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  He opened the closet door, thinking

  (Zelda it's Zelda in the closet her black tongue puffing out between her lips)

  he wasn't sure what, but of course it was only Church, the cat was in the closet, and when it saw Louis it arched its back like a cat on a Halloween card. It hissed at him, its mouth partly open, revealing its needle-sharp teeth.

  "Get out of there," Louis whispered.

  Church hissed again. It did not move.

  "Get out," I said. He picked up the first thing that came to hand in the litter of Gage's toys, a bright plastic Chuggy-Chuggy-Choo-Choo which in this dim light was the maroon color of dried blood. He brandished it at Church; the cat not only stood its ground but hissed again.

  And suddenly, without even thinking, Louis threw the toy at the cat, not playing, not goofing around; he pegged the toy at the cat as hard as he could, furious at it, and scared of it too, that it should hide here in the darkened closet of his son's room and refuse to leave, as if it had a right to be there.

  The toy locomotive struck the cat dead center. Church uttered a squawk and fled, displaying its usual grace by slamming into the door and almost falling over on its way out.

  Gage stirred, muttered something, shifted position, and was still again. Louis felt a little sick. There was sweat standing out in beads on his forehead.

  "Louis?" Rachel, from downstairs, sounding alarmed. "Did Gage fall out of his crib?"

  "He's fine, honey. Church knocked over a couple of his toys."

  "Oh, all right."

  He felt--irrationally or otherwise--the way he might have felt if he had looked in on his son and found a snake crawling over him or a big rat perched on the bookshelf over Gage's crib. Of course it was irrational. But when it had hissed at him from the closet like that . . .

  (Zelda did you think Zelda did you think Oz the Gweat and Tewwible?)

  He closed Gage's closet door, sweeping a number of toys back in with its moving foot. He listened to the tiny click of the latch. After a moment's further hesitation, he turned the closet's thumbbolt.

  He went back to Gage's crib. In shifting around, the kid had kicked his two blankets down around his knees. Louis disentangled him, pulled the blankets up, and then merely stood there, watching his son, for a long time.

  PART TWO

  The Micmac Burying Ground

  When Jesus came to Bethany, he found that Lazarus had lain in the grave four days already. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she hurried to meet him.

  "Lord," she said, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But now you are here, and I know that whatever you ask of God, God will grant."

  Jesus answered her: "Your brother shall rise again."

  --JOHN'S GOSPEL (paraphrase) "Hey-ho, let's go."

  --THE RAMONES

  36

  It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls--as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself.

  Louis Creed might have harbored such thoughts if he had been thinking rationally following the funeral of his son, Gage William Creed, on the seventeenth of May, but any rational thought--or attempt at it--ceased at the funeral parlor, where a fistfight with his father-in-law (bad enough) resulted in an event even more terrible--a final bit of outrageous gothic melodrama which shattered whatever remained of Rachel's fragile self-control. That day's penny dreadful events were only complete when she was pulled, screaming, from the East Room of the Brookings-Smith Mortuary, where Gage lay in his closed coffin, and sedated in the foyer by Surrendra Hardu.

  The irony of it was that she would not have experienced that final episode at all, that extravagance of horror, one might say, if the fistfight between Louis Creed and Mr. Irwin Goldman of Dearborn had taken place at the morning visiting hours (10 to 11:30 A.M.) instead of at the afternoon visiting hours (2 to 3:30 P.M.). Rachel had not been in attendance at the morning visiting hours; she simply had not been able to come. She sat at home with Jud Crandall and Steve Masterton. Louis had no idea how he ever could have gotten through the previous forty-eight hours or so without Jud and Steve.

  It was well for Louis--well for all three of the remaining family members--that Steve had shown up as promptly as he had, because Louis was at least temporarily unable to make any kind of decision, even one so minor as giving his wife a shot to mute her deep grief. Louis hadn't even noticed that Rachel had apparently meant to go to the morning viewing in her housecoat, which she had misbuttoned. Her hair was uncombed, unwashed, tangled. Her eyes, blank brown orbits, bulged from sockets so sunken that they had almost become the eyes of a living skull. Her flesh was doughy. It hung from her face. She sat at the breakfast table that morning, munching unbuttered toast and talking in disjointed phrases that made no sense at all. At one point she had said abruptly, "About that Winnebago you want to buy, Lou--" Louis had last spoken about buying a Winnebago in 1981.

  Louis only nodded and went on eating his own breakfast. He was having a bowl of Cocoa Bears. Cocoa Bears had been one of Gage's favorite cereals, and this morning Louis wanted them. The taste of them was appalling, but he still wanted them. He was neatly turned out in his best suit--not black, he didn't have a black suit, but it was at least a deep charcoal gray. He had shaved, showered, and combed his hair. He looked fine, although he was lost in shock.

  Ellie was dressed in bluejeans and a yellow blouse. She had brought a picture to the breakfast table with her. This picture, an enlargement of a Polaroid Rachel had taken with the SX-70 Louis and the kids had given her for her last birthday, showed Gage, grinning from the depths of his Sears ski-parka, sitting on her Speedaway sled as Ellie pulled him. Rachel had caught Ellie looking back over her shoulder and smiling at Gage. Gage was grinning back at her.

  Ellie carried the picture, but she didn't talk much.

  Louis was unable to see the condition of either his wife or his daughter; he ate his breakfast and his mind replayed the accident over and over and over, except in this mind-movie the conclusion was different. In the mind-movie he was quicker, and all that happened was that Gage got a spanking for not stopping when they yelled.

  It was Steve who really saw how it was going with Rachel and with Ellie as well. He forbade Rachel to go to the morning viewing (although "viewing" was really a misnomer because of the closed coffin; if it was open, Louis thought, they'd all run screaming from the room, me included) and forbade Ellie to go at all. Rachel protested, Ellie only sat, silent and grave, with the picture of her and Gage in one hand.

  It was Steve who gave Rachel the shot she needed and who gave Ellie a teaspoon of a colorless liquid to drink. Ellie usually whined and protested about taking medicine--any kind of medicine--but she drank this silently and without a grimace. By ten o'clock that morning she was asleep in her bed (the picture of her and Gage still held in her hand) and Rachel was sitting in front of the television set, watching "Wheel of Fortune." Her responses to Steve's questions were slow. She was stoned, but her face had lost that thoughtful look of madness which had so worried--and frightened--the P.A. when he came in that morning at a quarter past eight.

  Jud, of course, had made all the arrangements. He made them with the same calm efficiency that he had made them for his wife three months before. But it
was Steve Masterton who took Louis aside just before Louis left for the funeral home.

  "I'll see that she's there this afternoon, if she seems capable of handling it," he told Louis.

  "Okay."

  "The shot will have worn off by then. Your friend Mr. Crandall says he'll stay with Ellie during the afternoon viewing hours--"

  "Right."

  "--and play Monopoly or something with her--"

  "Uh-huh."

  "But--"

  "Right."

  Steve stopped. They were standing in the garage, Church's stomping ground, the place where he brought his dead birds and dead rats. The ones that Louis owned. Outside was May sunshine, and a robin bopped across the head of the driveway, as if it had important business somewhere. Maybe it did.

  "Louis," Steve said, "you've got to get hold of yourself."

  Louis looked at Steve, politely questioning. Not much of what Steve had said had gotten through--he had been thinking that if he had been a little quicker he could have saved his son's life--but a little of this last registered.

  "I don't think you've noticed," Steve said, "but Ellie isn't vocalizing. And Rachel has had such a bad shock that her very conception of time seems to have been twisted out of shape."

  "Right!" Louis said. More force in reply seemed to be indicated here. He wasn't sure why.

  Steve put a hand on Louis's shoulder. "Lou," he said, "they need you more now than they ever have in their life. More than they ever will again, maybe. Please, man . . . I can give your wife a shot, but . . . you . . . see, Louis, you gotta . . . Oh, Christ, Louis, what a cock-knocking, mother-fucking mess this is!"

  Louis saw with something like alarm that Steve was starting to cry. "Sure," he said, and in his mind he saw Gage running across the lawn toward the road. They were yelling at Gage to come back, but he wouldn't--lately the game had been to run away from Mommy-Daddy--and then they were chasing him, Louis quickly outdistancing Rachel, but Gage had a big lead, Gage was laughing, Gage was running away from Daddy--that was the game--and Louis was closing the distance but too slowly, Gage was running down the mild slope of the lawn now to the verge of Route 15, and Louis prayed to God that Gage would fall down--when little kids ran fast, they almost always fell down because a person's control over his legs didn't get really cool until he was maybe seven or eight. Louis prayed to God that Gage would fall down, fall down, yes, fall down bloody his nose crack his skull need stitches whatever, because now he could hear the drone of a truck coming toward them, one of those big ten-wheelers that went back and forth endlessly between Bangor and the Orinco plant in Bucksport, and he had screamed Gage's name then, and he believed that Gage had heard him and tried to stop. Gage seemed to realize that the game was over, that your parents didn't scream at you when it was just a game, and he had tried to put on the brakes, and by then the sound of the truck was very loud, the sound of it filled the world. It was thundering. Louis had thrown himself forward in a long flying tackle, his shadow tracking the ground beneath him as the shadow of the Vulture had tracked the white late-winter grass of Mrs. Vinton's field that day in March, and he believed that the tips of his fingers had actually brushed the back of the light jacket Gage had been wearing, and then Gage's forward motion had carried him out into the road, and the truck had been thunder, the truck had been sunlight on high chrome, the truck had been the deep-throated, shrieking bellow of an air horn, and that had been Saturday, that had been three days ago.

  "I'm okay," he said to Steve. "I ought to go now."

  "If you can get yourself together and help them," Steve said, swiping at his eyes with the arm of his jacket, "you'll be helping yourself too. The three of you have got to get through it together, Louis. That's the only way. That's all anybody knows."

  "That's right," Louis agreed, and in his mind it all started to happen again, only this time he leaped two feet farther right at the end, and snagged the back of Gage's jacket, and none of this was happening.

  *

  At the time the scene in the East Room happened, Ellie was pushing her Monopoly marker aimlessly--and silently--around the board with Jud Crandall. She shook the dice with one hand and clutched the Polaroid of her pulling Gage on her Speedaway sled with the other.

  Steve Masterton had decided it would be all right for Rachel to attend the afternoon viewing--in light of later developments, it was a decision he came to deeply regret.

  The Goldmans had flown into Bangor that morning and were staying at the Holiday Inn. Her father had called four times by noon, and Steve had to be increasingly firm--almost threatening, by call four--with the old man. Irwin Goldman wanted to come out and not all the dogs of hell could keep him from his daughter in her time of need, he said. Steve responded that Rachel needed this time before going to the funeral parlor to get over as much of her initial shock as she could. He didn't know about all the dogs of hell, he said, but he knew one Swedish-American physician's assistant that had no intention of allowing anyone into the Creed home until Rachel had appeared in public, of her own volition. After the viewing in the afternoon, Steve said, he would be more than happy to let the relatives' support system take over. Until then, he wanted her left alone.

  The old man swore at him in Yiddish and banged the phone down at his end, breaking the connection. Steve waited to see if Goldman would indeed show up, but Goldman had apparently decided to wait. By noon Rachel did seem a little better. She was at least aware of the time frame she was in, and she had gone out to the kitchen to see if there were sandwich makings or anything for after. People would probably want to come back to the house after, wouldn't they? she asked Steve.

  Steve nodded.

  There was no bologna or cold roast beef, but there was a Butterball turkey in the freezer, and she put it on the drainboard to thaw. Steve looked into the kitchen a few minutes later and saw her standing by the sink, looking fixedly at the turkey on the drainboard and weeping.

  "Rachel?"

  She looked toward Steve. "Gage really liked these. He especially liked the white meat. It was just occurring to me that he was never going to eat another Butterball turkey."

  Steve sent her upstairs to dress--the final test of her ability to cope, really--and when she came down wearing a simple black dress belted at the waist and carrying a small black clutch bag (an evening bag, really), Steve decided she was all right, and Jud concurred.

  Steve drove her into town. He stood with Surrendra Hardu in the lobby of the East Room and watched Rachel drift down the aisle toward the flower-buried coffin like a wraith.

  "How is it going, Steve?" Surrendra asked quietly.

  "Going fucking terrible," Steve said in a low, harsh voice. "How did you think it was going?"

  "I thought it was probably going fucking terrible," Surrendra said and sighed.

  *

  The trouble really began at the morning viewing, when Irwin Goldman refused to shake hands with his son-in-law.

  The sight of so many friends and relatives had actually forced Louis out of the web of shock a little, had forced him to notice what was going on and be outward. He had reached that stage of malleable grief that funeral directors are so used to handling and turning to its best advantage. Louis was moved around like a counter in a Parcheesi game.

  Outside the East Room was a small foyer where people could smoke and sit in overstuffed easy chairs. The chairs looked as if they might have come directly from a distress sale at some old English men's club that had gone broke. Beside the door leading into the viewing room was a small easel, black metal chased with gold, and on this easel was a small sign which said simply GAGE WILLIAM CREED. If you went across this spacious white building that looked misleadingly like a comfortable old house, you came to an identical foyer, this one outside the West Room, where the sign on the easel read ALBERTA BURNHAM NEDEAU. At the back of the house was the Riverfront Room. The easel to the left of the door between the foyer and this room was blank; it was not in use on this Tuesday morning. Downstairs was the coff
in showroom, each model lit by a baby spotlight mounted on the ceiling. If you looked up--Louis had, and the funeral director had frowned severely at him--it looked as if there were a lot of strange animals roosting up there.

  Jud had come with him on Sunday, the day after Gage had died, to pick out a coffin. They had gone downstairs, and instead of immediately turning right into the coffin showroom, Louis, dazed, had continued straight on down the hallway toward a plain white swinging door, the sort you see communicating between restaurant dining rooms and the kitchen. Both Jud and the funeral director had said quickly and simultaneously, "Not that way," and Louis had followed them away from that swinging door obediently. He knew what was behind that door though. His uncle had been an undertaker.

  The East Room was furnished with neat rows of folding chairs--the expensive ones with plushy seats and backs. At the front, in an area that seemed a combination nave and bower, was Gage's coffin. Louis had picked the American Casket Company's rosewood model--Eternal Rest, it was called. It was lined with plushy pink silk. The mortician agreed that it was really a beautiful coffin and apologized that he did not have one with a blue lining. Louis responded that he and Rachel had never made such distinctions. The mortician had nodded. The mortician asked Louis if he had thought about how he would defray the expenses of Gage's funeral. If not, he said, he could take Louis into his office and quickly go over three of their more popular plans--

  In Louis's mind, an announcer suddenly spoke up cheerfully: I got my kid's coffin free, for Raleigh coupons!

  Feeling like a creature in a dream, he said, "I'm going to pay for everything with my MasterCard."

  "Fine," the mortician said.

  The coffin was no more than four feet long--a dwarf coffin. Nonetheless its price was slightly over six hundred dollars. Louis supposed it rested on trestles, but the flowers made it difficult to see, and he hadn't wanted to go too close. The smell of all those flowers made him want to gag.