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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“I’m fine,” he called back a little aggressively. Pride probably would have led him to say the same thingeven if he had felt the onset of a coronary. He grinned, hitched the straps of the Gerrypack up a bit, andwent on.They topped the second hill, and then the path sloped through a head-high swatch of bushes and tangledunderbrush. It narrowed and then, just ahead, Louis saw Ellie and Jud go under an arch made of oldweather stained boards. Written on these in faded black paint, only just legible, were the wordsPET SEMATARY.He and Rachel exchanged an amused glance and stepped under the arch, instinctively reaching out andgrasping each other’s hands as they did so, as if they had come here to be married.For the second time that morning Louis was surprised into wonder.-There was no carpet of needles here. Here was an almost perfect circle of mown grass, perhaps as largeas forty feet in diameter. It was bounded by thickly interlaced underbrush on three sides and an oldblowdown on the fourth, a jackstraw jumble of fallen trees that looked both sinister and dangerous. Aman trying so pick his way through that or to climb over it would do well to put on a steel jock, Louisthought. The clearing was crowded with markers, obviously made by children from whatever materialsthey could beg or borrow—the slats of crates, scrapwood, pieces of beaten -tin. And yet, seen against theperimeter of low bushes and straggly trees that fought for living space and sunlight here, the very fact oftheir clumsy manufacture, and the fact that humans were responsible for what was here, seemed toemphasize what symmetry they had. The forested backdrop lent the place a crazy sort of profundity, acharm that was not Christian but pagan.“It’s lovely,” Rachel said, not sounding as if she meant it.“Wow!” Ellie cried.Louis unshouldered Gage and pulled him out of the baby carrier so he could crawl. Louis’s back sighedwith relief.Ellie ran from one monument to the next, exclaiming overeach. Louis followed her while Rachel kept an eye on the baby. Jud sat down cross-legged, his backagainst a protruding rock, and smoked.Louis noticed that the place did not just seem to have a sense of order, a pattern; the memorials hadarranged in rough concentric circles.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (26 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM