Pet Sematary - Stephen King [170]
Ten minutes later the deadfall loomed ahead. Louis climbed it, stumbling repeatedly but somehow not falling until he was almost down. Then he glanced at his feet, a branch promptly snapped (dont look down, Jud had said), another branch tumbled, spilling his foot outward, and he fell with a thud on his side, the wind knocked out of him.
Ill be goddamned if this isnt the second graveyard Ive fallen into tonight and Ill be goddamned if two isnt enough.
He began to feel around for the pick and shovel again, and laid his hands on them at last. For a moment he surveyed his surroundings, visible by starlight. Nearby was the grave of SMUCKY. He was obediant, Louis thought wearily. And TRIXIE, KILT ON THE HIGHWAY. The wind still blew strongly, and he could hear the faint ting-ting-ting of a piece of metal-perhaps it had once been a Del Monte can, cut laboriously by a grieving pet owner with his fathers tinsnips and then flattened out with a hammer and nailed to a stick-and that brought the fear back again. He was too tired now to feel it as more than a somehow sickening pulsebeat. He had done it. That steady ting-ting-ting sound coming out of the darkness brought it home to him more than anything else.
He walked through the Pet Sematary, past the grave of MARTA OUR PET RABIT who had DYED MARCH 1 1965, and near the barrow of GEN. PATTON; he stepped over the ragged chunk of board that marked the final resting place of POLYNESIA. The tick of metal was louder now, and he paused, looking down. Here atop a slightly leaning board that had been driven into the ground, was a tin rectangle, and by starlight Louis read, RINGO OUR HAMSTER, 1964-1965. It was this piece of tin that was ticking repeatedly off the boards of the Pet Sematarys entry arch. Louis reached down to bend the piece of tin back and then froze, scalp crawling.
Something was moving back there. Something was moving on the other side of the deadfall.
What he heard was a stealthy kind of sound-the furtive crackle of pine needles, the dry pop of a twig, the rattle of underbrush. They were almost lost under the sough of the wind through the pines.
Gage? Louis called hoarsely.
The very realization of what he was doing-standing here in the dark and calling his dead son-pulled his scalp stiff and brought his hair up on end. He began to shudder helplessly and steadily, as if with a sick and killing fever.
Gage?
The sounds had died away.
Not yet; its too early. Dont ask me how I know, but I do. That isnt Gage over there. Thats something else.
He suddenly thought of Ellie telling him, He called Lazarus,
come forth because if He hadnt called for Lazarus by name, everyone in that graveyard would have risen.
On the other side of the deadfall, those sounds had begun again. On the other side of the barrier. Almost-but not quite- hidden under the wind. As if something blind were stalking him with ancient instincts. His dreadfully overstimulated brain conjured horrible, sickening pictures: a giant mole, a great bat that flopped through the underbrush rather than flying.
Louis backed out of the Pet Sematary, not turning his back to the deadfall-that ghostlike glimmer, a livid scar on the dark-until he was well down the path. Then he began to hurry, and perhaps a quarter of a mile before the path ran out of the woods and into the field behind his house, he found enough left inside him to run.
Louis slung the pick and shovel indifferently inside the garage and stood for a moment at the head of his driveway, looking first back the way he had come and then up at the sky. It was quarter past four in the morning, and he supposed dawn could not be so far away. Light would already be three quarters of the way across the Atlantic, but for now, here in Ludlow, the night held hard. The wind blew steadily.
He went into the house, feeling his way along the side of the garage and unlocking the back door. He went through the kitchen without turning on a light and stepped into the small bathroom between the kitchen and the dining room. Here he did snap on a light,