Something toppled over in the living room, and Margaret White straightened up, cocking her head to one side. The butcher knife glittered dully in the light of the flames. The electric power had gone off sometime before, and the only light in the house came from the fire up the street.

One of the pictures fell from the wall with a thump. A moment later the Black Forest cuckoo clock fell. The mechanical bird gave a small, strangled squawk and was still.

From the town the sirens whooped endlessly, but she could still hear the footsteps when they turned up the walk.

The door blew open. Steps in the hall.

She heard the plaster plaques in the living room (CHRIST, THE UNSEEN GUEST, WHAT WOULD JESUS DO, THE HOUR DRAWETH NIGH; IF TONIGHT BECAME JUDGMENT, WOULD YOU BE READY) explode one after the other, like plaster birds in a shooting gallery.

(o i've been there and seen the harlots shimmy on wooden stages)

She sat up on her stool like a very bright scholar who has gone to the head of the class, but her eyes were deranged.

The living-room windows blew outward.

The kitchen door dammed and Carrie walked in.

Her body seemed to have become twisted, shrunken, cronelike. The prom dress was in tatters and flaps, and the pig blood had began to clot and streak. There was a smudge of grease on her forehead and both knees were scraped and raw-looking.

'Momma,' she whispered. Her eyes were preternaturally bright, hawklike, but her mouth was trembling. If someone had been there to watch, he would have been struck by the resemblance between them.

Margaret White sat on her kitchen stool, the carving knife hidden among the folds of her dress in her lap.

'I should have killed myself when he put it in me,' she said clearly. 'After the first time, before we were married, he promised. Never again. He said we just … slipped. I believed him. I fell down and I lost the baby and that was God's judgment. I felt that the sin had been expiated. By blood. But sin never dies. Sin … never … dies.' Her eyes glittered.

'Momma'

'At first it was all right. We lived sinlessly. We slept in the same bed, belly to belly sometimes, and O, I could feel the presence of the Serpent, but we never did until.' She began to grin, and it was a hard, terrible grin. 'And that night I could see him looking at me That Way. We got down on our knees to pray for strength and he… touched me. In that place. That woman place. And I sent him out of the house. He was gone for hours, and I prayed for him. I could see him in my mind's eye, walking the midnight streets, wrestling with the devil as Jacob wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. And when he came back, my heart was filled with thanksgiving.'

She paused, grinning her dry, spitless grin into the shifting shadows of the room.

'Momma, I don't want to hear it!'

Plates began to explode in the cupboards like clay pigeons.

'It wasn't until he came in that I smelled the whiskey on his breath. And he took me. Took me! With the stink of filthy roadhouse whiskey still on him he took me … and I liked it.' She screamed out the last words at the ceiling. 'I liked it o all that dirty fucking and his hands on me ALL OVER ME!'

'MOMMA!'

(MOMMA!!)

She broke off as if slapped and blinked at her daughter 'I almost killed myself,' she said in a more normal tone of voice. 'And Ralph wept and talked about atonement and I didn't and then he was dead and then I thought God had visited me with cancer; that He was turning my female parts into something as black and rotten as my sinning soul. But that would have been too easy. The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. I see that now. When the pains began I went and got a knife – this knife-' she held it up '-and waited for you to come so I could make my sacrifice. But I was weak and backsliding. I took this knife in hand again when you were three, and I backslid again. So now the devil has come home.'

She held the knife up, and her eyes fastened hypnotically on the glittering hook of its blade.

Carrie took a slow, blundering step forward.

'I came to kill you, Momma. And you were waiting here to kill me. Momma, I … it's not right, Momma. It's not … '

'Let's pray,' Momma said softly. Her eyes fixed on Carrie's and there was a crazed, awful compassion in them. The fire light was brighter now, dancing on the walls Up dervishes. 'For the last time, let us pray.'

'Oh Momma help me!' Carrie cried out.

She fell forward on her knees, head down, hands raised in supplication.

Momma leaned forward, and the knife came down in a shining arc.

Carrie, perhaps seeing out of the tail of her eye, jerked back, and instead of penetrating her back, the knife went into her shoulder to the hilt. Momma's feet tangled in the legs of her chair, and she collapsed in a sitting sprawl.

They stared at each other in silent tableau.

Blood began to ooze from around the handle of the knife and to splash on to the floor.

Then Carrie said softly: 'I'm going to give you a present, Momma.'

Margaret tried to get up, staggered, and fell back on her hands and knees. 'What are you doing?' she croaked hoarsely.

'I'm picturing your heart, Momma,' Carrie said. 'It's easier when you see things in your mind. Your heart is a big red muscle. Mine goes faster when I use my power. But your is going a little slower now. A little slower.'

Margaret tried to get up again, failed, and forked the sign of the evil eye at her daughter.

'A little slower, Momma. Do you know what the present is, Momma? What you always wanted. Darkness. And whatever God lives there.'

Margaret White whispered: 'Our father, Who art in heaven-'

'Slower, Momma. Slower.'

'-hallowed be Thy name-'

'I can see the blood draining back into you. Slower.'

'-Thy Kingdom come-'

'Your feet and hands like marble, like alabaster. White.'

'-Thy will be done-'

'My will, Momma. Slower!'

'-on earth-'

'Slower.'

'-as … as … as it…'

She collapsed forward, hands twitching.

'-as it is in heaven.'

Carrie whispered: 'Full stop.'

She looked down at herself, and put her hands weakly around the haft of the knife.