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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmthe usually benign Indian had frightened Steve. And Charlton’s mother had had a radical mastectomy.The tough nurse was not very optimistic about her mother’s chances for joining the Five-Year Club.Steve himself had attended four funerals since the death of Victor Pascow—his wife’s sister, killed in acar crash; a cousin, killed in a freak accident as the result of a barroom bet (he had been electrocutedwhile proving he could shinny all the way to the top of a power pole); a grandparent; and of courseLouis’s little boy.He liked Louis enormously, and he wanted to make sure Louis was all right. Louis had been through helllately.When he saw the billows of smoke, his first thought was that this was something else to lay at the doorof Victor Pascow, who seemed, in his dying, to have removed some sort of crash barrier between theseordinary people and an extraordinary run of bad luck. But that was stupid, and Louis’s house was theproof. It stood calm and white, a little piece of clean-limbed New England architecture in themidmorning sun.People were running toward the old duck’s house, and as Steve banked his bike across the road andpulled into Louis’s driveway, he saw a man dash up onto the old duck’s porch, approach the front door,and then retreat. It was well that he did; a moment later the glass pane in the center of the door blew out,and flames boiled through the opening. If the fool actually had gotten the door open, the blowout wouldhave cooked him like a lobster.Steve dismounted and put the Honda on its kickstand, Louis momentarily forgotten. He was drawn byall the old mystery of fire. Maybe half a dozen people had gathered; except for the would-be hero, wholingered on the Crandalls’ lawn, they kept a respectful distance. Now the windows between the porchand the house blew out. Glass danced in the air. The would-be hero ducked and ran for it. Flames ran upthe inner wail of the porch like groping hands, blistering the white paint. As Steve watched, one of therattan easy chairs smouldered and then exploded into flame.Over the crackling sounds, he heard the would-be hero cry out with a shrill and absurd sort of optimism:“Gonna lose her! Gonna lose her sure! If Jud’s in there, he’s a gone goose! Told im about the creosote inthat chimbly a hunnert times!”Steve opened his mouth to holler across and ask if the fire department had been called, but just then heheard the faint wail of sirens, approaching. A lot of them. They had been called, but the would-be herowas right: the house was going. Flames probed through half a dozen broken windows now, and the fronteave had grown an almost transparent membrane of fire over its bright green shingles.He turned back, then, remembering Louis—but if Louis were here, wouldn’t he be with the others acrossthe street?Steve caught something then, just barely caught it with the tail of his eye.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (327 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM