Pet Sematary - Stephen King [54]
Were damn lucky we didnt kill ourselves!-and then he shut it again. He had never really questioned at all, not from the moment Jud approached the deadfall. And he was not worried about getting back over again.
I guess not, he said.
Come on. Cot a piece to walk yet. Three miles or more.
They walked. The path did indeed go on. In places it seemed very wide, although the moving light revealed little clearly; it was mostly a feeling of space, a feeling that the trees had drawn back. Once or twice Louis looked up and saw stars wheeling between the massed dark border of trees. Once something loped across the path ahead of them, and the light picked up the reflection of greenish eyes-there and then gone.
At other times the path closed in until underbrush scratched stiff fingers across the shoulders of Louiss coat. He switched the bag and the shovel more often, but the ache in his shoulders was now constant. He fell into a rhythm of walking and became almost hypnotized with it. There was power here, yes, he felt it. He remembered a time when he had been a senior in high school. He and his girl and some other couple had gone way out in the boonies and had ended up necking at the end of a dead-end dirt road near a power station. They hadnt been there long before Louiss girl said that she wanted to go home, or at least to another place, because all her teeth (all the ones with fillings, anyway, and that was most of them) were aching. Louis had been glad to leave himself. The air around the power station had made him feel nervous and too awake. This was like that, but it was stronger. Stronger but not unpleasant at all. It was- Jud had stopped at the base of a long slope. Louis ran into him.
Jud turned toward him. Were almost where were going now, he said calmly. This next bit is like the deadfall-you got to walk steady and easy. Just follow me and dont look down. You felt us going downhill?
Yes.
This is the edge of what the Micmacs used to call Little Cod Swamp. The fur traders who came through called it Dead Mans Bog, and most of them who came once and got out never came gain.
Is there quicksand?
Oh, ayuh, quicksand aplenty! Streams that bubble up through
a big deposit of quartz sand left over from the glacier. Silica sand, we always called it, although theres probably a proper name for it.
Jud looked at him, and for a moment Louis thought he saw something bright and not completely pleasant in the old mans eyes.
Then Jud shifted the flashlight and that look was gone.
Theres a lot of funny things down this way, Louis. The airs heavier more electrical or somethin.
Louis started.
Whats wrong?
Nothing, Louis said, thinking of that night on the dead-end road.
You might see St. Elmos fire-what the sailors call foo-lights. It makes funny shapes, but its nothing. If you should see some of those shapes and they bother you, just look the other way. You may hear sounds like voices, but they are the loons down south toward Prospect. The sound carries. Its funny.
Loons? Louis said doubtfully. This time of year?
Oh, ayuh, Jud said again, and his voice was terribly bland and totally unreadable. For a moment Louis wished desperately he could see the old mans face again. That look- Jud, where are we going? What the hell are we doing out here in the back of the beyond?
Ill tell you when we get there. Jud turned away. Mind the tussocks.
They began to walk again, stepping from one broad hummock to the next. Louis did not feel for them. His feet seemed to find them automatically, with no effort from him. He slipped only once, his left shoe breaking through a thin scum of ice and dipping into cold and somehow slimy standing water. He pulled it out quickly and went on, following Juds bobbing light. That light, floating through the woods, brought back memories of the pirate tales he had liked to read as a boy. Evil men off to bury gold doubloons by the dark of the moon and of course one of them would be tumbled into the pit on top of the chest, a bullet in his heart, because the pirates had