Pet Sematary by Stephen King

If you’re a horror author, you prefer to ignore the first rule they teach in MFA programs: namely,
write from your own experience. Far better to consult your overheated imagination or, in the worst
case, your feverish nightmares. I assure you that Edgar Allan Poe didn’t want to experience "The
Premature Burial" or "The Pit and the Pendulum." Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, had no interest
in checking in at the seedy Bates Motel. H.P. Lovecraft would have gladly skipped the opportunity
for a face-to-face (face-to-mandible?) interview with Cthulhu or Azathoth.

But Stephen King actually paid a visit to the
Pet Sematary. The resulting novel—which
King later described as "the most frightening
book I’ve ever written"—drew extensively on
events and settings he encountered after
returning to his alma mater, the University of
Maine at Orono, for a guest teaching stint in the
late 1970s.

King rented a house in Orrington, a rural
community twelve miles from the University
campus. The house bordered on a busy
country road, and a neighbor warned him
about the dangers it posed to children and
pets. "That road has used up a lot of animals,"
the local shopkeeper told King, and in ominous
confirmation of this remark, the author's
daughter soon lost her cat Smucky, killed by
a passing vehicle.

But the youngsters in the area had created their
own impromptu animal graveyard a short
distance away from the King residence, in a
secluded wooded area. A sign on a tree declared
it was the "Pet Sematary"—a creepy misspelling
that the author later latched on to as the title for
his book. Here Smucky was laid to rest, along
with a homemade tombstone, prepared by King's
daughter, which read: "SMUCKY: HE WAS OBEDIENT." (To which King adds: "Smucky wasn't in
the least obedient, of course; he was a cat, for heaven’s sake.")

King describes an unnerving coda to this incident: "Our youngest son, then less than two years old,
had only learned to walk, but already he was practicing his running skills. On a day not long after
Smucky’s demise, while we were out in the neighboring yard fooling around with a kite, our toddler
took it into his head to go running toward the road." King took off after his son but, at that same
moment, could hear the sound of a truck barreling down the street in the direction of their home.
The near disaster was averted—King either caught the boy, or the toddler stumbled. "When you're
really scared, your memory often blanks out,” he later noted. “All I know for sure is that he is still
fine and well and in his young manhood." [Ted's gloss: And is also a well-known horror writer in his
own right, working under the name Joe Hill.] "But a part of my mind has never escaped from that
gruesome what if: Suppose I hadn't caught him? Or suppose he had fallen in the middle of the road
instead of on the edge of it?"

Almost every detail here found its way into King’s novel—even
Smucky and the makeshift grave marker. Yet the end result is
a book so phantasmagorical, that readers would hardly guess
that so many real-life settings and incidents went into its making.
The 'Pet Sematary' itself, as depicted in the book, is one of the
eeriest settings in the history of horror fiction, on a par with
Richard Matheson’s ‘Hell House’ or Mr. Bloch’s infamous
roadside motel. The small touches—the graves set in a spiral,
the chronological ordering of the dead pets, the broken-down
tombstones constructed from scrap materials, the peculiar or
misspelled tributes to "MARTA OUR PET RABIT" and "GEN.
PATTON (OUR! GOOD! DOG!)"—make this amateur necropolis
both palpably realistic and disturbingly unreal.

Of course, the Pet Sematary in the novel is much more than a
graveyard. The nearby land previously served as a Micmac
burial ground, and a few local residents know about strange
events that have taken place there over the years. Our hero
Louis Creed, who has settled in the area to take a job as
physician at the University’s student health center, gets an
unexpected introduction to the dark powers attached to the Micmac land when his daughter Ellie's
cat is struck and killed by a truck on the adjacent road. His neighbor Jud takes him to a hidden
place beyond the Pet Sematary, and provides instructions on how to dig a hole and set up a burial
mound for the animal. The next day, the cat returns home, resurrected from the grave—but now
with more violent tendencies, jerky and unnatural movements, and a bad smell that won’t go away
no matter how many times the animal is bathed and scrubbed.

Gradually Creed learns about the history of this area—and the handful of local residents who have
used it to bring back a beloved animal from the Great Beyond. But when Creed asks his neighbor
whether anyone has every tried to revive a dead human being in this manner, Jud grows secretive
and defensive. In a brilliant stroke, King has telegraphed the inevitable plot twist in his novel, but
in such a way as to add to the suspense and uncertainty. Usually readers lose interest when they
know what will happen in a novel, and this is especially true with horror books, which depend on
surprise for their greatest effects. Yet the opposite is the case with Pet Sematary. Readers soon
realize that a dead person will rise from this grave in this novel. But who will it be? What will they
do? And, above all, what will they tell us about their experiences in the depths of the Underworld?

Even in the hands of a lesser writer, these ingredients could
serve as fodder for a successful story, and probably a juicy
movie deal. But King is the master at extracting the maximum
impact from his plots, and works his own kind of magic in these
pages—perhaps not the same kind possessed by an ancient
Micmac burial ground, but powerful in its own way. He doesn't
just toss off cardboard characters, as do so many genre writers,
but brings them to life (okay, maybe he has some Micmac blood
in him) via incidents, details and revealing dialogue. King also
learned long ago something that many horror writers never grasp
—namely that laughter and screams can work in tandem. I could
imagine King, in an alternate universe, pursuing a career as a
humor writer, and although he only applies comedy in judicious doses here, he does so in effective
ways, sometimes to dissipate tension, at other junctures to leave the reader less prepared for the
frights ahead.

King is also a master at pacing, backstory and subplots, and though he will never put Cormac
McCarthy or Marilynne Robinson out of business as a describer of landscapes, he knows when
to linger on the scenery or call the reader’s attention to some uncanny detail. Indeed, Stephen
King rarely rushes into the main conflict in his books, and often devotes a hundred pages or
more to establishing the readers’ emotional connection to his characters. This may be the most
underrated virtue of his craft—perhaps unmentioned because it is so unfashionable in the current
day. Critics will remark on his skill in conjuring up scary scenes, but these often wouldn’t have
half the impact on the audience without the fright-free narrative that precedes them. In some
ways, King is a throwback to an earlier generation of genre writers. Just compare his careful
build-up to key moments of crisis to the usual fare nowadays in horror tales and movies.

Above all, King possesses that supreme talent for a horror writer: knowing what to leave unsaid.
Sometimes he offers explanations for the incidents in this book, but just as often he lets them
events speak for themselves. Or even remain silent, as the situation warrants. And as anyone
who has lingered in cemeteries late at night can tell you, the silence is the scariest part. That’s
why folks whistle when they walk by.

I won’t tell you how Pet Sematary ends; but trust me—there isn’t much whistling involved. Our
protagonist has been granted the rarest of powers, the ability to raise the dead. But in this instance,
the worst horror is the one you bring upon yourself by Faustian overreaching. And if other scary
tales aim to summon up the fear of the grave, King manages to show that the story of what
happens after we bury our dead can be even more gruesome. The result is a horror classic,
and one of King’s finest efforts.

Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from Basic Books.

Publication Date: July 25, 2016

This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia

My Year of Horrible Reading

Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker

Week 2:
T he Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

Week 3:
T ales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe

Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King

Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector

Week 6:
T ales
By H.P. Lovecraft

Week 7:
T he Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty

Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill

Week 9:
N ausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre

Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson

Week 11:
G host Stories of Henry James
By Henry James

Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice

Week 13:
A merican Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis

Week 14:
L ast Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann

Week 15:
G host Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James

Week 16:
R osemary's Baby
By Ira Levin

Week 17:
T he King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers

Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier

Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith

Week 21
O ff Season
by Jack Ketchum

Week 22
B ooks of Blood, Vols. 1-3
by Clive Barker

Week 23
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris

Week 24
T he Orange Eats Creeps
by Grace Krilanovich

Week 25
S trange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 26
P sycho
by Robert Bloch

Week 27
F ledgling
by Octavia E. Butler

Week 28
D emons by Daylight
by Ramsey Campbell

Week 29
T he Complete Short Stories
by Ambrose Bierce

Week 30
P et Sematary
by Stephen King