Pet Sematary(108)

Range oil had been splashed from one end of that little house to the other. You could smell the reek of it for three days after the fire was out."

"So they both burned up."

"Oh, ayuh, they burned. But they was dead beforehand. Timmy was shot twice in the chest with a pistol Bill Baterman kept handy, an old Colt's. They found it in Bill's hand. What he'd done, or so it looked like, was to kill his boy, lay him on the bed, and then spill out that range oil. Then he sat down in his easy chair by the radio, flicked a match, and ate the barrel of that Colt. 45."

"Jesus," Louis said.

"They were pretty well charred, but the county medical examiner said it looked to him like Timmy Baterman had been dead two or three weeks."

Silence, ticking out.

Jud got up. "I wasn't exaggerating when I said I might have killed your boy, Louis, or had a hand in it. The Micmacs knew that place, but that doesn't necessarily mean they made it what it was. The Micmacs weren't always here. They came maybe from Canada, maybe from Russia, maybe from Asia way back in the beginning. They stayed here in Maine for a thousand years, or maybe it was two thousand-it's hard to tell, because they did not leave their mark deep on the land. And now they are gone again... same way we'll be gone, someday, although I guess our mark will go deeper, for better or worse. But the place will stay no matter who's here, Louis. It isn't as though someone owned it and could take its secret when they moved on. It's an evil, curdled place, and I had no business taking you up there to bury that cat. I know that now. It has a power you'll beware of if you know what's good for your family and what's good for you. I wasn't strong enough to fight it. You saved Norma's life, and I wanted to do something for you, and that place turned my good wish to its own evil purpose. It has a power... and I think that power goes through phases, same as the moon. It's been full of power before, and I'm ascared it's coming around to full again. I'm ascared it used me to get at you through your son. Do you see, Louis, what I'm getting at?"

His eyes pleaded with Louis.

"You're saying the place knew Gage was going to die, I think," Louis said.

"No, I am saying the place might have made Gage die because I introduced you to the power in the place. I am saying I may have murdered your son with good intentions, Louis."

"I don't believe it," Louis said at last, shakily. Didn't; wouldn't. Couldn't.

He held Jud's hand tightly. "We're burying Gage tomorrow. In Bangor. And in Bangor he will stay. I don't plan to go up there to the Pet Sematary or beyond it ever again."

"Promise me!" Jud said harshly. "Promise."

"I promise," Louis said.

But in the back of his mind, contemplation remained-a dancing flicker of promise that would not quite go away.

40

But none of those things happened.

All of them-the droning Orinco truck, the fingers that just touched the back of Cage's jumper and then slid off, Rachel preparing to go to the viewing in her housecoat, Ellie carrying Gage's picture and putting his chair next to her bed, Steve Masterton's tears, the fight with Irwin Goldman, Jud Crandall's terrible story of Timmy Baterman-all of them existed only in Louis Creed's mind during the few seconds that passed while he raced his laughing son to the road. Behind him, Rachel screamed again-Gage, come back, don't RUN!-but Louis did not waste his breath. It was going to be close, very close, and yes, one of those things really happened: from somewhere up the road he could hear the drone of the oncoming truck and somewhere inside a memory circuit opened and he could hear Jud Crandall speaking to Rachel on that very first day in Ludlow: You want to watch em around the road, Missus Greed. It's a bad road for kids and pets.

Now Gage was running down the gentle slope of lawn that merged with the soft shoulder of Route 15, his husky little legs pumping, and by all the rights of the world he should have fallen over sprawling but he just kept going and now the sound of the truck was very loud indeed, it was that low, snoring sound that Louis sometimes heard from his bed as he floated just beyond the rim of sleep.

Then it seemed a comforting sound, but now it terrified him.

Oh my dear God oh my dear Jesus let me catch him don't let him get into the road!

Louis put on a final burst of speed and leaped, throwing himself out straight and parallel to the ground like a football player about to make a tackle; he could see his shadow tracking along on the grass below him in the lowest periphery of his vision, and he thought of the kite, the Vulture, printing its shadow all the way across Mrs. Vinton's field, and just as Gage's forward motion carried him into the road, Louis's fingers brushed the back of his jacket...

and then snagged it.

He yanked Gage backward and landed on the ground at the same instant, crashing his face into the rough gravel of the shoulder, giving himself a bloody nose.

His balls signaled a much more serious flash of pain-Ohhh, if l'd'a known I was gonna be playing football, I woulda worn my jock-but both the pain in his nose and the driving agony in his testes were lost in the swelling relief of hearing Gage's wail of pain and outrage as his bottom landed on the shoulder and he fell over backward onto the edge of the lawn, thumping his head. A moment later his wails were drowned by the roar of the passing truck and the almost regal blat of its air horn.

Louis managed to get up in spite of the lead ball sitting in his lower stomach and cradled his son in his arms. A moment later Rachel joined them, also weeping, crying out to Gage, "Never run in the road, Gage! Never, never, never! The road is bad! Bad!" And Gage was so astonished at this tearful lecture that he left off crying and goggled up at his mother.