Pet Sematary (54 page)

He and his son were on patrol. He and his son were the sentries in this magic land, and they cruised endlessly in their white van with the red dashboard flasher neatly and sensibly covered. They were not looking for trouble, not they, but they were ready for it should it show its face. That it was lurking even here, in a place dedicated to such innocent pleasures, could not be denied; some grinning man buying film along Main Street could clutch his chest as the heart attack struck, a pregnant woman might suddenly feel the labor pains start as she walked down the steps from the Sky Chariot, a teenage girl as pretty as a Norman Rockwell cover might suddenly collapse in a flopping epileptic fit, loafers rattling out a jagged backbeat on the cement as the signals in her brain suddenly jammed
up. There were sunstroke and heatstroke and brainstroke, and perhaps at the end of some sultry Orlando summer afternoon there might even be a stroke of lightning; there was, even, Oz the Gweat and Tewwible himself here—he might be glimpsed walking around near the monorail's point of egress into the Magic Kingdom or peering down from one of the flying Dumbos with his flat and stupid gaze—down here Louis and Gage had come to know him as just another amusement park figure like Goofy or Mickey or Tigger or the estimable Mr. D. Duck. He was the one, however, with whom no one wanted his or her picture taken, the one to whom no one wanted to introduce his son or daughter. Louis and Gage knew him; they had met him and faced him down in New England, some time ago. He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boggie of electricity—Available at Your Nearest Switchplate or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate.
Who's out there?
you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all
alone, and it was
his
answer that came back: Don't be afraid, it's just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let's go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name's Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want—hell, we're old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can't stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I've got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha.

And that thin voice is crying, “I love you, Tigger! I love you! I believe in you, Tigger! I will always love you and believe in you, and I will stay young, and the only Oz to ever live in my heart will be that gentle faker from Nebraska! I love you . . .”

We cruise . . . my son and I . . . because the essence of it isn't war or sex but only that sickening, noble, hopeless battle against Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. He and I, in our white van under this bright Florida sky, we cruise. And the red flasher is hooded, but it is there if we need it . . . and none need know but us because the soil of a man's heart is stonier; a man grows what he can . . . and tends it.

Thinking such troubled half-dreaming thoughts,
Louis Creed slipped away, unplugging his connections to waking reality line by line, until all thoughts ceased and exhaustion dragged him down to black dreamless unconsciousness.

*  *  *

Just before the first signs of dawn touched the sky in the east, there were footsteps on the stairs. They were slow and clumsy but purposeful. A shadow moved in the shadows of the hall. A smell came with it—a stench. Louis, even in his thick sleep, muttered and turned away from that smell. There was the steady pull and release of respiration.

The shape stood outside the master bedroom door for some little time, not moving. Then it came inside. Louis's face was buried in his pillow. White hands reached out, and there was a click as the black doctor's bag by the bed was opened.

A low clink and shift as the things inside were moved.

The hands explored, pushing aside drugs and ampules and syringes with no interest at all. Now they found something and held it up. In the first dim light there was a gleam of silver.

The shadowy thing left the room.

Jesus therefore, groaning inside of himself and full of trouble, came to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone had been raised against the mouth. “Roll away the stone,” Jesus said.

Martha said, “Lord, by this time he will have begun to rot. He has been dead four days.” . . .

And when he had prayed awhile, Jesus raised his voice and cried, “Lazarus, come forth!” And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin.

Jesus said to them, “Loose him and let him go.”

—J
OHN
'
S
G
OSPEL
(paraphrase)

“I only just thought of it,” she said hysterically. “Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't you think of it?”

“Think of what?” he questioned.

“The other two wishes,” she replied rapidly. “We've only had one.”

“Was that not enough?” he demanded fiercely.

“No,” she cried triumphantly: “we'll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again.”

—W. W. J
ACOBS
(“The Monkey's Paw”)

Jud Crandall came awake with a sudden jerk, almost falling out of his chair. He had no idea how long he had slept; it could have been fifteen minutes or three hours. He looked at his watch and saw that it was five minutes of five. There was a feeling that everything in the room had been subtly shifted out of position, and there was a line of pain across his back from sleeping sitting up.

Oh you stupid old man, look what you gone and done!

But he knew better; in his heart, he knew better. It wasn't just him. He hadn't simply fallen asleep on watch; he had been
put
to sleep.

That frightened him, but one thing frightened him more; what had awakened him? He was under the impression that there had been some sound, some—

He held his breath, listening over the papery rustle of his heart.

Here was a sound—not the same one that had
awakened him, but something. The faint creak of hinges.

Jud knew every sound in this house—which floorboards creaked, which stair levels squeaked, where along the gutters the wind was apt to hoot and sing when it was drunkenly high, as it had been last night. He knew this sound as well as any of those. The heavy front door, the one that communicated between his porch and the front hall, had just swung open. And with that information to go on, his mind was able to remember the sound that had awakened him. It had been the slow expansion of the spring on the screen door communicating between the porch and the front walk.

“Louis?” he called but with no real hope. That wasn't Louis out there. Whatever was out there had been sent to punish an old man for his pride and vanity.

Footsteps moved slowly up the hall toward the living room.

“Louis?” he tied to call again, but only a faint croak actually emerged because now he could smell the thing which had come into his house here at the end of the night. It was a dirty, low smell—the smell of poisoned tidal flats.

Jud could make out bulking shapes in the gloom—Norma's armoire, the Welsh dresser, the highboy—but no details. He tried to get to his feet on legs that had gone to water, his mind screaming that he needed more time, that he was too old to face this again without more time; Timmy Baterman had been bad enough, and Jud had been young then.

The swing door opened and let in shadows. One of the shadows was more substantial than the others.

Dear God, that stink.

Shuffling steps in the darkness.

“Gage?” Jud gained his feet at last. From one corner of his eye he saw the roll of cigarette ash in the Jim Beam ashtray. “Gage, is that y—”

A hideous mewling sound now arose, and for a moment all of Jud's bones turned to white ice. It was not Louis's son returned from the grave but some hideous monster.

No. It was neither.

It was Church, crouched in the hall doorway, making that sound. The cat's eyes flared like dirty lamps. Then his eyes moved in the other direction and fixed on the thing which had come in with the cat.

Jud began to back up, trying to catch at his thoughts, trying to hold on to his reason in the face of that smell. Oh, it was cold in here—the thing had brought its chill with it.

Jud rocked unsteadily on his feet—it was the cat, twining around his legs, making him totter. It was purring. Jud kicked at it, driving it away. It bared its teeth at him and hissed.

Think! Oh, think, you stupid old man, it mayn't be too late, even yet it mayn't be too late . . . it's back but it can be killed again . . . if you can only do it . . . if you can only think . . .

He backed away toward the kitchen, and he suddenly remembered the utensil drawer beside the sink. There was a meat cleaver in that drawer.

His thin shanks struck the swinging door that led into the kitchen and he pushed it open. The thing that had come into his house was still indistinct, but Jud could hear it breathing. He could see one white hand swinging back and forth—there was something in that hand, but he could not make out what. The door swung back as he entered the kitchen, and Jud at last turned his back and ran to the utensil drawer. He jerked it open and found the cleaver's worn hardwood handle. He snatched it up and turned toward the door again; he even took a step or two toward it. Some of his courage had come back.

Remember, it ain't a kid. It may scream or somethin when it sees you've got its number; it may cry. But you ain't gonna be fooled. You been fooled too many times already, old man. This is your last chance.

The swing door opened again, but at first only the cat came through. Jud's eye followed it for a moment and then he looked up again.

The kitchen faced east, and dawn's first light came in through the windows, faint and milky white. Not much light but enough. Too much.

Gage Creed came in, dressed in his burial suit. Moss was growing on the suit's shoulders and lapels. Moss had fouled his white shirt. His fine blond hair was caked with dirt. One eye had gone to the wall; it stared off into space with terrible concentration. The other was fixed on Jud.

Gage was grinning at him.

“Hello, Jud,” Gage piped in a babyish but perfectly understandable voice. “I've come to send your rotten,
stinking old soul straight to hell. You fucked with me once. Did you think I wouldn't come back sooner or later and fuck with you?”

Jud raised the cleaver. “Come on and get your pecker out then, whatever you are. We'll see who fucks with who.”

“Norma's dead, and there'll be no one to mourn you,” Gage said. “What a cheap slut she was. She fucked every one of your friends, Jud. She let them put it up her ass. That's how she liked it best. She's burning down in hell, arthritis and all. I
saw
her there, Jud. I
saw
her there.”

It lurched two steps toward him, shoes leaving muddy tracks on the worn linoleum. It held one hand out in front of it as if to shake with him; the other hand was curled behind its back.

“Listen, Jud,” it whispered—and then its mouth hung open, baring small milk teeth, and although the lips did not move, Norma's voice issued forth.

“I laughed at you! We all laughed at you! How we laaaaaauuughed—”

“Stop it!” The cleaver jittered in his hand.

“We did it in our bed, Herk and I did it, I did it with George, I did it with all of them. I knew about your whores but you never knew you
married
a whore and how we laughed, Jud! We rutted together and we laaaaaaaaaughed at—”

“STOP IT!” Jud screamed. He sprang at the tiny, swaying figure in its dirty burial suit, and that was when the cat arrowed out of the darkness under the butcher block where it had been crouched. It was hissing, its ears laid back along the bullet of its skull, and
it tripped Jud up just as neat as you please. The cleaver flew out of his hand. It skittered across the humped and faded linoleum, blade and handle swiftly changing places as it whirled. It struck the baseboard with a thin clang and slid under the refrigerator.

Jud realized that he had been fooled again, and the only consolation was that it was for the final time. The cat was on his legs, mouth open, eyes blazing, hissing like a teakettle. And then Gage was on him, grinning a happy black grin, eyes moon-shaped, rimmed with red, and his right hand came out from behind his back, and Jud saw that what he had been holding when he came in was a scalpel from Louis's black bag.

“Oh m' dear Jesus,” Jud managed and put his right hand up to block the blow. And here was an optical illusion; surely his mind had snapped because it appeared that the scalpel was on both sides of his palm at the same time. Then something warm began to drizzle down on his face, and he understood.