Pet Sematary(101)

Jud was back, speaking in his mind: You do it because it gets hold of you. You do it because that burial place is a secret place, and you want to share the secret you make up reasons... they seem like good reasons.

but mostly you do it because you want to. Or because you have to.

Jud's voice, low and drawling with Yankee intonation, Jud's voice chilling his flesh, bringing out the goosebumps, making the hackles on the back of his neck rise.

These are secret things, Louis... the soil of a man's heart is stonier...

like the soil up in the old Micmac burying ground. A man grows what he can...

and he tends it.

Louis began to go over the other things Jud had told him about the Micmac burying ground. He began to collate the data, to sort through it, to compress it-he proceeded in exactly the same way he had once readied himself for big exams.

The dog. Spot.

I could see all the places where the barbed wire had hooked him-there was no fur in any of those places, and the flesh looked dimpled in.

The bull. Another file turned over in Louis's mind.

Lester Morgan buried his prize hull up there. Black Angus bull, named Hanratty.

... Lester dragged him all the way up there on a sledge... shot him dead two weeks later. That bull turned mean, really mean. But he's the only animal I ever heard of that did.

He turned mean.

The soil of a man's heart is stonier.

He turned really mean.

He's the only animal I ever heard of that did.

Mostly you do it because once you've been up there, it's your place.

The flesh looked dimpled in.

Hanratty, ain't that a silly name for a bull?

A man grows what he can... and tends it.

They're my rats. And my birds. I bought the f**kers.

It's your place, a secret place, and it belongs to you, and you belong to it.

He turned mean, but he's the only animal I ever heard of that did.

What do you want to buy next, Louis, when the wind blows hard at night and the moon lays a white path through the woods to that place? Want to climb those stairs again? When they're watching a horror movie, everyone in the audience knows the hero or the heroine is stupid to go up those stairs, but in real life they always do-they smoke, they don't wear seat belts, they move their family in beside a busy highway where the big rigs drone back and forth all day and all night. So, Louis, what do you say? Want to climb the stairs? Would you like to keep your dead son or go for what's behind Door Number One, Door Number Two, or Door Number Three?

Hey-ho, let's go.

Turned mean... only animal... the flesh looked... a man yours... his...

Louis dumped the rest of the beer down the sink, feeling suddenly that he was going to vomit. The room was moving around in great swinging motions.

There was a knock at the door.

For a long time-it seemed like a long time, anyway-he believed it was only in his head, a hallucination. But the knocking just went on and on, patient, implacable. And suddenly Louis found himself thinking of the story of the monkey's paw, and a cold terror slipped into him. He seemed to feel it with total physical reality-it was like a dead hand that had been kept in a refrigerator, a dead hand which had suddenly taken on its own disembodied life and slipped inside his shirt to clutch the flesh over his heart. It was a silly image, fulsome and silly, but oh, it didn't feel silly. No.

Louis went to the door on feet he could not feel and lifted the latch with nerveless fingers. And as he swung it open, he thought: It'll be Pascow. Like they said about Jim Morrison, back from the dead and bigger than ever. Pascow standing there in his jogging shorts, big as life and as mouldy as month-old bread, Pascow with his horribly ruined head, Pascow bringing the warning again: Don't go up there. What was that old song by the Animals? Baby please don't go, baby PLEASE don't go, you know I love you so, baby please don't go.

The door swung open and standing there on his front step in the blowing dark of this midnight, between the day of the funeral parlor visitation and the day of his son's burial, was Jud Crandall. His thin white hair blew randomly in the chilly dark.

Louis tried to laugh. Time seemed to have turned cleverly back on itself. It was Thanksgiving again. Soon they would put the stiff, unnaturally thickened body of Ellie's cat Winston Churchill into a plastic garbage bag and start off. Oh, do not ask what is it; let us go and make our visit.

"Can I come in, Louis?" Jud asked. He took a pack of Chesterfields from his shirt pocket and poked one into his mouth.

"Tell you what," Louis said. "It's late and I've been drinking a pile of beer."

"Ayuh, I could smell it," Jud said. He struck a match. The wind snuffed it. He struck another around cupped hands, but the hands trembled and betrayed the match to the wind again. He got a third match, prepared to strike it, and then looked up at Louis standing in the doorway. "I can't get this thing lit," Jud said. "Gonna let me in or not, Louis?"

Louis stepped aside and let Jud walk in.

38

They sat at the kitchen table over beers-first time we've ever tipped one in our kitchen, Louis thought, a little surprised. Halfway across the living room, Ellie had cried out in her sleep, and both of them had frozen like statues in a children's game. The cry had not been repeated.

"Okay," Louis said, "what are you doing over here at quarter past twelve on the morning my son gets buried? You're a friend, Jud, but this is stretching it."