Pet Sematary (47 page)

“Don't let them stop you, Mommy,” Ellie said in a low voice. “Please.”

“No way, big sister,” Rachel said and then winced—it was what they had called her ever since Gage had been born. But she was no one's big sister anymore, was she?

“Thank you,” Ellie said.

“It's very important, isn't it?”

Ellie nodded.

“Honey, I believe that it is. But you could help me if you could tell me more. Is it just the dream?”

“No,” Ellie said. “It's . . . it's everything now. It's running all through me now. Can't you feel it, Mommy? Something like a—”

“Something like a wind.”

Ellie sighed shakily.

“But you don't know what it is? You don't remember anything more about your dream?”

Ellie thought hard and then shook her head reluctantly. “Daddy. Church. And Gage. That's all I remember. But I don't remember how they go together, Mommy!”

Rachel hugged her tightly. “It will be all right,” she said, but the weight on her heart did not lessen.

“Hello, ma'am,” the reservations clerk said.

“Hello?” Rachel tightened her grip on both Ellie and the phone.

“I think I can get you to Bangor, ma'am—but you're going to be getting in very late.”

“That doesn't matter,” Rachel said.

“Do you have a pen? It's complicated.”

“Yes, right here,” Rachel said, getting a stub of pencil out of the drawer. She found the back of an envelope to write on.

Rachel listened carefully, writing down everything. When the airline clerk finished, Rachel smiled a little and made an
O
with her thumb and forefinger to show Ellie that it was going to work.
Probably
going to work, she amended. Some of the connections looked very, very tight . . . especially in Boston.

“Please book it all,” Rachel said. “And thank you.”

Kim took Rachel's name and credit card number. Rachel hung up at last, limp but relieved. She looked at her father. “Daddy, will you drive me to the airport?”

“Maybe I ought to say no,” Goldman said. “I think I might have a responsibility to put a stop to this craziness.”

“Don't you dare!”
Ellie cried shrilly. “It's not crazy! It's
not!”

Goldman blinked and stepped back at this small but ferocious outburst.

“Drive her, Irwin,” Dory said quietly into the silence that followed. “I've begun to feel nervous too. I'll feel better if I know Louis is all right.”

Goldman stared at his wife and at last turned to Rachel. “I'll drive you, if it is what you want,” he said. “I . . . Rachel, I'll come with you, if you want that.”

Rachel shook her head. “Thank you, Daddy, but I got all the last seats. It's as if God saved them for me.”

Irwin Goldman sighed. At that moment he looked very old and it suddenly occurred to Rachel that her father looked like Jud Crandall.

“You have time to pack a bag, if you want,” he said. “We can be at the airport in forty minutes, if I drive the way I used to when your mother and I were first married. Find her your tote bag, Dory.”

“Mommy,” Ellie said. Rachel turned toward her. Ellie's face was now sheened with light sweat.

“What, honey?”

“Be careful, Mommy,” Ellie said.

The trees were only moving shapes against a cloudy sky backlit by the glow from the airport not too far distant. Louis parked the Honda on Mason Street. Mason bordered Pleasantview on its south side, and here the wind was almost strong enough to rip the car
door out of his hand. He had to push hard to shut it. The wind rippled at his jacket as he opened the Honda's hatch and took out the piece of tarpaulin he had cut and wrapped around his tools.

He was in a wing of darkness between two streetlights, standing on the curb with the canvas-wrapped bundle cradled in his arms, looking carefully for traffic before crossing to the wrought-iron fence which marked the boundary of the graveyard. He did not want to be seen at all, if he could help it, not even by someone who would notice him and forget him the next second. Beside him, the branches of an old elm groaned restlessly in the wind, making Louis think of jackleg necktie parties. God, he was so scared. This wasn't wild work; it was mad work.

No traffic. On the Mason Street side, the streetlamps marched away in perfect white circles, casting spotlights on the sidewalk where, during the days after Fairmount Grammar School let out, boys would ride bikes and girls would jump rope and play hopscotch, never noticing the nearby graveyard, except perhaps at Halloween, when it would acquire a certain spooky charm. Perhaps they would dare to cross their suburban street and hang a paper skeleton on the wrought-iron bars of the high fence, giggling at the old jokes:
It's the most popular place in town; people are dying to get in. Why is it wrong to laugh in the graveyard? Because everyone who lives there is always in a grave mood.

“Gage,” he muttered. Gage was in there, behind that wrought-iron fence, unjustly imprisoned under a blanket of dark earth, and that was no joke.
Gonna break you out,
Gage,
he thought.
Gonna break you out big guy, or die trying.

Louis crossed the street with his heavy bundle in his arms, stepped up on the other curb, glanced both ways again, and tossed the canvas roll over the fence. It clinked softly as it struck the ground on the far side. Dusting his hands, Louis walked away. He had marked the place in his mind. Even if he forgot, all he really had to do was follow the fence on the inside until he was standing opposite his Civic, and he would fall over it.

But would the gate be open this late?

He walked down Mason Street to the stop sign, the wind chasing him and worrying his heels. Moving shadows danced and twined on the roadway.

He turned the corner onto Pleasant Street, still following the fence. Car headlights splashed up the street, and Louis stepped casually behind an elm tree. It wasn't a cop car, he saw, only a van moving toward Hammond Street and, probably, the turnpike. When it was well past him, Louis walked on.

Of course it will be unlocked. It's got to be.

He reached the gate, which formed a cathedral shape in wrought iron, slim and graceful in the moving wind shadows thrown by the streetlights. He reached out and tried it.

Locked.

You stupid fool, of course it's locked—did you really think anyone would leave a cemetery inside the municipal city limits of any American city unlocked after eleven o'clock? No one is that trusting, dear man, not anymore. So what do you do now?

Now he would have to climb and just hope no one happened to glance away from the Carson Show long enough to see him monkeying up the wrought iron like the world's oldest, slowest kid.

Hey, police? I just saw the world's oldest, slowest kid climbing into Pleasantview Cemetery. Looked like he was dying to get in. Yeah, looked like a grave matter to me. Kidding? Oh no, I'm in dead earnest. Maybe you ought to dig into it.

Louis continued up Pleasant Street and turned right at the next intersection. The high iron fence marched along beside him restlessly. The wind cooled and evaporated the drops of sweat on his forehead and in the hollows of his temples. His shadow waxed and waned in the streetlights. Every now and then he glanced at the fence, and then he stopped and forced himself to really
look
at it.

You're going to climb that baby? Don't make me laugh.

Louis Creed was a fairly tall man, standing a bit over six-two, but the fence was easily nine feet high, each wrought-iron stave ending in a decorative, arrowlike point. Decorative, that is, until you happened to slip while swinging your leg over and the force of your suddenly dropping two hundred pounds drove one of those arrow points into your groin, exploding your testicles. And there you would be, skewered like a pig at a barbecue, hollering until someone called for the police and they came and pulled you off and took you to the hospital.

The sweat continued to flow, sticking his shirt to his back. All was silent except for the faint hum of late traffic on Hammond Street.

There had to be a way to get in there.

Had
to be.

Come on, Louis, face the facts. You may be crazy, but you're not that crazy. Maybe you could shinny up to the top of that fence, but it would take a trained gymnast to swing over those points without sticking himself on them. And even supposing you can get in, how are you going to get yourself and Gage's body out?

He went on walking, vaguely aware that he was circling the cemetery but not doing anything constructive.

All right, here's the answer. I'll just go on home to Ludlow tonight and come back tomorrow, in the late afternoon. I'll go in through the gate around four o'clock and find a place to hole up until it's midnight or a little later. I will, in other words, put off until tomorrow what I should have been smart enough to think of today.

Good idea, O Great Swami Louis . . . and in the meantime, what do I do about that great big bundle of stuff I threw over the wall? Pick, shovel, flashlight . . . you might as well stamp GRAVE-ROBBING EQUIPMENT on every damn piece of it.

It landed in the bushes. Who's going to find it, for Chrissake?

On measure that made sense. But this was no sensible errand he was on, and his heart told him quietly and absolutely that he couldn't come back tomorrow. If he didn't do it tonight, he would never do it. He would never be able to screw himself up to this crazy pitch again. This was the moment, the only time for it he was ever going to have.

There were fewer houses up this way—an occasional square of yellow light gleamed on the other side of the street, and once he saw the gray-blue flicker of a black-and-white TV—and looking through the fence he saw that the graves were older here, more rounded, sometimes leaning forward or backward with the freezes and thaws of many seasons. There was another stop sign up ahead, and another right turn would put him on a street roughly parallel to Mason Street, where he had begun. And when he got back to the beginning, what did he do? Collect two hundred dollars and go around again? Admit defeat?

Car headlights turned down the street. Louis stepped behind another tree, waiting for it to pass. This car was moving very slowly, and after a moment a white spotlight stabbed out from the passenger side and ran flickering along the wrought-iron fence. His heart squeezed painfully in his chest. It was a police car, checking the cemetery.

He pressed himself tight against the tree, the rough bark against his cheek, hoping madly that it was big enough to shield him. The spotlight ran toward him. Louis put his head down, trying to shield the white blur of his face. The spotlight reached the tree, disappeared for a moment, and then reappeared on Louis's right. He slipped around the tree a little. He had a momentary glimpse of the dark bubbles on the cruiser's roof. He waited for the taillights to flare a brighter red, for the doors to open, for the spotlight to suddenly turn back on its ball joint, hunting for him like a big white finger.
Hey you! You behind that tree!
Come on out where we can see you, and we want to see both hands empty! Come out NOW!

The police car kept on going. It reached the corner, signaled with sedate propriety, and turned left. Louis collapsed back against the tree, breathing fast, his mouth sour and dry. He supposed they would cruise past his parked Honda, but that didn't really matter. Parking from 6
P.M.
to 7
A.M.
was legal on Mason Street. There were plenty of other cars parked along it. Their owners would belong to the scattering of apartment buildings on the other side of the street.

Louis found himself glancing up at the tree he had hidden behind.

Just above his head, the tree forked. He supposed he could—

Without allowing himself to think about it further, he reached into the fork and pulled himself up, scrambling with his tennis shoes for purchase, sending a little shower of bark down to the sidewalk. He got a knee up and a moment later he had one foot planted solidly in the crotch of the elm. If the police car should happen to come back, their spotlight would find an extremely peculiar bird in this tree. He ought to move quickly.

He pulled himself up onto a higher branch, one which overhung the very top of the fence. He felt absurdly like the twelve-year-old he supposed he had once been. The tree was not still; it rocked easily, almost soothingly, in the steady wind. Its leaves rustled and murmured. Louis assessed the situation and then, before he could get cold feet, he dropped off into
space, holding on to the branch with his hands laced together over it. The branch was perhaps a little thicker than a brawny man's forearm. With his sneakers dangling about eight feet over the sidewalk, he pulled himself hand for hand toward the fence. The branch dipped but showed no sign of breaking. He was faintly aware of his shadow following along on the cement sidewalk below him, an amorphous black ape-shape. The wind chilled his hot armpits, and he found himself shivering in spite of the sweat running down his face and neck. The branch dipped and swayed with his movements. The farther out he moved, the more pronounced the dip became. His hands and wrists were getting tired now, and he was afraid that his sweat-greasy palms might slip.

He reached the fence. His tennis shoes dangled perhaps a foot below the arrow tips. The tips did not look blunt at all from this angle. They looked very sharp. Sharp or not, he suddenly realized it was not just his balls that were at risk here. If he fell and hit one of those things dead on, his weight would be enough to drive it all the way up into his lungs. The returning cops would find an early and extremely grisly Halloween decoration on the Pleasantview fence.

Breathing fast, not quite gasping, he groped for the fence points with his feet, needing a moment's rest. For a moment he hung there, his feet moving in an air dance, searching but not finding.