Pet Sematary - Stephen King [89]
No, Rachel said, with a hesitance that was not much like her. No, Louis, its not like that. I just get scared. And you know me. When I get scared, I get defensive.
Louis could not remember ever hearing Rachel speak with such effort, and suddenly he felt more cautious than he had with Ellie earlier. He felt that he was in a mine field.
Scared of what? Dying?
Not myself, she said. I hardly even think of that anymore. But when I was a kid, I thought of it a lot. Lost a lot of sleep. Dreamed of monsters coming to eat me up in my bed, and all of the monsters looked like my sister Zelda.
Yes, Louis thought. Here it is; at last, after all the time weve been married, here it is.
You dont talk about her much, he said.
Rachel smiled and touched his face. Youre sweet, Louis. I never talk about her. I try never to think about her.
I always assumed you had your reasons.
I did. I do.
She paused, thinking.
I know she died spinal meningitis
Spinal meningitis, she repeated. There are no pictures of her in the house anymore.
Theres a picture of a young girl in your fathers-
In his study. Yes, I forgot that one. And my mother carries one in her wallet still, I think. She was two years older than I was. She caught it and she was in the back bedroom she was in the back bedroom like a dirty secret, Louis, she was dying in there, my sister died in the back bedroom and thats what she was, a dirty secret-she was always a dirty secret!
Rachel suddenly broke down completely, and in the loud, rising quality of her sobs, Louis sensed the onset of hysteria and became alarmed. He reached for her and caught a shoulder, which was pulled away from him as soon as he touched it. He could feel the whisper of her nightdress under his fingertips.
Rachel-babe-dont-
Dont tell me dont, she said. Dont stop me, Louis. Ive only got the strength to tell this once, and then I dont want to ever talk about it again. I probably wont sleep tonight as it is.
Was it that horrible? he asked, knowing the answer already. It explained so much, and even things he had never connected before or only suspected vaguely suddenly came together in his mind, She had never attended a funeral with him, he realized- not even that of Al Locke, a fellow med student who had been killed when his motorcycle had collided with a city bus. Al had been a regular visitor at their apartment, and Rachel had always liked him. Yet she had not gone to his funeral.
She was sick that day, Louis remembered suddenly. Got the flu or something. Looked serious. But the next day she was okay again.
After the funeral she was all right again, he corrected himself. He remembered thinking even then that her sickness might just be psychosomatic.
It was horrible, all right. Worse than you can ever imagine. Louis, we watched her degenerate day by day, and there was nothing anyone could do. She was in constant pain. Her body seemed to shrivel pull in on itself her shoulders hunched up and her face pulled down until it was like a mask. Her hands were like birds feet. I had to feed her sometimes. I hated it, but I did it and never said boo about it. When the pain got bad enough, they started giving her drugs-mild ones at first and then ones that would have left her a junkie if she had lived. But of course everyone knew she wasnt going to live. I guess thats why
shes such a.. secret to all of us. Because we wanted her to die, Louis, we wished for her to die, and it wasnt just so she wouldnt feel any more pain, it was so we wouldnt feel any more pain, it was because she was starting to look like a monster, and she was starting to be a monster oh Christ I know how awful that must sound
She put her face in her hands.
Louis touched her gently. Rachel, it doesnt sound awful at all.
It does! she cried. It does!
It just sounds true, he said. Victims of long illnesses often become demanding, unpleasant monsters. The idea of the saintlike, long-suffering patient is a big romantic fiction. By the time the first set of sores crops up on a