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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmhad been cleaned and fumigated. All of the furniture was gone. The room was a bare box. Later—muchlater—it had become Dory Goldman’s sewing room.The first of the nightmares had come to Rachel that night, and when Rachel woke up at two o’clock inthe morning, screaming for her mother, she had been horrified to discover that she could barely get outof bed. Her back was in agony. She had strained it moving Zelda. In her spurt of adrenaline-poweredstrength, she had, after all, lifted Zelda with enough force to pull her own blouse apart.That she had strained herself trying to keep Zelda from choking was simple, obvious, elementary-mydear-Watson.To everyone, that was, except Rachel herself. Rachel had been sure that this was Zelda’srevenge from beyond the grave. Zelda knew that Rachel was glad she was dead; Zelda knew that whenRachel burst from the house telling all and sundry Zelda’s dead, Zelda’s dead at the top of her voice, shehad been laughing, not screaming; Zelda knew she had been murdered and so had given Rachel spinalmeningitis, and soon Rachel’s back would start to twistand change and she too would have to lie in bed, slowly but surely turning into a monster, her handshooking into claws.After a while she would begin screaming with the pain, as Zelda had done, and then she would startwetting the bed, and finally she would choke to death on her own tongue. It was Zelda’s revenge.No one could talk Rachel out of this belief—not her mother, her father, or Dr. Murray, who diagnosed amild backsprain and then told Rachel brusquely (cruelly, some—Louis, for instance—would have said)to stop behaving so badly. She ought to remember that her sister had just died, Dr. Murray told her; herparents were prostrate with grief and this was not the time for Rachel to make a childish play forattention. Only the slowly abating pain had been able to convince her that she was neither the victim ofZelda’s supernatural vengeance nor God’s just punishment of the wicked. For months (or so she toldLouis; it had actually been years, eight of them) afterward she would awaken from nightmares in whichher sister died over and over again, and in the dark Rachel’s hands would fly to her back to make sure itwas all right. In the frightful aftermath of these dreams she often thought that the closet door would bangopen and Zelda would lurch out, blue and twisted, her eyes rolled up to shiny whites, her black tonguepuffing out through her lips, her hands hooked into claws to murder the murderer cowering in her bedwith her hands jammed into the small of her back.She had not attended Zelda’s funeral or any funeral since.“If you’d told me this before,” Louis said, “it would have explained a hell of a lot.”“Lou, I couldn’t,” she said simply. She sounded very sleepy now. “Since then I’ve been. . . I guess alittle phobic on the subject.”Just a little phobic, Louis thought. Yeah, right.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (167 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM