Pet Sematary(30)

With the sleepwalking hypothesis in mind, he was able to analyze the causes of the dream-and he did so with a certain eagerness. He had walked to the Pet Sematary because it had become associated with another moment of recent stress.

It had in fact been the cause of a serious argument between him and his wife...

. and also, he thought with growing excitement, it was associated in his mind with his daughter's first encounter with the idea of death-something his own subconscious must have been grappling with last night when he went to bed.

Damn lucky I got back to the house okay-I don't even remember that part. Must have come back on autopilot.

It was a good thing he had. He couldn't imagine what it would have been like to have awakened this morning by the grave of Smucky the Cat, disoriented, covered with dew, and probably scared shitless-as Rachel also would have been, undoubtedly.

But it was over now.

Put paid to it, Louis thought with immeasurable relief. Yes, but what about the things he said when he was dying?, his mind tried to ask, and Louis shut it up fast.

That evening, with Rachel ironing and Ellie and Gage sitting in the same chair, both of them engrossed with "The Muppet Show," Louis told Rachel casually that he believed he might go for a short walk-to get a little air.

"Will you be back in time to help me put Gage to bed?" she asked without looking up from her ironing. "You know he goes better when you're there."

"Sure," he said.

"Where you going, Daddy?" Ellie asked, not looking away from the TV. Kermit was about to be punched in the eye by Miss Piggy.

"Just out back, hon."

Louis went out.

Fifteen minutes later he was in the Pet Sematary, looking around curiously and coping with a strong feeling of dйjа vu. That he had been here was beyond doubt: the little grave marker put up to honor the memory of Smucky the Cat was knocked over. He had done that when the vision of Pascow approached, near the end of what he could remember of the dream. Louis righted it absently and walked over to the deadfall.

He didn't like it. The memory of all these weather-whitened branches and dead trees turning into a pile of bones still had the power to chill. He forced himself to reach out and touch one. Balanced precariously on the jackstraw pile, it rolled and fell, bouncing down the side of the heap. Louis jumped back a step before it could touch his shoe.

He walked along the deadfall, first to the left, then to the right. On both sides the underbrush closed in so thickly as to be impenetrable. Nor was it the kind of brush you'd try to push your way through-not if you were smart, Louis thought. There were lush masses of poison ivy growing close to the ground (all his life Louis had heard people boast that they were immune to the stuff, but he knew that almost no one really was), and farther in were some of the biggest, most wicked-looking thorns he had ever seen.

Louis strolled back to the rough center of the deadfall. He looked at it, hands stuck in the back pockets of his jeans.

You're not going to try to climb that, are you?
Chapter 7

Not me, boss. Why would I want to do a stupid thing like that?

Great. Had me worried for just a minute there, Lou. Looks like a good way to land in your own infirmary with a broken ankle, doesn't it?

Sure does! Also, it's getting dark.

Sure that he was all together and in total agreement with himself, Louis began to climb the deadfall.

He was halfway up when he felt it shift under his feet with a peculiar creaking sound.

Roll dem bones, Doc.

When the pile shifted again, Louis began to clamber back down. The tail of his shirt had pulled out of his pants.

He reached solid ground without incident and dusted crumbled bits of bark off his hands. He walked back to the head of the path which would return him to his house-to his children who would want a story before bed, to Church, who was enjoying his last day as a card-carrying tomcat and lady-killer, to tea in the kitchen with his wife after the kids were down.

He surveyed the clearing again before leaving, struck by its green silence.

Tendrils of ground fog had appeared from nowhere and were beginning, to wind around the markers. Those concentric circles... as if, all unknowing, the childish hands of North Ludlow's generations had built a kind of scale-model Stonehenge.

But, Louis, is this all?

Although he had gotten only the barest glimpse over the top of the deadfall before the shifting sensation had made him nervous, he could have sworn there was a path beyond, leading deeper into the woods.

No business of yours, Louis. You've got to let this go.

Okay, boss.

Louis turned and headed home.

He stayed up that night an hour after Rachel went to bed, reading a stack of medical journals he had already been through, refusing to admit that the thought of going to bed-going to sleep-made him nervous. He had never had an episode of somnambulism before, and there was no way to be sure it was an isolated incident... until it did or didn't happen again.

He heard Rachel get out of bed, and then she called down softly, "Lou? Hon? You coming up?"

"Just was," he said, turning out the lamp over his study desk and getting up.

It took a good deal longer than seven minutes to shut the machine down that night. Listening to Rachel draw the long, calm breaths of deep sleep beside him, the apparition of Victor Pascow seemed less dreamlike. He would close his eyes and see the door crashing open and there he was, Our Special Guest Star, Victor Pascow, standing there in his jogging shorts, pallid under his summer tan, his collarbone poking up.