Pet Sematary - Stephen King [29]
Fighting the urge to run with everything in him, be forced himself to lean even closer. What did you say? he asked a second time
The grin. That was bad.
The soil of a mans heart is stonier, Louis, the dying man whispered. A man grows what he can and tends it."
Louis. he thought, hearing nothing with his conscious mind after his own name. Oh my God he called me by my name
Who are you? Louis asked in a trembling, papery voice. Who are you?
Injun bring my fish
How did you know my- Keep clear, us. Know- You-
Caa, the young man said, and now Louis fancied he
could smell death on his breath, internal injuries, lost rhythm, failure, rein.
What? A crazy urge came to shake him.
Gaaaaaaaa-
The young man in the red gym shorts began to shudder all over. Suddenly he seemed to freeze with every muscle locked. His eyes lost their vacant expression momentarily and seemed to find Louiss eyes. Then everything let go at once. There was a bad stink. Louis thought he would, must speak again. Then the eyes resumed their vacant expression and began to glaze. The man was dead.
Louis sat back, vaguely aware that all his clothes were sticking to him; he was drenched with sweat. Darkness bloomed, spreading a wing softly over his eyes, and the world began to swing sickeningly sideways. Recognizing what was happening, he half-turned from the dead man, thrust his head down between his knees, and pressed the nails of his left thumb and left forefinger into his gums hard enough to bring blood.
After a moment the world began to clear again.
13
Then the room filled up with people, as if they were all only actors, waiting for their cue. This added to Louiss feeling of unreality and disorientation-the strength of these feelings, which he had studied in psychology classes but never actually experienced, frightened him badly. It was, he supposed, the way a person would feel shortly after someone had slipped a powerful dose of LSD into his drink.
Like a play staged only for my benefit, he thought. The room is first conveniently cleared so the dying Sibyl can speak a few lines of oblique prophecy to me and me alone, and as soon as hes dead, everyone comes back.
The candy-stripers bungled in, one on each end of the hard stretcher, the one they used for people with spinal or neck injuries. Joan Charlton followed them, saying that the campus police were on their way. The young man had been struck by a car while jogging. Louis thought of the joggers who had run in front of his car that morning and his guts rolled.
Behind Charlton came Steve Masterton with two Campus Security cops. Louis, the people who brought Pascow in are He broke off and said sharply, Louis, are you all right?
Im okay, he said and got up. Faintness washed over him again and then withdrew. He groped. Pascow is his name?
One of the campus cops said, Victor Pascow, according to the girl he was jogging with.
Louis glanced at his watch and subtracted two minutes. From the room where Masterton had sequestered the people who had brought Pascow in, he could hear a girl sobbing wildly. Welcome back to school, little lady, he thought. Have a nice semester. Mr. Pascow died at 10:09 A.M., he said.
One of the cops wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Masterton said again, Louis, are you really okay? You look terrible.
Louis opened his mouth to answer, and one of the candy stripers abruptly dropped her end of the hard stretcher and ran out, vomiting down the front of her pinafore. A phone began to ring. The girl who had been sobbing now began to scream the
dead mans name-Vic! Vic! Vic!-over and over. Bedlam. Confusion. One of the cops was asking Charlton if they could have a blanket to cover him up, and Chariton was saying