Pet Sematary(117)

But would that not be the same as murdering his son? Killing him a second time?

A voice inside tried to argue that this was not so, but he would not listen. He shut the voice up briskly.

"Irwin, I ought to go now. I want to make sure Rachel's got what she needs and then get her to bed."

"All right. Goodbye, Louis. And once more-"

If he says he's sorry one more time, I'll f**king scream.

"Goodbye, Irwin," he said and hung up the phone.

Rachel was deep in a litter of clothes when he came upstairs. Blouses on the beds, bras hung over the backs of chairs, slacks on hangers that had been hung over the doorknob. Shoes were lined up like soldiers under the window. She appeared to be packing slowly but competently. Louis could see it was going to take her at least three suitcases (maybe four), but he could also see no sense in arguing with her about it. Instead he pitched in and helped.

"Louis," she said as they closed the last suitcase (he had to sit on it before Rachel could snap the catches), "are you sure there's nothing you want to tell me?"

"For God's sake, hon, what is this?"

"I don't know what it is," she replied evenly. "That's why I'm asking."

"What do you think I'm going to do? Creep off to a bordello? Join the circus?

What?"

"I don't know. But this feels wrong. It feels as if you're trying to get rid of us."

"Rachel, that's ridiculous!" He said this with a vehemence that was partly exasperation. Even in such straits as these, he felt a certain pique in being seen through so easily.

She smiled wanly. "You never were a very good liar, Lou."

He began to protest again, and she cut him off.

"Ellie dreamed you were dead," she said. "Last night. She woke up crying, and I went in to her. I slept with her for two or three hours and then came back in with you. She said that in her dream you were sitting at the kitchen table and your eyes were open, but she knew you were dead. She said she could hear Steve Masterton screaming."

Louis looked at her, dismayed. "Rachel," he said at last, "her brother just died. It's normal enough for her to dream that other members of her family-"

"Yes, I surmised that much for myself. But the way she told it the elements...

. it seemed to me to have a quality of prophecy.

She laughed weakly.

"Or maybe you had to be there."

"Yes, maybe so," Louis said.

It seemed to me to have a quality of prophecy.

"Come to bed with me," Rachel said. "The Valium's all worn off, and I don't want to take any more. But I'm afraid. I've been having my own dreams... " "Dreams of what?"

"Of Zeida," she said simply. "The last few nights since Gage died, when I go to sleep, Zelda's there, She says she's coming for me, and this time she'll get me.

That both she and Gage will get me. For letting them die."

"Rachel, that's-"

"I know. Just a dream. Normal enough. But come to bed with me and keep the dreams away if you can, Louis."

They lay together in the dark, crowded into Louis's single.

"Rachel? You still awake?"

"Yes."

"I want to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

He hesitated, not wanting to cause her even more pain but needing to know.

"Do you remember the scare we had with him when he was nine months old?" he asked finally.

"Yes. Yes, of course I do. Why?"

By the time Gage was nine months old, Louis had become deeply concerned about his son's cranial size. It was right off Louis's Berterier Chart, which showed the normal range of infant head sizes on a per-month basis. At four months, Gage's skull size had begun to drift toward the highest part of the curve, and then it began to go even higher than that. He wasn't having any trouble holding his head up-that would have been a dead giveaway-but Louis had nevertheless taken him to George Tardiff, who was perhaps the best neurologist in the Midwest. Rachel had wanted to know what was wrong, and Louis had told her the truth: he was worried that Gage might be hydrocephalic.

Rachel's face had grown very white, but she had remained calm.

"He seems normal to me," she said.

Louis nodded. "He does to me too. But I don't want to ignore this, babe."

"No, you mustn't," she said. "We mustn't."

Tardiff had measured Gage's skull and frowned. Tardiff poked two fingers at Gage's face, Three Stooges style. Gage flinched. Tardiff smiled. Louis's heart thawed out a little. Tardiff gave Gage a ball to hold. Gage held it for a while and then dropped it.

Tardiff retrieved the ball and bounced it, watching Cage's eyes. Gage's eyes tracked the ball.

"I'd say there's a fifty-fifty chance he's hydrocephalic," Tardiff said to Louis in his office later. "No-the odds may actually be a bit higher than that. If so, it's mild. He seems very alert. The new shunt operation should take care of the problem easily... if there is a problem."

"A shunt means brain surgery," Louis said.

"Minor brain surgery."

Louis had studied the process not long after he began to worry about the size of Gage's head, and the shunt operation, designed to drain excess fluid, had not looked very minor to him. But he kept his mouth shut, telling himself just to be grateful the operation existed at all.