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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmLouis hushed, looking around uneasily. Here the ground mist was thinner, but he still couldn’t see hisown shoes. Then he heard crackling underbrush and breaking branches. Something was moving out there—something big.He opened his mouth to ask Jud if it was a moose (bear was the thought that actually crossed his mind),and then he closed it again. The sound carries, Jud had said.He cocked his head to one side in unconscious imitation of Jud, unaware that he was doing it, andlistened. The sound seemed at first distant, then very close; moving away arid then moving ominouslytoward them. Louis felt the sweat on his forehead begin to trickle down his chapped cheeks. He shiftedthe Hefty Bag with Church’s body in it from one hand to the other. His palm had dampened, and thegreen plastic seemed greasy, wanting to slide through his fist. Now the thing out there seemed so closethat Louis expected to see its shape at any moment, risingup on two legs, perhaps, blotting out the stars with some unthought-of, immense and shaggy body.Bear was no longer what he was thinking of.Now he didn’t know just what he was thinking of.Then it moved away and disappeared.Louis opened his mouth again, the words What was that? already on his tongue. Then a shrill, maniacallaugh came out of the darkness, rising and falling in hysterical cycles, loud, piercing, chilling. To Louisit seemed that every joint in his body had frozen solid and that he had somehow gained weight, so muchweight that if he turned to run he would plunge down and out of sight in the swampy ground.The laughter rose, split into dry cackles like some rottenly friable chunk of rock along many fault lines;it reached the pitch of a scream, then sank into a guttural chuckling that might have become sobs beforeit faded out altogether.Somewhere there was a drip of water and above them, like a steady river in a bed of sky, themonotonous whine of the wind. Otherwise Little God Swamp was silent.Louis began to shudder all over. His flesh—particularly that of his lower belly—began to creep. Yes,creep was the right word; his flesh actually seemed to be moving on his body. His mouth was totally dry.There seemed to be no spit at all left in it. Yet that feeling of exhilaration persisted, an unshakablelunacy.“What in Christ’s name?” he whispered hoarsely to Jud.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (102 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM