"No," Louis said. "No, of course not. It's just... " It was just what? What the Christ was he doing pursuing this, anyway? There was no sane way to deal with it. It had to be let go, marked off, forgotten. Anything else was asking for a lot of pointless trouble. "It's just that it seemed very quick," he finished lamely.
"Well, he was autopsied yesterday afternoon"-that faint riffle of papers again-"at around three-twenty by Dr. Rynzwyck. By then his father had made all the arrangements. I imagine the body got to Newark by two in the morning."
"Oh. Well, in that case-"
"Unless one of the carriers screwed up and sent it somewhere else," the pathology clerk said brightly. "We've had that happen, you know, although never with Delta. Delta's actually pretty good. We had a guy who died on a fishing trip way up in Aroostook County, in one of those little towns that just have a couple of map coordinates for a name. Asshole strangled on a pop-top while he was chugging a can of beer. Took his buddies two days to buck him out of the wilderness, and you know that by then it's a toss-up whether or not the Forever Goop will take. But they shoved it in and hoped for the best. Sent him home to Grand Falls, Minnesota, in the cargo compartment of some airliner. But there was a screw-up. They shipped him first to Miami, then to Des Moines, then to Fargo, North Dakota. Finally somebody wised up, but by then another three days had gone by. Nothing took. They might as well have injected him with Kool-Aid instead of Jaundaflo. The guy was totally black and smelled like a spoiled pork roast.
That's what I heard, anyway. Six baggage handlers got sick."
The voice on the other end of the line laughed heartily.
Louis closed his eyes and said, "Well, thank you-"
"I can give you Dr. Rynzwyck's home phone if you want it, Doctor, but he usually plays golf up in Orono in the morning."
"That's okay," Louis said.
He hung up the telephone. Let that put paid to it, he thought. When you were having that crazy dream, or whatever it was, Pascow's body was almost certainly in a Bergenfield funeral home. That closes it off; let that be the end of it.
Driving home that afternoon, a simple explanation of the filth at the foot of the bed finally occurred to him, flooding him with relief.
He had experienced an isolated incident of sleepwalking, brought on by the unexpected and extremely upsetting happenstance of having a student mortally injured and then dying in his infirmary during his first real day on the job.
It explained everything. The dream had seemed extremely real because large parts of it were real-the feel of the carpet, the cold dew, and, of course, the dead branch that had scratched his arm. It explained why Pascow had been able to walk through the door and he had not.
A picture rose in his mind, a picture of Rachel coming downstairs last night and catching him bumping against the back door, trying in his sleep to walk through it. The thought made him grin. It would have given her a hell of a turn, all right.
With the sleepwalking hypothesis in mind, he was able to analyze the causes of the dream-and he did so with a certain eagerness. He had walked to the Pet Sematary because it had become associated with another moment of recent stress.
It had in fact been the cause of a serious argument between him and his wife...
. and also, he thought with growing excitement, it was associated in his mind with his daughter's first encounter with the idea of death-something his own subconscious must have been grappling with last night when he went to bed.
Damn lucky I got back to the house okay-I don't even remember that part. Must have come back on autopilot.
It was a good thing he had. He couldn't imagine what it would have been like to have awakened this morning by the grave of Smucky the Cat, disoriented, covered with dew, and probably scared shitless-as Rachel also would have been, undoubtedly.
But it was over now.
Put paid to it, Louis thought with immeasurable relief. Yes, but what about the things he said when he was dying?, his mind tried to ask, and Louis shut it up fast.
That evening, with Rachel ironing and Ellie and Gage sitting in the same chair, both of them engrossed with "The Muppet Show," Louis told Rachel casually that he believed he might go for a short walk-to get a little air.
"Will you be back in time to help me put Gage to bed?" she asked without looking up from her ironing. "You know he goes better when you're there."
"Sure," he said.
"Where you going, Daddy?" Ellie asked, not looking away from the TV. Kermit was about to be punched in the eye by Miss Piggy.
"Just out back, hon."
Louis went out.