But he did want to talk about them-or at least think about them. The Pet Sematary. What was beyond the Pet Sematary. The idea had a deadly attraction. It made a balance of logic which was impossible to deny. Church had been killed in the road; Gage had been killed in the road. Here was Church-changed of course, distasteful in some ways-but here. Ellie, Gage, and Rachel all had a working relationship with him. He killed birds, true, and had turned a few mice inside out, but killing small animals was a cat thing to do. Church had by no means turned into Frankencat. He was, in many ways, as good as ever.
You're rationalizing, a voice whispered. He's not as good as ever. He's spooky.
The crow, Louis... remember the crow?
"Good God," Louis said aloud in a shaky, distracted voice he was barely able to recognize as his own.
God, oh yes, fine, sure. If there had ever been a time to invoke the name of God outside of a novel about ghosts or vampires, this was it. So just what-what in the name of God-was he thinking about? He was thinking about a dark blasphemy which he was even now not wholly able to credit. Worse, he was telling himself lies. Not just rationalizing, but outright lying.
So what's the truth? You want the truth so f**king bad, what's the truth?
That Church wasn't really a cat anymore at all-start with that. He looked like a cat, and he acted like a cat, but he was really only a poor imitation. People couldn't actually see through that imitation, but they could feel through it. He remembered a night when Chariton had been at the house. The occasion had been a small pre-Christmas dinner party. They'd been sitting in here, talking after the meal, and Church had jumped up in her lap. Chariton had pushed the cat off immediately, a quick and instinctive moue of distaste puckering her mouth.
It had been no big deal. No one had even commented on it. But... it was there. Chariton had felt what the cat wasn't. Louis killed his beer and went back for another. If Gage came back changed in such a way, that would be an obscenity.
He popped the top and drank deeply. He was drunk now, drunk for fair, and there would be a big head for him to deal with tomorrow. How I Went to My Son's Funeral with a Han gover by Louis Creed, author of How I Just Missed Him at the Crucial Moment and numerous other works.
Drunk. Sure. And he suspected now that the reason he had gotten drunk was so he could consider this crazy idea soberly.
In spite of everything, the idea had that deadly attraction, that sick luster, that glamour. Yes, that above all else-it had glamour.
Jud was back, speaking in his mind: You do it because it gets hold of you. You do it because that burial place is a secret place, and you want to share the secret you make up reasons... they seem like good reasons.
but mostly you do it because you want to. Or because you have to.
Jud's voice, low and drawling with Yankee intonation, Jud's voice chilling his flesh, bringing out the goosebumps, making the hackles on the back of his neck rise.
These are secret things, Louis... the soil of a man's heart is stonier...
like the soil up in the old Micmac burying ground. A man grows what he can...
and he tends it.
Louis began to go over the other things Jud had told him about the Micmac burying ground. He began to collate the data, to sort through it, to compress it-he proceeded in exactly the same way he had once readied himself for big exams.
The dog. Spot.
I could see all the places where the barbed wire had hooked him-there was no fur in any of those places, and the flesh looked dimpled in.
The bull. Another file turned over in Louis's mind.
Lester Morgan buried his prize hull up there. Black Angus bull, named Hanratty.
... Lester dragged him all the way up there on a sledge... shot him dead two weeks later. That bull turned mean, really mean. But he's the only animal I ever heard of that did.
He turned mean.
The soil of a man's heart is stonier.
He turned really mean.
He's the only animal I ever heard of that did.
Mostly you do it because once you've been up there, it's your place.
The flesh looked dimpled in.
Hanratty, ain't that a silly name for a bull?
A man grows what he can... and tends it.
They're my rats. And my birds. I bought the f**kers.
It's your place, a secret place, and it belongs to you, and you belong to it.
He turned mean, but he's the only animal I ever heard of that did.
What do you want to buy next, Louis, when the wind blows hard at night and the moon lays a white path through the woods to that place? Want to climb those stairs again? When they're watching a horror movie, everyone in the audience knows the hero or the heroine is stupid to go up those stairs, but in real life they always do-they smoke, they don't wear seat belts, they move their family in beside a busy highway where the big rigs drone back and forth all day and all night. So, Louis, what do you say? Want to climb the stairs? Would you like to keep your dead son or go for what's behind Door Number One, Door Number Two, or Door Number Three?
Hey-ho, let's go.
Turned mean... only animal... the flesh looked... a man yours... his...
Louis dumped the rest of the beer down the sink, feeling suddenly that he was going to vomit. The room was moving around in great swinging motions.