Pet Sematary - Stephen King [33]
He didnt like this dream. Oh God, not at all. It was too real. The cold nubbles in the rug, the way he had not been able to pass through the shed door when a person could (or should) be able to walk through doors and walls in any self-respecting dream and now the cool brush of dew on his bare feet, and the feel of the night wind, just a breath of it, on his body, which was naked except for his Jockey shorts. Once under the trees, pine needles stuck to the soles of his feet another little detail that was just a bit more real than it needed to be.
Never mind. Never mind. I am home in my own bed. Its just a dream, no matter how vivid, and like all other dreams, it will seem ridiculous in the morning. My waking mind will discover its inconsistencies.
The small branch of a dead tree poked his bicep rudely and he winced. Up ahead, Pascow was only a moving shadow, and now Louiss terror seemed to have crystallized into a bright sculpture in his mind: I am following a dead man into the woods, I am following a dead man up to the Pet Sematary, and this is no dream. God help me, this is no dream. This is happening.
They walked down the far side of the wooded hill. The path curved in lazy S-shapes between the trees and then plunged into the underbrush. No boots now. The ground dissolved into cold jelly under his feet, grabbing and holding, letting go only reluctantly. There were ugly sucking noises. He could feel the mud oozing between his toes, trying to separate them.
He tried desperately to hold on to the dream idea.
It wouldnt wash.
They reached the clearing, and the moon sailed free of its reef of clouds again, bathing the graveyard with ghastly effulgence. The leaning markers-bits of board and tin cans that had been cut with a fathers tinsnips and then hammered into rude squares, chipped chunks of shale and slate-stood out with three-dimensional clarity, casting shadows perfectly black and defined.
Pascow stopped near SMUCKY THE CAT, HE WAS OBEDIANT and turned back toward Louis. The horror, the terror-he felt these things would grow in him until his body blew apart under their soft yet implacable pressure. Pascow was grinning. His bloody lips were wrinkled back from his teeth, and his healthy road-crew
tan in the moons bony light had become overlaid with the white of a corpse about to be sewn into its winding shroud.
He lifted one arm and pointed. Louis looked in that direction and moaned. His eyes grew wide, and he crammed his knuckles against his mouth. There was coolness on his cheeks, and he realized that in the extremity of his terror he had begun to weep.
The deadfall from which Jud Crandall had called Ellie in alarm had become a heap of bones. The bones were moving. They writhed and clicked together, mandibles and femurs and ulnas and molars and incisors; he saw the grinning skulls of humans and animals. Fingerbones clittered. Here the remains of a foot flexed its pallid joints.
Ah, it was moving; it was creeping- Pascow was walking toward him now, his bloody face grim in
the moonlight, and the last of Louiss coherent mind began to slip away in a yammering, cyclic thought: You got to scream yourself awake doesnt matter if you scare Rachel Ellie Gage wake the whole household the whole neighborhood got to scream yourself awake screamscreamscreamyourselfawakeawakeawake- But only a thin whisper of air would come. It was the sound of
a little kid sitting on a stoop somewhere and trying to teach himself to whistle.
Pascow came closer and then spoke.
The door must not be opened, Pascow said. He was looking down at Louis because Louis had fallen to his knees. There was a look on his face which Louis at first mistook for compassion. It wasnt really compassion at all; only a dreadful kind of patience. Still he pointed at the moving pile of bones. Dont go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken. Remember this: there