Pet Sematary

by Stephen King

Louis saw with something like alarm that Steve was starting to cry. “Sure,” he said, and in his mind he saw Gage running across the lawn toward the road. They were yelling at Gage to come back, but he wouldn’t—lately the game had been to run away from Mommy-Daddy—and then they were chasing him, Louis quickly outdistancing Rachel, but Gage had a big lead, Gage was laughing, Gage was running away from Daddy—that was the game—and Louis was closing the distance but too slowly, Gage was running down the mild slope of the lawn now to the verge of Route 15, and Louis prayed to God that Gage would fall down—when little kids ran fast, they almost always fell down because a person’s control over his legs didn’t get really cool until he was maybe seven or eight. Louis prayed to God that Gage would fall down, fall down, yes, fall down bloody his nose crack his skull need stitches whatever, because now he could hear the drone of a truck coming toward them, one of those big ten-wheelers that went back and forth endlessly between Bangor and the Orinco plant in Bucksport, and he had screamed Gage’s name then, and he believed that Gage had heard him and tried to stop. Gage seemed to realize that the game was over, that your parents didn’t scream at you when it was just a game, and he had tried to put on the brakes, and by then the sound of the truck was very loud, the sound of it filled the world. It was thundering. Louis had thrown himself forward in a long flying tackle, his shadow track...