Pet Sematary

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 Sematary-they were loons, they were St.
Elmo’s 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 gray-green feather duster dropped by a giant’s housekeeper.
The tree was broken off-splintered off-and the break was so fresh that the yellowish-white pulp still bled sap that was warm to Louis’s 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 pump-laurel 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 we’re 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 man’s 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 didn’t 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 it-not 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 old-timers 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 Gage’s 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, spread-eagled, 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. There’s still my