Christ, Jud, he thought, but I wish you'd kept your mouth shut.
He went to the sink and washed his hands and forearms vigorously, as if scrubbing for an operation. You do it because it gets hold of you . . . you make up reasons . . . they seem like good reasons . . . but mostly you do it because once you've been up there, it's your place, and you belong to it . . . and you make up the sweetest-smelling reasons in the world . . .
No, he couldn't blame Jud. He had gone of his own free will and he couldn't blame Jud.
He turned off the water and began to dry his hands and arms; suddenly the towel stopped moving and he stared straight ahead, looking out into the little piece of night framed in the window over the sink.
Does that mean it's my place now? That it's mine too?
No, not if I don't want it to be.
He slung the towel over the rack and went upstairs.
*
Rachel was in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, and Gage was tucked in neatly beside her. She looked at Louis apologetically. "Would you mind, hon? Just for tonight? I'd feel better having him with me. He's so hot."
"No," Louis said. "That's fine. I'll put out the hide-a-bed downstairs."
"You really don't mind?"
"No. It won't hurt Gage, and it'll make you feel better." He paused, then smiled. "You're going to pick up his virus, though. That comes almost guaranteed. I don't suppose that changes your mind, does it?"
She smiled back and shook her head. "What was Ellie fussing about?"
"Church. She wanted me to take Church away."
"Ellie wanted Church taken away? That's a switch."
"Yeah, it is," Louis agreed and then added, "She said he smelled bad, and I did think he was a little fragrant. Maybe he rolled in a pile of someone's mulch, or something."
"That's too bad," Rachel said, rolling over on her side. "I really think Ellie missed Church as much as she missed you."
"Uh-huh," Louis said. He bent and kissed her mouth softly. "Go to sleep, Rachel."
"I love you, Lou. I'm glad to be home. And I'm sorry about the couch."
"It's okay," Louis said, and turned out the light.
*
Downstairs, he stacked the couch cushions, pulled out the hide-a-bed, and tried to prepare himself mentally for a night of having the rod under the thin mattress dig into the small of his back. The bed was sheeted, at least; he wouldn't have to make it up from scratch. Louis got two blankets from the top shelf in the front hall closet and spread them on the bed. He began to undress, then paused.
You think Church is in again? Fine. Take a walk around and have a look. As you told Rachel, it won't hurt. May even help. And checking to make sure all the doors are on the latch won't even catch you a virus.
He took a deliberate tour of the entire downstairs, checking the locks on doors and windows. He had done everything right the first time, and Church was nowhere to be seen.
"There," he said. "Let's see you get in tonight, you dumb cat." He followed this with a mental wish that Church would freeze its balls off. Except that Church of course no longer had any.
He switched off the lights and got into bed. The rod started to press into his back almost immediately, and Louis was thinking he would be awake half the night when he fell asleep. He fell asleep resting uncomfortably on his side in the hide-a-bed, but when he woke up he was . . .
. . . in the burying ground beyond the Pet Sematary again. This time he was alone. He had killed Church himself this time and then had decided for some reason to bring him back to life a second time. God knew why; Louis didn't. He had buried Church deeper this time, though, and Church couldn't dig his way out. Louis could hear the cat crying somewhere under the earth, making a sound like a weeping child. The sound came up through the pores of the ground, through its stony flesh--the sound and the smell, that awful sickish-sweet smell of rot and decay. Just breathing it in made his chest feel heavy, as if a weight was on it.
The crying . . . the crying . . .
. . . the crying was still going on . . .
. . . and the weight was still on his chest.
"Louis!" It was Rachel and she sounded alarmed. "Louis can you come?"
She sounded more than alarmed; she sounded scared, and the crying had a choked, desperate quality to it. It was Gage.
He opened his eyes and stared into Church's greenish-yellow eyes. They were less than four inches from his own. The cat was on his chest, neatly curled up there like something from the old wives' tale of breath-stealing. The stink came off it in slow, noxious waves. It was purring.
Louis uttered a cry of disgust and surprise. He shot both hands out in a primitive warding-off gesture. Church thumped off the bed, landed on its side, and walked away in that stumbling lurch.
Jesus! Jesus! It was on me! Oh God, it was right on me!
His disgust could not be greater if he had awakened to find a spider in his mouth. For a moment he thought he was going to throw up.
"Louis!"
He pushed the blankets back and stumbled to the stairs. Faint light spilled from their bedroom. Rachel was standing at the head of the stairs in her nightgown.
"Louis, he's vomiting again . . . choking on it . . . I'm scared."
"I'm here," he said and came up to her, thinking: It got in. Somehow it got in. From the cellar, probably. Maybe there's a broken cellar window. In fact there must be a broken window down there. I'll check it tomorrow when I get home. Hell, before I go to work. I'll--
Gage stopped crying and begun to make an ugly, gargling choking sound.
"Louis!" Rachel screamed.
Louis moved fast. Gage was on his side and vomit was trickling out of his mouth onto an old towel Rachel had spread beside him. He was vomiting, yes, but not enough. Most of it was inside, and Gage was blushing with the onset of asphyxiation.
Louis grabbed the boy under the arms, aware in a distant way of how hot his son's armpits were under the Dr. Denton suit, and put him up on his shoulder as if to burp him. Then Louis snapped himself backward, jerking Gage with him. Gage's neck whiplashed. He uttered a loud bark that was not quite a belch, and an amazing flag of almost solid vomit flew from his mouth and spattered on the floor and the dresser. Gage began to cry again, a solid, bawling sound that was music to Louis's ears. To cry like that you had to be getting an unlimited supply of oxygen.
Rachel's knees buckled and she collapsed onto the bed, head supported in her hands. She was shaking violently. "He almost died, didn't he, Louis? He almost ch-ch-ch--oh my God--"
Louis walked around the room with his son in his arms. Gage's cries were tapering off to whimperings; he was already almost asleep again.
"The chances are fifty to one he would have cleared it himself, Rachel. I just gave him a hand."
"But he was close," she said. She looked up at him, and her white-ringed eyes were stunned and unbelieving. "Louis, he was so close."
Suddenly he remembered her shouting at him in the sunny kitchen. He's not going to die, no one is going to die around here . . .
"Honey," Louis said, "we're all close. All the time."
*
It was milk that had almost surely caused the fresh round of vomiting. Gage had awakened around midnight, she said, an hour or so after Louis had gone to sleep, with his "hungry cry," and Rachel had gotten him a bottle. She had drowsed off again herself while he was still taking it. About an hour later, the choking spell began.
No more milk, Louis said, and Rachel had agreed, almost humbly. No more milk.
Louis got back downstairs at around a quarter of two and spent fifteen minutes hunting up the cat. During his search, he found the door which communicated between the kitchen and basement standing ajar, as he suspected he would. He remembered his mother telling him about a cat that had gotten quite good at pawing open old-fashioned latches, such as the one on their cellar door. The cat would just climb the edge of the door, she'd said, and pat the thumb plate of the latch with its paw until the door opened.
A cute enough trick, Louis thought, but not one he intended to allow Church to practice often. There was, after all, a lock on the cellar door, too. He found Church dozing under the stove and tossed it out the front door without ceremony. On his way back to the hide-a-bed, he closed the cellar door again.
And this time shot the bolt.
29
In the morning, Gage's temperature was almost normal. His cheeks were chapped, but otherwise he was bright-eyed and full of beans. All at once, in the course of a week it seemed, his meaningless gabble had turned into a slew of words; he would imitate almost anything you said. What Ellie wanted him to say was "shit."
"Say shit, Gage," Ellie said over her oatmeal.
"Shit-Gage," Gage responded agreeably over his own cereal. Louis allowed the cereal on condition that Gage eat it with only a little sugar. And, as usual, Gage seemed to be shampooing with it rather than actually eating it.
Ellie dissolved into giggles.
"Say farts, Gage," she said.
"Farz-Gage," Gage said, grinning through the oatmeal spread across his face. "Farz-n-shit."
Ellie and Louis broke up. It was impossible not to.
Rachel was not so amused. "That's enough vulgar talk for one morning, I think," she said, handing Louis his eggs.
"Shit-n-farz-n-farz-n-shit," Gage sang cheerily, and Ellie hid her giggles in her hands. Rachel's mouth twitched a little, and Louis thought she was looking a hundred percent better in spite of her broken rest. A lot of it was relief, Louis supposed. Gage was better and she was home.
"Don't say that, Gage," Rachel said.
"Pretty," Gage said as a change of pace and threw up all the cereal he had eaten into his bowl.
"Oh, gross-OUT!" Ellie screamed and fled the table.
Louis broke up completely then. He couldn't help it. He laughed until he was crying and cried until he was laughing again. Rachel and Gage stared at him as if he had gone crazy.
No, Louis could have told them. I've been crazy, but I think I'm going to be all right now. I really think I am.
He didn't know if it was over or not, but it felt over; perhaps that would be enough.
And for a while, at least, it was.
30
Gage's virus hung on for a week, then cleared up. A week later he came down with a bout of bronchitis. Ellie also caught this and then Rachel; during the period before Christmas, the three of them went around hacking like very old and wheezy hunting dogs. Louis didn't catch it, and Rachel seemed to hold this against him.
The final week of classes at the university was a hectic one for Louis, Steve, Surrendra, and Charlton. There was no flu--at least not yet--but plenty of bronchitis and several cases of mononucleosis and walking pneumonia. Two days before classes broke for Christmas, six moaning, drunken fraternity boys were brought in by their concerned friends. There were a few moments of confusion gruesomely reminiscent of the Pascow affair. All six of the damned fools had crammed onto one medium-length toboggan (the sixth had actually been sitting on the shoulders of the tail man, from what Louis could piece together) and had set off to ride the toboggan down the hill above the steam plant. Hilarious. Except that after gaining a lot of speed, the toboggan had wandered off course and struck one of the Civil War cannons. The score was two broken arms, a broken wrist, a total of seven broken ribs, a concussion, plus contusions far too numerous to count. Only the boy riding on the shoulders of the tail-ender had escaped completely unscathed. When the toboggan hit the cannon, this fortunate soul flew over it and landed headfirst in a snowbank. Cleaning up the human wreckage hadn't been fun, and Louis had scored all of the boys liberally with his tongue as he stitched and bandaged and stared into pupils, but telling Rachel about it later, he had again laughed until he cried. Rachel had looked at him strangely, not understanding what was so funny, and Louis couldn't tell her that it had been a stupid accident, and people had been hurt, but they would all walk away from it. His laughter was partly relief, but it was partly triumph too--won one today, Louis.
The cases of bronchitis in his own family began to clear up around the time that Ellie's school broke for the holidays on December 16, and the four of them settled down to spend a happy and old-fashioned country Christmas. The house in North Ludlow, which had seemed so strange on that day in August when they pulled into the driveway (strange and even hostile, what with Ellie cutting herself out back and Gage getting stung by a bee at almost the same time), had never seemed more like home.
After the kids were finally asleep on Christmas Eve, Louis and Rachel stole downstairs from the attic like thieves, their arms full of brightly colored boxes--a set of Matchbox racers for Gage, who had recently discovered the joys of toy cars, Barbie and Ken dolls for Ellie, a Turn 'n' Go, an oversized trike, doll clothes, a play oven with a light bulb inside, other stuff.
The two of them sat side by side in the glow of lights from the tree, fussing the stuff together. Rachel in a pair of silk lounging pajamas, Louis in his robe. He could not remember a more pleasant evening. There was a fire in the fireplace, and every now and then one or the other of them would rise and throw in another chunk of split birch.
Winston Churchill brushed by Louis once, and he pushed the cat away with an almost absent feeling of distaste--that smell. Later he saw Church try to settle down next to Rachel's leg, and Rachel also gave it a push and an impatient "Scat!" A moment later Louis saw his wife rubbing her palm on one silk-clad thigh, the way you sometimes do when you feel you might have touched something nasty or germy. He didn't think Rachel was even aware she was doing it.
Church ambled over to the brick hearth and collapsed in front of the fire gracelessly. The cat had no grace at all now, it seemed; it had lost it all on that night Louis rarely allowed himself to think about. And Church had lost something else as well. Louis had been aware of it, but it had taken him a full month to pinpoint it exactly. The cat never purred anymore, and it used to have one of the loudest motors going, particularly when Church was sleeping. There had been nights when Louis had had to get up and close Ellie's door so he could get to sleep himself.
Now the cat slept like a stone. Like the dead.
No, he reminded himself, there was one exception. The night he had awakened on the hide-a-bed with Church curled up on his chest like a stinking blanket . . . Church had been purring that night. It had been making some sound, anyway.
But as Jud Crandall had known--or guessed--it had not been all bad. Louis found a broken window down-cellar behind the furnace, and when the glazier fixed it, he had saved them yea bucks in wasted heating oil. For calling his attention to the broken pane, which he might not have discovered for weeks--months, maybe--he supposed he even owed Church a vote of thanks.
Ellie no longer wanted Church to sleep with her, that was true, but sometimes when she was watching TV, she would let the cat hop up on her lap and go to sleep. But just as often, he thought, hunting through the bag of plastic widgets that were supposed to hold Ellie's Bat-Cycle together, she would push him down after a few minutes, saying, "Go on, Church, you stink." She fed him regularly and with love, and even Gage was not above giving old Church an occasional tail tug . . . more in the spirit of friendliness than in one of meanness, Louis was convinced; he was like a tiny monk yanking a furry bell rope. At these times Church would crawl lackadaisically under one of the radiators where Gage couldn't get him.
We might have noticed more differences with a dog, Louis thought, but cats are such goddamn independent animals anyway. Independent and odd. Fey even. It didn't surprise him that the old Egyptian queens and pharaohs had wanted their cats mummified and popped into their triangular tombs with them in order to serve as spirit guides in the next world. Cats were weird.
"How you doing with that Bat-Cycle, Chief?"
He held out the finished product. "Ta-da!"
Rachel pointed at the bag, which still had three or four plastic widgets in it. "What are those?"
"Spares," Louis said, smiling guiltily.
"You better hope they're spares. The kid will break her rotten little neck."
"That comes later," Louis said maliciously. "When she's twelve and showing off on her new skateboard."
She groaned. "Come on, Doc, have a heart!"
Louis stood up, put his hands on the small of his back, and twisted his torso. His spine crackled. "That's all the toys."
"And they're all together. Remember last year?" She giggled and Louis smiled. Last year seemingly everything they'd gotten had to be assembled, and they'd been up until almost four o'clock Christmas morning, both of them finishing grouchy and out of sorts. And by midafternoon of Christmas, Ellie had decided the boxes were more fun than the toys.
"Gross-OUT!" Louis said, imitating Ellie.
"Well, come on to bed," Rachel said, "and I'll give you a present early."
"Woman," Louis said, drawing himself up to his full height, "that is mine by right."
"Don't you wish," she said and laughed through her hands. In that moment she looked amazingly like Ellie . . . and like Gage.
"Just a minute," he said. "There's one other thing I gotta do."
He hurried into the front hall closet and brought back one of his boots. He removed the fire screen from in front of the dying fire.
"Louis, what are you--"
"You'll see."
On the left side of the hearth the fire was out and there was a thick bed of fluffy gray ashes. Louis stamped the boot into them, leaving a deep track. Then he tromped the boot down on the outer bricks, using it like a big rubber stamp.
"There," he said, after he had put the boot away in the closet again. "You like?"
Rachel was giggling again. "Louis, Ellie's going to go nuts."
During the last two weeks of school, Ellie had picked up a disquieting rumor around kindergarten, to wit, that Santa Claus was really parents. This idea had been reinforced by a rather skinny Santa at the Bangor Mall, whom Ellie had glimpsed in the Deering Ice Cream Parlor a few days ago. Santa had been sitting on a counter stool, his beard pulled to one side so he could eat a cheeseburger. This had troubled Ellie mightily (it seemed to be the cheeseburger, somehow, even more than the false beard), in spite of Rachel's assurances that the department store and Salvation Army Santas were really "helpers," sent out by the real Santa, who was far too busy completing inventory and reading children's last-minute letters up north to be boogying around the world on public relations jaunts.