Pet Sematary - Stephen King [39]
But it was over now.
Put paid to it, Louis thought with immeasurable relief. Yes, but what about the things he said when he was dying?, his mind tried to ask, and Louis shut it up fast.
That evening, with Rachel ironing and Ellie and Gage sitting in the same chair, both of them engrossed with The Muppet Show, Louis told Rachel casually that he believed he might go for a short walk-to get a little air.
Will you be back in time to help me put Gage to bed? she asked without looking up from her ironing. You know he goes better when youre there.
Sure, he said.
Where you going, Daddy? Ellie asked, not looking away from the TV. Kermit was about to be punched in the eye by Miss Piggy.
Just out back, hon.
Louis went out.
Fifteen minutes later he was in the Pet Sematary, looking around curiously and coping with a strong feeling of déjŕ vu. That he had been here was beyond doubt: the little grave marker put up to honor the memory of Smucky the Cat was knocked over. He had done that when the vision of Pascow approached, near the end of what he could remember of the dream. Louis righted it absently and walked over to the deadfall.
He didnt like it. The memory of all these weather-whitened branches and dead trees turning into a pile of bones still had the power to chill. He forced himself to reach out and touch one. Balanced precariously on the jackstraw pile, it rolled and fell, bouncing down the side of the heap. Louis jumped back a step before it could touch his shoe.
He walked along the deadfall, first to the left, then to the right. On both sides the underbrush closed in so thickly as to be impenetrable. Nor was it the kind of brush youd try to push your way through-not if you were smart, Louis thought. There were lush masses of poison ivy growing close to the ground (all his life Louis had heard people boast that they were immune to the stuff, but he knew that almost no one really was), and farther in were some of the biggest, most wicked-looking thorns he had ever seen.
Louis strolled back to the rough center of the deadfall. He looked at it, hands stuck in the back pockets of his jeans.
Youre not going to try to climb that, are you?
Not me, boss. Why would I want to do a stupid thing like that?
Great. Had me worried for just a minute there, Lou. Looks like a good way to land in your own infirmary with a broken ankle, doesnt it?
Sure does! Also, its getting dark.
Sure that he was all together and in total agreement with himself, Louis began to climb the deadfall.
He was halfway up when he felt it shift under his feet with a peculiar creaking sound.
Roll dem bones, Doc.
When the pile shifted again, Louis began to clamber back down. The tail of his shirt had pulled out of his pants.
He reached solid ground without incident and dusted crumbled bits of bark off his hands. He walked back to the head of the path which would return him to his house-to his children who would want a story before bed, to Church, who was enjoying his
last day as a card-carrying tomcat and lady-killer, to tea in the kitchen with his wife after the kids were down.
He surveyed the clearing again before leaving, struck by its green silence. Tendrils of ground fog had appeared from nowhere and were beginning, to wind around the markers. Those concentric circles as if, all unknowing, the childish hands of North Ludlows generations had built a kind of scale-model Stonehenge.
But, Louis, is this all?
Although he had gotten only the barest glimpse over the top of the deadfall before the shifting sensation had made him nervous, he could have sworn there was a path beyond, leading deeper into the woods.
No business of yours, Louis. Youve got to let this go.
Okay, boss.
Louis turned and headed home.
He stayed up that night an hour after Rachel went to bed, reading a stack of medical journals he had already been through, refusing to admit that the thought of going to bed-going to sleep
-made him nervous. He had never had an episode of somnambulism before, and there was no way to be sure it was an