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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmAnd that voice merged with the voice of his mother, who had lied to Louis Creed about sex at four buttold him the truth about death at twelve, when his cousin Ruthie had been killed in a stupid car accident.She had been crushed in her father’s car by a kid who had found the keys in a Public Works Departmentpayloader and decided to take it for a cruise and then found out he didn’t know how to stop it. The kidsuffered only minor cuts and contusions; his Uncle Carl’s Fairlane was demolished. She can’t be dead,he had replied in answer to his mother’s bald statement. He had heard the words, but he couldn’t seem toget the sense of them. What do you mean, she’s dead? What are you talking about? And then, as anafterthought: Who’s going to bury her? For although Ruthie’s father, Louis’s uncle, was an undertaker,he couldn’t imagine that Uncle Carl would possibly be the one to do it. In his confusion and mountingfear, he had seized upon this as the most important question. It was a genuine conundrum, like who cutthe town barber’s hair.I imagine that Donny Donahue will do it, his mother replied. Her eyes were red-rimmed; most of all shehad looked tired. His mother had looked almost ill with weariness.He’s your uncle’s best pal in the business. Oh, but Louis.Sweet little Ruthie. . . I can’t stand to think she suffered.pray with me. will you, Louis? Pray with me for Ruthie. I need you to help me.So they had gotten down on their knees in the kitchen, he and his mother, and they prayed, and it wasthe praying that finally brought it home to him; if his mother was praying for Ruthie Creed’s soul, then itmeant that her body was gone. Before his closed eyes rose a terrible image of Ruthie comingto his thirteenth birthday party with her decaying eyeballs hanging on her cheeks and blue mouldgrowing in her red hair, and this image provoked not just sickening horror but an awful doomed love.He cried out in the greatest mental agony of his life, “She can’t be dead! MOMMA, SHE CAN’T BEDEAD—I LOVE HER!"And his mother’s reply, her voice flat and yet full of images: dead fields under a November sky,scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot,decomposition, dust:She is, my darling. I’m sorry, but she is. Ruthie is gone.Louis shuddered, thinking, Dead is dead—what else do you need?Suddenly Louis knew what it was he had forgotten to do, why he was still awake on this night before thefirst day of his new job, hashing over old griefs.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (44 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM