon capacity. Capacity for what?

Kaka.

What else would a shitter drive?

Dennis heads to the Libertyville Lunch, a local diner, and calls Leigh. He tells her to come meet him and bring painkillers. His leg is acting up, and he is going to need to be operating at as close to 100% as he can get. The end, he knows, is nigh…

I almost feel as though we could end today’s post right here and now, Blog-o-weeners. Chapter 50 is not only short, but it is pretty useless, too. I kind of understand why it is on its own, though. Dramatically speaking, the previous chapter needed to end with Dennis’s face-to-face-to-face with Arnie and LeBay. The next chapter (spoiler alert!) is the final showdown, so it needs to sit on its own. This chapter… well… it’s just a placeholder.

As someone who just finished writing a novel (..cough-cough… shameless self-promotion…), I understand how hard it is to tear out underperforming chapters. You ask yourself, “Do I really need to say all this or could it be hinted at in a paragraph or two in another chapter?” This is a chapter that could have been (and probably should have been) a paragraph or two somewhere else — if for no other reason than to end the book with an even fifty chapters.

What can we actually talk about here…

Well, we have another motor vehicle with a woman’s name for one thing. Both Johnny Pomberton and Dennis refer to Petunia as “she.”

Say! That means we’re gonna have two “females” going head-to-head in the last chapter. It’s Christine vs. Petunia. You know what that means?

Petunia is huge tanker truck painted pink like a pig. More than likely, she is named after Porky Pig’s girlfriend.

Who now?

Petunia Pig was the creation of Frank Tashlin in the 1937 short Porky's Romance. Later, after Tashlin left Warner Bros. Studio in 1938, Bob Clampett redesigned Petunia. She was given dark hair tied in pigtails (natch), and her personality was not as overbearing. Sadly, the character was retired soon thereafter due to her relative unpopularity.

Maybe Porky complained that she was hogging the spotlight?

I like that Dennis calls Leigh from a diner pay phone. Back in the day, diners were a ubiquitous part of every Pittsburgh neighborhood. There was nothing I looked forward to more after a night of barhopping and beers than a trip down to De Luca’s in the Strip District on a Sunday morning for a post-hangover plate of eggs, bacon, and potatoes. And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

Unfortunately, with rising inflation costs putting the pinch on both businesses and their customers, it seems that the good ol’ American diner is on the endangered species list. It is getting harder and harder for mom-and-pop diners to keep up with gutless, corporate slophouses like Denny’s. If you have an independently-owned greasy spoon near you — preferably one that was a train car in a previous life — then stop in for a visit. I mean, where else are you gonna meet a short-order cook named Dutzer?

It feels weird to pull off the road while it is still daylight, but that’s our motel up ahead. There’s a diner just across the street that is still serving breakfast, so while we’re waiting for our pancakes and bacon to hit the table, let’s talk about Frye boots.

Say what?

When Leigh shows up at the Libertyville Lunch, she is sporting a “fur-fringed parka and faded jeans. The jeans were tucked into battered Frye boots” (464).

Founded in 1863 in Marlboro, Massachusetts, The Frye Company quickly became the leader in the manufacturing of shoes, boots and other leather accessories. (I wonder what those would be? Heh-heh-heh!) Frye’s customers include such celebrities as Jackie Kennedy, Bing Crosby, Jerry Lewis, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Ann-Margret, Walt Frazier, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Candice Bergen, Liza Minnelli, Carole King, Gene Autry, and President Richard Nixon. The company is still going strong today.

Woof… I don’t think I can eat another bite. Those pancakes were bigger than my head, as well as my stomach. While I go back to our room and drop into a deep, deep coma, you should read Part 3: Chapter 51. It is longer than the other chapters we’ve read recently, but it is what we’ve been waiting for for the past 460-some-odd pages. That’s right: it’s Christine vs. Petunia! It’s Dennis and Leigh vs. LeBay and Christine! It’s the final battle for all the marbles! It’s the “Barrage in the Garage”! It’s—

All right, all right!

Sheesh.

Man, why did you let me eat so much? You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson by now: stop eating after the sixth chocolate chip pancake. How do you do it? How do you know when to say when? What’s that? By watching me? How does watching me help you… oh, wait… I get it… 

Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 28

Part 3: Chapter 49

It is Friday, 19 January 1979. After getting the keys to Darnell’s Garage off of Jimmy Sykes, Dennis drives to school to wait for Arnie. This is the prelude to the end game that Dennis knows is coming.

Slouched down in his car, Dennis lets Arnie walk past him in the parking lot so that he can get between his friend and the car — the drug — that has destroyed him. Springing out from his hiding place, Dennis tries to push through LeBay’s facade to reach Arnie. He taunts the ghost of the older man until, finally, Arnie’s face changes and LeBay appears.

Dennis tells LeBay that he and Leigh know the truth, and that a whole lot of other people are beginning to put two and two together, as well. LeBay lashes out at Dennis, knocking him to the ground. Arnie, horrified at what he has done, comes back to himself and begs Dennis to help him. He tells Dennis that LeBay is always with him… except when Christine rolls on her own. At those moments, Arnie is finally left alone, and LeBay joins Christine.

Dennis challenges LeBay to one last duel at Darnell’s Garage. Winner take all…

Didn’t I tell you this chapter was good’un? I love a good confrontation scene before the big showdown, when the hero finally gets the nerve to stand up to the blackhat and say, “No more.”

Dennis mentions that LeBay, in death as in life, is “extraordinarily good at getting through to people, at finding their soft spots” (454). It must be said, however, that Dennis is equally good at finding the chink in LeBay’s armor, that one place through which Arnie can still be reached:

“‘How’s your cunt, Dennis?’ [LeBay] asked…

I took two shuffling steps forward on my crutches while he stood there, smiling with the corners of his mouth down.

‘How did you like it when Repperton called you Cuntface?’ I asked him. ‘Did you like it so well you want to turn it around and use it on somebody else?’

Part of him seemed to flinch at that — something that was maybe only in his eyes — but the contemptuous, watchful smile remained on his lips…

‘Or what about in fifth grade, when Tommy Deckinger used to call you Fart-Breath?” I asked, my voice rising… ‘Did you like that? And do you remember when Ladd Smythe was a patrol-boy and he pushed you down in the street and I pulled his hat off and stuffed it down his pants? Where you been, Arnie? This guy LeBay is a Johnny-come-lately. Me, I was here all along.’” (454)

The memories of the bullying that Arnie endured and the one friend that stood next to him throughout it begins to chip away at LeBay’s defenses. We know Arnie is in there, somewhere.

But so, too, is LeBay. Dennis keeps poking and prodding until the ghost of the old man is forced to come to the fore, and we get a moment of body horror worthy of a David Cronenberg film:

“And he did [come out]… but in Arnie’s face this time, and that was more terrible that all the skulls and skeletons and comicbook horrors ever thought of. Arnie’s face changed. A sneer bloomed on his lips like a rancid rose. And I saw him as he must have been back when the world was young and a car was all a young man needed to have; everything else would just automatically follow. I saw George LeBay’s big brother” (455)

Later, when Dennis uses their shared memories of the ant farms they kept together, Arnie and LeBay begin fighting and the battlefield is Arnie’s face:

“And suddenly the calm hardness broke. His face — his face roiled. I don’t know how else to describe it. LeBay was there, furious at having to put down a kind of internal mutiny. Then Arnie was there — drawn, tired, ashamed, but most of all, desperately unhappy.” (456)

It is moments like these that bring back the memory of another desperately unhappy addict who is being pulled in two directions at once: The Shining’s Jack Torrance. Towards the end of that novel, Jack chases his son, Danny, through the hotel, threatening to kill the boy with a roque mallet. Cornered, Danny reaches through the Outlook Hotel’s ghosts to touch his father’s heart one last time. Jack comes to himself, briefly, telling Danny to run away. The ghosts take over, forcing Jack to smash his own face — as well as his identity, and his humanity — with the mallet.

Whereas Jack Torrance was an alcoholic (and the hotel used his addiction against him), Arnie’s addiction is for Christine. We’ve seen plenty of moments where he runs back to her open arms like a alcoholic does to the bottle. In this chapter, Arnie is desperate to get back to Christine, but Dennis blocks his way. This is a kind of intervention, in a way.

Dennis tells LeBay that more and more people are beginning to suspect the truth behind the murders that have been happening in Libertyville. LeBay tries to laugh it off, telling Dennis, “And where will that get you? The asylum over at Reed City?” (457).

There is no Reed City near Pittsburgh, but there was an asylum nearby in the late-1970s. When I was kid, if we thought a friend was crazy, we would tell them that the men in white coats were coming to take them away to Dixmont.

Built in 1862 in Emsworth, Pennsylvania, (just down the road from where I went to high school), Dixmont State Hospital was once a state-of-the-art institution for caring for the mentally ill. From its beginning, it was completely self-sustaining. It had its own farmlands, livestock, rail station, and post office. Also part of the facility was a water treatment plant, a sewage treatment plant, and electricity generating facilities. They had their own butchers, bakers, farmhands, electricians, laborers, pipe fitters, botanists, chefs, and even a barber and a dentist. The hospital’s campus sprawled over 407 acres. It’s main building was called Reed Hall, so perhaps that is where King came up with the name of Reed City.

A decline in funding for state hospitals and changing philosophies in psychiatric care caused the hospital to finally close in 1984. The campus was abandoned for two decades. Reed Hall burned in a fire in 1995, and the rest of the site was demolished in 2006.

For a time, Walmart was preparing the site for redevelopment, but excavation destabilized the hillside and landslides covered Pennsylvania Route 65 and the Pittsburgh Line railroad tracks on the Ohio River side, shutting them both down for weeks. Kilbuck Township residents feared another collapse, and Walmart decided not to build on the property. As of 2007, the land was left to return to nature.

One wonders what… or who… caused that landslide…

I like that Dennis assures LeBay that he can’t keep getting away with using Arnie as a stalking horse because people in the 1970s are more credulous than they were in LeBay’s time:

“‘Oh, we won’t be taken seriously at first,’ I said. ‘I give you that. But that stuff about how they put you in the loonybin as soon as you start talking about ghosts and demons… uh-uh, LeBay. Maybe in your day, before flying saucers and The Exorcist and that house in Amityville. These days a hell of a lot of people believe in that stuff… It’s going to happen… People are only rational on the surface. They still toss salt over their  left shoulder if they spill the shaker, they don’t walk under ladders, they believe in survival after death.’” (457-8)

That hits LeBay right where he lives. Who knew you could scare a ghost just by watching In Search Of… and picking up a Time-Life series of books?

Whoa! I was having such a good time today that I darn near drove past the motel. While I do a U-turn up at the light, lemme mention one last reference that Dennis makes.

When he first gets out of the car to confront Arnie/LeBay, Dennis says that he feels “a little bit like Fred MacMurray in that old picture Double Indemnity” (453).

Who now?

Born in 1908, Frederick Martin MacMurray was a film actor and TV star with a career that spanned nearly fifty years. He played in mostly light, comic roles until he starred in Billy Wilder’s 1944 adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel Double Indemnity. In that classic film noir, MacMurray plays insurance man Walter Neff who plans the murder of a Mr. Dietrichson with the man’s wife, Phyllis, played exquisitely by Barbara Stanwyck. The set-up to the murder (and what Dennis is referencing) is that Neff, while pretending to be an injured Dietrichson, hobbles around on crutches on board a train. Neff leaps from the back of the slow moving locomotive, and he and Phyllis throw the dead body of her husband on the tracks.

From 1959 to 1973, MacMurray also appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Follow Me, Boys!, and The Happiest Millionaire. At this time he also starred in the television series My Three Sons.

Can you believe we only have three chapters remaining in Christine? Actually… it’s only two chapters and an Epilogue, if ya wanna get all pedantic about it… and you know I do. Tomorrow is gonna be another quickie. Part 3: Chapter 50 is only around six pages long. We finally learn what Dennis plans to use to combat LeBay and Christine, and I must say that it looks like he’s gonna go hog-wild on the two of them for what they did to his friend. No shit!

In the meantime, since you don’t have a lot of official reading to do, maybe it’s time for you to bone up on other supernatural goings-on. I’ve brought my copies of Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown along for the ride. Just in case Dennis fails in his bid to defeat Christine, I think we should be prepared for anything. After all…