Pet Sematary - Stephen King [181]
Then his hand fell away from the bulge of the keys. What killed the urge was not a sense of futility, not guilt, not despair or the deep weariness inside him. It was the sight of those muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. In his minds eye he could see them tracing a path across the entire country-first to Illinois,
then to Florida-across the entire world, if necessary. What you bought, you owned, and what you owned eventually came home to you.
There would come a day when he would open a door and there would be Gage, a demented parody of his former self, grinning a sunken grin, his clear blue eyes gone yellow and smart-stupid. Or Ellie would open the bathroom door for her morning shower, and there would be Gage in the tub, his body crisscrossed with the faded scars and bulges of his fatal accident, clean but stinking of the grave.
Oh yes, that day would come-he didnt doubt it a bit.
How could I have been so stupid? he said to the empty room, talking to himself again, not caring. How?
Grief, not stupidity, Louis. There is a difference small, but vital. The battery that burying ground survives on. Growing in power, Jud said, and of course he was right-and youre part of its power now. It has fed on your grief no, more than that. Its doubled it, cubed it, raised it to the nth power. And it isnt just grief it feeds on. Sanity. Its eaten your sanity. The flaw is only the inability to accept, not uncommon. Its cost you your wife, and its almost surely cost you your best friend as well as your son. This is it. What comes when youre too slow wishing away the thing that knocks on your door in the middle of the night is simple enough: total darkness.
I would commit suicide now, he thought, and I suppose its in the cards, isnt it? I have the equipment in my bag. It has managed everything, managed it from the first. The burying ground, the Wendigo, whatever it is. It forced our cat into the road, and perhaps it forced Gage into the road as well, it brought Rachel home, but only in its own good time. Surely Im meant to do that
and I want to.
But things have to be put right, dont they?
Yes. They did.
There was Gage to think about. Gage was still out there. Somewhere.
He followed the footprints through the dining room and the living room and back up the stairs. They were smudged there because he had walked over them on his way down without seeing them. They led into the bedroom. He was here, Louis thought wonderingly, he was right here, and then he saw that his medical bag was unsnapped.
The contents inside, which he always arranged with careful neatness, were now in jumbled disorder. But it did not take Louis long to see that his scalpel was missing, and he put his hands over his face and sat that way for some time, a faint, despairing noise coming from his throat.
At last he opened the bag again and began to look through it.
Downstairs again.
The sound of the pantry door being opened. The sound of a cupboard being opened, then slammed shut. The busy whine of the can opener. Last the sound of the garage door opening and closing. And then the house stood empty in the May sunshine, as it had stood empty on that August day the year before, waiting for the new people to arrive as it would wait for other new people to arrive at some future date. A young married couple perhaps, with no children (but with hopes and plans). Bright young marrieds with a taste for Mondavi wine and Löwenbräu beer-he would be in charge of the Northeast Banks credit department perhaps, she with a dental hygienists credential or maybe three years experience as an optometrists assistant. He would split half a cord of wood for the fireplace, she would wear high-waisted corduroy pants and walk in Mrs. Vintons field, collecting Novembers fall grasses for a table centerpiece, her hair in a ponytail, the brightest thing under the gray skies, totally unaware that an invisible Vulture rode the air currents overhead. They would congratulate themselves on their lack of superstition, on their hardheadedness