ebEpvI

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmhis wallet, coins, and keys on the night table beside him, his hands behind his head. That feeling ofcoldness still held; he felt totally unplugged from his people, the places that had become so familiar tohim, even his work. This could have been any Howard Johnson’s in the world—in San Diego or Duluthor Bangkok or Charlotte Amalie. He was nowhere, and now and then a thought of surpassing odditystruck him: before he saw any of those familiar places and faces again, he would see his son.His plan kept unreeling in his mind. He looked at it from all angles, poked it, prodded it, looked forholes or soft places. And he felt that in truth he was walking along a narrow beam over a gulf ofinsanity. Madness was all around him, softly fluttering as the wings of night-hunting owls with greatgolden eyes: he was heading into madness.The voice of Tom Rush echoed dreamily in his head: 0 death your hands are clammy . . . I feel them onmy knees . . . you came and took my mother. . . won’t you come back after me?Madness. Madness all around, close, hunting him.He walked the balance beam of rationality; he studied his plan.Tonight, around eleven o’clock, he would dig up his son’s grave, remove the body from the coffin inwhich it lay, wrap Gage in a cutdown piece of the tarpaulin, and put it in the trunk of the Civic. Hewould replace the coffin and refill the grave. He would drive to Ludlow, take Gage’s body from thetrunk. . . and take a walk. Yes, he would take a walk.If Gage returned, the single path forked into two possibilities. Along one, he saw Gage returning asGage, perhaps stunned or slow or even retarded (only in the deepest recesses of his mind did Louis allowhimself to hope that Gage would return whole, and just as he had been—but surely even that waspossible, wasn’t it?), but still his son, Rachel’s son, Ellie’s brother.Along the other, he saw some sort of monster emerging from the woods behind the house. He hadaccepted so much that he did not balk at the idea of monsters, or even of daemons, discorporeal beingsof evil from the outerworid which might well take charge of a reanimated body from which the originalsoul had fled.Either way, he and his son would be alone. And he would.I will make a diagnosis.Yes. That is what he would do.I will make a diagnosis, not only of his body but of his spirit. I will make allowances for the trauma ofthe accident itself, which he may or may not remember. Keeping the example of Church before me, Iwill expect retardation, perhaps mild, perhaps profound. I will judge our ability to reintegrate Gage intofile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (249 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM