Pet Sematary(114)

His family had been in Chicago.

For Louis, the final piece fell into place with a neat little click.

"You want us to what?" Rachel asked, staring at him, astounded.

It was a quarter of ten. Ellie had gone to bed. Rachel had taken another Valium after cleaning up the detritus of the funeral party ("funeral party" was another of those horrible phrases full of unstated paradox, like "visiting hours," but there seemed no other phrase for the way they had spent their afternoon) and had seemed dazed and quiet ever since he returned from Bangor... but this had gotten through.

"To go back to Chicago with your mother and father," Louis repeated patiently.

"They'll be going tomorrow. If you call them now and Delta right after, you may be able to get on the same plane with them."

"Louis, have you lost your mind? After the fight you had with my father-"

Louis found himself speaking with a quick glibness that was totally unlike him.

It afforded him a cheesy sort of exhilaration. He felt like a football sub who suddenly gets the ball and makes a seventy-yard touchdown run, cutting and weaving, outthinking potential tacklers with a delirious one-time-only ease. He had never been a particularly good liar, and he had not planned this encounter in any detail at all, but now a string of plausible lies, half-truths, and inspired justification poured out of him.

"The fight we had is one of the reasons I want you and Ellie to go back with them. It's time we sewed up this wound, Rachel. I knew that... felt it...

at the funeral parlor. When the fight started, I was trying to patch things up."

"But this trip... I don't think it's a good idea at all, Louis. We need you.

And you need us." Her eyes measured him doubt-fully. "At least, I hope you need us. And neither of us are in any shape to-"

"-in any kind of shape to stay here," Louis said forcefully. He felt as if he might be coming down with a fever. "I'm glad you need me, and I do need you and Ellie. But right now this is the worst damn place in the world for you, honey.

Gage is everywhere in this house, around every corner. For you and me, sure. But it's even worse for Ellie, I think."

He saw pain flicker in her eyes and knew he had touched her. Some part of himself felt shame at this cheap victory. All the textbooks he'd read on the subject of death told him that the bereaved's first strong impulse is to get away from the place where it happened... and that to succumb to such an impulse may turn out to be the most harmful course of action because it allows the bereaved the dubious luxury of refusing to come to terms with the new reality. The books said it was best to remain where you were, to battle grief on its home ground until it subsided into remembrance. But Louis simply did not dare make the experiment with his family at home. He had to get rid of them, at least for a while.

"I know," she said. "It just... hits you all over the place. I moved the couch while you were in Bangor... I thought running the vacuum around would take my mind off... off things and I found four of his little Matchbox cars under there.

as if they were waiting for him to come back and... you know, play with them.

... " Her voice, already wavering, now broke. Tears spilled down her cheeks. "And that's when I took the second Valium because I started crying again, the way I'm crying now... oh what a f**king soap opera all of this is... hold me, Lou, will you hold me?"

He did hold her, and he did it well, but he felt like an imposter. His mind spun with ways to turn these tears to his further benefit. Some nice guy, all right.

Hey-ho, let's go.

"How long does it go on?" she wept. "Does it ever end? If only we could have him back, Louis, I swear I'd watch him better, it would never happen, and just because that driver was going too fast that doesn't let me-us-off the hook. I didn't know there could ever be hurt like this, and that's the truth. It comes, over and over it comes, and it hurts so much, Louis, there's no rest from it even when I go to sleep, when I go to sleep I dream it, over and over again, I see him running to the road... and I scream to him...

. " "Shhh," he said. "Rachel, shhhh."

She lifted her puffy face to him. "It wasn't even as if he were being bad, Louis. It was just a game to him... the truck came at the wrong time... and Missy Dandridge called while I was still crying... and said she read in the Ellsworth American that the driver tried to kill himself."

"What?"

"He tried to hang himself in his garage. He's in shock and deep depression, the paper said... " "Too f**king bad he didn't make good on it," Louis said savagely, but his voice sounded distant to his own ears, and he felt a chill spreading through. The place has a power, Louis... it's been full of power before, and I'm ascared it's coming round to full again. "My boy's dead and he's out on a thousand dollars' bail and he'll go on feeling depressed and suicidal until some judge takes away his license for ninety days and gives him a slap-on-the-wrist fine."

"Missy says his wife has taken the kids and left him," Rachel said dully. "She didn't get that from the paper, but from somebody who knows somebody down Ellsworth way. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't on drugs. He didn't have any previous speeding violations. He said that when he got to Ludlow, he just felt like putting the pedal to the metal. He said he didn't even know why. So around and around it goes."