Cujo
VERYTHING begins so simply in Stephen King's latest novel, ''Cujo,'' perhaps the cruelest, most disturbing tale of horror he's written yet. One day this 200-pound St. Bernard named Cujo is chasing a rabbit in back of his owner's house, which happens to lie at the end of a dead-end road outside a small town in Maine.
Cujo is a good and gentle animal, but what dog can resist a rabbit racing by? So Cujo chases the rabbit into a hole in the side of a meadow, which turns out to be the entrance to a small limestone cave full of rabid bats. When Cujo tries to follow the rabbit into the hole, he gets bitten by one of the rabid bats. Pretty soon, Cujo isn't feeling so good. Pretty soon, Cujo is mad.
But things get complicated fast in Mr. King's imagination. Things get awful. Before you know it, we have the following situation. The members of the family that own Cujo are away or otherwise indisposed. A mother and her 4-year-old boy, Donna and Tad Trenton, are trapped in a Ford Pinto that is stuck in the driveway of Cujo's house. The weather is stiflingly hot. The Pinto's battery is dead. Nobody knows that Donna and her boy are there. Except Cujo.
