Some kind of sanity finally returned, and he stopped with the spade raised for another blow. The blade was bent and scratched. He tossed it aside and scrambled out of the grave on legs that felt weak and rubbery. He felt sick to his stomach, and the anger had gone as quickly as it had come. In its place the coldness flooded back in, and never in his life had his mind felt so alone and disconnected; he felt like an astronaut who has floated away from his ship during an EVA and now only drifts in a great blackness, breathing on borrowed time. Did Bill Baterman feel like this? he wondered. He lay on the ground, on his back this time, waiting to see if he was under control and ready to proceed. When the rubbery feeling had left his legs, he sat up and slipped back down into the grave. He shone the flashlight on the latch and saw it was not just broken, but demolished. He had swung the spade in a blind fury, but every blow he had struck had gone directly there, bulls eye, as if guided. The wood around it had splintered. Louis slipped the flashlight into his armpit. He squatted down slightly. His hands groped, like the hands of a catcher in a troupe of circus flyers, waiting to perform his part in a mortal docking. He found the groove in the lid, and he slipped his fingers into it. He paused for a momentone could not rightly call it a hesitationand then he opened his sons coffin. 50 Rachel Creed almost made her flight from Boston to Portland. Almost. Her Chicago plane left on time (a miracle in itself), was cleared straight into LaGuardia (another), and left New York only five minutes behind schedule. It got to the gate in Boston fifteen minutes lateat 1112 P.M. That left her with thirteen minutes. She still might have made her connecting flight, but the shuttle bus which makes a circle around the Logan terminals was late. Rachel waited, now in a kind of constant lowgrade panic, shifting from foot to foot as if she needed to go to the bathroom, switching the travel bag her mother had loaned her from one shoulder to the other. When the shuttle still hadnt come at 1125, she began to run. Her heels were low but still high enough to cause her problems. One of her ankles buckled painfully, and she paused long enough to take off the shoes. Then she ran on in her pantyhose, past Allegheny and Eastern Airlines, breathing hard now, getting the beginnings of a stitch in her side. Her breath was hot in her throat, that tuck in her side deeper and more painful. Now she was running past the international terminal, and there, up ahead, was Deltas triangular sign. She burst in through the doors, almost dropped one shoe, juggled it, caught it. It was 1137. One of the two clerks on duty glanced up at her. Flight 104, she panted. The Portland flight. Has it left? The clerk glanced behind him at the monitor. Still at the gate it says here, he said, but they called for final boarding five minutes ago. Ill call ahead. Bags to check? No, Rachel gasped, and brushed her sweaty hair out of her eyes. Her heart was galloping in her chest. Then dont wait for me to call. I willbut I advise you to run very fast. Rachel didnt run very fastshe was no longer able. But she did as well as she could. The escalator had been turned off for the night, and she pounded up the stairs, tasting copper shavings in her mouth. She reached the security checkpoint and almost threw the tote bag at the startled female guard, then waited for it to come through on the conveyor belt, her hands clenching and unclenching. It was barely out of the Xray chamber before she had snatched it by the strap and ran again, the bag flying out behind her and then banging her on the hip. She looked up at one of the monitors as she ran. FLIGHT 104 PORTLAND SCHED 1125P GATE 31 BOARDING Gate 31 was at the far end of the concourseand even as she snatched her glance at the monitor, BOARDING in steady letters changed to DEPARTING, blinking rapidly. A frustrated cry burst from her. She ran into the gate area just in time to see the gate attendant removing the strips which read FLIGHT 104 BOSTONPORTLAND 1125. Its gone? she asked incredulously. Its really gone? The attendant looked at her sympathetically. It rolled out of the jetway at 1140. Im sorry, maam. You made a helluva good try, if thats any consolation. He pointed out the wide glass windows. Rachel could see a big 727 with Delta markings, its running lights Christmastree bright, starting its takeoff roll. Christ, didnt anyone tell you I was coming? Rachel cried. When they called up here from downstairs, 104 was on an active taxiway. If Id called her back, she would have gotten caught in the parade going out to Runway 30, and that pilot would have had my beehind on a platter. Not to mention the hundred or so passengers on board. Im very sorry. If youd been even four minutes sooner She walked away, not listening to the rest. She was halfway back to the security checkpoint when waves of faintness rode over her. She stumbled into another gate area and sat down until the darkness had passed. Then she slipped her shoes back on, picking a squashed Lark cigarette butt off the tattered sole of one stocking first. My feet are dirty and I dont give a fuck, she thought disconsolately. She walked back toward the terminal. The security guard eyed her sympathetically. Missed it? I missed it, all right, Rachel said. Where were you headed? Portland. Then Bangor. Well, why dont you rent a car? If you really have to be there, that is? Ordinarily Id advise a hotel close to the airport, but if I ever saw a lady who looked like she really had to be there, you are that lady. Im that lady, all right, Rachel said. She thought about it. Yes, I suppose I could do that, couldnt I? If any of the agencies has a car. The security guard laughed. Oh, theyll have cars. Only time they dont have cars at Logan is when the airports fogged in. Which is a lot of the time. Rachel barely heard her. In her mind she was already trying to calculate it. She couldnt get to Portland in time to catch her Bangor flight even if she bulleted up the turnpike at a suicidal pace. So figure driving straight through. How long? That depended on how far. Two hundred and fifty miles, that was the figure which came to mind. Something Jud had said maybe. It was going to be at least a quarter past twelve before she got going, probably closer to 1230 A.M. It was all turnpike. She thought that her chances of going the whole distance at sixtyfive without getting hauled down for speeding were reasonably good. She ran the figures quickly in her head, dividing sixtyfive into two hundred and fifty. Not quite four hours. Well . . . say four even. She would have to stop once and go to the bathroom. And although sleep seemed impossibly distant now, she knew her own resources well enough to believe she would also have to stop for a great big black coffee. Still she could be back in Ludlow before first light. Mulling all this over, she started for the stairsthe car rental desks were one level down from the concourses. Good luck, honey, the security guard called. Take care. Thanks, Rachel said. She felt that she deserved some good luck. 51 The smell hit him first, and Louis recoiled, gagging. He hung on the edge of the grave, breathing hard, and just when he thought he had his gorge under control, his entire big, tasteless meal came up in a spurt. He threw up on the far side of the grave and then put his head against the ground, panting. At last the nausea passed. Teeth clamped together, he took the flashlight out of his armpit and shone it down into the open coffin. A deep horror that was very nearly awe stole over himit was the sort of feeling usually reserved for the worst nightmares, the ones you can barely remember upon awakening. Gages head was gone. Louiss hands were trembling so badly he had to hold the flashlight with both hands, gripping it the way a policeman is taught to grip his service revolver on the target range. Still the beam jittered back and forth and it was a moment before he could train the pencilthin beam back into the grave. Its impossible, he told himself, just remember that what you thought you saw is impossible. He slowly moved the narrow beam up Gages threefoot length, from the new shoes to the suit pants, the little coat (ah, Christ, no twoyearold was ever meant to wear a suit), to the open collar, to His breath caught in a harsh sound that was too outraged to be a gasp, and all his fury at Gages death came back in a rush, drowning fears of the supernatural, the paranatural, his growing certainty that he had crossed over into the country of the mad. Louis scrabbled in his back pocket for his handkerchief and pulled it out. Holding the light in one hand, he leaned into the grave again, almost past the point of balance. If one of the segments of grave liner had fallen now, it would have surely broken his neck. Gently he used his handkerchief to wipe away the damp moss that was growing on Gages skinmoss so dark that he had been momentarily fooled into thinking Gages whole head was gone. The moss was damp but no more than a scum. He should have expected it; there had been rain, and a grave liner was not watertight. Flashing his light to either side, Louis saw that the coffin was lying in a thin puddle. Beneath the light slime of growth, he saw his son. The mortician, aware that the coffin could not be opened after such a terrible accident, had nonetheless done the best he couldmorticians almost always did. Looking at his son was like looking at a badly made doll. Gages head bulged in strange directions. His eyes had sunken deep behind closed lids. Something white protruded from his mouth like an albino tongue, and Louis thought at first that they had, perhaps, used too much embalming fluid. It was tricky stuff at best, and with a child it was next to impossible to tell how much was enough or too much. Then he realized it was only cotton. He reached in and plucked it out of the boys mouth. Gages lips, oddly lax and seeming somehow too dark and too wide, closed with a faint but audible plip! He threw the cotton into the grave where it floated in the shallow puddle and gleamed a loathsome white. Now one of Gages cheeks had a hollow oldmans look. Gage, he whispered, going to take you out now, okay? He prayed no one would come along now, a caretaker making a 1230 swing through the cemetery, something like that. But it was no longer a matter of not being caught; if someone elses flashlight beam speared him as he stood here in the grave going about his grim work, he would seize the bent, scarred spade and put it through the intruders skull. He worked his arms under Gage. The body lolled bonelessly from side to side, and a sudden, awful certainty came over him when he lifted Gage, Gages body would break apart and he would be left with the pieces. He would be left standing with his feet on the sides of the grave liner with the pieces, screaming. And that was how they would find him. Go on, you chicken, go on and do it! He got Gage under the arms, aware of the fetid dampness, and lifted him that way, as he had lifted him so often from his evening tub. Gages head lolled all the way to the middle of his back. Louis saw the grinning circlet of stitches which held Gages head onto his shoulders. Somehow, panting, his stomach spasming from the smell and from the boneless loose feel of his sons miserably smashed body, Louis wrestled the body out of the coffin. At last he sat on the verge of the grave with the body in his lap, his feet dangling in the hole, his face a horrible livid color, his eyes black holes, his mouth drawn down in a trembling bow of horror and pity and sorrow. Gage, he said and began to rock the boy in his arms. Gages hair lay against Louiss wrist, as lifeless as wire. Gage, It will be all right, I swear, Gage, it will be all right, this will end, this is just the night, please, Gage, I love you, Daddy loves you. Louis rocked his son. By quarter of two, Louis was ready to leave the cemetery. Actually handling the body had been the worst of itthat was the point at which that interior astronaut, his mind, seemed to float the farthest into the void. And yet now, resting, his back a throbbing hurt in which exhausted muscles jumped and twitched, he felt it might be possible to get back. All the way back. He put Gages body on the tarpaulin and wrapped it up. He cinched it with long strips of strapping tape, then cut the length of rope in two and tied off the ends neatly. Once more he might have had a rolledup rug, no more. He closed the coffin, then after a moments thought, he reopened it and put the bent spade in. Let Pleasantview have that relic; it would not have his son. He closed the coffin and then lowered half of the cement graveliner top. He considered simply dropping the other half but was afraid it would shatter. After a moments consideration, he threaded his belt through the iron rings and used it to lower the cement square gently into place. Then he used the shovel to fill in the hole. There was not enough dirt to bring it up even with the ground again. The graves swaybacked look might be noticed. It might not. It might be noticed and disregarded. He would not allow himself to think about it, or worry about it tonighttoo much still lay ahead of him. More wild work. And he was very tired. Heyho, lets go. Indeed, Louis muttered. The wind rose, shrieking briefly through the trees and making him look around uneasily. He laid the shovel, the pick he had yet had to use, the gloves, and the flashlight beside the bundle. Using the light was a temptation, but he resisted it. Leaving the body and the tools, Louis walked back the way he had come and arrived at the high wroughtiron fence about five minutes later. There, across the street, was his Civic, parked neatly at the curb. So near and yet so far. Louis looked at it for a moment and then struck off in a different direction. This time he moved away from the gate, walking along the wroughtiron fence until it turned away from Mason Street at a neat right angle. There was a drainage ditch here, and Louis looked into it. What he saw made him shudder. There were masses of rotting flowers here, layer upon layer of them, washed down by seasons of rain and snow. Christ. No, not Christ. These leavings were made in propitiation of a much older God than the Christian one. People have called Him different things at different times, hut Rachels sister gave Him a perfectly good name, I think Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, God of dead things left in the ground, God of rotting flowers in drainage ditches, God of the Mystery. Louis stared down into the ditch as if hypnotized. At last he dragged his gaze away with a little gaspthe gasp of one who has come to, or who has been called from a mesmerists trance by the final number in a count of ten. He went on. He hadnt walked far before he found what he was looking for, and he suspected that his mind had neatly stored this bit of information on the day of Gages burial. Here, looming in the windy dark, was the cemeterys crypt. Coffins were stored there in the winter when it was too cold for even the payloaders to dig in the frozen earth. It was also used when there was a rush of business. There were such rushes of cold custom from time to time, Louis knew; in any given population there were times when, for no reason anyone could understand, lots of people died. It all balances out, Uncle Carl told him. If I have a twoweek period in May when nobody dies, Lou, I can count on a twoweek period in November when Ill have ten funerals. Only its rarely November, and its never around Christmas, although people always think thats when a lot of people die. That stuff about Christmas depression is just a load of bullshit. Just ask any funeral director. Most people are real happy around Christmas, and they want to live. So they do live. Its usually February when we get a big bulge. The flu gets the old people and theres pneumonia, of coursebut thats not all. Therell be people whove been battling cancer like mad bastards for a year, sixteen months. Then bad old February comes around and it seems as if they get tired and the cancer just rolls them up like a rug. On January 31 theyre in remission, and they feel as if theyre in the pink. Come February 24 theyre planted. People have heart attacks in February, strokes in February, renal failure in February. Its a bad month. People get tired in February. Were used to it, in the business. But then, for no reason, the same thing will happen in June or in October. Never in August. Augusts a slow month. Unless a gas main explodes or a city bus goes off a bridge, you never fill up a cemetery crypt in August. But there have been Februarys when weve had caskets stacked up three deep, hoping like hell for a thaw so we can plant some of them before we have to rent a frigging apartment. Uncle Carl had laughed. And Louis, feeling a party to something not even his instructors in med school knew, had laughed too. The crypts double doors were set into a grassy rise of hill, a shape as natural and attractive as the swell of a womans breast. This hill (which Louis suspected was landscaped rather than natural) crested only a foot or two below the decorative arrow tips of the wroughtiron fence, which remained even at the top rather than rising with the contour. Louis glanced around, then scrambled up the slope. On the other side was an empty square of ground, perhaps two acres in all. No . . . not quite empty. There was a single outbuilding, like a disconnected shed. Probably belongs to the cemetery, Louis thought. That would be where they kept their grounds equipment. The streetlights shone through the moving leaves of a belt of treesold elms and maplesthat screened this area from Mason Street. Louis saw no other movement. He slid back down on his butt, afraid of falling and reinjuring his knee, and returned to his sons grave. He almost stumbled over the roll of the tarpaulin. He saw he would have to make two trips, one with the body and another for the tools. He bent, grimacing at his backs protest, and got the stiff canvas roll in his arms. He could feel the shift of Gages body within and steadfastly ignored that part of his mind which whispered constantly that he had gone mad. He carried the body over to the hill which housed Pleasantviews crypt with its two steel sliding doors (the doors made it look queerly like a twocar garage). He saw what would have to be done if he were going to get his fortypound bundle up that steep slope now that his rope was gone and prepared to do it. He backed up and then ran at the slope, leaning forward, letting his forward motion carry him as far as it would. He got almost to the top before his feet skidded out from under him on the short, slick grass, and he tossed the canvas roll as far as he could as he came down. It landed almost at the crest of the hill. He scrambled the rest of the way up, looked around again, saw no one, and laid the rolledup tarp against the fence. Then he went back for the rest of his things. He gained the top of the hill again, put the gloves on, and piled the flashlight, pick, and shovel next to the tarp. Then he rested, back against the staves of the fence, hands propped on his knees. The new digital watch Rachel had given him for Christmas informed him that it was now 201. He gave himself five minutes to regroup and then tossed the shovel over the fence. He heard it thud in the grass. He tried to stuff the flashlight into his pants, but it just wouldnt go. He slipped it through two of the iron staves and listened to it roll down the hill, hoping it would not hit a stone and break. He wished he had worn a packsack. He removed his dispenser of strapping tape from the pocket of his jacket and bound the businessend of the pick to the canvas roll, going around and around, drawing the tape tight over the picks metal arms and tight under the canvas. He did this until the tape was gone and then tucked the empty dispenser back in his pocket. He lifted the bundle and hoisted it over the fence (his back screamed in protest; he would pay for this night all the following week, he suspected) and then let it drop, wincing at the soft thud. Now he swung one leg over the fence, grasped two of the decorative arrow points, and swung his other leg over. He skidded down, digging in at the earth between the staves of the fence with the toes of his shoes, and dropped to the ground. He made his way down the far side of the hill and felt through the grass. He found the shovel right awaymuted as the glow from the streetlights was through the trees, it reflected a faint gleam from the blade. He had a couple of bad moments when he was unable to find the flashlighthow far could it have rolled in this grass? He got down on his hands and knees and felt through the thick plush, his breath and heartbeat loud in his own ears. At last he spotted it, a thin black shadow some five feet from where he had guessed it would belike the hill masking the cemetery crypt, the regularity of its shape gave it away. He grabbed it, cupped a hand over its felted lens, and pushed the little rubber nipple that hid the switch. His palm lit up briefly, and he switched the flashlight off. It was okay. He used his pocketknife to cut the pick free from the canvas roll and took the tools through the grass to the trees. He stood behind the biggest, looking both ways along Mason Street. It was utterly deserted now. He saw only one light on the entire street a square of yellowgold in an upstairs room. An insomniac, perhaps, or an invalid. Moving quickly but not running, Louis stepped out onto the sidewalk. After the dimness of the cemetery, he felt horribly exposed under the streetlights; here he stood, only yards away from Bangors secondlargest boneyard, a pick, shovel, and flashlight cradled in his arms. If someone saw him now, the inference would be too clear to miss. He crossed the street rapidly, heels clicking. There was his Civic, only fifty yards down the street. To Louis, it looked like five miles. Sweating, he walked toward it, alert for the sound of an approaching car engine, footfalls other than his own, perhaps the rasp of a window going up. He got to his Honda, leaned the pick and shovel against the side, and fumbled for his keys. They werent there, not in either pocket. Fresh sweat began to break on his face. His heart began to run again, and his teeth were clenched together against the panic that wanted to leap free. He had lost them, most likely when he had dropped from the tree limb, hit the grave marker with his knee, and rolled over. His keys were lying somewhere in the grass, and if he had had trouble finding his flashlight, how could he hope to recover his keys? It was over. One piece of bad luck and it was over. Now wait, wait just a goddam minute. Go through your pockets again. Your change is thereand if your change didnt fall out, your keys didnt fall out either. This time he went through his pockets more slowly, removing the change, even turning the pockets themselves inside out. No keys. Louis leaned against the car, wondering what to do next. He would have to climb back in, he supposed. Leave his son where he was, take the flashlight, climb back in, and spend the rest of the night in a fruitless hunt for Light suddenly broke in his tired mind. He bent down and stared into the Civic. There were his keys dangling from the ignition switch. A soft grunt escaped him, and then he ran around to the drivers side, snatched the door open, and took the keys out. In his mind he suddenly heard the authoritative voice of that grim father figure Karl Malden, he of the potato nose and the archaic snapbrim hat Lock your car. Take your keys. Dont help a good boy go bad. He went around to the rear of the Civic and opened the hatchback. He put in the pick, shovel, and flashlight, then slammed it. He had gotten twenty or thirty feet down the sidewalk when he remembered his keys. This time he had left them dangling from the hatchback lock. Stupid! he railed at himself. If youre going to be so goddam stupid, you better forget the whole thing! He went back and got his keys. He had gotten Gage in his arms and was most of the way back to Mason Street when a dog began to bark somewhere. Noit didnt just begin to bark. It began to howl, its gruff voice filling the street. AugggghROOOO! AugggghROOOOOO! He stood behind one of the trees, wondering what could possibly happen next, wondering what to do next. He stood there expecting lights to start going on all up and down the street. In fact only one light did go on, at the side of a house just opposite where Louis stood in the shadows. A moment later a hoarse voice cried, Shut up, Fred! AugggghROOOOOO! Fred responded. Shut him up, Scanlon, or Im calling the police! someone yelled from the side of the street Louis was on, making him jump, making him realize just how false the illusion of emptiness and desertion was. There were people all around him, hundreds of eyes, and that dog was attacking sleep, his only friend. Goddam you, Fred, he thought. Oh, goddam you. Fred began another chorus; he got well into the Auggggh, but before he could do more than get started on a good solid ROOOOOO, there was a hard whacking sound followed by a series of low whimpers and yips. Silence followed by the faint slam of a door. The light at the side of Freds house stayed on for a moment, then clicked off. Louis felt strongly inclined to stay in the shadows, to wait; surely it would be better to wait until the ruckus had died down. But time was getting away from him. He crossed the street with his bundle and walked back down to the Civic, seeing no one at all. Fred held his peace. He clutched his bundle in one hand, got his keys, opened the hatchback. Gage would not fit. Louis tried the bundle vertically, then horizontally, then diagonally. The Civics back compartment was too small. He could have bent and crushed the bundle in thereGage would not have mindedbut Louis could simply not bring himself to do it. Come on, come on, come on, lets get out of here, lets not push it any further. But lie stood, nonplussed, out of ideas, the bundle containing his sons corpse in his arms. Then he heard the sound of an approaching car, and without really thinking at all, he took the bundle around to the passenger side, opened the door, and slipped the bundle into the seat. He shut the door, ran around to the rear of the Civic, and slammed the hatchback. The car went right through the intersection, and Louis heard the whoop of drunken voices. He got behind the wheel, started his car, and was reaching for the headlight switch when a horrible thought struck him. What if Gage were facing backward, sitting there with those joints at knee and hip bending the wrong way, his sunken eyes looking toward the rear window instead of out through the windshield? It doesnt matter, his mind responded with a shrill fury born of exhaustion. Will you get that through your head? it just doesnt matter! But it does. it does matter. Its Gage in there, not a bundle of towels! He reached over and gently began to press his hands against the canvas tarpaulin, feeling for the contours underneath. He looked like a blind man trying to determine what a specific object might be. At last he came upon a protuberance that could only be Gages nosefacing in the right direction. Only then could he bring himself to put the Civic in gear and start the twentyfive minute drive back to Ludlow. 52 At one oclock that morning, Jud Crandalls telephone rang, shrilling in the empty house, starting him awake. In his doze he was dreaming, and in the dream he was twentythree again, sitting on a bench in the B  A coupling shed with George Chapin and Ren Michaud, the three of them passing around a bottle of Georgia Charger whiskeyjumpedup moonshine with a revenue stamp on itwhile outside a noreaster blew its randy shriek over the world, silencing all that moved, including the rolling stock of the B  A railroad. So they sat and drank around the potbellied Defiant, watching the red glow of the coals shift and change behind the cloudy isinglass, casting diamondshaped flame shadows across the floor, telling the stories which men hold inside for years like the junk treasures boys store under their beds, the stories they store up for nights such as this. Like the glow of the Defiant, these were dark stories with a glow of red at the center of each and the wind to wrap them around. He was twentythree, and Norma was very much alive (although in bed now, he had no doubt; she would not expect him home this wild night), and Ren Michaud was telling a story about a Jew peddler in Bucksport who That was when the phone began to ring and he jerked up in his chair, wincing at the stiffness in his neck, feeling a sour heaviness drop into him like a stoneit was, he thought, all those years between twentythree and eightythree, all sixty of them, dropping into him at once. And on the heels of that thought You been sleepin, boyo. Thats no way to run this railroad . . . not tonight. He got up, holding himself straight against the stiffness that had also settled into his back, and crossed to the phone. It was Rachel. Jud? Has he come home? No, Jud said. Rachel, where are you? You sound closer. I am closer, Rachel said. And although she did sound closer somehow, there was a distant humming on the wire. It was the sound of the wind, somewhere between here and wherever she was. The wind was high tonight. That sound that always made Jud think of dead voices, sighing in chorus, maybe singing something just a little too far away to be made out. Im at the rest area at Biddeford on the Maine Turnpike. "Biddeford! I couldnt stay in Chicago. It was getting to me, too whatever it was that got Ellie, it was getting me too. And you feel it. Its in your voice. Ayuh. He picked a Chesterfield out of his pack and slipped it into the corner of his mouth. He popped a wooden match alight and watched it flicker as his hand trembled. His hands hadnt tremblednot before this nightmare had commenced anyway. Outside, he heard that dark wind gust. It took the house in its hand and shook it. Powers growing. I can feel it. Dim terror in his old bones. It was like spun glass, fine and fragile. Jud, please tell me whats going on! He supposed she had a right to knowa need to know. And he supposed he would tell her. Eventually he would tell her the whole story. He would show her the chain that had been forged link by link. Normas heart attack, the death of the cat, Louiss questionhas anyone ever buried a person up there?Cages death . . . and God alone knew what further link Louis might be forging right now. Eventually he would tell her. But not over the phone. Rachel, how come you to be on the turnpike instead of in a plane? She explained how she had missed her connecting flight at Boston. I got an Avis car, but Im not making the time I thought I would. I got a little bit lost corning from Logan to the turnpike, and Ive only got into Maine. I dont think I can get there until dawn. But Jud . . . please. Please tell me whats happening. Im so scared, and I dont even know why. Rachel, listen to me, Jud said, you drive on up to Portland and lay over, do you hear me? Check into a motel there and get some Jud, I cant do th and get some sleep. Feel no fret, Rachel. Something may be happening here tonight, or something may not. If something isif its what I thinkthen you wouldnt want to be here anyway. I can take care of it, I think. I better be able to take care of it because whats happening is my fault. If nothings happening, then you get here this afternoon, and that will be fine. I imagine Louis will be real glad to see you. I couldnt sleep tonight, Jud.


Yes, he said, reflecting that he had believed the same thing hell, Peter had probably believed the same thing on the night Jesus had been taken into custody. Sleeping on sentry duty. Yes, you can. Rachel, if you doze off behind the wheel of that damn rentacar and go off the road and get yourself killed, whats going to happen to Louis then? And Ellie? Tell me whats going on! If you tell me that, Jud, maybe Ill take your advice. But I have to know! When you get to Ludlow, I want you to come here, Jud said. Not over to your house. Come here first. Ill tell you everything I know, Rachel. And I am watching for Louis. Tell me, she said. No, maam. Not over the phone. I wont. Rachel, I cant. You go on now. Drive up to Portland and lay over. There was a long, considering pause. All right, she said at last. Maybe youre right. Jud, tell me one thing. Tell me how bad it is. I can handle it, Jud said calmly. Things have got as bad as theyre going to get. Outside the headlights of a car appeared, moving slowly. Jud hallstood, watching it, and then sat down again when it accelerated past the Creed house and out of sight. All right, she said. I guess. The rest of this drive has seemed like a stone on my head. Let the stone roll off, my dear, Jud said. Please. Save yourself for tomorrow. Things here will be all right. You promise youll tell me the whole story? Yes. Well have us a beer, and Ill tell you the whole thing. Goodbye, then, Rachel said, for now. For now, Jud agreed. Ill see you tomorrow, Rachel. Before she could say anything else, Jud hung up the telephone. He thought there were caffeine pills in the medicine cabinet, but he could not find them. He put the rest of the beer back in the refrigeratornot without regretand settled for a cup of black coffee. He took it back to the bow window and sat down again, sipping and watching. The coffeeand the conversation with Rachelkept him awake and alert for three quarters of an hour, but then he began to nod once more. No sleeping on sentry duty, old man. You let it get hold of you; you bought something, and now you have to pay for it. So no sleeping on sentry duty. He lit a fresh cigarette, drew deep, and coughed an old mans rasping cough. He put the cigarette on the groove of the ashtray and rubbed his eyes with both hands. Outside a tenwheeler blasted by, running lights glaring, cutting through the windy, uneasy night. He caught himself dozing off again, snapped awake, and abruptly slapped himself across the face, forehand and backhand, causing his ears to ring. Now terror awakened in his heart, a stealthy visitor who had broken into that secret place. Its puttin me to sleep . . . hypnotizin me . . . somethin. It doesnt want me awake. Because hell be comin back pretty soon. Yeah, I feel that. And it wants me out of the way. No, he said grimly. No way at all. You hear me? Im puttin a stop to this. This has gone far enough. The wind whined around the eaves, and the trees on the other side of the road shook their leaves in hypnotic patterns. His mind went back to that night around the Defiant stove in the coupling shed, which had stood right where the Evarts Furniture Mart stood in Brewer now. They had talked the night away, he and George and Ren Michaud, and now he was the only one left Ren crushed between two boxcars on a stormy night in March of 1939, George Chapin dead of a heart attack just last year. Of so many, he was the only one left, and the old get stupid. Sometimes the stupidity masquerades as kindness, and sometimes it masquerades as pridea need to tell old secrets, to pass things on, to pour from the old glass to the new one, to . . . So dis Jew peddler come in and he say I got sumpin you never seen before. These poscards, dey jus look like wimmin in bathin suits until you rub dem wit a wet cloth, and den Juds head nodded. His chin settled slowly, gently, against his chest. deys as nakid as the day dey was born! But when dey dry, the cloes, dey come back on! And dat aint all! I got Ren telling this story in the coupling shed, leaning forward, smiling, and Jud holds the bottlehe feels the bottle and his hand closes around it on thin air. In the ashtray, the cigarette ash on the end of the cigarette grew longer. At last it tipped forward into the ashtray and burned out, its shape recalled in the neat roll of ash like a rune. Jud slept. And when the taillights flashed outside and Louis turned the Honda Civic into his driveway some forty minutes later and drove it into the garage, Jud did not hear, stir, or awaken, any more than Peter awoke when the Roman soldiers came to take a tramp named Jesus into their custody. 53 Louis found a fresh dispenser of strapping tape in one of the kitchen drawers, and there was a coil of rope in the corner of the garage near last winters snow tires. He used the tape to bind the pick and shovel together in a single neat bundle and the rope to fashion a rough sling. Tools in the sling. Gage in his arms. He looped the sling over his back, then opened the passenger door of the Civic, pulling the bundle out. Gage was much heavier than Church had been. He might well be crawling by the time he got his boy up to the Micmac burying groundand he would still have the grave to dig, lighting his way through that stony, unforgiving soil. Well, he would manage. Somehow. Louis Creed stepped out of his garage, pausing to thumb off the light switch with his elbow, and stood for a moment at the place where asphalt gave way to grass. Ahead of him he could see the path leading to the Pet Sematary well enough in spite of the blackness; the path, with its short grass, glowed with a kind of luminescence. The wind pushed and pulled its fingers through his hair, and for a moment the old, childlike fear of the dark rushed through him, making him feel weak and small and terrorized. Was he really going into the woods with this corpse in his arms, passing under the trees where the wind walked, from darkness into darkness? And alone this time? Dont think about it. Just do it. Louis got walking. By the time he got to the Pet Sematary twenty minutes later, his arms and legs were trembling with exhaustion, and he collapsed with the rolledup tarpaulin across his knees, gasping. He rested there for another twenty minutes, almost dozing, no longer fearfulexhaustion had driven fear out, it seemed. Finally he got to his feet again, not really believing he could climb the deadfall, only knowing in some numb sort of way that he must try. The bundle in his arms seemed to weigh two hundred pounds instead of forty. But what had happened before happened again; it was like suddenly, vividly remembering a dream., No, not remembering; reliving. When he placed his foot on the first dead treetrunk, that queer sensation rushed through him again, a feeling that was almost exultation. The weariness did not leave him, but it became bearableunimportant, really. Just follow me. Follow me and dont look down, Louis. Dont hesitate and dont look down. I know the way through, but it has to be done quick and sure. Quick and sure, yesthe way Jud had removed the stinger. I know the way through. But there was only one way through, Louis thought. Either it let you through or it did not. Once before, he had tried to climb the deadfall by himself and hadnt been able to. This time he mounted it quickly and surely, as he had on the night Jud had shown him the way. Up and up, not looking down, his sons body in its canvas shroud cradled in his arms. Up until the wind funneled secret passages and chambers through his hair again, flipping it, parting it widdershins. He stood on the top for a moment and then descended quickly, as if going down a set of stairs. The pick and shovel rattled and clinked dully against his back. In no more than a minute, he was standing on the springy, needlecovered ground of the path again, the deadfall bulking behind him, higher than the graveyard fence had been. He moved up the path with his son, listening to the wind moan in the trees. The sound held no terror for him now. The nights work was almost done. 54 Rachel Creed passed the sign reading EXIT 8 KEEP RIGHT FOR PORTLAND WESTBROOK, put on her blinker, and guided the Avis Chevette toward the exit ramp. She could see a green Holiday Inn sign clearly against the night sky. A bed, sleep. An end to this constant, racking, sourceless tension. Also an endfor a little while, at leastto her grieving emptiness for the child who was no longer there. This grief, she had discovered, was like a massive tooth extraction. There was numbness at first, but even through the numbness you felt pain curled up like a cat swishing its tail, pain waiting to happen. And when the novocaine wore off, oh boy, you sure werent disappointed. He told her that he was sent to warn . . . but that he couldnt interfere. He told her he was near Daddy because they were together when his soul was discorporated. Jud knows, but he wont tell. Something is going on. Something. But what? Suicide? Is it suicide? Not Louis; I cant believe that. But he was lying about something. It was in his eyes . . . oh shit, it was all over his face, almost as if he wanted me to see the lie . . . see it and put a stop to it . . . because part of him was scared so scared. Scared? Louis is never scared! Suddenly she jerked the Chevettes steering wheel hard over to the left, and the ear responded with the abrupt suddenness that small cars have, the tires wailing. For a moment she thought it was going to turn over. But it didnt, and she was moving north again, exit 8 with its comforting Holiday Inn sign slipping behind her. A new sign came in view, reflective paint twinkling eerily. NEXT EXIT ROUTE 12 CUMBERLAND CUMBERLAND CENTER JERUSALEMS LOT FALMOUTH FALMOUTH FORESIDE. Jerusalems Lot, she thought randomly, what an odd name. Not a pleasant name, for some reason . . . Come and sleep in Jerusalem. But there would be no sleep for her tonight; Juds advice notwithstanding, she now meant to drive straight through. Jud knew what was wrong and had promised her he would put a stop to it, but the man was eightysome years old and had lost his wife only three months before. She would not put her trust in Jud. She should never have allowed Louis to bulldoze her out of the house the way he had, but she had been weakened by Gages death. Ellie with her Polaroid picture of Gage and her pinched faceit had been the face of a child who has survived a tornado or a sudden divebombing from a clear blue sky. There had been times in the dark watches of the night when she had longed to hate Louis for the grief he had fathered inside her, and for not giving her the comfort she needed (or allowing her to give the comfort she needed to give), but she could not. She loved him too much still, and his face had been so pale . . . so watchful . . . The Chevettes speedometer needle hung poised just a bit to the right of sixty miles an hour. A mile a minute. Two hours and a quarter to Ludlow maybe. Maybe she could still beat the sunrise. She fumbled with the radio, turned it on, found a rockandroll station out of Portland. She turned up the volume and sang along, trying to keep herself awake. The station began to fade in and out half an hour later, and she retuned to an Augusta station, rolled the window down, and let the restless night air blow in on her. She wondered if this night would ever end. 55 Louis had rediscovered his dream and was in its grip; every few moments he looked down to make sure it was a body in a tarpaulin he was carrying and not one in a green Hefty Bag. He remembered how on awakening the morning after Jud had taken him up there with Church he had been barely able to remember what they had donebut now he also remembered how vivid those sensations had been, how alive each of his senses had felt, how they had seemed to reach out, touching the woods as if they were alive and in some kind of telepathic contact with himself. He followed the path up and down, rediscovering the places where it seemed as wide as Route 15, the places where it narrowed until he had to turn sideways to keep the head and foot of his bundle from getting tangled in the underbrush, the places where the path wound through great cathedral stands of trees. He could smell the clear tang of pine resin, and he could hear that strange crumpcrump of the needles underfoota sensation that is really more feeling than sound. At last the path began to slant downward more steeply and constantly. A short time later one foot splashed through thin water and became mired in the sludgy stuff underneath . . . the quicksand, if Jud was to be believed. Louis looked down and could see the standing water between growths of reeds and low, ugly bushes with leaves so broad they were almost tropical. He remembered that the light had seemed brighter that other night too. More electrical. This next bit is like the deadfallyou got to walk steady and easy. Just follow me and dont look down. Yes, okay . . . and just by the bye, have you ever seen plants like these in Maine before? In Maine or anywhere else? What in Christs name are they? Never mind, Louis. Just . . . lets go. He began to walk again, looking at the wet, marshy undergrowth just long enough to sight the first tussock and then only looking ahead of himself, his feet moving from one grassy hump to the nextfaith is accepting gravity as a postulate, he thought; nothing he had been told in a college theology or philosophy course, but something his high school physics instructor had once tossed off near the end of a period . . . something Louis had never forgotten. He accepted the ability of the Micmac burying ground to resurrect the dead and walked into Little God Swamp with his son in his arms, not looking down or back. These marshy bottoms were noisier now than they had been at the tag end of autumn. Peepers sang constantly in the reeds, a shrill chorus which Louis found alien and uninviting. An occasional frog twanged a deep elastic somewhere in its throat. Twenty paces or so into Little God Swamp he was buzzbombed by some shape . . . a bat, perhaps. The groundmist began to swirl around him, first covering his shoes, then his shins, finally enclosing him in a glowing white capsule. It seemed to him that the light was brighter, a pulsing effulgence like the beat of some strange heart. He had never before felt so strongly the presence of nature as a kind of coalescing force, a real being . . . possibly sentient. The swamp was alive, but not with the sound of music. If asked to define either the sense or the nature of that aliveness, he would have been unable. He only knew that it was rich with possibility and textured with strength. Inside it, Louis felt very small and very mortal. Then there was a sound, and he remembered this from the last time as well a high, gobbling laugh that became a sob. There was silence for a moment and then the laugh came again, this time rising to a maniacal shriek that froze Louiss blood. The mist drifted dreamily around him. The laughter faded, leaving only the drone of the wind, heard but no longer felt. Of course not; this had to be some sort of geological cup in the earth. If the wind could have penetrated here, it would have torn this mist to tatters . . . and Louis wasnt sure he would want to see what might have been revealed. You may hear sounds like voices, but they are the loons down south toward Prospect. The sound carries. Its funny. Loons, Louis said and barely recognized the cracked, somehow ghastly sound of his own voice. But he sounded amused. God help him, he actually sounded amused. He hesitated briefly and then moved on again. As if to punish him for his brief pause, his foot slipped from the next tussock, and he almost lost his shoe, pulling it free from the grasping ooze under the shallow water. The voiceif that was what it wascame again, this time from the left. Moments later it came from behind him . . . from directly behind him, it seemed, as if he could have turned and seen some blooddrenched thing less than a foot from his back, all bared teeth and glittering eyes . . . but this time Louis did not slow. He looked straight ahead and kept walking. Suddenly the mist lost its light and Louis realized that a face was hanging in the air ahead of him, leering and gibbering. Its eyes, tilted up like the eyes in a classical Chinese painting, were a rich yellowishgray, sunken, gleaming. The mouth was drawn down in a rictus; the lower lip was turned inside out, revealing teeth stained blackishbrown and worn down almost to nubs. But what struck Louis were the ears, which were not ears at all but curving horns . . . they were not like devils horns; they were rams horns. This grisly, floating head seemed to be speakinglaughing. Its mouth moved, although that turneddown lower lip never came back to its natural shape and place. Veins in there pulsed black. Its nostrils flared, as if with breath and life, and blew out white vapors. As Louis drew closer, the floating heads tongue lolled out. It was long and pointed, dirty yellow in color. It was coated with peeling scales and as Louis watched, one of these flipped up and over like a manhole cover and a white worm oozed out. The tongues tip skittered lazily on the air somewhere below where its adams apple should have been . . . it was laughing. He clutched Gage closer to him, hugging him, as if to protect him, and his feet faltered and began to slip on the grassy tussocks where they held slim purchase. You might see St. Elmos fire, what the sailors call foolights. It can make funny shapes, but its nothing. If you should see some of those shapes and they bother you, just look the other way . . . Juds voice in his head gave him a measure of resolve. He began to move steadily forward again, lurching at first, then finding his balance. He didnt look away but noticed that the faceif that was what it was and not just a shape made by the mist and his own mindseemed to always remain the same distance away from him. And seconds or minutes later, it simply dissolved into drifting mist. That was not St. Elmos fire. No, of course it wasnt. This place was thick with spirits; it was tenebrous with them. You could look around and see something that would send you raving mad. He would not think about it. There was no need to think about it. There was no need to Something was coming. Louis came to a total halt, listening to that sound . . . that inexorable, approaching sound. His mouth fell open, every tendon that held his jaw shut simply giving up. It was a sound like nothing he had ever heard in his lifea living sound, a big sound. Somewhere nearby, growing closer, branches were snapping off. There was a crackle of underbrush breaking under unimaginable feet. The jellylike ground under Louiss feet began to shake in sympathetic vibration. He became aware that he was moaning (oh my God oh my dear God what is that what is coming through this fog?) and once more clutching Gage to his chest; he became aware that the peepers and frogs had fallen silent, he became aware that the wet, damp air had taken on an eldritch, sickening smell like warm, spoiled pork. Whatever it was, it was huge. Louiss wondering, terrified face tilted up and up, like a man following the trajectory of a launched rocket. The thing thudded toward him, and there was the ratcheting sound of a treenot a branch, but a whole treefalling over somewhere close by. Louis saw something. The mist stained to a dull slategray for a moment, but this diffuse, illdefined watermark was better than sixty feet high. It was no shade, no insubstantial ghost; he could feel the displaced air of its passage, could hear the mammoth thud of its feet coming down, the suck of mud as it moved on. For a moment he believed he saw twin yelloworange sparks high above him. Sparks like eyes. Then the sound began to fade. As it went away, a peeper called hesitantlyone. It was answered by another. A third joined the conversation; a fourth made it a bull session; a fifth and sixth made it a peeper convention. The sounds of the things progress (slow but not blundering; perhaps that was the worst of it, that feeling of sentient progress) were moving away to the north. Little . . . less . . . gone. At last Louis began to move again. His shoulders and back were a frozen ache of torment. He wore an undergarment of sweat from neck to ankles. The seasons first mosquitoes, newhatched and hungry, found him and sat down to a late snack. The Wendigo, dear Christ, that was the Wendigothe creature that moves through the north country, the creature that can touch you and turn you into a cannibal. That was it. The Wendigo has just passed within sixty yards of me. He told himself not to be ridiculous, to be like Jud and avoid ideas about what might be seen or heard beyond the Pet Sematarythey were loons, they were St. Elmos fire, they were the members of the New York Yankees bullpen. Let them be anything but the creatures which leap and crawl and slither and shamble in the world between. Let there be God, let there be Sunday morning, let there be smiling Episcopalian ministers in shining white surplices . . . but let there not be these dark and draggling horrors on the nightside of the universe. Louis walked on with his son, and the ground began to firm up again under his feet. Only moments later he came to a felled tree, its crown visible in the fading mist like a graygreen feather duster dropped by a giants housekeeper. The tree was broken offsplintered offand the break was so fresh that the yellowishwhite pulp still bled sap that was warm to Louiss touch as he climbed over . . . and on the other side was a monstrous indentation out of which he had to scramble and climb, and although juniper and low pumplaurel bushes had been stamped right into the earth, he would not let himself believe it was a footprint. He could have looked back to see if it had any such configuration once he had climbed beyond and above it, but he would not. He only walked on, skin cold, mouth hot and arid, heart flying. The squelch of mud under his feet soon ceased. For a while there was the faint cereal sound of pine needles again. Then there was rock. He had nearly reached the end. The ground began to rise faster. He barked his shin painfully on an outcropping. But this was not just a rock. Louis reached out clumsily with one hand (the strap of his elbow, which had grown numb, screamed briefly) and touched it. Steps here. Cut into the rock. Just follow me. We get to the top and were there. So he began to climb and the exhilaration returned, once more beating exhaustion back . . . at least a little way. His mind tolled off the steps as he rose into the chill, as he climbed back into that ceaseless river of wind, stronger now, rippling his clothes, making the piece of canvas tarp Gage was wrapped in stutter gunshot sounds like a lifted sail. He cocked his head back once and saw the mad sprawl of the stars. There were no constellations he recognized, and he looked away again, disturbed. Beside him was the rock wall, not smooth but splintered and gouged and friable, taking here the shape of a boat, here the shape of a badger, here the shape of a mans face with hooded, frowning eyes. Only the steps that had been carved from the rock were smooth. Louis gained the top and only stood there with his head down, swaying, sobbing breath in and out of his lungs. They felt like cruelly punched bladders, and there seemed to be a large splinter sticking into his side. The wind ran through his hair like a dancer, roared in his ears like a dragon. The light was brighter this night; had it been overcast the other time or had he just not been looking? It didnt matter. But he could see, and that was enough to start another chill worming down his back. It was just like the Pet Sematary. Of course you knew that, his mind whispered as he surveyed the piles of rocks that had once been cairns. You knew that, or should have known itnot concentric circles but the spiral . . . Yes. Here on top of this rock table, its face turned up to cold starlight and to the black distances between the stars, was a gigantic spiral, made by what the oldtimers would have called Various Hands. But there were no real cairns, Louis saw; every one of them had been burst apart as something buried beneath returned to life . . . and clawed its way out. Yet the rocks themselves had fallen in such a way that the shape of the spiral was apparent. Has anyone ever seen this from the air? Louis wondered randomly and thought of those desert drawings that one tribe of Indians or another had made in South America. Has anyone ever seen it from the air, and if they did, what did they think, I wonder? He kneeled and set Gages body on the ground with a groan of relief. At last his consciousness began to come back. He used his pocketknife to cut the tape holding the pick and shovel slung over his back. They fell to the ground with a clink. Louis rolled over and lay down for a moment, spreadeagled, staring blankly at the stars. What was that thing in the woods? Louis, Louis, do you really think anything good can come at the climax of a play where something like that is among the cast of characters? But now it was too late to back out, and he knew it. Besides, he gibbered to himself, it may still come out all right; there is no gain without risk, perhaps no risk without love. Theres still my bag, not the one downstairs but the one in our bathroom on the high shelf, the one I sent Jud for the night Norma had her heart attack. There are syringes, and if something happens . . . something bad . . . no one has to know but me. His thoughts dissolved into the inarticulate, droning mutter of prayer even as his hands groped for the pick . . . and still on his knees, Louis began to dig into the earth. Each time he brought the pick down he collapsed over the end of it, like an old Roman falling on his sword. Yet little by little the hole took shape and deepened. He clawed the rocks out, and most he simply pushed aside along with the growing pile of stony dirt. But some of them he saved. For the cairn. 56 Rachel slapped her face until it began to tingle, and still she kept nodding off. Once she snapped fully awake (she was in Pittsfield now and had the turnpike all to herself), and it seemed to her for a split second that dozens of silvery, merciless eyes were looking at her, twinkling like cold, hungry fire. Then they resolved themselves into the small reflectors on the guardrail posts. The Chevette had drifted far over into the breakdown lane. She wrenched the wheel to the left again, the tires wailing, and she believed she heard a faint tick! that might have been her right front bumper just kissing off one of those guardrail posts. Her heart leaped in her chest and began to bang so hard between her ribs that she saw small specks before her eyes, growing and shrinking in time with its beat. And yet a moment later, in spite of her close shave, her scare, and Robert Gordon shouting Red Hot on the radio, she was drowsing off again. A crazy, paranoid thought came to her. Paranoid, all right, she muttered under the rock and roll. She tried to laughbut she couldnt. Not quite. Because the thought remained, and in the eye of the night, it gained a spooky kind of credibility. She began to feel like a cartoon figure who has run into the rubber band of a gigantic slingshot. Poor guy finds forward motion harder and harder, until at last the potential energy of the rubber band equalizes the actual energy of the runner . . . inertia becomes . . . what? . . . elementary physics . . . something trying to hold her back . . . stay out of this, you . . . and a body at rest tends to remain at rest . . . Gages body, for instance . . . once set in motion . . . This time the scream of tires was louder, the shave a lot closer; for a moment there was the queeling, grailing sound of the Chevette running along the guardrail cables, scraping paint down to the twinkling metal, and for a moment the wheel didnt answer, and then Rachel was standing on the brake, sobbing; she had been asleep this time, not just dozing but asleep and dreaming at sixty miles an hour, and if there had been no guardrail . . . or if there had been an overpass stanchion . . . She pulled over and put the car in park and wept into her hands, bewildered and afraid. Something is trying to keep me away from him. When she felt she had control of herself, she began to drive againthe little cars steering did not seem impaired, but she supposed the Avis company would have some serious questions for her when she returned their car to BIA tomorrow. Never mind. One thing at a time. Got to get some coffee into methats the first thing. When the Pittsfield exit came up, Rachel took it. About a mile down the road she came to bright arcsodium lights and the steady muttergrowl of diesel engines. She pulled in, had the Chevette filled up (Somebody put a pretty good ding along the side of her, the gas jockey said in an almost admiring voice), and then went into the diner, which smelled of deepfat grease, vulcanized eggs . . . and, blessedly, of good strong coffee. Rachel had three cups, one after another, like medicineblack, sweetened with a lot of sugar. A few truckers sat at the counter or in the booths, kidding the waitresses, who somehow all managed to look like tired nurses filled with bad news under these fluorescent lights burning in the nights little hours. She paid her check and went back out to where she had parked the Chevette. It wouldnt start. The key, when turned, would cause the solenoid to utter a dry click, but that was all. Rachel began to beat her fists slowly and forcelessly against the steering wheel. Something was trying to stop her. There was no reason for this car, brandnew and with less than five thousand miles on its odometer, to have died like this, but it had. Somehow it had, and here she was, stranded in Pittsfield, still almost fifty miles from home. She listened to the steady drone of the big trucks, and it came to her with a sudden, vicious certainty that the truck which had killed her son was here among them . . . not muttering but chuckling. Rachel lowered her head and began to cry. 57 Louis stumbled over something and fell fulllength on the ground. For a moment he didnt think he would be able to get upgetting up was far beyond himhe would simply lie here, listening to the chorus of peepers from Little God Swamp somewhere behind him and feeling the chorus of aches and pains inside his own body. He would lie here until he went to sleep. Or died. Probably the latter. He could remember slipping the canvas bundle into the hole he had dug, and pushing most of the earth back into the hole with his bare hands. And he believed he could remember piling the rocks up, building from a broad base to a point . . . From then to now he remembered very little. He had obviously gotten back down the steps again or he wouldnt be here, which was . . . where? Looking around, he thought he recognized one of the groves of great old pines not far beyond the deadfall. Could he have made it all the way back through Little God Swamp without knowing it? He supposed it was possible. Just. This is far enough. I'll just sleep here. But it was that thought, so falsely comforting, that got him to his feet and moving again. Because if he stayed here, that thing might find him . . . that thing might be in the woods and looking for him right this moment. He scrubbed his hand up to his face, palm first, and was stupidly surprised to see blood on his hand . . . at some point hed given himself a nosebleed. Who gives a fuck? he muttered hoarsely and grubbed apathetically around him until he had found the pick and shovel again. Ten minutes later the deadfall loomed ahead. Louis climbed it, stumbling repeatedly but somehow not falling until he was almost down.


Then he glanced at his feet, a branch promptly snapped (dont look down, Jud had said), another branch tumbled, spilling his foot outward, and he fell with a thud on his side, the wind knocked out of him. Ill be goddamned if this isnt the second graveyard Ive fallen into tonight . . . and Ill be goddamned if two isnt enough. He began to feel around for the pick and shovel again, and laid his hands on them at last. For a moment he surveyed his surroundings, visible by starlight. Nearby was the grave of SMUCKY. He was obediant, Louis thought wearily. And TRIXIE, KILT ON THE HIGHWAY. The wind still blew strongly, and he could hear the faint tingtingting of a piece of metalperhaps it had once been a Del Monte can, cut laboriously by a grieving pet owner with his fathers tinsnips and then flattened out with a hammer and nailed to a stickand that brought the fear back again. He was too tired now to feel it as more than a somehow sickening pulsebeat. He had done it. That steady tingtingting sound coming out of the darkness brought it home to him more than anything else. He walked through the Pet Sematary, past the grave of MARTA OUR PET RABIT who had DYED MARCH 1 1965, and near the barrow of GEN. PATTON; he stepped over the ragged chunk of board that marked the final resting place of POLYNESIA. The tick of metal was louder now, and he paused, looking down. Here atop a slightly leaning board that had been driven into the ground, was a tin rectangle, and by starlight Louis read, RINGO OUR HAMSTER, 19641965. It was this piece of tin that was ticking repeatedly off the boards of the Pet Sematarys entry arch. Louis reached down to bend the piece of tin back . . . and then froze, scalp crawling. Something was moving back there. Something was moving on the other side of the deadfall. What he heard was a stealthy kind of soundthe furtive crackle of pine needles, the dry pop of a twig, the rattle of underbrush. They were almost lost under the sough of the wind through the pines. Gage? Louis called hoarsely. The very realization of what he was doingstanding here in the dark and calling his dead sonpulled his scalp stiff and brought his hair up on end. He began to shudder helplessly and steadily, as if with a sick and killing fever. Gage? The sounds had died away. Not yet; its too early. Dont ask me how I know, but I do. That isnt Gage over there. Thats . . . something else. He suddenly thought of Ellie telling him, He called Lazarus, come forth . . . because if He hadnt called for Lazarus by name, everyone in that graveyard would have risen. On the other side of the deadfall, those sounds had begun again. On the other side of the barrier. Almostbut not quite hidden under the wind. As if something blind were stalking him with ancient instincts. His dreadfully overstimulated brain conjured horrible, sickening pictures a giant mole, a great bat that flopped through the underbrush rather than flying. Louis backed out of the Pet Sematary, not turning his back to the deadfallthat ghostlike glimmer, a livid scar on the darkuntil he was well down the path. Then he began to hurry, and perhaps a quarter of a mile before the path ran out of the woods and into the field behind his house, he found enough left inside him to run. Louis slung the pick and shovel indifferently inside the garage and stood for a moment at the head of his driveway, looking first back the way he had come and then up at the sky. It was quarter past four in the morning, and he supposed dawn could not be so far away. Light would already be three quarters of the way across the Atlantic, but for now, here in Ludlow, the night held hard. The wind blew steadily. He went into the house, feeling his way along the side of the garage and unlocking the back door. He went through the kitchen without turning on a light and stepped into the small bathroom between the kitchen and the dining room. Here he did snap on a light, and the first thing he saw was Church, curled up on top of the toilet tank, staring at him with those muddy yellowgreen eyes. Church, he said. I thought someone put you out. Church only looked at him from atop the toilet tank. Yes, someone had put Church out; he had done it himself. He remembered that very clearly. Just as he remembered replacing the window pane downcellar that time and then telling himself that that had taken care of the problem. But exactly whom had he been kidding? When Church wanted to get in, church got in. Because Church was different now. It didnt matter. In this dull, exhausted aftermath, nothing seemed to matter. He felt like something less than human now, one of George Romeros stupid, lurching moviezombies, or maybe someone who had escaped from T. S. Eliots poem about the hollow men. I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling through Little God Swamp and up to the Micmac burying ground, he thought and uttered a dry chuckle. Headpiece full of straw, Church, he said in his croaking voice. He was unbuttoning his shirt now. Thats me. You better believe it. There was a nice bruise coming on his left side, about halfway up his ribcage, and when he shucked his pants he saw that the knee he had banged on the gravestone was swelling up like a balloon. It had already turned a rotten purpleblack, and he supposed that as soon as he stopped flexing it, the joint would become stiff and painfully obdurateas if it had been dipped in cement. It looked like one of those injuries that might want to converse with him on rainy days for the rest of his life. He reached out a hand to stroke Church, wanting some sort of comfort, but the cat leaped down from the toilet tank, staggering in that drunken and weirdly unfeline way, and left for some other place. It spared Louis one flat, yellow glance as it went. There was BenGay in the medicine cabinet. Louis lowered the toilet seat, sat down, and smeared a gob on his bad knee. Then he rubbed some more on the small of his backa clumsy operation. He left the toilet and walked into the living room. He turned on the hall light and stood there at the foot of the stairs for a moment, looking stupidly around. How strange it all seemed! Here was where he had stood on Christmas Eve when he had given Rachel the sapphire. It had been in the pocket of his robe. There was his chair, where he had done his best to explain the facts of death to Ellie after Norma Crandalls fatal heart attackfacts he had found ultimately unacceptable to himself. The Christmas tree had stood in that corner, Ellies constructionpaper turkey the one that had reminded Louis of some sort of futuristic crow had been Scotchtaped in that window, and much earlier the entire room had been empty except for the United Van Lines boxes, filled with their family possessions and trucked across half the country from the Midwest. He remembered thinking that their things looked very insignificant, boxed up like thata small enough bulwark between his family and the coldness of all the outer world where their names and their family customs were not known. How strange it all seemed . . . and how he wished they had never heard of the University of Maine, or Ludlow, or Jud and Norma Crandall, or any of it. He went upstairs in his skivvies, and in the bathroom at the top he got the stool, stood on it, and took down the small black bag from on top of the medicine cabinet. He took this into the master bedroom, sat down, and began to rummage through it. Yes, there were syringes in case he needed one, and amid the rolls of surgical tape and surgical scissors and neatly wrapped papers of surgical gut were several ampules of very deadly stuff. If needed. Louis snapped the bag shut and put it by the bed. He turned off the overhead light, then lay down, hands behind his head. To lie here on his back, at rest, was exquisite. His thoughts turned to Disney World again. He saw himself in a plain white uniform, driving a white van with the mouseears logo on itnothing to indicate it was a rescue unit on the outside, of course, nothing to scare the paying customers. Gage was sitting beside him, his skin deeply tanned, the whites of his eyes bluish with health. Here, just to the left, was Goofy, shaking hands with a little boy; the kid was in a trance of wonder. Here was Winnie the Pooh posing with two laughing grandmas in pants suits so a third laughing grandma could snap their pictures; here was a little girl in her best dress crying, I love you, Tigger! I love you, Tigger! He and his son were on patrol. He and his son were the sentries in this magic land, and they cruised endlessly in their white van with the red dashboard flasher neatly and sensibly covered. They were not looking for trouble, not they, but they were ready for it should it show its face. That it was lurking even here, in a place dedicated to such innocent pleasures, could not be denied; some grinning man buying film along Main Street could clutch his chest as the heart attack struck, a pregnant woman might suddenly feel the labor pains start as she walked down the steps from the Sky Chariot, a teenage girl as pretty as a Norman Rockwell cover might suddenly collapse in a flopping epileptic fit, loafers rattling out a jagged backbeat on the cement as the signals in her brain suddenly jammed up. There were sunstroke and heatstroke and brainstroke, and perhaps at the end of some sultry Orlando summer afternoon there might even be a stroke of lightfling; there was, even, Oz the Gweat and Tewwible himself here he might be glimpsed walking around near the monorails point of egress into the Magic Kingdom or peering down from one of the flying Dumbos with his flat and stupid gazedown here Louis and Gage had come to know him as just another amusement park figure like Goofy or Mickey or Tigger or the estimable Mr. D. Duck. He was the one, however, with whom no one wanted his or her picture taken, the one to whom no one wanted to introduce his son or daughter. Louis and Gage knew him; they had met him and faced him down in New England, some time ago. He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a drycleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boogie of electricityAvailable at Your Nearest Switchplate or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there tooShower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Whos out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back Dont be afraid, its just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Heyho, lets go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiationin its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my names Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you wanthell, were old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; cant stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then Ive got a little smokeinhalation job to do in Omaha. And that thin voice is crying, I love you, Tigger! I love you! I believe in you, Tigger! I will always love you and believe in you, and I will stay young, and the only Oz to ever live in my heart will be that gentle faker from Nebraska! I love you . . . We cruise . . . my son and I . . . because the essence of it isnt war or sex but only that sickening, noble, hopeless battle against Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. He and I, in our white van under this bright Florida sky, we cruise. And the red flasher is hooded, but it is there if we need it . . . and none need know but us because the soil of a mans heart is stonier; a man grows what he can . . . and tends it. Thinking such troubled halfdreaming thoughts, Louis Creed slipped away, unplugging his connections to waking reality line by line, until all thoughts ceased and exhaustion dragged him down to black dreamless unconsciousness. Just before the first signs of dawn touched the sky in the east, there were footsteps on the stairs. They were slow and clumsy but purposeful. A shadow moved in the shadows of the hail. A smell came with ita stench. Louis, even in his thick sleep, muttered and turned away from that smell. There was the steady pull and release of respiration. The shape stood outside the master bedroom door for some little time, not moving. Then it came inside. Louiss face was buried in his pillow. White hands reached out, and there was a click as the black doctors bag by the bed was opened. A low clink and shift as the things inside were moved. The hands explored, pushing aside drugs and ampules and syringes with no interest at all. Now they found something and held it up. In the first dim light there was a gleam of silver. The shadowy thing left the room. PART THREE OZ THE GWEAT AND TEWWIBLE Jesus therefore, groaning inside of himself and full of trouble, came to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone had been raised against the mouth. Roll away the stone, Jesus said. Martha said, Lord, by this time he will have begun to rot. He has been dead four days. . . . And when he had prayed awhile, Jesus raised his voice and cried, Lazarus, come forth! And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said to them, Loose him and let him go. JOHNS GOSPEL (paraphrase) I only just thought of it, she said hysterically. Why didnt I think of it before? Why didnt you think of it? Think of what? he questioned. The other two wishes, she replied rapidly. Weve only had one. Was that not enough? he demanded fiercely. No, she cried triumphantly well have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again. W. W. JACOBS (The Monkeys Paw) 58 Jud Crandall came awake with a sudden jerk, almost falling out of his chair. He had no idea how long he had slept; it could have been fifteen minutes or three hours. He looked at his watch and saw that it was five minutes of five. There was a feeling that everything in the room had been subtly shifted out of position, and there was a line of pain across his back from sleeping sitting up. Oh you stupid old man, look what you gone and done! But he knew better; in his heart, he knew better. It wasnt just him. He hadnt simply fallen asleep on watch; he had been put to sleep. That frightened him, but one thing frightened him more what had awakened him? He was under the impression that there had been some sound, some He held his breath, listening over the papery rustle of his heart. Here was a soundnot the same one that had awakened him, but something. The faint creak of hinges. Jud knew every sound in this housewhich floorboards creaked, which stair levels squeaked, where along the gutters the wind was apt to hoot and sing when it was drunkenly high, as it had been last night. He knew this sound as well as any of those. The heavy front door, the one that communicated between his porch and the front hail, had just swung open. And with that information to go on, his mind was able to remember the sound that had awakened him. It had been the slow expansion of the spring on the screen door communicating between the porch and the front walk. Louis? he called but with no real hope. That wasnt Louis out there. Whatever was out there had been sent to punish an old man for his pride and vanity. Footsteps moved slowly up the hail toward the living room. Louis? he tried to call again, but only a faint croak actually emerged because now he could smell the thing which had come into his house here at the end of the night. It was a dirty, low smellthe smell of poisoned tidal flats. Jud could make out bulking shapes in the gloomNormas armoire, the Welsh dresser, the highboybut no details. He tried to get to his feet on legs that had gone to water, his mind screaming that he needed more time, that he was too old to face this again without more time; Timmy Baterman had been bad enough, and Jud had been young then. The swing door opened and let in shadows. One of the shadows was more substantial than the others. Dear God, that stink. Shuffling steps in the darkness. Gage? Jud gained his feet at last. From one corner of his eye he saw the neat roll of cigarette ash in the Jim Beam ashtray. Gage, is that y A hideous mewling sound now arose, and for a moment all of Juds bones turned to white ice. It was not Louiss son returned from the grave but some hideous monster. No. It was neither. It was Church, crouched in the hail doorway, making that sound. The cats eyes flared like dirty lamps. Then his eyes moved in the other direction and fixed on the thing which had come in with the cat. Jud began to back up, trying to catch at his thoughts, trying to hold on to his reason in the face of that smell. Oh, it was cold in herethe thing had brought its chill with it. Jud rocked unsteadily on his feetit was the cat, twining around his legs, making him totter. It was purring. Jud kicked at it, driving it away. It bared its teeth at him and hissed. Think! Oh, think, you stupid old man, it maynt be too late, even yet it maynt be too late . . . its back but it can he killed again . . . if you can only do it . . . if you can only think . . . He backed away toward the kitchen, and he suddenly remembered the utensil drawer beside the sink. There was a meat cleaver in that drawer. His thin shanks struck the swinging door that led into the kitchen and he pushed it open. The thing that had come into his house was still indistinct, but Jud could hear it breathing. He could see one white hand swinging back and forththere was something in that hand, but he could not make out what. The door swung back as he entered the kitchen, and Jud at last turned his back and ran to the utensil drawer. He jerked it open and found the cleavers worn hardwood handle. He snatched it up and turned toward the door again; he even took a step or two toward it. Some of his courage had come back. Remember, it aint a kid. It may scream or somethin when it sees youve got its number; it may cry. But you aint gonna be fooled. You been fooled too many times already, old man. This is your last chance. The swing door opened again, but at first only the cat came through. Juds eye followed it for a moment and then he looked up again. The kitchen faced east, and dawns first light came in through the windows, faint and milky white. Not much light but enough. Too much. Gage Creed came in, dressed in his burial suit. Moss was growing on the suits shoulders and lapels. Moss had fouled his white shirt. His fine blond hair was caked with dirt. One eye had gone to the wall; it stared off into space with terrible concentration. The other was fixed on Jud. Gage was grinning at him. Hello, Jud, Gage piped in a babyish but perfectly understandable voice. Ive come to send your rotten, stinking old soul straight to hell. You fucked with me once. Did you think I wouldnt come back sooner or later and fuck with you? Jud raised the cleaver. Come on and get your pecker out then, whatever you are. Well see who fucks with who. Normas dead, and therell be no one to mourn you, Gage said. What a cheap slut she was. She fucked every one of your friends, Jud. She let them put it up her ass. Thats how she liked it best. Shes burning down in hell, arthritis and all. I saw her there, Jud. I saw her there. It lurched two steps toward him, shoes leaving muddy tracks on the worn linoleum. It held one hand out in front of it as if to shake with him; the other hand was curled behind its back. Listen, Jud, it whisperedand then its mouth hung open, baring small milk teeth, and although the lips did not move, Normas voice issued forth. I laughed at you! We all laughed at you! How we laaaaaauuughed Stop it! The cleaver jittered in his hand. We did it in our bed, Herk and I did it, I did it with George, I did it with all of them, I knew about your whores but you never knew you married a whore and how we laughed, Jud! We rutted together and we laaaaaaaaaughed at STOP IT! Jud screamed. He sprang at the tiny, swaying figure in its dirty burial suit, and that was when the cat arrowed out of the darkness under the butcher block where it had been crouched. It was hissing, its ears laid back along the bullet of its skull, and it tripped Jud up just as neat as you please. The cleaver flew out of his hand. It skittered across the humped and faded linoleum, blade and handle swiftly changing places as it whirled. It struck the baseboard with a thin clang and slid under the refrigerator. Jud realized that he had been fooled again, and the only consolation was that it was for the final time. The cat was on his legs, mouth open, eyes blazing, hissing like a teakettle. And then Gage was on him, grinning a happy black grin, eyes moonshaped, rimmed with red, and his right hand came out from behind his back, and Jud saw that what he had been holding when he came in was a scalpel from Louiss black bag. Oh m dear Jesus, Jud managed and put his right hand up to block the blow. And here was an optical illusion; surely his mind had snapped because it appeared that the scalpel was on both sides of his palm at the same time. Then something warm began to drizzle down on his face, and he understood. Im gonna fuck with you, old man! the Gagething chortled, blowing its poisoned breath in his face. Im gonna fuck with you! Im gonna fuck with you all . . . I . . . want! Jud flailed and got hold of Gages wrist. Skin peeled off like parchment in his hand. The scalpel was yanked out of his hand, leaving a vertical mouth. ALL . . . I . . .WANT! The scalpel came down again. And again. And again. 59 Try it now, maam, the truck driver said. He was looking into the engine cavity of Rachels rented car. She turned the key. The Chevettes engine roared into life. The truck driver slammed the hood down and came around to her window, wiping his hands on a big blue handkerchief. He had a pleasant, ruddy face. A Dysarts TruckStop cap was tilted back on his head. Thank you so much, Rachel said, on the verge of tears. I just didnt know what I was going to do. Aw, a kid could have fixed that, the trucker said. But it was funny. Never seen something like that go wrong on such a new car, anyway. Why? What was it? One of your battery cables come right off. Wasnt nobody frigging with it, was there? No, Rachel said, and she thought again of that feeling shed had, that feeling of running into the rubber band of the worlds biggest slingshot. Must have jogged her loose just ridin along, I guess. But you wont have no more trouble with your cables anyway. I tightened em up real good. Could I give you some money? Rachel asked timidly. The trucker roared with laughter. Not me, lady, he said. Us guys are the knights of the road, remember? She smiled. Well . . . thank you. Moren welcome. He gave her a good grin, incongruously full of sunshine at this hour of the morning. Rachel smiled back and drove carefully across the parking lot to the feeder road. She glanced both ways for traffic and five minutes later was back on the turnpike again, headed north. The coffee had helped more than she would have believed. She felt totally awake now, not the slightest bit dozy, her eyes as big as doorknobs, That feather of unease touched her again, that absurd feeling that she was being manipulated. The battery cable coming off the terminal post like that . . . So she could be held up just long enough for . . . She laughed nervously. Long enough for what? For something irrevocable to happen. That was stupid. Ridiculous. But Rachel began to push the little car along faster nonetheless. At five oclock, as Jud was trying to ward off a scalpel stolen from the black bag of his good friend Dr. Louis Creed, and as her daughter was awakening boltupright in bed, screaming in the grip of a nightmare which she could mercifully not remember, Rachel left the turnpike, drove the Hammond Street Cutoff close to the cemetery where a spade was now the only thing buried in her sons coffin, and crossed the BangorBrewer Bridge. By quarter past five, she was on Route 15 and headed for Ludlow. She had decided to go directly to Juds; she would make good on at least that much of her promise. The Civic was not in their driveway, anyway, and although she supposed it might be in the garage, their house had a sleeping, unoccupied look. No intuition suggested to her that Louis might be home. Rachel parked behind Juds pickup and got out of the Chevette, looking around carefully. The grass was heavy with dew, sparkling in this clear, new light. Somewhere a bird sang and then was silent. On the few occasions since her preteenage years when she had been awake and alone at dawn without some responsibility to fulfill as the reason, she had a lonely but somehow uplifted feelinga paradoxical sense of newness and continuity. This morning she felt nothing so clean and good. There was only a dragging sense of unease which she could not entirely charge off to the terrible twentyfour hours just gone by and her recent bereavement. She mounted the porch steps and opened the screen door, meaning to use the oldfashioned bell on the front door. She had been charmed by that bell the first time she and Louis came over together; you twisted it clockwise, and it uttered a loud but musical cry that was anachronistic and delightful. She reached for it now, then glanced down at the porch floor and frowned. There were muddy tracks on the mat. Looking around, she saw that they led from the screen door to this one. Very small tracks. A childs tracks, by the look of them. But she had been driving all night, and there had been no rain. Wind, but no rain. She looked at the tracks for a long timetoo long, reallyand discovered she had to force her hand back to the turn bell. She grasped it . . . and then her hand fell away again. Im anticipating, thats all. Anticipating the sound of that bell in this stillness. Hes probably gone to sleep after all and it will startle him awake . . . But that wasnt what she was afraid of. She had been nervous, scared in some deep and diffuse way ever since she had found it so hard to stay awake, but this sharp fear was something new, something which had solely to do with those small tracks. Tracks that were the size Her mind tried to block this thought, but it was too tired, too slow. of Gages feet. Oh stop it, cant you stop it? She reached out and twisted the bell. Its sound was even louder than she remembered, but not so musicalit was a harsh, choked scream in the stillness. Rachel jumped back, uttering a nervous little laugh that had absolutely no humor in it at all. She waited for Juds footsteps, but his footsteps did not come. There was silence, and more silence, and she was beginning to debate in her own mind whether or not she could bring herself to twist that ironbutterfly shape again, when a sound did come from behind the door, a sound she would not have expected in her wildest surmises. Waow! . . . Waow! . . . Waow! Church? she asked, startled and puzzled. She bent forward, but it was of course impossible to see in; the doors glass panel had been covered with a neat white curtain. Normas work. Church, is that you? Waow! Rachel tried the door. It was unlocked. Church was there, sitting in the hallway with its tail coiled neatly around its feet. The cats fur was streaked with something dark. Mud, Rachel thought, and then saw that the beads of liquid caught in Churchs whiskers were red. He raised one paw and began to lick it, his eyes never leaving her face. Jud? she called out, really alarmed now. She stepped just inside the door. The house gave back no answer; only silence. Rachel tried to think, but all at once images of her sister Zelda had begun to creep into her mind, blurring thought. How her hands had twisted. How she used to slam her head against the wall sometimes when she was angrythe paper had been all torn there, the plaster beneath torn and broken. This was no time to think of Zelda, not when Jud might be hurt. Suppose he had fallen down? He was an old man. Think about that, not about the dreams you had as a kid, dreams of opening the closet and having Zelda spring out at you with her blackened, grinning face, dreams of being in the bathtub and seeing Zeldas eyes peering out of the drain, dreams of Zelda lurking in the basement behind the furnace, dreams Church opened his mouth, exposing his sharp teeth and cried Waow! again. Louis was right, we never should have had him fixed, hes never seemed right since then. But Louis said it would take away all of his aggressive instincts. He was wrong about that, anyway; Church still hunts. He Waow! Church cried again, then turned and darted up the stairs. Jud? she called again. Are you up there? Waow! Church cried from the top of the stairs, as if to confirm the fact, and then he disappeared down the hall. How did he get in, anyway? Did Jud let him in? Why? Rachel shifted from one foot to the other, wondering what to do next. The worst of it was that all of this seemed . . . seemed somehow managed, as if something wanted her to be here, and And then there was a groan from upstairs, low and filled with painJuds voice, surely Juds voice. Hes fallen in the bathroom or maybe tripped, broken a leg, or sprained his hip, maybe, the bones of the old are brittle, and what in the name of God are you thinking of, girl, standing down here and shifting back and forth like you had to go to the bathroom, that was blood on Church, blood, Juds hurt and youre just standing here! Whats wrong with you? Jud! The groan came again, and she ran up the stairs. She had never been up here before, and because the hails only window faced west, toward the river, it was still very dark. The hallway ran straight and wide beside the stairwell and toward the back of the house, the cherrywood rail gleaming with mellow elegance. There was a picture of the Acropolis on the wall and (its Zelda all these years shes been after you and now its her time open the right door and shell be there with her humped and twisted back smelling of piss and death its Zelda its her time and finally she caught up with you) the groan came again, low, from behind the second door on the right. Rachel began to walk toward that door, her heels clacking on the boards. It seemed to her that she was going through some sort of warpnot a time warp or a space warp but a size warp. She was getting smaller. The picture of the Acropolis was floating higher and higher, and that cutglass doorknob would soon be at eye level. Her hand stretched out for it . . . and before she could even touch it, the door was snatched open. Zelda stood there. She was hunched and twisted, her body so cruelly deformed that she had actually become a dwarf, little more than two feet high; and for some reason Zelda was wearing the suit they had buried Gage in.