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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmThe muddy tracks approached the chair by the window. Mixed among the human tracks were a fewfaded, ghostly catprints. As if Church had walked in and out of the gravedirt left by Gage’s small shoes.Then the tracks made for the swinging door leading into the kitchen.Heart thudding, Louis followed the tracks.He pushed the door open and saw Jud’s splayed feet, his old green workpants, his checked flannel shirt.The old man was lying sprawled in a wide pool of drying blood.Louis clapped his hands to his face, as if to blight his own vision. But there was no way to do that; hesaw eyes, Jud’s eyes, open, accusing him, perhaps even accusing himself for setting this in motion.But did he? Louis wondered. Did he really do that?Jud had been told by Stanny B., and Stanny B. had been toldby his father, and Stanny B.’s father had been told by his father, the last trader to the Indians, aFrenchman from the north country in the days when Franklin Pierce had been a living President.“Oh Jud, I’m so sorry,” he whispered.Jud’s blank eyes stared at him.“So sorry,” Louis repeated.His feet seemed to move by themselves, and he was suddenly back to last Thanksgiving in his mind, notto that night when he and Jud had taken the cat up to the Pet Sematary and beyond, but to the turkeydinner Norma had put on the table, all of them laughing and talking, the two men drinking beer andNorma with a glass of white wine, and she had taken the white lawn tablecloth from the lower drawer ashe was taking it now, but she had put it on the table and then anchored it with lovely pewter candlestickholders, while he— Louis watched it billow down over Jud’s body like a collapsingparachute, mercifully covering that dead face. Almost immediately, tiny rosepetals of deepest, darkestscarlet began to stain the white lawn.“I’m sorry,” he said for a third time. “So sor—”Then something moved overhead, something scraped, and the word broke off between his lips. It hadbeen soft, it had been stealthy, but it had been deliberate. Oh yes, he was convinced of that. A sound hehad been meant to hear.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (322 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM