Pet Sematary - Stephen King [177]
Rachel tried to think, but all at once images of her sister Zelda had begun to creep into her mind, blurring thought. How her hands had twisted. How she used to slam her head against the wall sometimes when she was angry-the paper had been all torn there, the plaster beneath torn and broken. This was no time to think of Zelda, not when Jud might be hurt. Suppose he had fallen down? He was an old man.
Think about that, not about the dreams you had as a kid, dreams of opening the closet and having Zelda spring out at you with her blackened, grinning face, dreams of being in the bathtub and seeing Zeldas eyes peering out of the drain, dreams of Zelda lurking in the basement behind the furnace, dreams- Church opened his mouth, exposing his sharp teeth and cried Waow! again.
Louis was right, we never should have had him fixed, hes never seemed right since then. But Louis said it would take away all of his aggressive instincts. He was wrong about that, anyway; Church still hunts. He- Waow! Church cried again, then turned and darted up the stairs.
Jud? she called again. Are you up there?
Waow! Church cried from the top of the stairs, as if to confirm the fact, and then he disappeared down the hall.
How did he get in, anyway? Did Jud let him in? Why?
Rachel shifted from one foot to the other, wondering what to do next. The worst of it was that all of this seemed seemed somehow managed, as if something wanted her to be here, and- And then there was a groan from upstairs, low and filled with pain-Juds voice, surely Juds voice. Hes fallen in the bathroom or maybe tripped, broken a leg, or sprained his hip, maybe, the bones of the old are brittle, and what in the name of God are you thinking of, girl, standing down here and shifting back and forth like you had to go to the bathroom, that was blood on Church, blood, Juds hurt and youre just standing here! Whats wrong with you?
Jud! The groan came again, and she ran up the stairs.
She had never been up here before, and because the hails only window faced west, toward the river, it was still very dark. The hallway ran straight and wide beside the stairwell and toward the back of the house, the cherrywood rail gleaming with mellow elegance. There was a picture of the Acropolis on the wall and
(its Zelda all these years shes been after you and now its her time open the right door and shell be there with her humped and twisted back smelling of piss and death its Zelda its her time and finally she caught up with you)
the groan came again, low, from behind the second door on the right.
Rachel began to walk toward that door, her heels clacking on the boards. It seemed to her that she was going through some sort of warp-not a time warp or a space warp but a size warp. She was getting smaller. The picture of the Acropolis was floating higher and higher, and that cut-glass doorknob would soon be at eye level. Her hand stretched out for it and before she could even touch it, the door was snatched open.
Zelda stood there.
She was hunched and twisted, her body so cruelly deformed that she had actually become a dwarf, little more than two feet high; and for some reason Zelda was wearing the suit they had buried Gage in. But it was Zelda, all right, her eyes alight with an insane glee, her face a raddled purple; it was Zelda screaming, I finally came back for you, Rachel, Im going to twist your back like mine and youll never get out of bed again never get out of bed again NEVER GET OUT OF BED AGAIN-
Church was perched on one of her shoulders and Zeldas face swam and changed, and Rachel saw with spiraling, sickening horror that it really wasnt Zelda at all-how could she have made such a stupid mistake? It was Cage. His face was not black but dirty, smeared with blood. And it was swollen, as if he had been terribly hurt and then put back together again by crude, uncaring hands.
She cried his name and held her arms out. He ran to her and climbed into them, and all the time one hand remained behind his back, as if with a bunch of posies picked in someones back meadow.