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Margaret Brigham, who was then almost thirty, began attending fundamentalist prayer meetings. Her mother had become involved with a new man (Harold Allison, whom she later married) and they both wanted Margaret out of the house-she believed her mother, Judith, and Harold Allison were living in sin and made her views known frequently. Judith Brigham expected her daughter to remain a spinster the rest of her life. In the more pungent phraseology of her soon-to-be stepfather, “Margaret had a face like the ass end of a gasoline truck and a body to match.” He also referred to her as “a little prayin' Jesus.”

Margaret refused to leave until 1960, when she met Ralph White at a revival meeting. In September of that year she left the Brigham residence in Motton and moved to a small flat in Chamberlain Center.

The courtship of Margaret Brigham and Ralph White terminated in marriage on March 23,1962. On April 3,1962, Margaret White was admitted briefly to Westover Doctors Hospital.

“Nope, she wouldn't tell us what was wrong,” Harold Allison said. “The one time we went to see her she told us we were living in adultery even though we were hitched, and we were going to hell. She said God had put an invisible mark on our foreheads, but she could see it. Acted crazy as a bat in a henhouse, she did. Her mom tried to be nice, tried to find out what the matter with her was. She got hysterical and started to rave about an angel with a sword who would walk through the parking lots of roadhouses and cut down the wicked. We left.”

Judith Allison, however, had at least an idea of what might have been wrong with her daughter; she thought that Margaret had gone through a miscarriage. If so, the baby was conceived out of wedlock. Confirmation of this would shed an interesting light on the character of Carrie's mother.

In a long and rather hysterical letter to her mother dated August 19, 1962, Margaret said that she and Ralph were living sinlessly, without “the Curse of Intercourse.” She urged Harold and Judith Allison to close their “abode of wickedness” and do likewise. “It is,” Margaret declares near the end of her letter, “the oney [sic] way you & That Man can avoid the Rain of Blood yet to come. Ralph & I, like Mary & Joseph, will neither know or polute [sic] each other's flesh. If there is issue, let it be Divine.”

Of course, the calendar tells us that Carrie was conceived later that same year

 

The girls dressed quietly for their Monday morning Period One gym class, with no horseplay or little screaming catcalls, and none of them were very surprised when Miss Desjardin slammed open the locker-room door and walked in. Her silver whistle dangled between her small breasts, and if her shorts were the ones she had been wearing on Friday, no trace of Carrie's bloody handprint remained.

The girls continued to dress sullenly, not looking at her.

“Aren't you the bunch to send out for graduation,” Miss Desjardin said softly. “When is it? A month? And the Spring Ball even less than that. Most of you have your dates and gowns already, I bet. Sue, you'll be going with Tommy Ross. Helen, Roy Evarts. Chris, I imagine that you can take your pick. Who's the lucky guy?”

“Billy Nolan,” Chris Hargensen said sullenly.

“Well, isn't he the lucky one?” Desjardin remarked. “What are you going to give him for a party favor, Chris, a bloody Kotex? Or how about some used toilet paper? I understand these' things seem to be your sack these days.”

Chris went red.” I'm leaving. I don't have to listen to that.”

Desjardin had not been able to get the image of Carrie out of her mind all weekend, Carrie screaming, blubbering, a wet napkin plastered squarely in the middle of her pubic hair-and her own sick, angry reaction.

And now, as Chris tried to storm out past her, she reached out and slammed her against a row of dented, olive-colored lockers beside the inner door. Chris's eyes widened with shocked disbelief. Then a kind of insane rage filled her face.

“You can't hit us!” she screamed. “You'll get canned for this! See if you don't, you bitch!”

The other girls winced and sucked breath and stared at the floor. It was getting out of hand. Sue noticed out of the corner of her eye that Mary and Donna Thibodeau were holding hands.

“I don't really care, Hargensen,” Desjardin said. “If you-or any of you girls-think I'm wearing my teacher hat right now, you're making a bad mistake. I just want you all to know that you did a shitty thing on Friday. A really shitty thing.”

Chris Hargensen was sneering at the floor. The rest of the girls were looking miserably at anything but their gym instructor. Sue found herself looking into the shower stall-the scene of the crime-and jerked her glance elsewhere. None of them had ever heard a teacher call anything shitty before.

“Did any of you stop to think that Carrie White has feelings? Do any of you ever stop to think? Sue? Fern? Helen? Jessica? Any of you? You think she's ugly. Well, you're all ugly. I saw it on Friday morning.”

Chris Hargensen was mumbling about her father being a lawyer.

“Shut up!” Desjardin yelled in her face. Chris recoiled so suddenly that her head struck the lockers behind her. She began to whine and rub her head.

“One more remark out of you,” Desjardin said softly, “and I'll throw you across the room. Want to find out if I'm telling the truth?”

Chris, who had apparently decided she was dealing with a madwoman, said nothing.

Desjardin put her hands on her hips. “The office has decided on punishment for you girls. Not my punishment, I'm sorry to say. My idea was three days' suspension and refusal of your prom tickets.”

Several girls looked at each other and muttered unhappily.

“That would have hit you where you live,” Desjardin continued. “Unfortunately, Ewen is staffed completely by men in its administration wing. I don't believe they have any real conception of how utterly nasty what you did was. So. One week's detention.”

Spontaneous sighs of relief.

“But. It's to be my detention. In the gym. And I'm going to run you ragged.”

“I won't come,” Chris said. Her lips had thinned across her teeth.

“That's up to you, Chris. That's up to all of you. But punishment for skipping detention is going to be three days' suspension and refusal of your prom tickets. Get the picture?”

No one said anything.

“Right. Change up. And think about what I said.”

She left.

Utter silence for a long and stricken moment. Then Chris Hargensen said with loud, hysterical stridency:

“She can't get away with it!” She opened a door at random, pulled out a pair of sneakers and hurled them across the room. “I'm going to get her! Goddammit! Goddammit! See if I don't! If we all stick together we can—”

“Shut up, Chris,” Sue said, and was shocked to hear a dead, adult lifelessness in her voice. 'just shut up.”

“This isn't over,” Chris Hargensen said, unzipping her skirt with a rough jab and reaching for her fashionably frayed green gym shorts. “This isn't over by a long way.”

And she was right.

 

From The Shadow Exploded (pp. 6~6l):

 

In the opinion of this researcher, a great many of the people who have researched the Carrie White matter-either for the scientific journals or for the popular press-have placed a mistaken emphasis on a relatively fruitless search for incidents of telekinesis in the girl's childhood. To strike a rough analogy, this is like spending years researching the early incidents of masturbation in a rapist's childhood.

The spectacular incident of the stones serves as a kind of red herring in this respect. Many researchers have adopted the erroneous belief that where there has been one incident, there must be others. To offer another analogy, this is like dispatching a crew of meteor watchers to Crater National Park because a huge asteroid struck there two million years ago.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no other recorded instances of TK in Carrie's childhood. If Carrie had not been an only child, we might have at least hearsay reports of dozens of other minor occurrences.

In the case of Andrea Kolintz (see Appendix II for a fuller history), we are told that, following a spanking for crawling out on the roof, “The medicine cabinet flew open, bottles fell to the floor or seemed to hurl themselves across the bathroom, doors flew open and slammed shut, and, at the climax of the manifestation, a 300-pound stereo cabinet tipped over and records flew all over the living room, dive-bombing the occupants and shattering against the walls.”

Significantly, this report is from one of Andrea's brothers, as quoted in the September 4, 1955, issue of Life magazine. Lift is hardly the most scholarly or unimpeachable source, but there is a great deal of other documentation, and I think that the point of familiar witness-ship is served.

In the case of Carrie White, the only witness to any possible prologue to the final climactic events was Margaret White, and she, of course is dead

 

Henry Grayle, principal of Ewen High School, had been expecting him all week, but Chris Hargensen's father didn't show up until Friday-the day after Chris had skipped her detention period with the formidable Miss Desjardin.

“Yes, Miss Fish?” He spoke formally into the intercom, although he could see the man in the outer office through his window, and certainly knew his face from pictures in the local paper.

“John Hargensen to see you, Mr. Grayle.”

“Send him in, please.” Goddammit, Fish, do you have to sound so impressed?

Grayle was an irrepressible paper-clip-bender, napkin-ripper, corner-folder. For John Hargensen, the town's leading legal light, he was bringing up the heavy ammunition-a whole box of heavy-duty clips in the middle of his desk blotter.

Hargensen was a tall, impressive man with a self-confident way of moving and the kind of sure, mobile features that said this was a man superior at the game of one-step-ahead social interaction.

He was wearing a brown Savile Row suit with subtle glints of green and gold running through the weave that put Grayle's local off-the-rack job to shame. His briefcase was thin, real leather, and bound with glittering stainless steel. The smile was faultless and full of many capped teeth-a smile to make the hearts of lady jurors melt like butter in a warm skillet. His grip was major league all the way-firm, warm, long.

“Mr. Grayle. I've wanted to meet you for some time now.

“I'm always glad to see interested parents,” Grayle said with a dry smile. “That's why we have Parents Open House every October.”

“Of course.” Hargensen smiled. “I imagine you're a busy man, and I have to be in court forty-five minutes from now. Shall we get down to specifics?”

“Surely.” Grayle dipped into his box of clips and began to mangle the first one. “I suspect you are here concerning the disciplinary action taken against your daughter Christine. You should be informed that school policy on the matter has been set. As a man concerned with the workings of justice yourself, you should realize that bending the rules is hardly possible or—

Hargensen waved his hand impatiently. “Apparently you're

laboring under a misconception, Mr. Grayle. I am here because my daughter was manhandled by your gym teacher, Miss Rita Desjardin. And verbally abused, I'm afraid. I believe the term your Miss Desjardin used in connection with my daughter was 'shitty. '

Grayle sighed inwardly. “Miss Desjardin has been reprimanded.”

John Hargensen's smile cooled thirty degrees. “I'm afraid a reprimand will not be sufficient. I believe this has been the young, ah, lady's first year in a teaching capacity?”

“Yes. We have found her to be eminently satisfactory.”

“Apparently your definition of eminently satisfactory includes throwing students up against lockers and the ability to curse like a sailor?”

Grayle fenced: “As a lawyer, you must be aware that this state acknowledges the school's title to in loco parentis-along with full responsibility, we succeed to full parental rights during school hours. If you're not familiar, I'd advise you to check Monondock Consolidated School District vs. Cranepool or—”

“I'm familiar with the concept,” Hargensen said. “I'm also aware that neither the Cranepool case that you administrators are so fond of quoting or the Frick case cover anything remotely concerned with physical or verbal abuse. There is, however, the case of School District #4 vs. David. Are you familiar with it?”

Grayle was. George Kramer, the assistant principal of the consolidated high school in S. D. 14 was a poker buddy. George wasn't playing much poker any more. He was working for an insurance company after taking it upon himself to cut a student's hair. The school district had ultimately paid seven thousand dollars in damages, or about a thousand bucks a snip.

Grayle started on another paper clip.

“Let's not quote cases at each other, Mr. Grayle. We're busy men. I don't want a lot of unpleasantness. I don't want a mess. My daughter is at home, and she will stay there Monday and Tuesday. That will complete her three-day suspension. That's all right.” Another dismissive wave of the hand.

(catch fido good boy here's a nice bone)

“Here's what I want,” Hargensen continued. “One, prom tickets for my daughter. A girl's senior prom is important to her, and Chris is very distressed. Two, no contract renewal of the Desjardin woman. That's for me. I believe that if I cared to take the School Department to court, I could walk out with both her dismissal and a hefty damage settlement in my pocket. But I don't want to be vindictive.”

“So court is the alternative if I don't agree to your demands?”

“I understand that a School Committee hearing would precede that, but only as a formality. But yes, court would be the final result. Nasty for you.

Another paper clip.

“For physical and verbal abuse, is that correct?”

“Essentially.”

“Mr. Hargensen, are you aware that your daughter and about ten of her peers threw sanitary napkins at a girl who was having her first menstrual period? A girl who was under the impression that she was bleeding to death?”

A faint frown creased Hargensen's features, as if someone had spoken in a distant room. “I hardly think such an allegation is at issue. I am speaking of actions following—”

“Never mind,” Grayle said. “Never mind what you were speaking of. This girl, Carietta White, was called 'a dumb puddings and was told to 'plug it up' and was subjected to various obscene gestures. She has not been in school this week at all. Does that sound like physical and verbal abuse to you? It does to me.

“I don't intend,” Hargensen said, “to sit here and listen to a tissue of half-truths or your standard schoolmaster lecture, Mr. Grayle. I know my daughter well enough to—”

“Here.” Grayle reached into the wire IN basket beside the blotter and tossed a sheaf of pink cards across the desk. “I doubt very much if you know the daughter represented in these cards half so well as you think you do. If you did, you might realize that it was about time for a trip to the woodshed. It's time you snubbed her close before she does someone a major damage.”

“You aren't—”

“Ewen, four years,” Grayle overrode him. “Graduation slated June seventy-nine; next month. Tested I. Q. of a hundred and forty. Eighty-three average. Nonetheless, I see she's been accepted at Oberlin. I'd guess someone-probably you, Mr. Hargensen-has been yanking some pretty long strings. Seventy-four assigned detentions. Twenty of those have been for harassment of misfit pupils, I might add. Fifth wheels. I understand that Chris's clique calls them Mortimer Snerds. They find it all quite hilarious. She skipped out on fifty-one of those assigned detentions. At Chamberlain Junior High, one suspension for putting a firecracker in a girl's shoe... the note on the card says that little prank almost cost a little girl named Irma Swope two toes. The Swope girl has a harelip, I understand. I'm talking about your daughter, Mr. Hargensen. Does that tell you anything?”

“Yes,” Hargensen said, rising. A thin flush had suffused his features. “It tells me I'll see you in court. And when I'm done with you, you'll be lucky to get a job selling encyclopedias door to door.”

Grayle also rose, angrily, and the two men faced each other across the desk.

“Let it be court, then,” Grayle said.

He noted a faint flick of surprise on Hargensen's face, crossed his fingers, and went in for what he hoped would be a knockout-or at least a TKO that would save Desjardin's job and take this silk-ass son of a bitch down a notch.

“You apparently haven't realized all the implications of in loco parentis in this matter, Mr. Hargensen. The same umbrella that covers your daughter also covers Carrie White. And the minute you file for damages on the grounds of physical and verbal abuse, we will cross-file against your daughter on those same grounds for Carrie White.”

Hargensen's mouth dropped open, then closed. “You can't get away with a cheap gimmick like that, you-“Shyster lawyer? Is that the phrase you were looking for?”

Grayle smiled grimly. I believe you know your way out, Mr. Hargensen. The sanctions against your daughter stand. If you care to take the matter further, that is your right.”

Hargensen crossed the room stiffly, paused as if to add something, then left, barely restraining himself from the satisfaction of a hard door slam.

Grayle blew out breath. It wasn't hard to see where Chris Hargensen came by her self-willed stubbornness.

A. I). Morton entered a minute later. “How did it go?”

“Time'll tell, Morty,” Grayle said. Grimacing, he looked at the twisted pile of paper clips. “He was good for seven clips, anyway. That's some kind of record.”

“Is he going to make it a civil matter?”

“Don't know. It rocked him when I said we'd cross-sue.”

“I bet it did.” Morton glanced at the phone on Grayle's desk. “It's time we let the superintendent in on this bag of garbage, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Grayle said, picking up the phone. “Thank God my unemployment insurance is paid up.”

“Me too,” Morton said loyally.

 

From The Shadow Exploded (Appendix III):

 

Carietta White passed in the following short verse as a poetry assignment in the seventh grade. Mr. Edwin King, who had Carrie for grade seven English, says: “I don't know why I saved it. She certainly doesn't stick out in my mind as a superior pupil, and this isn't a superior verse. She was very quiet and I can't remember her ever raising her hand even once in class. But something in this seemed to cry out.”

 

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?

The border of the paper on which this little verse is written is decorated with a great many cruciform figures which almost seem to dance..

 

Tommy was at baseball practice Monday afternoon, and Sue went down to the Kelly Fruit Company in The Center to wait for him.

Kelly's was the closest thing to a high school hangout the loosely sprawled community of Chamberlain could boast since Sheriff Doyle had closed the rec center following a large drug bust. It was run by a morose fat man named Hubert Kelly who dyed his hair black and complained constantly that his electronic pacemaker was on the verge of electrocuting him.

The place was a combination grocery, soda fountain, and gas station-there was a rusted Jenny gas pump out front that Hubie had never bothered to change when the company merged. He also sold beer, cheap wine, dirty books, and a wide selection of obscure cigarettes such as Murads, King Sano, and Marvel Straights.

The soda fountain was a slab of real marble, and there were four or five booths for kids unlucky enough or friendless enough to have no place to go and get drunk or stoned. An ancient pinball machine that always tilted on the third ball stuttered lights on and off in the back beside the rack of dirty books.

When Sue walked in she saw Chris Hargensen immediately. She was sitting in one of the back booths. Her current amour, Billy Nolan, was looking through the latest issue of Popular Mechanics at the magazine rack. Sue didn't know what a rich, Popular girl like Chris saw in Nolan, who was like some strange time traveler from the 1950s with his greased hair, zipper-bejeweled black leather jacket, and manifold-bubbling Chevrolet road machine.

“Sue!” Chris hailed. “Come on over!”

Sue nodded and raised a hand, although dislike rose in her throat like a paper snake. Looking at Chris was like looking through a slanted doorway to a place where Carrie White crouched with hands over her head. Predictably, she found her own hypocrisy (inherent in the wave and the nod) incomprehensible and sickening. Why couldn't she just cut her dead?

“A dime root beer,” she told Hubie. Hubie had genuine draft root beer, and he served it in huge, frosted 1890s mugs. She had been looking forward to tipping a long one while she read a paper novel and waited for Tommy-in spite of the havoc the root beers raised with her complexion, she was hooked. But she wasn't surprised to find she'd lost her taste for this one.

“How's your heart, Hubie?” she asked.

“You kids,” Hubie said, scraping the head off Sue's beer with a table knife and filling the mug the rest of the way. “You don't understand nothing. I plugged in my electric razor this morning and got a hundred and ten volts right through this pacemaker. You kids don't know what that's like, am I right?”

“I guess not.”

“No. Christ Jesus forbid you should ever have to find out. How long can my old ticker take it? You kids'll all find out when I buy the farm and those urban renewal poops turn this place into a parking lot. That's a dime.”

She pushed her dime across the marble.

“Fifty million volts right up the old tubes,” Hubie said darkly, and stared down at the small bulge in his breast pocket.

Sue went over and slid carefully into the vacant side of Chris's booth. She was looking exceptionally pretty, her black hair held by a shamrock-green band and a tight Basque blouse that accentuated her firm, up thrust breasts.

“How are you, Chris?”

“Bitchin' good,” Chris said a little too blithely. “You heard the latest? I'm out of the prom. I bet that cocksucker Grayle loses his job, though.”

Sue had heard the latest. Along with everyone at Ewen.

“Daddy's suing them,” Chris went on. Over her shoulder:

“Billeee! Come over here and say hi to Sue.”

He dropped his magazine and sauntered over, thumbs hooked into his side-hitched garrison belt, fingers dangling limply toward the stuffed crotch of his pegged levis. Sue felt a wave of unreality surge over her and fought an urge to put her hands to her face and giggle madly.

“Hi, Suze,” Billy said. He slid in beside Chris and immediately began to massage her shoulder. His face was utterly blank. He might have been testing a cut of beef.

“I think we're going to crash the prom anyway,” Chris said. “As a protest or something.”

“Is that right?” Sue was frankly startled.

“No,” Chris replied, dismissing it. “I don't know.” Her face suddenly twisted into an expression of fury, as abrupt and surprising as a tornado funnel. “That goddamned Carrie White! I wish she'd take her goddam holy joe routine and stuff it straight up her ass!”

“You'll get over it,” Sue said.

“If only the rest of you had walked out with me... Jesus, Sue, why didn't you? We could have had them by the balls. I never figured you for an establishment pawn.”

Sue felt her face grow hot. “I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't being anybody's pawn. I took the punishment because I thought I earned it. We did a suck-off thing. End of statement.”

“Bullshit. That fucking Carrie runs around saying everyone but her and her gilt-edged momma are going to hell and you can stick up for her? We should have taken those rags and stuffed them down her throat.”

“Sure. Yeah. See you around, Chris.” She pushed out of the booth.

This time it was Chris who colored; the blood slammed to her face in a sudden rush, as if a red cloud had passed over some inner sun.

“Aren't you getting to be the Joan of Arc around here! I seem to remember you were in there pitching with the rest of us.”

“Yes,” Sue said, trembling. “But I stopped.”

“Oh, aren't you just it?” Chris marveled. “Oh my yes. Take your root beer with you. I'm afraid I might touch it and turn to gold.”

She didn't take her root beer. She turned and half-walked, half-stumbled out. The upset inside her was very great, too great yet for either tears or anger. She was a get-along girl, and it was the first fight she had been in, physical or verbal, since grade-school pigtail pulling. And it was the first time in her life that she had actively espoused a Principle.

And of course Chris had hit her in just the right place, had hit her exactly where she was most vulnerable: She was being a hypocrite, there seemed no way to avoid that, and deeply, sheathed within her and hateful, was the knowledge that one of the reasons she had gone to Miss Desjardin's hour of calisthenics and sweating runs around the gym floor had nothing to do with nobility. She wasn't going to miss her last Spring Ball for anything. Not for anything.

Tommy was nowhere in sight.

She began to walk back toward the school, her stomach churning unhappily. Little Miss Sorority. Suzy Creemcheese. The Nice Girl who only does It with the boy she plans to marry-with the proper Sunday supplement coverage, of course. Two kids. Beat the living shit out of them if they show any signs of honesty: screwing, fighting, or refusing to grin each time some mythic honcho yelled frog.

Spring Ball. Blue gown. Corsage kept all the afternoon in the fridge. Tommv in a white dinner jacket, cummerbund, black pants, black shoes. Parents taking photos posed by the living-room sofa with Kodak Starflashes and Polaroid Big-Shots. Crepe masking the stark gymnasium girders. Two bands: one rock, one mellow. No fifth wheels need apply. Mortimer Snerd, please keep out. Aspiring country club members and future residents of Kleen Korners only.

The tears finally came and she began to run.

 

From The Shadow Exploded (p. 60):

 

The following excerpt is from a letter to Donna Kellogg from Christine Hargensen. The Kellogg girl moved from Chamberlain to Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 1978. She was apparently one of Chris Hargersen's few close friends and a confidante. The letter is postmarked May 17, 1979:

“So I'm out of the Prom and my yellow-guts father says he won't give them what they deserve. But they're not going to get away with it. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet, but I guarantee you everyone is going to get a big fucking surprise...

 

It was the seventeenth. May seventeenth. She crossed the day off the calendar in her room as soon as she slipped into her long white nightgown. She crossed off each day as it passed with a heavy black felt pen, and she supposed it expressed a very bad attitude toward life. She didn't really care. The only thing she really cared about was knowing that Momma was going to make her go back to school tomorrow and she would have to face all of Them.

She sat down in the small Boston rocker (bought and paid for with her own money) beside the window, closed her eyes, and swept Them and all the clutter of her conscious thoughts from her mind. It was like sweeping a floor. Lift the rug of your subconscious and sweep all the dirt under. Good-bye.

She opened her eyes. She looked at the hairbrush on her bureau.

Flex.

She was lifting the hairbrush. It was heavy. It was like lifting a barbell with very weak arms. Oh. Grunt.

The hairbrush slid to the edge of the bureau, slid out past the point where gravity should have toppled it, and then dangled, as if on an invisible string. Carrie's eyes had closed to slits. Veins pulsed in her temples. A doctor might have been interested in what her body was doing at that instant; it made no rational sense. Respiration had fallen to sixteen breaths per minute. Blood pressure up to 190/100. Heartbeat up to I40higher than astronauts under the heavy g-load of lift-off. Temperature down to 94. 3 Her body was burning energy that seemed to be coming from nowhere and seemed to be going nowhere. An electroencephalogram would have shown alpha waves that were no longer waves at all, but great, jagged spikes.

She let the hairbrush down carefully. Good. Last night she had dropped it. Lose all your points, go to jail.

She closed her eyes again and rocked. Physical functions began to revert to the norm; her respiration speeded until she was nearly panting. The rocker had a slight squeak. Wasn't annoying, though. Was soothing. Rock, rock. Clear your mind.

“Carrie?” Her mother's voice, slightly disturbed, floated up.