Pet Sematary

by Stephen King

Rachel shifted from one foot to the other, wondering what to do next. The worst of it was that all of it seemed… seemed somehow managed, as if something wanted her to be here, and— And then there was a groan from upstairs, low and filled with pain—Jud’s voice, surely Jud’s voice. He’s fallen in the bathroom or maybe tripped, broken a leg, or sprained his hip, maybe, the bones of the old are brittle, and what in the name of God are you thinking of, girl, standing down here and shifting back and forth like you had to go to the bathroom, that was blood on Church, blood. Jud’s hurt and you’re just standing here! What’s wrong with you? “Jud!” The groan came again, and she ran up the stairs. She had never been up here before, and because the hall’s only window faced west, toward the river, it was still very dark. The hallways ran straight and wide beside the stairwell and toward the back of the house, the cherrywood rail gleaming with mellow elegance. There was a picture of the Acropolis on the wall and (it’s Zelda all these years she’s been after you and now it’s her time open the right door and she’ll be there with her humped and twisted back smelling of piss and death it’s Zelda it’s her time and finally she caught up with you) the groan came again, low, from behind the second door on the right. Rachel began to walk toward that door, her heels clacking on the boards. It seemed to her that she was going through some sort of warp—not a time warp or a space warp but a size warp....

warp. She was getting smaller. The picture of the Acropolis was floating higher and higher, and that cut-glass doorknob would soon be at eye level. Her hand stretched out for it . . . and before she could even touch it, the door was snatched open. Zelda stood there. She was hunched and twisted, her body so cruelly deformed that she had actually become a dwarf, little more than two feet high; and for some reason Zelda was wearing the suit they had buried Gage in. But it was Zelda, all right, her eyes alight with an insane glee, her face a raddled purple; it was Zelda screaming, “I finally came back for you, Rachel, I’m going to twist your back like mine and you’ll never get out of bed again never get out of bed again NEVER GET OUT OF BED AGAIN—” Church was perched on one of her shoulders and Zelda’s face swam and changed, and Rachel saw with spiraling, sickening horror that it really wasn’t Zelda at all—how could she have made such a stupid mistake? It was Gage. His face was not black but dirty, smeared with blood. And it was swollen, as if he had been terribly hurt and then put back together again by crude, uncaring hands. She cried his name and held her arms out. He ran to her and climbed into them, and all the time one hand remained behind his back, as if with a bunch of posies picked in someone’s back meadow. “I brought you something, Mommy!” he screamed. “I brought you something, Mommy! I brought you something, I brought you something!”