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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmAll at once he’s my friend, Louis thought, bemused and distressed at the same time.“Rachel—”“And I don’t want her going up there again.”“Rachel, what Jud said about the path is true.”“It’s not the path and you know it,” Rachel said. She picked up the bowl again and began beating thecake batter even faster. “it’s that damned place. It’s unhealthy. Kids going up there and tending thegraves, keeping the path.fucking morbid is what it is. Whatever disease the kids in this town have got, I don’t want Ellie to catchit.”Louis stared at her, nonplussed. He more than half suspected that one of the things which had kept theirmarriage together when it seemed as if each year brought the news that two or three of their friends’marriages had collapsed was their respect of the mystery—the half-grasped but never spoken idea thatmaybe, when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing asmarriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That wasthe mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran intoblank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket ofalien strangeness, something like the clear-air turbulence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all.An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemednearly psychotic. And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; youtried to remember that anger at such a discovery was the province of fools who really believed it waspossible for one mind to know another.“Honey, it’s just a pet cemetery,” he said.“The way she was crying in there just now,” Rachel said, gesturing toward the door to his office with abatter-covered spoon, “do you think it’s just a pet cemetery to her? It’s going to leave a scar, Lou. No.She’s not going up there anymore. It’s not the path, it’s the place. Here she is already thinking Church isgoing to die.”For a moment Louis had the crazy impression that he was still talking to Ellie; she had simply donnedstilts, one of her mother’s dresses, and a very clever, very realistic Rachel mask. Even the expressionwas the same—set and a bit sullen on top, but wounded beneath.He groped, because suddenly the issue seemed large to him, not a thing to be simply passed over indeference to that mystery . . . or that aloneness. He groped because it seemed to him that she wasmissing something so large it nearly filled the landscape, and you couldn’t do that unless you werefile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (35 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM