The grass had almost entirely overgrown one, and when he set it back up, there was a small tearing, protesting sound from the earth. Blind beetles scurried over the section he had exposed. He felt a small chill and thought, Boot Hill for animals. Im not sure I really like it. How far do these go back? Gorry, I dont know, Jud said, putting his hands deep in his pockets. Place was here when Spot died, of course. I had a whole gang of friends in those days. They helped me dig the hole for Spot. Digging here aint that easy, either grounds awful stony, you know, hard to turn. And I helped them sometimes. He pointed here and there with a horny finger. That there was Pete LaVasseurs dog, if I remember right, and theres three of Albion Groatleys barncats buried right in a row there. Old Man Fritchie kept racing pigeons. Me and Al Groatley and Carl Hannah buried one of them that a dog got. Hes right there. He paused thoughtfully. Im the last of that bunch left, you know. All dead now, my gang. All gone. Louis said nothing, only stood looking at the pet graves with his hands in his pockets. Grounds stony, Jud repeated. Couldnt plant nothing here but corpses anyway, I guess. Across the way, Gage began to cry thinly, and Rachel brought him over, toting him on her hip. Hes hungry, she said. I think we ought to go back, Lou. Please, okay? her eyes asked. Sure, he said. He shouldered the Gerrypack again and turned around so Rachel could pop Gage in. Ellie! Hey Ellie, where are you? There she is, Rachel said and pointed toward the blowdown. Ellie was climbing as if the blowdown was a bastard cousin to the monkeybars at school. Oh, honey, you want to come dawn off there! Jud called over, alarmed. You stick your foot in the wrong hole and those old trees shift, youll break your ankle. Ellie jumped down. Ow! she cried and came toward them, rubbing her hip. The skin wasnt broken, but a stiff dead branch had torn her slacks. You see what I mean, Jud said, ruffling her hair. Old blowdown like this, even someone wise about the woods wont try to climb over it if he can go around. Trees that all fall down in a pile get mean. Theyll bite you if they can. Really? Ellie asked. Really. Theyre piled up like straws, you see. And if you was to step on the right one, they might all come down in an avalanche. Ellie looked at Louis. Is that true, Daddy? I think so, hon. Yuck! She looked back at the blowdown and yelled You tore my pants, you cruddy trees! All three of the grownups laughed. The blowdown did not. It merely sat whitening in the sun as it had done for decades. To Louis it looked like the skeletal remains of some longdead monster, something slain by a parfait good and gentil knight, perchance. A dragons bones, left here in a giant cairn. It occurred to him even then that there was something too Convenient about that blowdown and the way it stood between the pet cemetery and the depths of woods beyond, woods which Jud Crandall later sometimes referred to absently as the Indian woods. Its very randomness seemed too artful, too perfect for a work of nature. It Then Gage grabbed one of his ears and twisted it, crowing happily, and Louis forgot all about the blowdown in the. woods beyond the pet cemetery. It was time to go home. 9 Ellie came to him the next day, looking troubled. Louis was working on a model in his study. This one was a 1917 RollsRoyce Silver Ghost680 pieces, over 50 moving parts. It was nearly done, and be could almost imagine the liveried chauffeur, direct descendant of eighteenth and nineteenthcentury English coachmen, sitting imperially behind the wheel. He had been modelcrazy since his tenth year. He had begun with a World War I Sped that his Uncle Carl had bought him, had worked his way through most of the Revell airplanes, and had moved on to bigger and better things in his teens and twenties. There had been a boatsinbottles phase and a warmachines phase and even a phase in which he had built guns so realistic it was hard to believe they wouldnt fire when you pulled the triggerColts and Winchesters and Lugers, even a Buntline Special. Over the last five years or so, it had been the big cruise ships. A model of the Lusitania and one of the Titanic sat on his shelves at his university office, and the Andrea Doria, completed just before they left Chicago, was currently cruising the mantelpiece in their living room. Now he had moved on to classic cars, and if previous patterns held true, he supposed it would be four or five years before the urge to do something new struck him. Rachel looked on this, his only real hobby, with a wifely indulgence that held, he supposed, some elements of contempt; even after ten years of marriage she probably thought he would grow out of it. Perhaps some of this attitude came from her father, who believed just as much now as at the time Louis and Rachel had married that he had gotten an asshole for a soninlaw. Maybe, he thought, Rachel is right. Maybe Ill just wake up one morning at the age of thirtyseven, put all these models up in the attic, and take up hang gliding. Meanwhile Ellie looked serious. Far away, drifting in the clear air, he could hear that perfect Sunday morning sound of churchbells calling worshippers. Hi, Dad, she said. Hello, pumpkin. Wass happenin? Oh, nothing, she said, but her face said differently; her face said that plenty was up, andnone of it was so hot, thank you very much. Her hair was fleshly washed and fell loose to her shoulders. In this light it was still more blond than the brown it was inevitably becoming. She was wearing a dress, and it occurred to Louis that his daughter almost always put on a dress on Sundays, although they did not attend church. What are you building? Carefully gluing on a mudguard, he told her. Look at this, he said, carefully banding her a hubcap. See those linked Rs? Thats a nice detail, huh? If we fly back to Shytown for Thanksgiving and we get on an L10l 1, you look Out at the jet engines and youll see those same Rs. Hubcap, big deal. She handed it back. Please, he said. If you own a RollsRoyce, you call that a wheel covering. If youre rich enough to own a Rolls, you can strut a little. When I make my second million, Im going to buy myself one. RollsRoyce Corniche. Then when Gage gets carsick, he can throw up into real leather. And just by the way, Ellie, whats on your mind? But it didnt work that way with Ellie. You didnt ask things right out. She was wary of giving too much of herself away. It was a trait Louis admired. Are we rich, Daddy? No, he said, but were not going away to starve either. Michael Burns at school says all doctors are rich. Well, you tell Michael Burns at school that lots of doctors get rich, but it takes twenty years. . and you dont get rich running a university infirmary. You get rich being a specialist. A gynecologist or an orthopedist or a neurologist. They get rich quicker. For utility infielders like me, it takes longer. Then why dont you be a specialist, Daddy? Louis thought of his models again and ofthe way he had one day just not wanted to build any more warplanes, the way he had likewise gotten tired of Tiger tanks and gun emplacements, the way he had come to believe (almost overnight, it seemed in retrospect) that building boats in bottles was pretty dumb; and then he thought of what it would be like to spend your whole life inspecting childrens feet for hammertoe or putting on the thin Latex gloves so you could grope along some womans vaginal canal with one educated finger, feeling for bumps or lesions. I just wouldnt like it, he said. Church came into the office, paused, inspected the situation with his bright green eyes. He leaped silently onto the windowsill and appeared to go to sleep. Ellie glanced at him and frowned, which struck Louis as exceedingly odd. Usually Ellie looked at Church with an expression of love so sappy it was almost painful. She began to walk around the office, looking at various models, and in a voice that was nearly casual, she said, Boy, there were a lot of graves up in the Pet Sematary, werent there? Ah, heres the nub, Louis thought but did not look around; after examining his instructions, he began putting the carriage lamps on the Rolls. There were, he said. Better than a hundred, Id say. Daddy, why dont pets live as long as people? Well, some animals do live about as long, he said, and some live much longer. Elephants live a very long time, and there are some sea turtles so old that people really dont know how old they are . . . or maybe they do, and they just cant believe it. Ellie dismissed these simply enough. Elephants and sea turtles arent pets. Pets dont live very long at all. Michael Burns says that every year a dog lives, its like nine of our years. Seven, Louis corrected automatically. I see what youre getting at, honey, and there some truth to it. A dog who lives to be twelve is an old dog. See, theres this thing called metabolism, and what metabolism seems to do is tell time. Oh, it does other stuff toosome people can eat a lot and stay thin because of their metabolism, like your mother. Other peopleme, for instancejust cant eat as much without getting fat. Our metabolisms are different, thats all. But what metabolism seems to do most of all is to serve living things as a body clock. Dogs have a fairly rapid metabolism. The metabolism of human beings is much slower. We live to be about seventytwo, most of us. And believe me, seventytwo years is a very long time. Because Ellie looked really worried, he hoped he sounded more sincere than he actually felt. He was thirtyfive, and it seemed to him that those years had passed as quickly and ephemerally as a momentary draft under a door. Sea turtles, now, have an even slower metabo What about cats? Ellie asked and looked at Church again. Well, cats live as long as dogs, he said, mostly, anyway. This was a lie, and he knew it. Cats lived violent lives and often died bloody deaths, always just below the usual range of human sight. Here was Church, dozing in the sun (or appearing to), Church who slept peacefully on his daughters bed every night, Church who had been so cute as a kitten, all tangled up in a ball of string. And yet Louis had seen him stalk a bird with a broken wing, his green eyes sparkling with curiosity andyes, Louis would have sworn itcold delight. He rarely killed what he stalked, but there had been one notable exceptiona large rat, probably caught in the alley between their apartment house and the next. Church had really put the blocks to that baby. It had been so bloody and goreflecked that Rachel, then in her sixth month with Gage, had had to run into the bathroom and vomit. Violent lives, violent deaths. A dog got them and ripped them open instead of just chasing them like the bumbling, easily fooled dogs in the TV cartoons, or another torn got them, or a poisoned bait, or a passing car. Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire. But those were maybe not things to tell your fiveyearold daughter, who was for the first time examining the facts of death. I mean, he said, Church is only three now, and youre five. He might still be alive when youre fifteen, a sophomore in high school. And thats a long time away. It doesnt seem long to me, Ellie said, and now her voice trembled. Not long at all. Louis gave up the pretense of working on his model and gestured for her to come. She sat on his lap, and he was again struck by her beauty, which was emphasized now by her emotional upset. She was darkskinned, almost Levantine. Tony Benton, one of the doctors he had worked with in Chicago, used to call her the Indian Princess. Honey, he said, if it was up to me, Id let Church live to be a hundred. But I dont make the rules. Who does? she asked, and then, with infinite scorn God, I suppose. Louis stifled the urge to laugh. It was too serious. God or Somebody, he said. Clocks run downthats all I know. There are no guarantees, babe. I dont want Church to be like all those dead pets! she burst out, suddenly tearful and furious. I dont want Church to ever be dead! Hes my cat! Hes not Gods cat! Let God have His own cat! Let God have all the damn old cats He wants, and kill them all! Church is mine! There were footsteps across the kitchen, and Rachel looked in, startled. Ellie was now weeping against Louiss chest. The horror had been articulated; it was out; its face had been drawn and could be regarded. Now, even if it could not be changed, it could at least be wept over. Ellie, he said, rocking her, Ellie, Ellie, Church isnt dead; hes right over there, sleeping. But he could be, she wept. He could be, any time. He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girls tears; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the human beings wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could die (any time!) and be buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother. To herself. Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real. In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a childs hands could feel. It would be easy to lie at this point, the way he had lied earlier about the life expectancy of tomcats. But a lie would be remembered later and perhaps finally totted up on the report card all children hand in to themselves on their parents. His own mother had told him such a lie, an innocuous one about women finding babies in the dewy grass when they really wanted them, and as innocuous as the lie had been, Louis had never forgiven his mother for telling itor himself for believing it. Honey, he said, it happens. Its a part of life. Its a bad part! she cried. Its a really bad part! There was no answer for this. She wept. Eventually her tears would stop. It was a necessary first step on the way to. making an uneasy peace with a truth that was never going to go away. He held his daughter and listened to church bells on Sunday morning, floating across the September fields; and it was some time after her tears had stopped before he realized that, like Church, she had gone to sleep. He put her up in her bed and then, came downstairs to the kitchen, where Rachel was beating cake batter too hard. He mentioned his surprise that Ellie should just cork off like that in the middle of the morning; it wasnt like her. No, Rachel said, setting the bowl down on the counter with a decisive thump. It isnt, but I think she was awake most of last night. I heard her tossing around, and Church cried to go out around three. He only does that when shes restless. Why would she . . . ? Oh, you know why! Rachel said, angrily. That damned pet cemetery is why! It really upset her, Lou. It was the first cemetery of any kind for her, and it just . . . upset her. I dont think Ill write your friend Jud Crandall any thankyou notes for that little hike. All at once hes my friend, Louis thought, bemused and distressed at the same time. Rachel And I dont want her going up there again. Rachel, what Jud said about the path is true. Its not the path and you know it, Rachel said. She picked up the bowl again and began beating the cake batter even faster. its that damned place. Its unhealthy. Kids going up there and tending the graves, keeping the path . . . fucking morbid is what it is. Whatever disease the kids in this town have got, I dont want Ellie to catch it. Louis stared at her, nonplussed. He more than half suspected that one of the things which had kept their marriage together when it seemed as if each year brought the news that two or three of their friends marriages had collapsed was their respect of the mysterythe halfgrasped but never spoken idea that maybe, when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a fullfledged pocket of alien strangeness, something like the clearair turbulence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemed nearly psychotic. And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was the province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another. Honey, its just a pet cemetery, he said. The way she was crying in there just now, Rachel said, gesturing toward the door to his office with a battercovered spoon, do you think its just a pet cemetery to her? Its going to leave a scar, Lou. No. Shes not going up there anymore. Its not the path, its the place. Here she is already thinking Church is going to die. For a moment Louis had the crazy impression that he was still talking to Ellie; she had simply donned stilts, one of her mothers dresses, and a very clever, very realistic Rachel mask. Even the expression was the sameset and a bit sullen on top, but wounded beneath. He groped, because suddenly the issue seemed large to him, not a thing to be simply passed over in deference to that mystery . . . or that aloneness. He groped because it seemed to him that she was missing something so large it nearly filled the landscape, and you couldnt do that unless you were deliberately closing your eyes to it. Rachel, he said, Church is going to die. She stared at him angrily. That is hardly the point, she said, enunciating each word carefully, speaking as one might speak to a backward child. Church is not going to die today, or tomorrow I tried to tell her that Or the day after that, or probably for years Honey, we cant be sure of th Of course we can! she shouted. We take good care .of him, hes not going to die, no one is going to die around here, and so why do you want to go and get a little girl all upset about something she cant understand until shes much older? Rachel, listen. But Rachel had no intention of listening. She was blazing. Its bad enough to try and cope with a deatha pet or a friend or a relativewhen it happens, without turning it into a . . . a goddam tourist attraction . . . a FFForest Lawn for aanimals . . . Tears were running down her cheeks. Rachel, he said and tried to put his hands on her shoulders. She shrugged them off in a quick, hard gesture. Never mind, she said. You dont have the slightest idea what Im talking about. He sighed. I feel like I fell through a hidden trapdoor and into a giant Mixmaster, he said, hoping for a smile. He got none; only her eyes, locked on his, black and blazing. She was furious, he realized; not just angry, but absolutely furious. Rachel, he said suddenly, not fully sure what he was going to say until it was out, how did you sleep last night? Oh boy, she said scornfully, turning awaybut not before he had seen a wounded flicker in her eyes. Thats really intelligent. Really intelligent. You never change, Louis. When something isnt going right, blame Rachel, right? Rachels just having one of her weird emotional reactions. Thats not fair. No? She took the bowl of cake batter over to the far counter by the stove and set it down with another bang. She began to grease a cake tin, her lips pressed tightly together. He said patiently, Theres nothing wrong with a child finding out something about death, Rachel. In fact, Id call it a necessary thing. Ellies reactionher cryingthat seemed perfectly natural to me. It Oh, it sounded natural, Rachel said, whirling on him again. It sounded very natural to hear her weeping her heart out over her cat which is perfectly fine Stop it, he said. Youre not making any sense. I dont want to discuss it anymore. Yes, but were going to, he said, angry himself now. You had your atbatshow about giving me mine? Shes not going up there anymore. And as far as Im concerned, the subject is closed. Ellie has known where babies come from since last year, Louis said deliberately. We got her the Myers book and talked to her about it, do you remember that? We both agreed that children ought to know where they come from. That has nothing to do with It does, though! he said roughly. When I was talking to her in my office, about Church, I got thinking about my mother and how she spun me that old cabbageleaf story when I asked her where women got babies. Ive never forgotten that lie. I dont think children ever forget the lies their parents tell them. Where babies come from has nothing to do with a goddam pet cemetery! Rachel cried at him, and what her eyes said to him was Talk about the parallels all night and all day, if you want to, Louis; talk until you turn blue, but I wont accept it. Still, he tried. She knows about babies; that place up in the woods just made her want to know something about the other end of things. Its perfectly natural. In fact, I think its the most natural thing in the w Will you stop saying that! she screamed suddenlyreally screamed and Louis recoiled, startled. His elbow struck the open bag of flour on the counter. It tumbled off the edge and struck the floor, splitting open. Hour puffed up in a dry white cloud. Oh fuck, he said dismally. In an upstairs room, Gage began to cry. Thats nice, she said, also crying now. You woke the baby up too. Thanks for a nice, quiet, stressless Sunday morning. She started by him and Louis put a hand on her arm. Let me ask you something, he said, because I know that anythingliterally anythingcan happen to physical beings. As a doctor I know that. Do you want to be the one to explain to her what happened if her cat gets distemper or leukemia cats are very prone to leukemia, you knowor if he gets run over in that road? Do you want to be the one, Rachel? Let me go, she nearly hissed. The anger in her voice, however, was overmatched by the hurt and bewildered terror in her eyesI dont want to talk about this, Louis, and you cant make me, that look said. Let me go, I want to get Gage before he falls out of his cr Because maybe you ought to be the one, he said. You can tell her we dont talk about it, nice people dont talk about it, they just bury itoops! but dont say buried, youll give her a complex. I hate you! Rachel sobbed and tore away from him. Then he was of course sorry, and it was of course too late. Rachel She pushed by him roughly, crying harder. Leave me alone. Youve done enough. She paused in the kitchen doorway, turning toward him, the tears coursing down her cheeks. I dont want this discussed in front of Ellie anymore, Lou. I mean it. Theres nothing natural about death. Nothing. You as a doctor should know that. She whirled and was gone, leaving Louis in the empty kitchen, which still vibrated with their voices. At last he went to the pantry to get the broom. As he swept, he reflected on the last thing she had said and on the enormity of this difference of opinion, which had gone undiscovered for so long. Because, as a doctor, he knew that death was, except perhaps for childbirth, the most natural thing in the world. Taxes were not so sure; human conflicts were not; the conflicts of society were not; boom and bust were not. In the end there was only the clock, and the markers, which became eroded and nameless in the passage of time. Even sea turtles and the giant sequoias had to buy out someday. Zelda, he said aloud. Christ, that must have been bad for her. The question was should he just let it ride or should he try to do something about it? He tilted the dustpan over the wastebasket, and flour slid out with a soft foom, powdering the castout cartons and usedup cans. 10 Hope Ellie didnt take it too hard, Jud Crandall said. Not for the first time Louis thought that the man had a peculiar and rather uncomfortableability to put his finger gently on whatever the sore spot was. He and Jud and Norma Crandall now sat on the Crandalls porch in the cool of the evening, drinking iced tea instead of beer. On 15, goinghomeaftertheweekend traffic was fairly heavypeople recognized that every good latesummer weekend now might be the last one, Louis supposed. Tomorrow he took up his full duties at the University of Maine infirmary All day yesterday and today students had been arriving, filling apartments in Orono and dorms on campus, making beds, renewing acquaintances, and no doubt groaning over another year of eight oclock classes and commons food. Rachel had been cool to him all dayno, freezing was more like itand when he went back across the road tonight, he knew that she would already be in bed, Gage sleeping with her more than likely, the two of them so far over to her side that the baby would be in danger of falling off. His half of the bed would have grown to three quarters, all of it looking like a big, sterile desert. I said I hoped Sorry, Louis said. Woolgathering. She was a little upset, yeah. How did you guess that? Seen em come and go, like I said. Jud took his wifes hand gently and grinned at her. Havent we, dear? Packs and packs of them, Norma Crandall said. We. love the children. Sometimes that pet cemetery is their first eyeballtoeyeball with death, Jud said. They see people die on TV, but they know thats pretend, like the old Westerns they used to have at the movies on Saturday afternoons. On TV and in the Western movies, they just hold their stomachs or their chests and fall over. Place up on that hill seems a lot more real to most of em than all those movies and TV shows put together, dont you know. Louis nodded, thinking Tell my wife that, why dont you? Some kids it dont affect at all, at least not so you can see it, although Id guess most of em kinda . . . kinda take it home in their pockets to look over later, like all the other stuff they collect. Most of em are fine. But some . . you remember the little Holloway boy, Norma? She nodded. Ice chattered softly in the glass she held. Her glasses hung on her chest, and the headlights of a passing car illuminated the chain briefly. He had such nightmares, she said. Dreams about corpses coming out of the ground and I dont know what all. Then his dog diedate some poisoned bait was all anyone in town could figure, wasnt it, Jud? Poisoned bait, Jud said, nodding. Thats what most people thought, ayuh. That was 1925. Billy Holloway was maybe ten then. Went on to become a state senator. Ran for the U.S. House of Representatives later on, but he lost. That was just before Korea. He and some of his friends had a funeral for the dog, Norma remembered. It was just a mongrel, but he loved it well. I remember his parents were a little against the burying, because of the bad dreams and all, but it went off fine. Two of the bigger boys made a coffin, didnt they, Jud? Jud nodded and drained his iced tea. Dean and Dana Hall, he said. Them and that other kid Billy chummed withI cant remember his first name, but Im sure he was one of the Bowie kids. You remember the Bowies that used to live up on Middle Drive in the old Brochette house, Norma? Yes! Norma said, as excited as if it had happened yesterday . . . and perhaps in her mind, it seemed that way. It was a Bowie! Alan or Burt Or maybe it was Kendall, Jud agreed. Anyways, I remember they had a pretty good argument about who was going to be pallbearers. The dog wasnt very big, and so there wasnt room but for two. The Hall boys said they ought to be the ones to do it since they made the coffin, and also because they were twinssort of a matched set, ysee. Billy said they didnt know Bowserthat was the dogwell enough to be the pallbearers. My dad says only close friends get to be pallbearers, was his argument, not jest any carpenter.  Jud and Norma both laughed at this, and Louis grinned. They was just about ready to fight over it when Mandy Holloway, Billys sister, fetched out the fourth volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Jud said. Her dad, Stephen Holloway, was the only doctor this side of Bangor and that side of Bucksport in those days, Louis, and they was the only family in Ludlow that could afford a set of encyclopedia. They were also the first to have electric lights, Norma broke in. Anyway, Jud resumed, Mandy come out all aflukin, head up and tail over a splashboard, all of eight years old, petticoats flyin, that big book in her arms. Billy and the Bowie kidI think it must have been Kendall, him that crashed and burned up in Pensacola where they was trainin fighter pilots in early 1942they was gettin ready to take on the Hall twins over the privilege of toting that poor old poisoned mutt up to the boneyard. Louis started giggling. Soon he was laughing out loud. He could feel the daysold residue of tension left from the bitter argument with Rachel beginning to loosen. So she says, Wait! Wait! Looka this! And they all stop and look. And goddam if she aint Jud, Norma said warningly. Sorry, dear; I get carried away yarning, you know that. I guess you do, she said. And darned if she aint got that book open to FUNERALS, and theres a picture of Queen Victoria getting her final sendoff and bon voyage, and there are about fortyeleven people on each side of her coffin, some sweatin and strainin to lift the bugger, some just standin around in their funeral coats and ruffled collars like they was waitin for someone to call post time at the racetrack. And Mandy says, When its a ceremonial funeral of state, you can have as many as you want! The book says so! That solved it? Louis asked. That did the trick. They ended up with about twenty kids, and damn if they didnt look just like the picture Mandy had found, except maybe for the ruffles and tall hats. Mandy took charge, she did. Got em lined up and gave each of em a wildflowera dandelion or a ladys slipper or a daisyand off they went., By the gee, I always thought the country missed a bet when Mandy Holloway never got voted to the U.S. Congress. He laughed and shook his head. Anyway, that was the end of Billys bad dreams about the Pet Sematary. He mourned his dog and finished his mourning and got on. Which is what we all do, I guess. Louis thought again of Rachels nearhysteria. Your Ellie will get over it, Norma said and shifted position. You must be thinking that death is all we talk about around here, Louis. Jud and I are getting on, but I hope neither of us has gotten to the gorecrow stage yet No, of course not, dont be silly, Louis said. But its not such a bad idea to be on nodding acquaintance with it. These days . . . I dont know . . . no one wants to talk about it or think about it, it seems. They took it off the TV because they thought it might hurt the children some way hurt their minds. . and people want closed coffins so they dont have to look at the remains or say goodbye . . . it just seems like people want to forget it. And at the same time they brought in the cable TV with all those movies showing peopleJud looked at Norma and cleared his throatshowing people doing what people usually do with their shades pulled down, he finished. Queer how things change from one generation to the next, isnt it? Yes, Louis said. I suppose it is. Well, we come from a different time, Jud said, sounding almost apologetic We was on closer terms with death. We saw the flu epidemic after the Great War, and mothers dying with child, and children dying of infection and fevers that it seems like doctors just wave a magic wand over these days. In the time when me and Norma was young, if you got cancer, why, that was your death warrant, right there.


No radiation treatments back in the 1920s! Two wars, murders, suicides . . He fell silent for a moment. We knew it as a friend and as an enemy, he said finally. My brother Pete died of a burst appendix in 1912, back when Taft was President. Pete was just fourteen, and he could hit a baseball farther than any kid in town. In those days you didnt need to take a course in college to study death, hotspice, or whatever they call it. In those days it came into the house and said howdy and sometimes it took supper with you and sometimes you could feel it bite your ass. This time Norma didnt correct him; instead she nodded silently. Louis stood up, stretched. I have to go, he said. Big day tomorrow. Yes, the merrygoround starts for you tomorrow, dont it? Jud said, also standing. Jud saw Norma was also trying to get up and gave her a hand. She rose with a grimace. Bad tonight, is it? Louis asked. Not so bad, she said. Put some heat on it when you go to bed. I will, Norma said. I always do. And Louis. . dont fret about Ellie. Shell be too busy gettin to know her new friends this fall to worry much about that old place. Maybe someday all of emll go up and repaint some of the signs, or pull weeds, or plant flowers. Sometimes they do, when the notion takes them. And shell feel better about it. Shell start to get that nodding acquaintance. Not if my wife has anything to say about it. Come on over tomorrow night and tell me how it went up at the college, if you get the chance, Jud said. Ill whup you at cribbage. Well, maybe Ill get you drunk first, Louis said. Doubleskunk you. Doc, Jud said with great sincerity, the day I get doubleskunked at cribbage would be the day Id let a quack like you treat me. He left on their laughter and crossed the road to his own house in the latesummer dark. Rachel was sleeping with the baby, curled up on her side of the bed in a fetal, protective position. He supposed she would get over itthere had been other arguments and times of coldness in their marriage, but this one was surely the worst of the lot. He felt sad and angry and unhappy all at the same time, wanting to make it up but not sure how, not even sure that the first move should come from him. It was all so pointlessonly a capful of wind somehow blown up to hurricane proportions by a trick of the mind. Other fights and arguments, yes, sure, but only a few as bitter as the one over Ellies tears and questions. He supposed it didnt take a great many blows like that before the marriage sustained structural damage and then one day, instead of reading about it in a note from a friend (Well, I suppose I ought to tell you before you hear it from someone else, Lou; Maggie and I are splitting . . .) or in the newspaper, it was you. He undressed to his shorts quietly and set the alarm for 6 A.M. Then he showered, washed his hair, shaved, and crunched up a Rolaid before brushing his teethNormas iced tea had given him acid indigestion. Or maybe it was coming home and seeing Rachel way over on her side of the bed. Territory is that which defines all else, hadnt he read that in some college history course? Everything done, the evening put neatly away, he went to bed . . . but couldnt sleep. There was something else, something that nagged at him. The last two days went around and around in his head as he listened to Rachel and Gage breathing nearly in tandem. GEN. PATTON . . . HANNAH THE BEST DOG THAT EVER LIVED . . . MARIA OUR PET RABIT . . . Ellie, furious. I dont want Church to ever be dead! . . . Hes not Gods cat! Let God have His own cat! Rachel, equally furious. You as a doctor should know . . . Norma Crandall saying It just seems like people want to forget it . . . And Jud, his voice terribly sure, terribly certain, a voice from another age Sometimes it took supper with you and sometimes you could feel it bite your ass. And that voice merged with the voice of his mother, who had lied to Louis Creed about sex at four but told him the truth about death at twelve, when his cousin Ruthie had been killed in a stupid car accident. She had been crushed in her fathers car by a kid who had found the keys in a Public Works Department payloader and decided to take it for a cruise and then found out he didnt know how to stop it. The kid suffered only minor cuts and contusions; his Uncle Carls Fairlane was demolished. She cant be dead, he had replied in answer to his mothers bald statement. He had heard the words, but he couldnt seem to get the sense of them. What do you mean, shes dead? What are you talking about? And then, as an afterthought Whos going to bury her? For although Ruthies father, Louiss uncle, was an undertaker, he couldnt imagine that Uncle Carl would possibly be the one to do it. In his confusion and mounting fear, he had seized upon this as the most important question. It was a genuine conundrum, like who cut the town barbers hair. I imagine that Donny Donahue will do it, his mother replied. Her eyes were redrimmed; most of all she had looked tired. His mother had looked almost ill with weariness. Hes your uncles best pal in the business. Oh, but Louis. Sweet little Ruthie . . . I cant stand to think she suffered . . . pray with me. will you, Louis? Pray with me for Ruthie. I need you to help me. So they had gotten down on their knees in the kitchen, he and his mother, and they prayed, and it was the praying that finally brought it home to him; if his mother was praying for Ruthie Creeds soul, then it meant that her body was gone. Before his closed eyes rose a terrible image of Ruthie coming to his thirteenth birthday party with her decaying eyeballs hanging on her cheeks and blue mould growing in her red hair, and this image provoked not just sickening horror but an awful doomed love. He cried out in the greatest mental agony of his life, She cant be dead! MOMMA, SHE CANT BE DEADI LOVE HER! And his mothers reply, her voice flat and yet full of images dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust She is, my darling. Im sorry, but she is. Ruthie is gone. Louis shuddered, thinking, Dead is deadwhat else do you need? Suddenly Louis knew what it was he had forgotten to do, why he was still awake on this night before the first day of his new job, hashing over old griefs. He got up, headed for the stairs, and suddenly detoured down the hall to Ellies room. She was sleeping peacefully, mouth open, wearing her blue babydoll pajamas that she had really outgrown. My God, Ellie, he thought, youre sprouting like corn. Church lay between her splayed ankles, also dead to the world. You should pardon the pun. Downstairs there was a bulletin board on the wall by the phone with various messages, memos, and bills tacked to it. Written across the top in Rachels neat caps was THINGS TO PUT OFF AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. Louis got the telephone book, looked up a number, and jotted it on a blank memo sheet. Below the number he wrote Quentin L. Jolander, D.V.M.call for appointment re Churchif Jolander doesnt neuter animals, he will refer. He looked at the note, wondering if it was time, knowing that it was. Something concrete had to come out of all this bad feeling, and he had decided sometime between this morning and tonightwithout even knowing he was deciding that he didnt want Church crossing the road anymore if he could help it. His old feelings on the subject rose up in him, the idea that neutering would lessen the cat, would turn him into a fat old tom before his time, content to just sleep on the radiator until someone put something into his dish. He didnt want Church like that. He liked Church the way he was, lean and mean. Outside in the dark, a big semi droned by on Route 15, and that decided him. He tacked the memo up and went to bed. 11 The next morning at breakfast, Ellie saw the new memo on the bulletin board and asked him what it meant. It means hes going to have a very small operation, Louis said. Hell probably have to stay over at the vets for one night afterward. And when he comes home, hell stay in our yard and not want to roam around so much. Or cross the road? Ellie asked. She may be only five, Louis thought, but shes sure no slouch. Or cross the road, he agreed. Yay! Ellie said, and that was the end of the subject. Louis, who had been prepared for a bitter and perhaps hysterical argument about Church being out of the house for even one night, was mildly stunned by the ease with which she had acquiesced. And he realized how worried she must have been. Perhaps Rachel had not been entirely wrong about the effect the Pet Sematary had had on her. Rachel herself, who was feeding Gage his breakfast egg, shot him a grateful approving look, and Louis felt something loosen in his chest. The look told him that the chill was over; this particular hatchet had been buried. Forever, he hoped. Later, after the big yellow school bus had gobbled Ellie up for the morning, Rachel came to him, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his mouth gently. You were very sweet to do that, she said, and Im sorry I was such a bitch. Louis returned her kiss, feeling a little uncomfortable nonetheless. It occurred to him that the Im sorry I was such a bitch statement, while by no means a standard, was not exactly something hed never heard before either. It usually came after Rachel had gotten her way. Gage, meanwhile, had toddled unsteadily over to the front door and was looking out the lowest pane of glass at the empty road. Bus, he said, hitching nonchalantly at his sagging diapers. Elliebus. Hes growing up fast, Louis said. Rachel nodded. Too fast to suit me, I think. Wait until hes out of diapers, Louis said. Then he can stop. She laughed, and it was all right between them again completely all right. She stood back, made a minute adjustment to his tie, and looked him up and down critically. Do I pass muster, Sarge? he asked. You look very nice. Yeah, I know. But do I look like a heart surgeon? A twohundredthousanddollarayear man? No, just old Lou Creed, she said and giggled. The rockandroll animal. Louis glanced at his watch. The rockandroll animal has got to put on his boogie shoes and go, he said. Are you nervous? Yeah, a little. Dont be, she said. Its sixtyseven thousand dollars a year for putting on Ace bandages, prescribing for the flu and for hangovers, giving girls the pill Dont forget the crabandlouse lotion, Louis said, smiling again. One of the things that had surprised him on his first tour of the infirmary had been the supplies of Quell, which seemed to him enormousmore fitted to an army base infirmary than to one on a middlesized university campus. Miss Charlton, the head nurse, had smiled cynically. Off campus apartments in the area are pretty tacky. Youll see. He supposed he would. Have a good day, she said and kissed him again, lingeringly. But when she pulled away, she was mockstem. And for Christs sake remember that youre an administrator, not an intern or a secondyear resident! Yes, Doctor, Louis said humbly, and they both laughed again. For a moment he thought of asking Was it Zelda, babe? is that whats got under your skin? Is that the zone of low pressure? Zelda and how she died? But he wasnt going to ask her that, not now. As a doctor he knew a lot of things, and while the fact that death was just as natural as childbirth might be the greatest of them, the fact that you dont monkey with a wound that has finally started to heal was far from the least of them. So instead of asking, he only kissed her again and went out. It was a good start, a good day. Maine was putting on a latesummer show, the sky was blue and cloudless, the temperature pegged at an utterly perfect seventytwo degrees. Rolling to the end of the driveway and checking for traffic, Louis mused that so far he hadnt seen so much as a trace of the fall foliage that was supposed to be so spectacular. But he could wait. He pointed the Honda Civic they had picked up as a second car toward the university and let it roll. Rachel would call the vet this morning, they would get Church fixed, and that would put this whole nonsense of Pet Semataries (it was funny how that misspelling got into your head and began to seem right) and death fears behind them. There was no need to be thinking about death on a beautiful September morning like this one. Louis turned on the radio and dialed until he found the Ramones belting out Rockaway Beach. He turned it up and sang alongnot well but with lusty enjoyment. 12 The first thing he noticed turning into the university grounds was how suddenly and spectacularly the traffic swelled. There was car traffic, bike traffic, there were joggers by the score. He had to stop quickly to avoid two of the latter coming from the direction of Dunn Hall. Louis braked hard enough to lock his shoulder belt and honked. He was always annoyed at the way joggers (bicyclers had the same irritating habit) seemed to automatically assumed that their responsibility lapsed completely at the moment they began to run. They were, after all, exercising. One of them gave Louis the finger without ever looking around. Louis sighed and drove on. The second thing was that the ambulance was gone from its slot in the small infirmary parking lot, and that gave him a nasty start. The infirmary was equipped to treat almost any illness or accident on a shortterm basis; there were three wellequipped examinationandtreatment rooms opening off the big foyer, and beyond this were two wards with fifteen beds each. But there was no operating theater, nor anything even resembling one. In case of serious accidents, there was the ambulance, which would rush an injured or seriously ill person to the Eastern Maine Medical Center. Steve Masterton, the physicians assistant who had given Louis his first tour of the facility, had shown Louis the log from the previous two academic years with justifiable pride; there had only been thirtyeight ambulance runs in that time . . . not bad when you considered that the student population here was over ten thousand and the total university population was almost seventeen thousand. And here he was, on his first real day of work, with the ambulance gone. He parked in the slot headed with a freshly painted sign reading RESERVED FOR DR. CREED and hurried in. He found Charlton, a graying but lithe woman of about fifty, in the first examining room, taking the temperature of a girl who was wearing jeans and a halter top. The girl had gotten a bad sunburn not too long ago, Louis observed; the peeling was well advanced. Good morning, Joan, he said. Wheres the ambulance? Oh, we had a real tragedy, all right, Charlton said, taking the thermometer out of the students mouth and reading it. Steve Masterton came in this morning at seven and saw a great big puddle under the engine and the front wheels. Radiator let go. They hauled it away. Great, Louis said, but he felt relieved nonetheless. At least it wasnt out on a run, which was what he had first feared; When do we get it back? Joan Chariton laughed. Knowing the University Motor Pool, she said, itll come back around December fifteenth wrapped in Christmas ribbon. She glanced at the student. Youve got half a degree of fever, she said. Take two aspirins and stay out of bars and dark alleys. The girl got down. She gave Louis a quick appraising glance and then went out. Our first customer of the new semester, Charlton said sourly. She began to shake the thermometer down with brisk snaps. You dont seem too pleased about it. I know the type, she said. Oh, we get the other type tooathletes who go on playing with bone chips and tendonitis and everything else because they dont want to be benched, they got to be macho men, not let the ream down, even if theyre jeopardizing pro careers later on. Then youve got little Miss HalfDegree of Fever She jerked her head toward the window, where Louis could see the girl with the peeling sunburn walking in the direction of the Gannett CumberlandAndroscoggin complex of dorms. In the examining room the girl had given the impression of being someone who did not feel well at all but was trying not to let on. Now she was walking briskly, her hips swinging prettily, noticing and being noticed. Your basic college hypochondriac. Charlton dropped the thermometer into a sterilizer. Well see her two dozen times this year. Her visits will be more frequent before each round of prelims. A week or so before finals, shell be convinced she has either mono or pneumonia. Bronchitis is the fallback position. Shell get out of four or five teststhe ones where the instructors are wimps, to use the word they useand get easier makeups. They always get sicker if they know the prelim or final is going to be an objective test rather than an essay exam. My, arent we cynical this morning, Louis said. He was, in fact, a little nonplussed. She tipped him a wink that made him grin. I dont take it to heart. Doctor. Neither should you Wheres Stephen now? In your office, answering mail and trying to figure out the latest ton of bureaucratic bullshit from Blue CrossBlue Shield, she said. Louis went in. Charltons cynicism notwithstanding, he felt comfortably in harness. Looking back on it, Louis would thinkwhen he could bear to think about it at allthat the nightmare really began when they brought the dying boy, Victor Pascow, into the infirmary around ten that morning. Until then, things were very quiet. At nine, half an hour after Louis arrived, the two candystripers who would be working the ninetothree shift came in. Louis gave them each a doughnut and a cup of coffee and talked to them for about fifteen minutes, outlining their duties, and what was perhaps more important, what was beyond the scope of their duties. Then Charlton took over. As she led them out of Louis's office, Louis heard her ask Either of you allergic to shit or puke? Youll see a lot of both here. Oh God, Louis murmured and covered his eyes. But he was smiling. A tough old babe like Charlton was not always a liability. Louis began filling out the long Blue CrossBlue Shield forms, which amounted to a complete inventory of drug stock and medical equipment (Every year, Steve Masterton said in an aggrieved voice. Every goddam year the same thing. Why dont you write down Complete heart transplant facility, approx. value eight million dollars. Louis? Thatll foozle em!), and he was totally engrossed, thinking only marginally that a cup of coffee would go down well, when Masterton screamed from the direction of the foyerwaiting room Louis! Hey, Louis, get out here! We got a mess! The nearpanic in Mastertons voice got Louis going in a hurry. He bolted out of his chair almost as if he had, in some subconscious way, been expecting this. A shriek, as thin and sharp as a shard of broken glass, arose from the direction of Mastertons shout. It was followed by a sharp slap and Chariton saying, Stop that or get the hell out of here! Stop it right now! Louis burst into the waiting room and was first only conscious of the bloodthere was a lot of blood. One of the candystripers was sobbing. The other, pale as cream, had put her fisted hands to the corners of her mouth, pulling her lips into a big revolted grin. Masterton was kneeling down, trying to hold the head of the boy sprawled on the floor. Steve looked up at Louis, eyes grim and wide and frightened He tried to speak. Nothing came out. People were congregating at the Student Medical Centers big glass doors, peering in, their hands cupped around their faces to cut out the glare. Louiss mind conjured up an insanely appropriate image sitting in the living room as a kid of no more than six with his mother in the morning before she went to work. watching the television. Watching the old Today show, with Dave Garroway. People were outside, gaping in at Dave and Frank Blair and good old J. Fred Muggs. He looked around and saw other people standing at the windows. He couldnt do anything about the doors, but "Shut the drapes, he snapped at the candystriper who had screamed. When she didnt move immediately, Charlton slapped her can. Do it, girl! The candystriper got in gear. A moment later green drapes were jerked across the windows. Chariton and Steve Masterton moved instinctively between the boy or. the floor and the doors, cutting off the view as best they could. Hard stretcher, Doctor? Chariton asked. If we need it, get it, Louis said, squatting beside Masterton. I havent even had a chance to look at him. Come on, Chariton said to the girl who had closed the drapes. She was pulling the corners of her mouth with her fists again, making that humorless, screaming grin. She looked at Charlton and moaned, Oh, ag, Yeah, oh, ag is right. Come on. She gave the girl a hard yank and got her moving, her red and white pinstriped skirt swishing against her legs. Louis bent over his first patient at the University of Maine at Orono. He was a young man, age approximately twenty, and it took Louis less than three seconds to make the only diagnosis that mattered The young man was suing to die. Half of his head was crushed. His neck had been Broken. One collarbone jutted from his swelled and twisted right shoulder. From his head, blood and a yellow, pussy fluid seeped sluggishly into the carpet. Louis could see the mans brain, whitishgray and pulsing through a shattered section of skull. It was like looking through a broken window. The incursion was perhaps five centimeters wide; if he had had a baby in his skull, he could almost have birthed it, like Zeus delivering from his forehead. That he was still alive at all was incredible. In his mind suddenly he heard Jud Crandall saying sometimes you could feel it bite your ass. And his mother dead is dead. He felt a crazy urge to laugh. Dead was dead, all right. Thats affirmative, good buddy. Holler for the ambulance, he snapped at Masterton. Louis, the ambulance is Oh Christ, Louis said, slapping his own forehead. He shifted his gaze to Charlton. Joan, what do you do in a case like this? Call Campus Security or the EMMC? Joan looked flustered and upsetan extreme rarity with her, Louis guessed. But her voice was composed enough as she replied. Doctor, I dont know. Weve never had a situation like this before in my time at the Medical Center. Louis thought as fast as he could. Call the campus police. We cant wait for EMMC to send out their own ambulance. If they have to, they can take him up to Bangor in one of the fire engines. At least it has a siren, flashers. Go do it, Joan. She went but not before he caught her deeply sympathetic glance and interpreted it. This young man, who was deeply tanned and wellmuscledperhaps from a summer working on a roadcrew somewhere, or painting houses, or giving tennis lessonsand dressed now only in red gym shorts with white piping, was going to die no matter what they did. He would be just as dead even if their ambulance had been parked out front with the motor idling when the patient was brought in. Incredibly, the dying man was moving. His eyes fluttered and opened. Blue eyes, the irises ringed with blood. They stared vacantly around, seeing nothing. He tried to move his head, and Louis exerted pressure to keep him from doing so, mindful of the broken neck. The cranial trauma did not preclude the possibility of pain. The hole in his head, oh Christ, the hole in his head. What happened to him? he asked Steve, aware that it was, under the circumstances, a stupid and pointless question. The question of a bystander. But the hole in the mans head confirmed his status; a bystander was all he was. Did the police bring him? Some students brought him in a blanket sling. I dont know what the circumstances were. There was what happened next to be thought of. That was his responsibility too. Go out and find them, Louis said. Take them around to the other door. I want them handy, but I dont want them to see any more of this than they already have. Masterton, looking relieved to be away from what was happening in here, went to the door and opened it, letting in a babble of excited, curious, confused conversation. Louis could also hear the warble of a police siren. Campus Security was here then. Louis felt a kind of miserable relief. The dying man was making a gurgling sound in his throat. He tried to speak. Louis heard syllablesphonetics, at least but the words themselves were slurred and unclear. Louis leaned over him and said, Youre going to be all right, fella. He thought of Rachel and Ellie as he said it, and his stomach gave a great, unlovely lurch. He put a hand over his mouth and stifled a burp. Caaa, the young man said. Gaaaaaa Louis looked around and saw that he was momentarily alone with the dying man. Dimly he could hear Joan Charlton yelling at the candystripers that the hard stretcher was in the supply closet off Room Two. Louis doubted if they knew Room Two from a frogs gonads; it was, after all, their first day on the job. They had gotten a hell of an introduction to the world of medicine. The green walltowall carpet was now soaked a muddy purple in an expanding circle around the young mans ruined head; the leakage of intercranial fluid had, mercifully, stopped. In the Pet Sematary, the young man croaked .. . and he began to grin. This grin was remarkably like the mirthless hysterical grin of the candystriper who had closed the drapes. Louis stared down at him, at first refusing to credit what he had heard. Then Louis thought he must have had an auditory hallucination. He made some more of those phonetic sounds and my subconscious made them into something coherent, crosspatched the sounds into my own experience. But that was not what had happened, and a moment later he was forced to realize it. A swooning, mad terror struck him and his flesh began to creep avidly, seeming to actually move up and down his arms and along his belly in waves . . . but even then he simply refused to believe it Yes, the syllables had been on the bloody lips of the man on the carpet as well as in Louiss ears, but that only meant the hallucination had been visual as well as auditory. What did you say? he whispered. And this time, as clear as the words of a speaking parrot or a crow whose tongue had been split, the words were unmistakable Its not the real cemetery. The eyes were vacant, notseeing, rimmed with blood the mouth grinning the large grin of a dead carp. Horror rolled through Louis, gripping his warm heart in its cold hands, squeezing. It reduced him, made him less and less, until he felt like taking to his heels and running from this bloody, twisted, speaking head on the floor of the infirmary waiting room. He was a man with no deep religious training, no bent toward the superstitious or the occult. He was illprepared for this . . . whatever it was. Fighting the urge to run with everything in him, be forced himself to lean even closer. What did you say? he asked a second time. The grin. That was bad. The soil of a mans heart is stonier, Louis, the dying man whispered. A man grows what he can and tends it. Louis. he thought, hearing nothing with his conscious mind after his own name. Oh my God he called me by my name. Who are you? Louis asked in a trembling, papery voice. Who are you? Injun bring my fish. How did you know my Keep clear, us. Know You Caa, the young man said, and now Louis fancied he could smell death on his breath, internal injuries, lost rhythm, failure, rein. What? A crazy urge came to shake him. Gaaaaaaaa The young man in the red gym shorts began to shudder all over. Suddenly he seemed to freeze with every muscle locked. His eyes lost their vacant expression momentarily and seemed to find Louiss eyes. Then everything let go at once. There was a bad stink. Louis thought he would, must speak again. Then the eyes resumed their vacant expression . . . and began to glaze. The man was dead. Louis sat back, vaguely aware that all his clothes were sticking to him; he was drenched with sweat. Darkness bloomed, spreading a wing softly over his eyes, and the world began to swing sickeningly sideways. Recognizing what was happening, he halfturned from the dead man, thrust his head down between his knees, and pressed the nails of his left thumb and left forefinger into his gums hard enough to bring blood. After a moment the world began to clear again. 13 Then the room filled up with people, as if they were all only actors, waiting for their cue. This added to Louiss feeling of unreality and disorientationthe strength of these feelings, which he had studied in psychology classes but never actually experienced, frightened him badly. It was, he supposed, the way a person would feel shortly after someone had slipped a powerful dose of LSD into his drink. Like a play staged only for my benefit, he thought. The room is first conveniently cleared so the dying Sibyl can speak a few lines of oblique prophecy to me and me alone, and as soon as hes dead, everyone comes back. The candystripers bungled in, one on each end of the hard stretcher, the one they used for people with spinal or neck injuries. Joan Charlton followed them, saying that the campus police were on their way. The young man had been struck by a car while jogging. Louis thought of the joggers who had run in front of his car that morning and his guts rolled. Behind Charlton came Steve Masterton with two Campus Security cops. Louis, the people who brought Pascow in are . . . He broke off and said sharply, Louis, are you all right? Im okay, he said and got up. Faintness washed over him again and then withdrew. He groped. Pascow is his name? One of the campus cops said, Victor Pascow, according to the girl he was jogging with. Louis glanced at his watch and subtracted two minutes. From the room where Masterton had sequestered the people who had brought Pascow in, he could hear a girl sobbing wildly. Welcome back to school, little lady, he thought. Have a nice semester. Mr. Pascow died at 1009 A.M., he said. One of the cops wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Masterton said again, Louis, are you really okay? You look terrible. Louis opened his mouth to answer, and one of the candy stripers abruptly dropped her end of the hard stretcher and ran out, vomiting down the front of her pinafore. A phone began to ring. The girl who had been sobbing now began to scream the dead mans nameVic! Vic! Vic!over and over. Bedlam. Confusion. One of the cops was asking Charlton if they could have a blanket to cover him up, and Chariton was saying she didnt know if she had the authority to requisition one, and Louis found himself thinking of a line from Maurice Sendak Let the wild rumpus start! Those rotten giggles rose in his throat again, and somehow he managed to bottle them up. Had this Pascow really said the words Pet Sematary? Had this Pascow really spoken his name? Those were the things that were knocking him off kilter, the things that had sent him wobbling out of orbit. But already his mind seemed to be wrapping those few moments in a protective filmsculpting, changing, disconnecting. Surely he had said something else (if he had indeed spoken at all), and in the shock and unhappy passion of the moment, Louis had misinterpreted it. More likely, Pascow had only mouthed sounds, as he had at first thought. Louis groped for himself, for that part of himself that had caused the administration to give him this job over the other fiftythree applicants for the position. There was no one in command here, no forward motion; the room was full of milling people. Steve, go give that girl a trank, he said, and just saying the words made him feel better. It was as if he were in a rocketship under power now, puffing away from a tiny moonlet. Said moonlet being, of course, that irrational moment when Pascow had spoken. Louis had been hired to take charge; he was going to do it. Joan. Give the cop a blanket.


Doctor, we havent inventoried Give it to him anyway. Then check on that candystriper. He looked at the other girl, who still held her end of the hard stretcher. She was staring at Pascows remains with a kind of hypnotized fascination. Candystriper! Louis said harshly, and her eyes jerked away from the body. WWWh Whats the other girls name? WWho? The one who puked, he said with deliberate harshness. JuhJuhJudy. Judy DeLessio. Your name? Carla. Now the girl sounded a little more steady. Carla, you go check on Judy. And get that blanket. Youll find a pile of them in the little utility closet off Examining Room One. Go, all of you. Lets look a little professional here. They got moving. Very shortly the screaming in the other room quieted. The phone, which had stopped ringing, now began again. Louis pushed the hold button without picking up the receiver off its cradle. The older campus cop looked more together, and Louis spoke to him. Who do we notify? Can you give me a list? The cop nodded and said, We havent had one of these in six years. Its a bad way to start the semester. It sure is, Louis said. He picked up the phone and punched off the hold button. Hello? Who is an excited voice began, and Louis cut it off. He began to make his calls. 14 Things did not slow down until nearly four that afternoon, after Louis and Richard Irving, the head of Campus Security, made a statement to the press. The young man, Victor Pascow, had been jogging with two friends, one of them his fiance. A car driven by Tremont Withers, twentythree, of Haven, Maine, had come up the road leading from the Lengyll Womens Gymnasium toward the center of campus at an excessive speed. Witherss car had struck Pascow and driven him headfirst into a tree. Pascow had been brought to the infirmary in a blanket by his friends and two passersby. He had died minutes later. Withers was being held pending charges of reckless driving, driving under the influence, and vehicular manslaughter. The editor of the campus newspaper asked if he could say that Pascow had died of head injuries. Louis, thinking of that broken window through which the brain itself could be seen, said he would rather let the Penobscot County coroner announce the cause of death. The editor then asked if the four young people who had brought Pascow to the infirmary in the blanket might not have inadvertently caused his death. No, Louis replied. Not at all. Unhappily, Mr. Pascow was in my opinion, mortally wounded upon being struck. There were other questionsa fewbut that answer really ended the press conference. Now Louis sat in his office (Steve Masterton had gone home an hour before, immediately following the press conferenceto catch himself on the evening news Louis suspected) trying to pick up the shards of the dayor maybe he was just trying to cover what had happened, to paint a thin coating of routine over it. He and Charlton were going over the cards in the front filethose students who were pushing grimly through their college years in spite of some disability There were twentythree diabetics in the front file, fifteen epileptics, fourteen paraplegics, and assorted others students with leukemia, students with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy blind students, two mute students, and one case of sicklecell anemia, which Louis had never even seen. Perhaps the lowest point of the afternoon had come just after Steve left. Charlton came in and laid a pink memo slip on Louiss desk. Bangor Carpet will be here at 900 tomorrow, it read. Carpet? he had asked. It will have to be replaced, she said apologetically. No way the stains going to come out, Doctor. Of course not. At that point Louis had gone into the dispensary and taken a Tuinalwhat his first med school roommate had called Tooners. Hop up on the Toonerville Trolley, Louis, hed say, and Ill put on some Creedence. More often than not Louis had declined the ride on the fabled Toonerville, and that was maybe just as well; his roomie had flunked out halfway through his third semester and had ridden the Toonerville Trolley all the way to Vietnam as a medical corpsman. Louis sometimes pictured him over there, stoned to the eyeballs, listening to Creedence do Run Through the Jungle. But he needed something. If he was going to have to see that pink slip about the carpet on his noteminder board every time he glanced up from the front file spread out in front of them, he needed something. He was cruising fairly well when Mrs. Baillings, the night nurse poked in her head and said, Your wife, Dr. Creed. Line one. Louis glanced at his watch and saw it was nearly fivethirty; he had meant to be out of here an hour and a half ago. "Okay, Nancy. Thanks." He picked up the phone and punched line one. "Hi, honey. Just on my" "Louis, are you all right?" "Yeah, fine." "I heard about it on the news. Lou, I'm so sorry." She paused a moment. "It was on the radio news. They had you on, answering some question. You sounded fine." "Did I? Good." "Are you sure you're all right?" "Yes, Rachel. I'm fine." "Come home," she said. "Yes," he said. Home sounded good to him. 15 She met him at the door, and his jaw dropped. She was wearing the net bra he liked, a pair of semitransparent panties, and nothing else. "You look delicious," he said. "Where are the kids?" "Missy Dandridge took them. We're on our own until eightthirty . . . which gives us two and a half hours. Let's not waste it." She pressed against him. He could smell a faint, lovely scentwas it attar of roses? His arms went around her, first around her waist, and then his hands found her buttocks as her tongue danced lightly over his lips and then into his mouth, licking and darting. At last their kiss broke, and he asked her a bit hoarsely, "Are you for dinner?" "Dessert," she said and then began to rotate her lower body slowly and sensuously against his groin and abdomen. "But I promise you you don't have to eat anything you don't like." He reached for her, but she slipped out of his arms and took his hand. "Upstairs first," she said. She drew him an extremely warm bath, then undressed him slowly and shooed him into the water. She donned the slightly rough spongeglove that usually hung unused on the shower head, soaped his body gently, then rinsed it. He could feel the daythis horrible first dayslipping slowly off him. She had gotten quite wet, and her panties clung like a second skin. Louis started to get out of the tub, and she pushed him back gently. "What" Now the spongeglove gripped him gentlygently but with almost unbearable friction, moving slowly up and down. "Rachel" Sweat had broken all over him, and not just from the heat of the tub. "Shush." It seemed to go on almost eternallyhe would near climax, and the hand in the spongeglove would slow, almost stop. Then it didn't stop but squeezed, loosened, squeezed again, until he came so strongly that he felt his eardrums bulge. "My God," he said shakily when he could speak again. "Where did you learn that?" "Girl Scouts," she said primly. She had made a stroganoff which had been simmering during the bathtub episode, and Louis, who would have sworn at four o'clock that he would next want to eat sometime around Halloween, ate two helpings. Then she led him upstairs again. "Now," she said, "let's see what you can do for me." All things considered, Louis thought he rose to the occasion quite well. Afterward, Rachel dressed in her old blue pajamas. Louis pulled on a flannel shirt and nearly shapeless corduroy pants what Rachel called his grubsand went after the kids. Missy Dandridge wanted to know about the accident, and Louis sketched it in for her, giving her less than she would probably read in the Bangor Daily News the following day. He didn't like doing itit made him feel like the most rancid sort of gossipbut Missy would accept no money for sitting, and he was grateful to her for the evening he and Rachel had shared. Gage was fast asleep before Louis had gotten the mile between Missys house and their own; even Ellie was yawning and glassyeyed. He put Gage into fresh diapers, poured him into his sleeper suit, and popped him into his crib. Then he read Ellie a storybook. As usual, she clamored for Where the Wild Things Are, being a veteran wild thing herself. Louis convinced her to settle for The Cat in the Hat. She was asleep five minutes after he carried her up, and Rachel tucked her in. When he came downstairs again, Rachel was sitting in the living room with a glass of milk. A Dorothy Sayers mystery was open on one long thigh. Louis, are you really all right? Honey, Im fine, he said. And thanks. For everything.  We aim to please, she said with a curving, slightly saucy smile. Are you going over to Juds for a beer? He shook his head. Not tonight. Im totally bushed. I hope I had something to do with that. I think you did. Then grab yourself a glass of milk, Doctor, and lets go to bed. He thought perhaps he would lie awake, as he often had when he was interning, and days that were particularly hairy would play over and over in his mind. But he slid smoothly toward sleep, as if on a slightly inclined, frictionless board. He had read somewhere that it takes the average human being just seven minutes to turn off all the switches and uncouple from the day. Seven minutes for conscious and subconscious to revolve, like the trick wall in an amusementpark haunted house. Something a little eerie in that. He was almost there when he heard Rachel say, as if from a great distance, . . . day after tomorrow. Ummmmmm? Jolander. The vet. Hes taking Church the day after tomorrow. Oh. Church. Treasure your cojnes while you got em, Church, old boy. Then he slipped away from everything, down a hole, sleeping deeply and without dreams. 16 Something woke him much later, a crash loud enough to cause him to sit up in bed, wondering if Ellie had fallen onto the floor or if maybe Gages crib had collapsed. Then the moon sailed out from behind a cloud, flooding the room with cold white light, and he saw Victor Pascow standing in the doorway. The crash had been Pascow throwing open the door. He stood there with his head bashed in behind the left temple. The blood had dried on his face in maroon stripes like Indian warpaint. His collarbone jutted whitely. He was grinning. Come on, Doctor, Pascow said. We got places to go. Louis looked around. His wife was a vague hump under her yellow comforter, sleeping deeply. He looked back at Pascow, who was dead but somehow not dead. Yet Louis felt no fear. He realized why almost at once. Its a dream, he thought, and it was only in his relief that he realized he had been frightened after all. The dead do not return; it is physiologically impossible. This young man is in an autopsy drawer in Bangor with the pathologists tattooa Ycut stitched back upon him. The pathologist probably tossed his brain into his chest cavity after taking a tissue sample and filled up the skull cavity with brown paper to prevent leakingsimpler than trying to fit the brain back into the skull like a jigsaw piece into a puzzle. Uncle Carl, father of the unfortunate Ruthie, had told him that pathologists did that, and all sorts of other random information that he supposed would give Rachel, with her death phobia, the screaming horrors. But Pascow was not hereno way, baby. Pascow was in a refrigerated locker with a tag around his toe. And he is most certainly not wearing those red jogging shorts in there. Yet the compulsion to get up was strong. Pascows eyes were upon him. He threw back the covers and swung his feet onto the floor. The hooked ruga wedding present from Rachels grandmother long agopressed cold nubbles into the balls of his feet. The dream had a remarkable reality. It was so real that he would not follow Pascow until Pascow had turned and begun to go back down the stairs. The compulsion to follow was strong, but he did not want to be touched, even in a dream, by a walking corpse. But he did follow. Pascows jogging shorts glimmered. They crossed the living room, dining room, kitchen. Louis expected Pascow to turn the lock and then lift the latch on the door which connected the kitchen to the shed where he garaged the station wagon and the Civic, but Pascow did no such thing. Instead of opening the door, he simply passed through it. And Louis, watching, thought with mild amazement Is that how its done? Remarkable! Anyone could do that! He tried it himselfand was a little amused to meet only unyielding wood. Apparently he was a hardheaded realist, even in his dreams. Louis twisted the knob on the Yale lock, lifted the latch, and let himself into the shedgarage. Pascow was not there. Louis wondered briefly if Pascow had just ceased to exist. Figures in dreams often did just that. So did locationsfirst you were standing nude by a swimming pool with a raging hardon, discussing the possibilities of wife swapping with, say, Roger and Missy Dandridge; then you blinked and you were climbing the side of a Hawaiian volcano. Maybe he had lost Pascow because this was the beginning of Act II. But when Louis emerged from the garage, he saw him again, standing in the faint moonlight at the back of the lawnat the head of the path. Now fear came, entering softly, sifting through the hollow places of his body and filling them up with dirty smoke. He didnt want to go up there. He halted. Pascow glanced back over his shoulder, and in the moonlight his eyes were silver. Louis felt a hopeless crawl of horror in his belly. That jutting bone, those dried clots of blood. But it was hopeless to resist those eyes. This was apparently a dream about being hypnotized, being dominated . . . being unable to change things, perhaps, the way he had been unable to change the fact of Pascows death. You could go to school for twenty years and you still couldnt do a thing when they brought a guy in who had been rammed into a tree hard enough to open a window in his skull. They might as well have called a plumber, a rainmaker, or the Man from Glad. And even as these thoughts passed through his mind, he was drawn forward onto the path. He followed the jogging shorts, as maroon in this light as the dried blood on Pascows face. He didnt like this dream. Oh God, not at all. It was too real. The cold nubbles in the rug, the way he had not been able to pass through the shed door when a person could (or should) be able to walk through doors and walls in any selfrespecting dream . . . and now the cool brush of dew on his bare feet, and the feel of the night wind, just a breath of it, on his body, which was naked except for his Jockey shorts. Once under the trees, pine needles stuck to the soles of his feet . . . another little detail that was just a bit more real than it needed to be. Never mind. Never mind. I am home in my own bed. Its just a dream, no matter how vivid, and like all other dreams, it will seem ridiculous in the morning. My waking mind will discover its inconsistencies. The small branch of a dead tree poked his bicep rudely and he winced. Up ahead, Pascow was only a moving shadow, and now Louiss terror seemed to have crystallized into a bright sculpture in his mind I am following a dead man into the woods, I am following a dead man up to the Pet Sematary, and this is no dream. God help me, this is no dream. This is happening. They walked down the far side of the wooded hill. The path curved in lazy Sshapes between the trees and then plunged into the underbrush. No boots now. The ground dissolved into cold jelly under his feet, grabbing and holding, letting go only reluctantly. There were ugly sucking noises. He could feel the mud oozing between his toes, trying to separate them. He tried desperately to hold on to the dream idea. It wouldnt wash. They reached the clearing, and the moon sailed free of its reef of clouds again, bathing the graveyard with ghastly effulgence. The leaning markersbits of board and tin cans that had been cut with a fathers tinsnips and then hammered into rude squares, chipped chunks of shale and slatestood out with threedimensional clarity, casting shadows perfectly black and defined. Pascow stopped near SMUCKY THE CAT, HE WAS OBEDIANT and turned back toward Louis. The horror, the terrorhe felt these things would grow in him until his body blew apart under their soft yet implacable pressure. Pascow was grinning. His bloody lips were wrinkled back from his teeth, and his healthy roadcrew tan in the moons bony light had become overlaid with the white of a corpse about to be sewn into its winding shroud. He lifted one arm and pointed. Louis looked in that direction and moaned. His eyes grew wide, and he crammed his knuckles against his mouth. There was coolness on his cheeks, and he realized that in the extremity of his terror he had begun to weep. The deadfall from which Jud Crandall had called Ellie in alarm had become a heap of bones. The bones were moving. They writhed and clicked together, mandibles and femurs and ulnas and molars and incisors; he saw the grinning skulls of humans and animals. Fingerbones clittered. Here the remains of a foot flexed its pallid joints. Ah, it was moving; it was creeping Pascow was walking toward him now, his bloody face grim in the moonlight, and the last of Louiss coherent mind began to slip away in a yammering, cyclic thought You got to scream yourself awake doesnt matter if you scare Rachel Ellie Gage wake the whole household the whole neighborhood got to scream yourself awake screamscreamscreamyourselfawakeawakeawake But only a thin whisper of air would come. It was the sound of a little kid sitting on a stoop somewhere and trying to teach himself to whistle. Pascow came closer and then spoke. The door must not be opened, Pascow said. He was looking down at Louis because Louis had fallen to his knees. There was a look on his face which Louis at first mistook for compassion. It wasnt really compassion at all; only a dreadful kind of patience. Still he pointed at the moving pile of bones. Dont go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken. Remember this there is more power here than you know. It is old and always restless. Remember. Louis tried again to scream. He could not. I come as a friend, Pascow saidbut was friend actually the word Pascow had used? Louis thought not. It was as if Pascow had spoken in a foreign language which Louis could understand through some dream magic . . . and friend was as close to whatever word Pascow had actually used that Louiss struggling mind could come. Your destruction and the destruction of all you love is very near, Doctor. He was close enough for Louis to be able to smell death on him. Pascow, reaching for him. The soft, maddening click of the bones. Louis began to overbalance in his effort to get away from that hand. His own hand struck a monument and tilted it into the earth. Pascows face, leaning down, filled the sky. Doctorremember. Louis tried to scream, and the world whirled awaybut still he heard the click of moving bones in the moonlit crypt of the night. 17 It takes the average human seven minutes to go to sleep, but according to Hands Human Physiology, it takes the same average human fifteen to twenty minutes to wake up. It is as if sleep is a pool from which emerging is more difficult than entering. When the sleeper wakes, he or she comes up by degrees, from deep sleep to light sleep to what is sometimes called waking sleep, a state in which the sleeper can hear sounds and will even respond to questions without being aware of it later . . . except perhaps as fragments of dream. Louis heard the click and rattle of bones, but gradually this sound became sharper, more metallic. There was a bang. A yell. More metallic sounds . . . something rolling? Sure, his drifting mind agreed. Roll dem bones. He heard his daughter calling Get it, Cage! Go get it! This was followed by Gages crow of delight, the sound to which Louis opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of his own bedroom. He held himself perfectly still, waiting for the reality, the good reality, the blessed reality, to come home all the way. All a dream. No matter how terrible, how real, it had all been dream. Only a fossil in the mind under his mind. The metallic sound came again. It was one of Gages toy cars being rolled along the upstairs hail. Get it, Gage! Get it! Gage yelled. Get itget itget it! Thumpathumpathumpa. Gages small bare feet thundering along the hallway runner. He and Ellie were giggling. Louis looked to his right. Rachels side of the bed was empty, the covers thrown back. The sun was well up. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nearly eight oclock. Rachel had let him oversleep . . . probably on purpose. Ordinarily this would have irritated him, but this morning it did not. He drew in a deep breath and let it out, content for the moment to lie here with a bar of sunlight slanting in through the window, feeling the unmistakable texture of the real world. Dustmotes danced in the sunlight. Rachel called upstairs Better come down and get your snack and go out for the bus, El! Okay! The louder clackclack of her feet. Heres your car, Gage. I got to go to school. Gage began to yell indignantly. Although it was garbledthe only clear words being Gage, car, geddit, and Elliebus, his text seemed clear enough Ellie should stay. Public education could go hang for the day. Rachels voice again, Give your dad a shake before you come clown, El. Ellie came in, her hair done up in a ponytail, wearing her red dress. Im awake, babe, he said. Go on and get your bus. Okay, Daddy. She came over, kissed his slightly scruffy cheek, and bolted for the stairs. The dream was beginning to fade, to lose its coherence. A damn good thing too. Gage! he yelled. Come give your dad a kiss! Gage ignored this. He was following Ellie downstairs as rapidly as he could, yelling Get it! GetitgetitGETIT! at the top of his lungs. Louis caught just a glimpse of his sturdy little kids body, clad only in diapers and rubber pants. Rachel called up again, Louis, was that you? You awake? Yeah, he said, sitting up. Told you he was! Ellie called. Im goin. Bye! The slam of the front door and Gages outraged bellow punctuated this. One egg or two? Rachel called. Louis pushed back the blankets and swung his feet out onto the nubs of the hooked rug, ready to tell her hed skip the eggs, just a bowl of cereal and hed run . . . and the words died in his throat. His feet were filthy with dirt and pine needles. His heart leaped up in his throat like a crazy jackinthebox. Moving fast, eyes bulging, teeth clamped unfeelingly on his tongue, he kicked the covers all the way back. The foot of the bed was littered with needles. The sheets were mucky and dirty. Louis? He saw a few errant pine needles on his knees, and suddenly he looked at his right arm. There was a scratch there on the bicep, a fresh scratch, exactly where the dead branch had poked him . . . in the dream. Im going to scream. I can feel it. And he could too; it was roaring up from inside, nothing but a big cold bullet of fear. Reality shimmered. Realitythe real reality, he thoughtwas those needles, the filth on the sheets, the bloody scratch on his bare arm. Im going to scream and then Ill go crazy and I wont have to worry about it anymore Louis? Rachel was coming up the stairs. Louis, did you go back to sleep? He grappled for himself in those two or three seconds; he fought grimly for himself just as he had done in those moments of roaring confusion after Pascow had been brought into the Medical Center, dying in a blanket. He won. The thought which tipped the scales was that she must not see him this way, his feet muddy and coated with needles, the blankets tossed back onto the floor to reveal the mucksplashed ground sheet. Im awake, he called cheerfully. His tongue was bleeding from the sudden, involuntary bite he had given it. His mind swirled, and somewhere deep inside, away from the action, he wondered if he had always been within touching distance of such mad irrationalities; if everyone was. One egg or two? She had stopped on the second or third riser. Thank God. Two, he said, barely aware of what he was saying. Scrambled. Good for you, she said, and went back downstairs again. He closed his eyes briefly in relief, but in the darkness he saw Pascows silver eyes. His eyes flew open again. Louis began to move rapidly, putting off any further thought. He jerked the bedclothes off the bed. The blankets were okay. He separated out the two sheets, balled them up, took them into the hallway, and dumped them down the laundry chute. Almost running, he entered the bathroom, jerked the shower handle on, and stepped under water so hot it was nearly scalding, unmindful. He washed the dirt from his feet and legs. He began to feel better, more in control. Drying off, it struck him that this was how murderers must feel when they believe they have gotten rid of all the evidence. He began to laugh. He went on drying himself, but he also went on laughing. He couldnt seem to stop. Hey, up there! Rachel called. Whats so funny? Private joke, Louis called back, still laughing. He was frightened, but the fright didnt stop the laughter. The laughter came, rising from a belly that was as hard as stones mortared into a wall. It occurred to him that shoving the sheets down the laundry chute was absolutely the best thing he could have done. Missy Dandridge came in five days a week to vacuum, clean . . . and do the laundry. Rachel would never see those sheets at all until she put them back on the bed . . . clean. He supposed it was possible that Missy would mention it to Rachel, but he didnt think so. She would probably whisper to her husband that the Creeds were playing some strange sex game that involved mud and pine needles instead of body paints. This thought made Louis laugh all the harder. The last of the giggles and chuckles dried up as he was dressing, and he realized that he felt a little better. How that could be he didnt know, but he did. The room looked normal now except for the stripped bed. He had gotten rid of the poison. Maybe evidence was actually the word he was looking for, but in his mind it felt like poison. Perhaps this is what people do with the inexplicable, he thought. This is what they do with the irrational that refuses to be broken down into the normal causes and effects that run the Western world. Maybe this was how your mind coped with the flying saucer you saw hovering silently over your back field one morning, casting its own tight little pool of shadow; the rain of frogs; the hand from under the bed that stroked your bare foot in the dead of night. There was a giggling fit or a crying fit . . . and since it was its own inviolable self and would not break down, you simply passed terror intact, like a kidney stone. Gage was in his chair, eating Cocoa Bears and decorating the table with it. He was decorating the plastic mat under his high chair with Cocoa Bears and apparently shampooing with it. Rachel came out of the kitchen with his eggs and a cup of coffee. What was the big joke, Lou? You were laughing like a loon up there. Scared me a little. Louis opened his mouth with no idea of what he was going to say, and what came out was a joke he had heard the week before at the corner market down the roadsomething about a Jewish tailor who bought a parrot whose only line was Ariel Sharon jerks off. By the time he finished, Rachel was laughing tooso was Cage for that matter. Fine. Our hero has taken care of all the evidenceto wit the muddy sheets and the loony laughter in the bathroom. Our hero will now read the morning paperor at least look at itputting the seal of normality on the morning. So thinking, Louis opened the paper. Thats what you do, all right, he thought with immeasurable relief. You pass it like a stone, and thats the end of it . . . unless there comes a campfire some night with friends when the wind is high and the talk turns to inexplicable events. Because on campfire nights when the wind is high, talk is cheap. He ate his eggs. He kissed Rachel and Gage. He glanced at the square, whitepainted laundry cabinet at the foot of the chute only as he left. Everything was okay. It was another knockout of a morning. Late summer showed every sign of just going on forever, and everything was okay. He glanced at the path as he backed the car out of the garage, but that was okay too. Never turned a hair. You passed it like a stone. Everything was okay until he had gotten ten miles down the road, and then the shakes hit him so hard that he had to pull off Route z and into the morningdeserted parking lot of Sings, the Chinese restaurant not far from the Eastern Maine Medical Center . . . where Pascows body would have been taken. The EMMC, that is, not Sings. Vic Pascow was never going to eat another helping of moo goo gai pan, haha. The shakes twisted his body, ripped at it, had their way with it. Louis felt helpless and terrifiednot terrified of anything supernatural, not in this bright sunshine, but simply terrified of the possibility that he might be losing his mind. It felt as if a long, invisible wire was being twirled through his head. No more, he said. Please, no more. He fumbled for the radio and got Joan Baez singing about diamonds and rust. Her sweet, cool voice soothed him, and by the time she had finished, Louis felt that he could drive on. When he got to the Medical Center, he called hello to Charlton and then ducked into the bathroom, believing that he must look like hell. Not so. He was a little hollow under the eyes, but not even Rachel had noticed that. He slapped some cold water on his face, dried off, combed his hair, and went into his office. Steve Masterton and the Indian doctor, Surrendra Hardu, were in there, drinking coffee and continuing to go over the front file. Morning, Lou, Steve said. Morning. Lets hope it is not like last morning, Hardu said. Thats right, you missed all the excitement. Surrendra had plenty of excitement himself last night, Masterton said, grinning. Tell him, Surrendra. Hardu polished his glasses, smiling. Two boys bring in their Jady friend around one oclock in the morning, he said. She is very happily drunk, celebrating the return to university, you understand. She has cut one thigh quite badly, and I tell her it will be at least four stitches, no scar. Stitch away, she tells me, and so I do, bending over like this Hardu demonstrated, salaaming over an invisible thigh. Louis began to grin, sensing what was coming. And as I am suturing, she vomits on my head. Masterton broke up. So did Louis. Hardu smiled calmly, as if this had happened to him thousands of times in thousands of lives. Surrendra, how long have you been on duty? Louis asked, when the laughter died. Since midnight, Hardu said. I am just leaving. But I wanted to stay long enough to say hello again. Well, hello, Louis said, shaking his small, brown hand. Now go home and go to sleep. Were almost through with the front file, Masterton said. Say hallelujah, Surrendra. I decline, Hardu said, smiling. I am not a Christian. Then sing the chorus of Instant Karma or something. May you both shine on, Hardu said, still smiling, and glided out the door. Louis and Steve Masterton looked after him for a moment, Silent, and then looked at each other. They broke out laughing. To Louis, no laugh had ever felt so good . . . so normal. Just as well we got the file finished up, Steve said. Todays the day we put the welcome mat out for the dope pushers. Louis nodded.. The first of the drug salesmen would begin arriving at ten. As Steve liked to crack, Wednesday might be Prince Spaghetti Day, but at UMO every Tuesday was Dday. The D stood for Darvon, the alltime favorite. A word of advice, O Great Boss, Steve said.