Pet Sematary

but both of them had fallen out of her hand. Louis was a little shocked at how clawlike that hand looked. He bent over and picked up the apple as it rolled across the floor. Jud got the Snickers and dropped it into Ellie’s bag.
“Oh, let me get you another apple, honey,” Norma said. “That one will bruise.”
“It’s fine,” Louis said, trying to drop it into Ellie’s bag, but Ellie stepped away, holding her bag protectively shut.
“I don’t want a bruised apple, Daddy,” she said, looking at her father as if he might have gone mad. “Brown spots… yuck!”
“Ellie, that’s damned impolite!”
“Don’t scold her for telling the truth, Louis,” Norma said.
“Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That’s what makes them children.
The brown spots are yucky.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Crandall,” Ellie said, casting a vindicated eye on her father.
“You’re very welcome, honey,” Norma said.
Jud escorted them out to the porch. Two little ghosts were coming up the walk, and Ellie recognized them both as friends from school. She took them back to the kitchen, and for a moment Jud and Louis were alone on the porch.
“Her arthritis has gotten worse,” Louis said.
Jud nodded and pinched out his cigarette over an ashtray. “Yeah. It’s come down harder on her every fall and winter, but this is the worst it’s ever been.”
“What does her doctor say?”
“Nothing. He can’t say nothing because Norma hasn’t been back to see him.”
“What? Why not?”
Jud looked at Louis, and in the light cast by the headlamps of the station wagon waiting for the ghosts, he looked oddly defenseless. “I’d meant to ask you this at a better time, Louis, but I guess there isn’t no good time to impose on a friendship. Would you examine her?”
From the kitchen, Louis could hear the two ghosts booo-ing and Ellie going into her cackles-which she had been practicing all week-again. It all sounded very fine and Halloweenish.
“What else is wrong with Norma?” he asked. “Is she afraid of something else, Jud?”
“She’s been having pains in her chest,” Jud said in a low voice. “She won’t go see Dr. Weybridge anymore. I’m a little worried.”
“Is Norma worried?”
Jud hesitated and then said, “I think she’s scared. I think that’s why she doesn’t want to go to the doctor. One of her oldest friends, Betty Coslaw, died in the EMMC just last month. Cancer. She and Norma were of an age. She’s scared.”
“I’d be happy to examine her,” Louis said. “No problem at all.”
“Thanks, Louis,” Jud said gratefully. “If we catch her one night, gang up on her, I think-”
Jud broke off, head cocking quizzically to one side. His eyes met Louis’s.
Louis couldn’t remember later exactly how one emotion slipped into the next. Trying to analyze it only made him feel dizzy. All he could remember for sure was that curiosity changed swiftly into a feeling that somewhere something had gone badly wrong. His eyes met Jud’s, both unguarded. It was a moment before he could find a way to act.
“Hoooo-hoooo,” the Halloween ghosts in the kitchen chanted. “Hooo-hooo.” And then suddenly the h-sound was gone arid the cry rose louder, genuinely frightening: “oooo-000000-”
And then one of the ghosts began to scream.
“Daddy!” Ellie’s voice was wild and tight with alarm. “Daddy! Missus Crandall fell down!”
“Ah, Jesus,” Jud almost moaned.
Ellie came running out onto the porch, her black dress flapping. She clutched her broom in one hand. Her green face, now pulled long in dismay, looked like the face of a pygmy wino in the last stages of alcohol poisoning. The two little ghosts followed her, crying.
Jud lunged through the door, amazingly spry for a man of over eighty. No, more than spry. Again, almost lithe. He was calling his wife’s name.
Louis bent and put his hands on Ellie’s shoulders. “Stay right here on the porch, Ellie. Understand?”
“Daddy, I’m scared,” she whispered.
The two ghosts barrelled past them and ran down the walk, candy bags rattling, screaming their mother’s name.
Louis ran down the front hall and into the kitchen, ignoring Ellie, who was calling for him to come back.
Norma lay on the hilly linoleum by the table in a litter of apples and small Snickers bars. Apparently she had caught the bowl with her hand going down and had overturned it. It lay nearby like a small Pyrex flying saucer. Jud was chafing one of her wrists, and he looked up at Louis with a strained face.
“Help me, Louis,” he said. “Help Norma. She’s dying, I think.”
“Move to one side,” Louis said. He kneeled and came down on a Spy, crushing it.
He felt juice bleed through the knee of his old cords, and the cidery smell of apple suddenly filled the kitchen.