Stephen King - Pet Sematary

The clerk glanced behind him at the monitor. “Still at the gate it says here,”

he said, “but they called for final boarding five minutes ago. I’ll call ahead.

Bags to check?”

“No,” Rachel gasped, and brushed her sweaty hair out of her eyes. Her heart was galloping in her chest.

“Then don’t wait for me to call. I will-but I advise you to run very fast.”

Rachel didn’t run very fast-she was no longer able. But she did as well as she could. The escalator had been turned off for the night, and she pounded up the stairs, tasting copper shavings in her mouth. She reached the security checkpoint and almost threw the tote bag at the startled female guard, then waited for it to come through on the conveyor belt, her hands clenching and unclenching. It was barely out of the X-ray chamber before she had snatched it by the strap and ran again, the bag flying out behind her and then banging her on the hip.

She looked up at one of the monitors as she ran.

FLIGHT 104 PORTLAND SCHED 11:25P GATE 31 BOARDING Gate 31 was at the far end of the concourse-and even as she snatched her glance at the monitor, BOARDING in steady letters changed to DEPARTING, blinking rapidly.

A frustrated cry burst from her. She ran into the gate area just in time to see the gate attendant removing the strips which read: FLIGHT 104 BOSTON-PORTLAND 11:25.

“It’s gone?” she asked incredulously. “It’s really gone?”

The attendant looked at her sympathetically. “It rolled out of the jetway at 11:40. I’m sorry, ma’am. You made a helluva good try, if that’s any consolation.” He pointed out the wide glass windows. Rachel could see a big 727 with Delta markings, its running lights Christmas-tree bright, starting its takeoff roll.

“Christ, didn’t anyone tell you I was coming?” Rachel cried.

“When they called up here from downstairs, 104 was on an active taxiway. If I’d called her back, she would have gotten caught in the parade going out to Runway 30, and that pilot would have had my bee-hind on a platter. Not to mention the hundred or so passengers on board. I’m very sorry. If you’d been even four minutes sooner-”

She walked away, not listening to the rest. She was halfway back to the security checkpoint when waves of faintness rode over her. She stumbled into another gate area and sat down until the darkness had passed. Then she slipped her shoes back on, picking a squashed Lark cigarette butt off the tattered sole of one stocking first. My feet are dirty and I don’t give a fuck, she thought disconsolately.

She walked back toward the terminal.

The security guard eyed her sympathetically. “Missed it?”

“I missed it, all right,” Rachel said.

“Where were you headed?”

“Portland. Then Bangor.”

“Well, why don’t you rent a car? If you really have to be there, that is?

Ordinarily I’d advise a hotel close to the airport, but if I ever saw a lady who looked like she really had to be there, you are that lady.”

“I’m that lady, all right,” Rachel said. She thought about it. “Yes, I suppose I could do that, couldn’t I? If any of the agencies has a car.”

The security guard laughed. “Oh, they’ll have cars. Only time they don’t have cars at Logan is when the airport’s fogged in. Which is a lot of the time.”

Rachel barely heard her. In her mind she was already trying to calculate it.

She couldn’t get to Portland in time to catch her Bangor flight even if she bulleted up the turnpike at a suicidal pace. So figure driving straight through.

How long? That depended on how far. Two hundred and fifty miles, that was the figure which came to mind. Something Jud had said maybe. It was going to be at least a quarter past twelve before she got going, probably closer to 12:30 A. M.

It was all turnpike. She thought that her chances of going the whole distance at sixty-five without getting hauled down for speeding were reasonably good. She ran the figures quickly in her head, dividing sixty-five into two hundred and fifty. Not quite four hours. Well… say four even. She would have to stop once and go to the bathroom. And although sleep seemed impossibly distant now, she knew her own resources well enough to believe she would also have to stop for a great big black coffee. Still she could be back in Ludlow before first light. Mulling all this over, she started for the stairs-the car rental desks were one level down from the concourses.

“Good luck, honey,” the security guard called. “Take care.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said. She felt that she deserved some good luck.

The smell hit him first, and Louis recoiled, gagging. He hung on the edge of the grave, breathing hard, and just when he thought he had his gorge under control, his entire big, tasteless meal came up in a spurt. He threw up on the far side of the grave and then put his head against the ground, panting. At last the nausea passed. Teeth clamped together, he took the flashlight out of his armpit and shone it down into the open coffin.

A deep horror that was very nearly awe stole over him-it was the sort of feeling usually reserved for the worst nightmares, the ones you can barely remember upon awakening.

Gage’s head was gone.

Louis’s hands were trembling so badly he had to hold the flashlight with both hands, gripping it the way a policeman is taught to grip his service revolver on the target range. Still the beam jittered back and forth and it was a moment before he could train the pencil-thin beam back into the grave.

it’s impossible, he told himself, just remember that what you thought you saw is impossible.

He slowly moved the narrow beam up Gage’s three-foot length, from the new shoes to the suit pants, the little coat (ah, Christ, no two-year-old was ever meant to wear a suit), to the open collar, to-His breath caught in a harsh sound that was too outraged to be a gasp, and all his fury at Gage’s death came back in a rush, drowning fears of the supernatural, the paranatural, his growing certainty that he had crossed over into’ the country of the mad.

Louis scrabbled in his back pocket for his handkerchief and pulled it out.

Holding the light in one hand, he leaned into the grave again, almost past the point of balance. If one of the segments of grave liner had fallen now, it would have surely broken his neck. Gently he used his handkerchief to wipe away the damp moss that was growing on Gage’s skin-moss so dark that he had been momentarily fooled into thinking Gage’s whole head was gone.

The moss was damp but no more than a scum. He should have expected it; there had been rain, and a grave liner was not watertight. Flashing his light to either side, Louis saw that the coffin was lying in a thin puddle. Beneath the light slime of growth, he saw his son. The mortician, aware that the coffin could not be opened after such a terrible accident, had nonetheless done the best he could-morticians almost always did. Looking at his son was like looking at a badly made doll. Gage’s head bulged in strange directions. His eyes had sunken deep behind closed lids. Something white protruded from his mouth like an albino tongue, and Louis thought at first that they had, perhaps, used too much embalming fluid. It was tricky stuff at best, and with a child it was next to impossible to tell how much was enough or too much.

Then he realized it was only cotton. He reached in and plucked it out of the boy’s mouth. Gage’s lips, oddly lax and seeming somehow too dark and too wide, closed with a faint but audible plip! He threw the cotton into the grave where it floated in the shallow puddle and gleamed a loathsome white. Now one of Gage’s cheeks had a hollow old-man’s look.

“Gage,” he whispered, “going to take you out now, okay?”