فصل پنجاه و سه

FIFTY-THREE

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 winter’s 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 ground – and he would still have the grave to dig, fighting 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 away 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?

Don’t 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 rolled-up tarpaulin across his knees, gasping. He rested there for another twenty minutes, almost dozing, no longer fearful – exhaustion 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 exaltation. The weariness did not leave him, but it became bearable – unimportant, really.

Just follow me. Follow me and don’t look down, Louis. Don’t hesitate and don’t look down. I know the way through, but it has to be done quick and sure.

Quick and sure, yes – the 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 hadn’t 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 son’s 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, needle-covered 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 night’s work was almost done.