Pet Sematary - Stephen King [23]
and then one day, instead of reading about it in a note from a friend (Well, I suppose I ought to tell you before you hear it from someone else, Lou; Maggie and I are splitting ) or in the newspaper, it was you.
He undressed to his shorts quietly and set the alarm for 6 A.M. Then he showered, washed his hair, shaved, and crunched up a Rolaid before brushing his teeth-Normas iced tea had given him acid indigestion. Or maybe it was coming home and seeing Rachel way over on her side of the bed. Territory is that which defines all else, hadnt he read that in some college history course?
Everything done, the evening put neatly away, he went to bed but couldnt sleep. There was something else, something that nagged at him. The last two days went around and around in his head as he listened to Rachel and Gage breathing nearly in tandem. GEN. PATTON HANNAH THE BEST DOG THAT EVER LIVED -. MARIA OUR PET RABIT Ellie, furious. I dont want Church to ever be dead! Hes not Gods cat!
Let God have His own cat! Rachel, equally furious. You as a doctor should know Norma Crandall saying It just seems like people want to forget it And Jud, his voice terribly sure, terribly certain, a voice from another age: Sometimes it took supper with you and sometimes you could feel it bite
your ass.
And that voice merged with the voice of his mother, who had lied to Louis Creed about sex at four but told him the truth about death at twelve, when his cousin Ruthie had been killed in a stupid car accident. She had been crushed in her fathers car by a kid who had found the keys in a Public Works Department payloader and decided to take it for a cruise and then found out he didnt know how to stop it. The kid suffered only minor cuts and contusions; his Uncle Carls Fairlane was demolished. She cant be dead, he had replied in answer to his mothers bald statement. He had heard the words, but he couldnt seem to get the sense of them. What do you mean, shes dead? What are you talking about? And then, as an afterthought: Whos going to bury her? For although Ruthies father, Louiss uncle, was an undertaker, he couldnt imagine that Uncle Carl would possibly be the one to do it. In his confusion and mounting fear, he had seized upon this as the most important question. It was a genuine conundrum, like who cut the town barbers hair.
I imagine that Donny Donahue will do it, his mother replied. Her eyes were red-rimmed; most of all she had looked tired. His mother had looked almost ill with weariness.
Hes your uncles best pal in the business. Oh, but Louis.
Sweet little Ruthie I cant stand to think she suffered.
pray with me. will you, Louis? Pray with me for Ruthie. I need you to help me.
So they had gotten down on their knees in the kitchen, he and his mother, and they prayed, and it was the praying that finally brought it home to him; if his mother was praying for Ruthie Creeds soul, then it meant that her body was gone. Before his closed eyes rose a terrible image of Ruthie coming
to his thirteenth birthday party with her decaying eyeballs hanging on her cheeks and blue mould growing in her red hair, and this image provoked not just sickening horror but an awful doomed love.
He cried out in the greatest mental agony of his life, She cant be dead! MOMMA, SHE CANT BE DEAD-I LOVE HER!"
And his mothers reply, her voice flat and yet full of images: dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust:
She is, my darling. Im sorry, but she is. Ruthie is gone.
Louis shuddered, thinking, Dead is dead-what else do you need?