Pet Sematary - Stephen King [91]
No, of course you didnt, Louis said. He turned to her and hugged her, and Rachel gripped him with the panicky strength of a poor swimmer whose boat has suddenly overturned in the middle of a large lake. Did someone actually give you a hard time about it, babe?
No, she said, no one blamed me. But nobody could make it better either. No one could change it. No one could make it an unhappening, Louis. She hadnt swallowed her tongue. She started making a sound, a kind of, I dont know-gaaaaaa-like that-
In her distressed, total recall of that day she did a more than creditable imitation of the way her sister Zelda must have sounded, and Louiss mind Bashed to Victor Pascow. His grip on his wife tightened.
-and there was spit, spit coming down her chin-
Rachel, thats enough, he said, not quite steadily. I am aware of the symptoms.
Im explaining, she said stubbornly. Im explaining why I cant go to poor Normas funeral, for one thing, and why we had that stupid fight that day-
Shh-thats forgotten.
Not by me, it isnt, she said. I remember it well, Louis. I remember it as well as I remember my sister Zelda choking to death in her bed on April 14, 1965.
For a long moment there was silence in the room.
I turned her over on her belly and thumped her back, Rachel went on at last. Its all I knew to do. Her feet were beating up and down and her twisted legs and I remember there was a sound like farting I thought she was farting or I was, but it wasnt farts, it was the seams under both arms of my blouse
ripping out when I turned her over. She started to to convulse and I saw that her face was turned sideways, turned into the pillows, and I thought, oh, shes choking, Zeldas choking, and theyll come home and say I murdered her by choking, theyll say you hated her, Rachel, and that was true, and theyll say you wanted her to be dead, and that was true too. Because, Louis, see, the first thought that went through my mind when she started to go up and down in the bed like that, I remember it, my first thought was Oh good, finally, Zeldas choking and this is going to be over. So I turned her over again and her face had gone black, Louis, and her eyes were bulging and her neck was swelled up. Then she died. I backed across the room. I guess I wanted to back out the door, but I hit the wall and a picture fell down-it was a picture from one of the Oz books that Zelda liked before she got sick with the meningitis, when she was well, it was a picture of Oz the Great and Terrible, only Zelda always called him Oz the Gweat and Tewwible because she couldnt make that sound, and so she sounded like Elmer Fudd. My mother got that picture framed because because Zelda liked it most of all
Oz the Gweat and Tewwible and it fell down and hit the floor and the glass in the frame shattered and I started to scream because I knew she was dead and I thought I guess I thought it was her ghost, coming back to get me, and I knew that her ghost would hate me like she did, but her ghost wouldnt be stuck in bed, so I screamed I screamed and I ran out of the house screaming Zeldas dead! Zeldas dead! Zeldas dead! And the neighbors they came and they looked they saw me running down the street with my blouse all ripped out under the arms I was yelling Zeldas dead! Louis, and I guess maybe they thought I was crying but I think I think maybe I was laughing, Louis. I think maybe thats what I was doing.
If you were, I salute you for it, Louis said.
You dont mean that, though, Rachel said with the utter surety of one who has been over a point and over it and over it. He let it go. He thought she might eventually get rid of this awful, rancid memory that had haunted her for so long-most of it, anyway-but never this part. Never completely. Louis Creed was no psychiatrist, but he knew that there are rusty, half-buried things in the terrain of any life and that human beings seem compelled to go back to these things and pull at them, even though
they cut. Tonight Rachel