Pet Sematary Read Online Free Page A

She’s a good old girl, my Norma.” There was a great and simple weight of affection in his voice. Out on Route 15, a tanker truck droned by, one so big and long that for a moment Louis couldn’t see his house across the road. Written on the side, just visible in the last light, was the word ORINCO .
    â€œOne hell of a big truck,” Louis commented.
    â€œOrinco’s near Orrington,” Crandall said. “Chemical fertilizer fact’ry. They come and go, all right. And the oil tankers, and the dump trucks, and the people who go to work in Bangor or Brewer and come home at night.” He shook his head. “That’s the one thing about Ludlow I don’t like anymore. That frigging road. No peace from it. They go all day and all night. Wake Norma up sometimes. Hell, wake me up sometimes, and I sleep like a goddam log.”
    Louis, who thought this strange Maine landscape almost eerily quiet after the constant roar of Chicago, only nodded his head.
    â€œOne day soon the Arabs will pull the plug, and they’ll be able to grow African violets right down the yellow line,” Crandall said.
    â€œYou might be right.” Louis tilted his can back and was surprised to find it empty.
    Crandall laughed. “You just grab yourself one to grow on, Doc.”
    Louis hesitated and then said, “All right, but just one more. I have to be getting back.”
    â€œSure you do. Ain’t moving a bitch?”
    â€œIt is,” Louis agreed, and then for a time they were silent. The silence was a comfortable one, as if theyhad known each other for a long time. This was a feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced until now. He felt ashamed of his casual thoughts about free medical advice earlier.
    On the road a semi roared by, its running lights twinkling like earthstars.
    â€œThat’s one mean road, all right,” Crandall repeated thoughtfully, almost vaguely, and then turned to Louis. There was a peculiar little smile on his seamed mouth. He poked a Chesterfield into one corner of the smile and popped a match with his thumbnail. “You remember the path there that your little girl commented on?”
    For a moment Louis didn’t; Ellie had commented on a whole catalogue of things before finally collapsing for the night. Then he did remember. That wide mown patch winding up through the copse of trees and over the hill.
    â€œYes, I do. You promised to tell her about it sometime.”
    â€œI did, and I will,” Crandall said. “That path goes up into the woods about a mile and a half. The local kids around Route 15 and Middle Drive keep it nice because they use it. Kids come and go . . . there’s a lot more moving around than there used to be when I was a boy; then you picked a place out and stuck to it. But they seem to tell each other, and every spring a bunch of them mows that path. They keep it nice all the summer long. Not all of the adults in town know it’s there—a lot of them do, of course, but not all, not by a long chalk—but all of the kids do. I’d bet on it.”
    â€œKnow what’s there?”
    â€œThe pet cemetery,” Crandall said.
    â€œPet cemetery,” Louis repeated, bemused.
    â€œIt’s not as odd as it prob’ly sounds,” Crandall said, smoking and rocking. “It’s the road. It uses up a lot of animals, that road does. Dogs and cats, mostly, but that ain’t all. One of those big Orinco trucks run down the pet raccoon the Ryder children used to keep. That was back—Christ, must have been in ’73, maybe earlier. Before the state made keeping a coon or even a denatured skunk illegal, anyway.”
    â€œWhy did they do that?”
    â€œRabies,” Crandall said. “Lot of rabies in Maine now. There was a big old St. Bernard went rabid downstate a couple of years ago and killed four people. That was a hell of a thing. Dog