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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmin a glowing white capsule. It seemed to him that the light was brighter, a pulsing effulgence like thebeat of some strange heart. He had never before felt so strongly the presence of nature as a kind ofcoalescing force, a real being . . . possibly sentient. The swamp was alive, but not with the sound ofmusic. If asked to define either the sense or the nature of that aliveness, he would have been unable. Heonly knew that it was rich with possibility and textured with strength. Inside it, Louis felt very small andvery mortal.Then there was a sound, and he remembered this from the last time as well: a high, gobbling laugh thatbecame a sob. There was silence for a moment and then the laugh came again, this time rising to amaniacal shriek that froze Louis’s blood. The mist drifted dreamily around him. The laughter faded,leaving only the drone of the wind, heard but no longer felt. Of course not; this had to be some sort ofgeological cup in the earth. If the wind could have penetrated here, it would have torn this mist totatters . . . and Louis wasn’t sure he would want to see what might have been revealed.You may hear sounds like voices, but they are the loons down south toward Prospect. The sound carries.It’s funny.“Loons,” Louis said and barely recognized the cracked, somehow ghastly sound of his own voice. Buthe sounded amused. God help him, he actually sounded amused.He hesitated briefly and then moved on again. As if to punish him for his brief pause, his foot slippedfrom the next tussock, and he almost lost his shoe, pulling it free from the grasping ooze under theshallow water.The voice—if that was what it was—came again, this time from the left. Moments later it came frombehind him . . . from directly behind him, it seemed, as if he could have turned and seen some blooddrenchedthing less than a foot from his back, all bared teeth and glittering eyes . . . but this time Louisdid not slow. He looked straight ahead and kept walking.Suddenly the mist lost its light and Louis realized that a face was hanging in the air ahead of him, leeringand gibbering. Its eyes, tilted up like the eyes in a classical Chinese painting, were a rich yellowish-gray,sunken, gleaming. The mouth was drawn down in a rictus; the lower lip was turned inside out, revealingteeth stained blackish-brown and worn down almost to nubs. But what struck Louis were the ears, whichwere not ears at all but curving horns . . . they were not like devil’s horns; they were ram’s horns.This grisly, floating head seemed to be speaking—laughing. Its mouth moved, although that turneddownlower lip never came back to its natural shape and place. Veins in there pulsed black. Its nostrilsflared, as if with breath and life, and blew out white vapors.As Louis drew closer, the floating head’s tongue lolled out. It was long and pointed, dirty yellow incolor. It was coated with peeling scales and as Louis watched, one of these flipped up and over like amanhole cover and a white worm oozed out. The tongue’s tip skittered lazily on the air somewherefile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (293 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM