Pet Sematary(51)

He fell silent. Louis waited.

"The Micmacs told Stanny B. 's grandda about the burying ground which they didn't use anymore because the Wendigo had soured the ground, and about Little God Swamp, and the steps, and all the rest.

"The Wendigo story, now, that was something you could hear in those days all over the north country. It was a story they had to have, the same way I guess we have to have some of our Christian stories. Norma would damn me for a profaner if she heard me say that, but Louis, it's true. Sometimes, if the winter was long and hard and the food was short, there were north country Indians who would finally get down to the bad place where it was starve or... or do something else."

"Cannibalism?"

Jud shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe they'd pick out someone who was old and used up, and then there would be stew for a while. And the story they worked out would be that the Wendigo had walked through their village or encampment while they were sleepin and touched them. And the Wendigo was supposed to give those it touched a taste for the flesh of their own kind."

Louis nodded. "Saying the devil made them do it."

"Sure. My own guess is that the Micmacs around here had to do it at some point and that they buried the bones of whoever they ate-one or two, maybe even ten or a dozen-up there in their burying ground."

"And then decided the ground had gone sour," Louis muttered.

"So here's Stanny B., come out in back of the livery to get his jug, I guess,"

Jud said, "already half-crocked, he was. His grandfather was worth maybe a million dollars when he died-or so people said-and Stanny B. was nothing but the local ragman. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him. He saw I'd been bawling, and he told me there was a way it could be fixed up, if I was brave and sure I wanted it fixed up.

"I said I'd give anything to have Spot well again, and I asked him if he knew a vet that could do it. 'Don't know no vet, me,' Stanny said, 'but I know how to fix your dog, boy. You go home now and tell your dad to put that dog in a grain sack, but you ain't gonna bury him, no! You gonna drag him up to the Pet Sematary and you gonna put him in the shade by that big deadfall. Then you gonna come back and say it's done. ' "I asked him what good that would do, and Stanny told me to stay awake that night and come out when he threw a stone against my window. 'And it be midnight, boy, so if you forget Stanny B. and go to sleep, Stanny B. gonna forget you, and it's goodbye dog, let him go straight to Hell!"

Jud looked at Louis and lit another cigarette.

"It went just the way Stanny set it up. When I got back, my dad said he'd put a bullet in Spot's head to spare him any more suffering. I didn't even have to say anything about the Pet Sematary; my dad asked me if I didn't think Spot would want me to bury him up there, and I said I guessed he would. So off I went, dragging my dog in a grain sack. My dad asked me if I wanted help, and I said no because I remembered what Stanny B. said.

"I laid awake that night-forever, seemed like. You know how time is for kids. It would seem to me I must have stayed awake right around until morning, and then the clock would only chime ten or eleven. A couple of times I almost nodded off, but each time I snapped wide awake again. It was almost as if someone had shaken me and said, 'Wake up, Jud! Wake up!' Like something wanted to make sure I stayed awake."

Louis raised his eyebrows at that, and Jud shrugged.

"When the clock in the downstairs hall chimed twelve, I got right up and sat there dressed on my bed with the moon shinin in the window. Next I know, the clock is chimin the half-hour, then one o'clock, and still no Stanny B. He's forgot all about me, that dumb Frenchman, I think to myself, and I'm gettin ready to take my clothes off again when these two pebbles whap off the window, damn near hard enough to break the glass. One of them did put a crack in a pane, but I never noticed it until the next morning, and my mother didn't see it until the next winter, and by then she thought the frost done it.

"I just about flew across to that window and heaved it up. It grated and rumbled against the frame, the way they only seem to do when you're a kid and you want to get out after midnight-" Louis laughed, even though he could not remember ever having wanted to get out of the house at some dark hour when he was a boy of ten. Still, if he had wanted to, he was sure that windows which had never creaked in the daytime would creak then.

"I figured my folks must have thought burglars were trying to break in, but when my heart quieted down I could hear my dad still sawin wood in the bedroom on the first floor. I looked out and there was Stanny B., standin in our driveway and lookin up, swayin like there was a high wind when there wasn't so much as a puff of breeze. I don't think he ever would have come, Louis, except that he'd gotten to that stage of drunkenness where you're as wide awake as an owl with diarrhea and you just don't give a care about anything. And he sort of yells up at me-only I guess he thought he was whispering-'You comin down, boy, or am I comin up to get you?' "Shh!' I says, scared to death now that my dad will wake up and give me the whopping of my young life. 'What'd you say?' Stanny says, even louder than before. If my parents had been around on the road side of this house, Louis, I would have been a goner. But they had the bedroom that belongs to Norma and me now, with the river view."

"I bet you got down those stairs in one hell of a hurry," Louis said. "Have you got another beer, Jud?" He was already two past his usual limit, but tonight that seemed okay. Tonight that seemed almost mandatory.