Stephen King - Pet Sematary

“Louis?” he called but with no real hope. That wasn’t Louis out there. Whatever was out there had been sent to punish an old man for his pride and vanity.

Footsteps moved slowly up the hail toward the living room.

“Louis?” he tried to call again, but only a faint croak actually emerged because now he could smell the thing which had come into his house here at the end of the night. It was a dirty, low smell-the smell of poisoned tidal flats.

Jud could make out bulking shapes in the gloom-Norma’s armoire, the Welsh dresser, the highboy-but no details. He tried to get to his feet on legs that had gone to water, his mind screaming that he needed more time, that he was too old to face this again without more time; Timmy Baterman had been bad enough, and Jud had been young then.

The swing door opened and let in shadows. One of the shadows was more substantial than the others.

Dear God, that stink.

Shuffling steps in the darkness.

“Gage?” Jud gained his feet at last. From one corner of his eye he saw the neat roll of cigarette ash in the Jim Beam ashtray. “Gage, is that y-”

A hideous mewling sound now arose, and for a moment all of Jud’s bones turned to white ice. It was not Louis’s son returned from the grave but some hideous monster.

No. It was neither.

It was Church, crouched in the hail doorway, making that sound. The cat’s eyes flared like dirty lamps. Then his eyes moved in the other direction and fixed on the thing which had come in with the cat.

Jud began to back up, trying to catch at his thoughts, trying to hold on to his reason in the face of that smell. Oh, it was cold in here-the thing had brought its chill with it.

Jud rocked unsteadily on his feet-it was the cat, twining around his legs, making him totter. It was purring. Jud kicked at it, driving it away. It bared its teeth at him and hissed.

Think! Oh, think, you stupid old man, it mayn’t be too late, even yet it mayn’t be too late… it’s back but it can he killed again… if you can only do it… if you can only think…

He backed away toward the kitchen, and he suddenly remembered the utensil drawer beside the sink. There was a meat cleaver in that drawer.

His thin shanks struck the swinging door that led into the kitchen and he pushed it open. The thing that had come into his house was still indistinct, but Jud could hear it breathing. He could see one white hand swinging back and forth-there was something in that hand, but he could not make out what. The door swung back as he entered the kitchen, and Jud at last turned his back and ran to the utensil drawer. He jerked it open and found the cleaver’s worn hardwood handle. He snatched it up and turned toward the door again; he even took a step or two toward it. Some of his courage had come back.

Remember, it ain’t a kid. It may scream or somethin when it sees you’ve got its number; it may cry. But you ain’t gonna be fooled. You been fooled too many times already, old man. This is your last chance.

The swing door opened again, but at first only the cat came through. Jud’s eye followed it for a moment and then he looked up again.

The kitchen faced east, and dawn’s first light came in through the windows, faint and milky white. Not much light but enough. Too much.

Gage Creed came in, dressed in his burial suit. Moss was growing on the suit’s shoulders and lapels. Moss had fouled his white shirt. His fine blond hair was caked with dirt. One eye had gone to the wall; it stared off into space with terrible concentration. The other was fixed on Jud.

Gage was grinning at him.

“Hello, Jud,” Gage piped in a babyish but perfectly understandable voice. “I’ve come to send your rotten, stinking old soul straight to hell. You fucked with me once. Did you think I wouldn’t come back sooner or later and fuck with you?”

Jud raised the cleaver. “Come on and get your pecker out then, whatever you are.

We’ll see who fucks with who.”

“Norma’s dead, and there’ll be no one to mourn you,” Gage said. “What a cheap slut she was. She fucked every one of your friends, Jud. She let them put it up her ass. That’s how she liked it best. She’s burning down in hell, arthritis and all. I saw her there, Jud. I saw her there.”

It lurched two steps toward him, shoes leaving muddy tracks on the worn linoleum. It held one hand out in front of it as if to shake with him; the other hand was curled behind its back.

“Listen, Jud,” it whispered-and then its mouth hung open, baring small milk teeth, and although the lips did not move, Norma’s voice issued forth.

“I laughed at you! We all laughed at you! How we laaaaaauuughed-”

“Stop it!” The cleaver jittered in his hand.

“We did it in our bed, Herk and I did it, I did it with George, I did it with all of them, I knew about your whores but you never knew you married a whore and how we laughed, Jud! We rutted together and we laaaaaaaaaughed at-”

“STOP IT!” Jud screamed. He sprang at the tiny, swaying figure in its dirty burial suit, and that was when the cat arrowed out of the darkness under the butcher block where it had been crouched. It was hissing, its ears laid back along the bullet of its skull, and it tripped Jud up just as neat as you please.

The cleaver flew out of his hand. It skittered across the humped and faded linoleum, blade and handle swiftly changing places as it whirled. It struck the baseboard with a thin clang and slid under the refrigerator.

Jud realized that he had been fooled again, and the only consolation was that it was for the final time. The cat was on his legs, mouth open, eyes blazing, hissing like a teakettle. And then Gage was on him, grinning a happy black grin, eyes moon-shaped, rimmed with red, and his right hand came out from behind his back, and Jud saw that what he had been holding when he came in was a scalpel from Louis’s black bag.

“Oh m’ dear Jesus,” Jud managed and put his right hand up to block the blow. And here was an optical illusion; surely his mind had snapped because it appeared that the scalpel was on both sides of his palm at the same time. Then something warm began to drizzle down on his face, and he understood.

“I’m gonna fuck with you, old man!” the Gage-thing chortled, blowing its poisoned breath in his face. “I’m gonna fuck with you/I’m gonna fuck with you all want!”

Jud flailed and got hold of Gage’s ‘wrist. Skin peeled off like parchment in his hand.

The scalpel was yanked out of his hand, leaving a vertical mouth.

“All… I… WANT!”

The scalpel came down again.

And again.

And again.

“Try it now, ma’am,” the truck driver said. He was looking into the engine cavity of Rachel’s rented car.

She turned the key. The Chevette’s engine roared into life. The truck driver slammed the hood down and came around to her window, wiping his hands on a big blue handkerchief. He had a pleasant, ruddy face. A Dysart’s Truck-Stop cap was tilted back on his head.

“Thank you so much,” Rachel said, on the verge of tears. “I just didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“Aw, a kid could have fixed that,” the trucker said. “But it was funny. Never seen something like that go wrong on such a new car, anyway.”

“Why? What was it?”

“One of your battery cables come right off. Wasn’t nobody frigging with it, was there?”

“No,” Rachel said, and she thought again of that feeling she’d had, that feeling of running into the rubber band of the world’s biggest slingshot.

“Must have jogged her loose just ridin along, I guess. But you won’t have no more trouble with your cables anyway. I tightened em up real good.”