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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmFor most of his adult life—since college days, he supposed—he had believed that death was the end. Hehad been present at many deathbeds and had never felt a soul bullet past him on its way to . . . wherever;hadn’t this very thought occurred to him upon the death of Victor Pascow? He had agreed with hisPsychology I teacher that the life-after-life experiences reported in scholarly journals and thenvulgarized in the popular press probably indicated a last-ditch mental stand against the onrush of death—the endlessly inventive human mind, staving off insanity to the very end by constructing a hallucinationof immortality.He had likewise agreed with an acquaintance in the dorm who had said, during an all-night bull sessionduring Louis’s sophomore year at Chicago, that the Bible was suspiciously full of miracles which hadceased almost completely during the age of rationality (“totally ceased,” he had said at first but had beenforced backward at least one step by others who claimed with some authority that there were still plentyof weird things going on, little pockets of perplexity in a world that had become by and large a clean,well-lighted place—there was, for instance, the Shroud of Turin, which had survived every effort todebunk it). “So Christ brought Lazarus back from the dead,” this acquaintance—who had gone on tobecome a highly thought-of o.b. man in Dearborn, Michigan—had said. “That’s fine with me. If I haveto swallow it, I will. I mean, I had to buy the concept that the fetus of one twin can sometimes swallowthe fetus of the other in utero, like some kind of unborn cannibal, and then show up with teeth in histestes or in his lungs twenty or thirty years later to prove that he did it, and I suppose if I can buy that Ican buy anything. But I wanna see the death certificate—you dig what I’m saying? I’m not questioningthat he came out of the tomb. But I wanna see the original death certificate. I’m like Thomas saying he’donly believe Jesus had risen when he could look through the nail holes and stick his hands in the guy’sside. As far as I’m concerned, he was the real physician of the bunch, not Luke.”No, he had never really believed in survival. At least, not until Church.“I believe that we go on,” he told his daughter slowly. “But as to what it’s like, I have no opinion. It maybe that it’s different for different people. It may be that you get what you believed all your life. But Ibelieve we go on, and I believe that Mrs. Crandall is probably someplace where she can be happy.”“You have faith in that,” Ellie said. It was not a question. She sounded awed.Louis smiled, a little pleased and a little embarrassed. “I suppose so. And I have faith that it’s time foryou to go to bed. Like ten minutes ago.”He kissed her twice, once on the lips and once on the nose.“Do you think animals go on?”“Yes,” he said, without thinking, and for a moment he almostfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (159 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM