Pet Sematary

by Stephen King

Here, looming in the windy dark, was the cemetery’s crypt. Coffins were stored there in the winter when it was too cold for even the payloaders to dig in the frozen earth. It was also used when there was a rush of business. There were such rushes of “cold custom” from time to time, Louis knew; in any given population there were times when, for no reason anyone could understand, lots of people died. “It all balances out,” Uncle Carl told him. “If I have a two-week period in May when nobody dies, Lou, I can count on a two-week period in November when I’ll have ten funerals. Only it’s rarely November, and it’s never around Christmas, although people always think that’s when a lot of people die. That stuff about Christmas depression is just a load of bullshit. Just ask any funeral director. Most people are really happy around Christmas, and they want to live. So they do live. It’s usually February when we get a big bulge. The flu gets the old people and there’s pneumonia, of course—but that’s not all. There’ll be people who’ve been battling cancer like mad bastards for a year, sixteen months. Then bad old February comes around and it seems as if they get tired and the cancer just rolls them up like a rug. On January 31 they’re in remission, and they feel as if they’re in the pink. Come February 24 they’re planted. People have heart attacks in February, strokes in February, renal failure in February. It’s a bad month. People get tired in February. We’re used to it, in the busin...