Pet Sematary

by Stephen King

The urge to flee came on him again for the last time, stronger than ever—he actually felt the comforting bulge of his car keys in his pocket. He would get in the Civic and drive to Chicago. He would get Ellie and go on from there. Of course by then Goldman would know something was wrong, that something was dreadfully amiss, but he would get her anyway… snatch her, if he had to. Then his hand fell away from the bulge of the keys. What killed the urge was not a sense of futility, not guilt, not despair or the deep weariness inside him. It was the sight of those muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. In his mind’s eye he could see them tracing a path across the entire country—first to Illinois, then to Florida—across the entire world, if necessary. What you bought, you owned, and what you owned eventually came home to you. There would come a day when he would open a door and there would be Gage, a demented parody of his former self, grinning a sunken grin, his clear blue eyes gone yellow and smart-stupid. Or Ellie would open the bathroom door for her morning shower, and there would be Gage in the tub, his body crisscrossed with the faded scars and bulges of his fatal accident, clean but stinking of the grave. Oh yes, that day would come—he didn’t doubt it a bit. “How could I have been so stupid?” he said to the empty room, talking to himself again, not caring. “How?” Grief, not stupidity, Louis. There is a difference… small, but vital. The battery that burying ground survives...

ground survives on. Growing in power, Jud said, and of course he was right—and you’re part of its power now. It has fed on your grief . . . no, more than that. It’s doubled it, cubed it, raised it to the nth power. And it isn’t just grief it feeds on. Sanity. It’s eaten your sanity. The flaw is only the inability to accept, not uncommon. It’s cost you your wife, and it’s almost surely cost you your best friend as well as your son. This is it. What comes when you’re too slow wishing away the thing that knocks on your door in the middle of the night is simple enough: total darkness. I would commit suicide now, he thought, and I suppose it’s in the cards, isn’t it? I have the equipment in my bag. It has managed everything, managed it from the first. The burying ground, the Wendigo, whatever it is. It forced our cat into the road, and perhaps it forced Gage into the road as well, it brought Rachel home, but only in its own good time. Surely I’m meant to do that . . . and I want to. But things have to be put right, don’t they? Yes. They did. There was Gage to think about. Gage was still out there. Somewhere.