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SIXTY-TWO

Steve Masterton came around the final curve just before Louis’s house and saw the smoke almost immediately – not from Louis’s place, but from the house of the old duck across the street.

He had come out this morning because he had been worried about Louis – deeply worried. Charlton had told him about Rachel’s call of the day before, and that had set him to wondering just where Louis was … and what he was up to.

His worry was vague, but it itched at his mind – he wasn’t going to feel right until he had gone out there and checked to see if things were okay … or as okay as they could be, under the circumstances.

The spring weather had emptied the infirmary like white magic, and Surrendra had told him to go ahead; he could handle whatever came up. So Steve had jumped on to his Honda, which he had liberated from the garage only last weekend, and headed out for Ludlow. He maybe pushed the cycle a little faster than was strictly necessary, but the worry was there; it gnawed. And with it came the absurd feeling that he was already late. Stupid, of course, but in the pit of his stomach there was a feeling similar to the one he’d had there last fall when that Pascow thing cropped up – a feeling of miserable surprise and almost leaden disillusion. He was by no means a religious man (in college Steve had been a member of the Atheists’ Society for two semesters and had dropped out only when his advisor had told him – privately and very much off the record – that it might very well hurt his chances to obtain a med school scholarship later on), but he supposed he fell as much heir to whatever biological or biorhythmic conditions passed for premonitions as any other human being, and the death of Pascow had seemed to set a tone for the year which followed, somehow. Not a good year, by any means. Two of Surrendra’s relatives had been clapped in jail back home, some political thing, and Surrendra had told him that he believed one of them – an uncle he cared for very much – might well now be dead. Surrendra had wept, and the tears from the usually benign Indian had frightened Steve. And Charlton’s mother had had a radical mastectomy. The tough nurse was not very optimistic about her mother’s chances for joining the Five Year Club. Steve himself had attended four funerals since the death of Victor Pascow – his wife’s sister, killed in a car crash, a cousin, killed in a freak accident as the result of a bar-room bet (he had been electrocuted while proving he could shinny all the way to the top of a power pole), a grandparent, and, of course, Louis’s little boy.

And he liked Louis. He wanted to make sure Louis was all right. Louis had been through hell lately.

When he saw the billows of smoke, his first thought was that this was something else to lay at the door of Victor Pascow, who seemed, in his dying, to have removed some sort of crash-barrier between these ordinary people and an extraordinary run of bad luck. But that was stupid, and Louis’s house was the proof. It stood calm and white, a little piece of clean-limbed New England architecture in the mid-morning sun.

People were running toward the old duck’s house, and as Steve banked his bike across the road and pulled into Louis’s driveway, he saw a man dash up on to the old duck’s porch, approach the front door, and then retreat. It was well that he did; a moment later the glass pane in the center of the door blew out and flames boiled through the opening. If the fool actually had gotten the door open, the blow-out would have cooked him like a lobster.

Steve dismounted and put the Honda on its kickstand, Louis momentarily forgotten. He was drawn by all the old mystery of fire. Maybe half a dozen people had gathered; except for the would-be hero, who lingered on the Crandalls’ lawn, they kept a respectful distance. Now the windows between the porch and the house blew out. Glass danced in the air. The would-be hero ducked and ran for it. Flames ran up the inner wall of the porch like groping hands, blistering the white paint. As Steve watched, one of the rattan easy-chairs smouldered and then exploded into flame.

Over the crackling sounds, he heard the would-be hero cry out with a shrill and absurd sort of optimism: ‘Gonna lose her! Gonna lose her sure! If Jud’s in there, he’s a gone goose! Told ‘im about the creosote in that chimbly a hunnert times!’ Steve opened his mouth to holler across and ask if the fire department had been called, but just then he heard the faint wail of sirens approaching. A lot of them. They had been called, but the would-be hero was right: the house was going. Flames probed through half a dozen broken windows now, and the front eave had grown an almost transparent membrane of fire over its bright green shingles.

He turned back, then, remembering Louis – but if Louis were here, wouldn’t he be with the others across the street?

Steve caught something then, just barely caught it with the tail of his eye.

Beyond the head of Louis’s hot-topped driveway there was a field, a field that stretched up a long, gently rising hill. The timothy, although still green, had grown high already this May, but Steve could see a path, almost as neatly mowed as a putting green on a golf course: It wound and meandered its way up the slope of the field, rising to meet the woods that began, thick and green, just below the horizon. It was here, where the pale green of the timothy grass met the thicker, denser green of the woods, that Steve had seen movement – a flash of bright white that seemed to be moving. It was gone almost as soon as his eye registered it, but it had seemed to him for that brief moment that he had seen a man carrying a white bundle.

That was Louis, his mind told him with sudden irrational certainty. That was Louis, and you better get to him quick, because something damn bad has happened and pretty quick something even more damn bad is going to happen. If you don’t stop him.

He stood indecisively at the head of the driveway, shifting one foot for the other, his weight jittery between two of them.

Steve baby, you’re scared shitless just about now, aren’t you?

Yes. He was. He was scared shitless, and for no reason at all. But there was also a certain … a certain

(attraction)

yes, a certain attraction here, something about that path, that path leading up the hill and perhaps continuing on into the woods, surely that path had to go somewhere, didn’t it? Yes, of course it did. All paths eventually went somewhere.

Louis. Don’t forget about Louis, you dummy! Louis was the man you came out to see, remember? You didn’t come out to Ludlow to go exploring the goddam woods.

‘What you got there, Randy?’ the would-be hero cried. His voice, still shrill and somehow optimistic, carried well.

Randy’s reply was almost but not quite obscured by the growing wail of the fire sirens: ‘Dead cat.’

‘Burnt up?’

‘Don’t look burnt,’ Randy returned. ‘Just looks dead.’

And Steve’s mind returned implacably, as if the exchange across the street had something to do with what he had seen – or what he thought he had seen: That was Louis.

He started to move then, trotting up the path toward the woods, leaving the fire behind him. He had worked up a good sweat by the time he reached the edge of the woods, and the shade felt cool and good. There was the sweet aroma of pine and spruce, bark and sap.

Once into the woods he broke into an all-out run, not sure why he was running, not sure why his heart was beating double-time. His breath whistled in and out. He was able to lengthen his run to a sprint going downhill – the path was admirably clear – but he reached the arch that marked the entrance to the Pet Sematary at little more than a fast walk. There was a hot stitch high in his right side, just under the armpit.

His eyes barely registered the circles of graves, the beaten tin squares, the bits of board and slate. His gaze was fixed on the bizarre sight at the far side of the circular clearing. It was fixed on Louis, who was climbing a deadfall, seemingly in outright defiance of gravity. He mounted the steep fall step by step, his eyes straight ahead, like a man who has been mesmerized or who is sleepwalking. In his arms was the white thing that Steve had seen from the tail of his eye. This close, its configuration was undeniable – it was a body. One foot, clad in a black shoe with a low heel, protruded. And Steve knew with a sudden and sickening certainty that Louis was carrying Rachel’s body.

Louis’s hair had gone white.

‘Louis!’ Steve screamed.

Louis didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause. He reached the top of the deadfall and began down the far side.

He’ll fall, Steve thought incoherently. He’s been damned lucky, incredibly lucky, but pretty soon he’s going to fall and if his leg’s the only thing he breaks— But Louis did not fall. He reached the other side of the deadfall, was temporarily out of Steve’s sight, and then reappeared as he walked toward the woods again.

‘Louis!’ Steve yelled again.

And this time Louis stopped, and turned back.

Steve was struck dumb by what he saw. Besides the white hair, Louis’s face was that of an old, old man.

At first there was no recognition at all in Louis’s face. It dawned little by little, as if someone was turning a rheostat up in his brain. Louis’s mouth was twitching. After a while Steve realized Louis was trying to smile.

‘Steve,’ he said in a cracked, uncertain voice. ‘Hello, Steve. I’m going to bury her. Have to do it with my bare hands, I guess. It may take until dark. The soil up there is very stony. I don’t suppose you’d want to give me a hand?’ Steve opened his mouth, but no words came out. In spite of his surprise, in spite of his horror, he did want to give Louis a hand. Somehow, up here in the woods, it seemed very right, very … very natural.

‘Louis,’ he managed to croak at last. ‘What happened? Good Christ, what happened? Was she … was she in the fire?’ ‘I waited too long with Gage,’ Louis said. ‘Something got into him because I waited too long. But it will be different with Rachel, Steve. I know it will.’ He staggered a little, and Steve saw that Louis had gone insane – he saw this quite clearly. Louis was insane and abysmally weary. But somehow, only the latter seemed to carry weight in his own bewildered mind.

‘I could use some help,’ Louis said.

‘Louis, even if I wanted to help you, I couldn’t climb over that pile of wood.’

‘Oh yes,’ Louis said. ‘You could. If you just move steadily and don’t look down. That’s the secret, Steve.’

He turned then, and although Steve called his name, Louis moved off into the woods. For a few moments Steve could see the white of the sheet flickering through the trees. Then it was gone.

He ran across to the deadfall and began to climb it with no thought at all, at first feeling with his hands for good holds, attempting to crawl up it, and then gaining his feet. As he did so, a crazy sort of daredevil exhilaration swept over him – it was like hitting on pure oxygen. He believed he could do it – and he did. Moving swiftly and surely, he reached the top. He stood there for a moment, swaying, watching Louis move along the path – the path which continued on the far side of the deadfall.

Louis turned and looked back at Steve. He held his wife, wrapped in a bloody sheet, in his arms.

‘You may hear sounds,’ Louis said. ‘Sounds like voices. But they are just the loons, down south toward Prospect. The sound carries. It’s funny.’ ‘Louis—’

But Louis had turned away.

For a moment Steve almost followed him – it was very, very close.

I could help him, if that’s what he wants … and I want to help him, yes. That’s the truth, because there’s more going on here than meets the eye and I want to know what it is. It seems very … well … very important. It seems like a secret. Like a mystery.

Then a branch snapped under one of his canted feet. It made a dry, dusty sound like a track-starter’s gun. It brought him back to exactly where he was, and what he was doing. Terror leaped into him and he turned around in a clumsy circle, arms held out for balance, his tongue and throat oily with fright, his face bearing the dismayed grimace of a man who wakes up only to find he has sleepwalked his way on to a high skyscraper ledge.

She’s dead and I think that maybe Louis has killed her, Louis has gone mad, utterly mad, but—

But there was something worse than madness here; something much, much worse. It was as if there was a magnet somewhere out in those woods and he could feel it pulling at something in his brain. Pulling him toward that place where Louis was taking Rachel.

Come on, man, walk the path … walk the path and see where it goes. We got stuff to show you out here, Steverino, stuff they never told you about in the Atheists’ Society back in Lake Forest.

And then, perhaps simply because it had enough for one day to feed on and lost interest in him, the call of the place in his mind simply ceased. Steve took two plunging, drunken steps back down the side of the deadfall. Then more branches let go with a grinding rattle and his left foot plunged into the tangled deadwood; harsh sharp splinters pulled off his sneaker and then tore into his flesh as he yanked free. He fell forward into the Pet Sematary, barely missing a piece of orange-crate that could easily have punched into his stomach.

He got to his feet, staring around, bewildered, wondering what had happened to him … or if anything had happened to him. Already it had begun to seem like a dream.

Then, from the deep woods behind the deadfall, woods so deep that the light looked green and tarnished even on the brightest days, a low, chuckling laugh arose. The sound was huge. Steve could not even begin to imagine what sort of creature could have made such a sound.

He ran, one shoe off and one shoe on, like the boy in the nursery rhyme, trying to shriek, but unable. He was still running when he reached Louis’s house, and still trying to shriek when he finally got his bike started and slued out on to Route 15. He very nearly sideswiped an arriving fire engine from Brewer. Inside his Bell helmet, his hair was standing on end.

By the time he got back to his apartment in Orono, he could not precisely remember having gone to Ludlow at all. He called in sick at the infirmary, took a pill, and went to bed.

Steve Masterton never really remembered that day … except in deep dreams, those that come in the small hours of the morning. And in these dreams he would sense that something huge had shrugged by him – something which had reached out to touch him … and had then withdrawn its inhuman hand at the very last second.

Something with great yellow eyes which gleamed like fog lamps.

Steve sometimes awoke shrieking from these dreams, his eyes wide and bulging, and he would think: You think you are screaming, but it’s only the sound of the loons, down south, in Prospect. The sound carries. It’s funny.

But he did not know, could not remember, what such a thought might mean. The following year he took a job halfway across the country, in St Louis.

In the time between his last sight of Louis Creed and his departure for the Midwest, Steve never went into the town of Ludlow again.