Vaguely, he remembered arriving at the Ludlow house, tense, tired, and more than a little scared, and having some fantasy about just driving down to Orlando and hiring on as a medic at Disney World. Maybe that wasn’t so farfetched after all.
He saw himself, dressed in white, resuscitating a pregnant woman who had foolishly gone on the Magic Mountain ride and had fainted. Stand back, stand back, give her some air, he heard himself saying, and the woman opened her eyes and smiled gratefully at him.
As his mind spun out this not disagreeable fantasy, Louis fell asleep. He slept as his daughter awoke in an airplane somewhere above Niagara Falls, screaming from a nightmare of clutching hands and stupid yet merciless eyes; he slept as the stewardess rushed down the aisle to see what was wrong; he slept as Rachel, totally unnerved, tried to soothe her; he slept as Ellie cried over and over again: It’s Gage! Mommy! It’s Gage! it’s Gage! Gage is alive! Gage has got the knife from Daddy’s bag! Don’t let him get me! Don’t let him get Daddy!
He slept as Ellie quieted at last and lay shuddering against her mother’s breast, her eyes wide and tearless, and as Dory Goldman thought what an awful thing all of this had been for Eileen, and how much she reminded Dory of Rachel after Zelda had died.
He slept and woke up at a quarter past five, with the afternoon light beginning to slant down toward the coming night.
Wild work, he thought stupidly and got up.
45
By the time United Airlines flight 419 touched down at O’Hare Airport and offloaded its passengers at ten minutes past three, central standard time, Ellie Creed was in a state of low hysteria, and Rachel was very frightened.
If you touched Ellie casually on the shoulder, she jumped and stared around at you with big walleyes, and her whole body quivered steadily and without letup.
It was as if she were full of electricity. The nightmare on the airplane had been bad enough, but this… Rachel simply didn’t know how to cope with it.
Going into the terminal, Ellie tripped over her own feet and fell down. She did not get up but merely lay there on the carpet with people passing around her (or looking down at her with that mildly sympathetic but disconnected glance of people who are in transit and cannot be bothered) until Rachel picked her up in her arms.
“Ellie, what’s wrong with you?” Rachel asked.
But Ellie would not answer. They moved across the lobby toward the luggage carousels, and Rachel saw her mother and father waiting there for them. She waved at them with her free hand, and they came over.
“They told us not to go to the gate and wait for you,” Dory said, “so we thought… Rachel? How’s Eileen?”
“Not good.”
“Is there a ladies’ room, Mommy? I’m going to throw up.”
“Oh, God,” Rachel said despairingly and took her by the hand. There was a ladies’ room across the lobby, and she led Ellie toward it quickly.
“Rachel, shall I corner’ Dory called.
“No, get the luggage, you know what it looks like. We’re okay.”
Mercifully the ladies’ room was deserted. Rachel led Ellie to one of the stalls, fumbling in her purse for a dime, and then she saw-thank God-that the locks on three of them were broken. Over one broken lock, someone had written in grease pencil: SIR JOHN CRAPPER WAS A SEXIST PIG!
Rachel pulled the door open quickly; Ellie was now moaning and holding her stomach. She retched twice, but there was no vomiting; they were the dry heaves of total nervous exhaustion.
When Ellie told her she felt a little better, Rachel took her over to the basins and washed her daughter’s face. Ellie was wretchedly white, and there were circles under her eyes.
“Ellie, what is wrong? Can’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she said. “But I knew something was wrong ever since Daddy told me about the trip. Because something was wrong with him.”
Louis, what are you hiding? You were hiding something. I could see it; even Ellie could see it.
It occurred to her that she had also been nervous all day, as though waiting for a blow to fall. She felt the way she did in the two or three days before her period, tense and on edge, ready to laugh or cry or get a headache that would come bulleting through like a fast express, there and then gone three hours later.
“What?” she said now to Ellie’s reflection in the mirror. “Honey, what could be wrong with Daddy?”
“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “It was the dream. Something about Gage. Or maybe it was Church. I don’t remember. I don’t know.”
“Ellie, what was your dream?”
“I dreamed I was in the Pet Sematary,” Ellie said. “Paxcow took me to the Pet Sematary and said Daddy was going to go there and something terrible was going to happen.”
“Paxcow?” A bolt of terror both sharp and yet undefined struck her. What was that name, and why did it seem familiar? It seemed that she had heard that name-or one like it-but she could not for the life of her remember where. “You dreamed someone named Paxcow took you to the Pet Sematary?”
“Yes, that’s what he said his name was. And-” Her eyes suddenly widened.
“Do you remember something else?”
“He said that he was sent to warn but that he couldn’t interfere. He said that he was… I don’t know… that he was near Daddy because they were together when his soul was dis-dis-I can’t remember!” she wailed.
“Honey,” Rachel said, “I think you dreamed about the Pet Sematary because you’re still thinking about Gage. And I’m sure Daddy is fine. Do you feel any better now?”
“No,” Ellie whispered. “Mommy, I’m scared. Aren’t you scared?”
“Huh-uh,” Rachel said, with a brisk little shake of her head and a smile-but she was, she was scared; and that name, Fax-cow, haunted her with its familiarity.
She felt she had heard it in some dreadful context months or even years ago, and that nervy feeling would not leave her.
She felt something-something pregnant, swollen, and waiting to burst. Something terrible that needed to be averted. But what? What?
“I’m sure everything is fine,” she told Ellie. “Want to go back to Grandma and Grandda?”
“I guess so,” Ellie said listlessly.
A Puerto Rican woman led her very young son into the ladies’, scolding him. A large wet stain had spread on the crotch of the little boy’s Bermudas and Rachel found herself reminded of Gage with a kind of paralyzing poignancy. This fresh sorrow was like novocaine, smothering her jitters.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll call Daddy from Grandda’s house.”
“He was wearing shorts,” Ellie said suddenly, looking back at the little boy.
“Who was, honey?”
“Paxcow,” Ellie said. “He was wearing red shorts in my dream.
That brought the name momentarily into focus, and Rachel felt that knee-weakening fear again… then it danced away.
They could not get close to the luggage carousel; Rachel could just see the top of her father’s hat, the one with the feather. Dory Goldman was holding two seats against the wall for them and waving. Rachel brought Ellie over.
“Are you feeling any better, dear?” Dory asked.
“A little bit,” Ellie said. “Mommy-”
She turned to Rachel and broke off. Rachel was sitting bolt upright, her hand clapped to her mouth, her face white. She had it. It had suddenly gone through with a terrible thud. Of course she should have known at once, but she had tried to put it out of her mind. Of course.
“Mommy?”
Rachel turned slowly to her daughter, and Ellie could hear the tendons in her neck creak. She took her hand away from her mouth.
“Did the man in your dream tell you his first name, Eileen?”
“Mommy, are you all-”
“Did the man in your dream tell you his first name?”
Dory was looking at her daughter and granddaughter as if they might have both gone crazy.
“Yes, but I can’t remember… Mommy, you’re hurrrrting me-”
Rachel looked down and saw that her free hand was clamped around Ellie’s lower forearm like a manacle.
“Was it Victor?”
Ellie drew sharp breath. “Yes, Victor! He said his name was Victor! Mommy, did you dream of him too?”
“Not Paxcow,” Rachel said. “Pascow.”
“That’s what I said. Paxcow.”
“Rachel, what’s wrong?” Dory said. She took Rachel’s free hand and winced at its chill. “And what’s wrong with Eileen?”
“It’s not Eileen,” Rachel said. “It’s Louis, I think. Something is wrong with Louis. Or something is going to be wrong. Sit with Ellie, Mom. I want to call home.”
She got up and crossed to the telephones, digging in her purse for a quarter.
She made the call collect, but there was no one to accept the charges. The phone simply rang.
“Will you try your call later?” the operator asked her.
“Yes,” Rachel said and hung up.
She stood there, staring at the phone.
He said that he was sent to warn but that he couldn’t interfere. He said that he was… that he was near Daddy because they were together when his soul was dis-dis-I can’t remember!
“Discorporated,” Rachel whispered. Her fingers dug at the fabric of her handbag.
“Oh my God, was that the word?”
She tried to catch at her thoughts, to arrange them. Was something going on here, something beyond their natural upset at Gage’s death and this queer cross-country trip that was so much like flight? How much had Ellie known about the young man who had died on Louis’s first day at work?
Nothing, her mind answered inexorably. You kept it from her, the way you tried to keep anything from her that had to do with death-even the possible death of her cat, remember the dumb, stupid argument we had that day in the pantry? You kept it from her. Because you were scared then and you’re scared now. His name was Pascow, Victor Pascow, and how desperate is the situation now, Rachel? How bad is this? What in the name of God is happening?
Her hands were trembling so badly that it took her two tries to redeposit her quarter. This time she called the infirmary at the university and got Chariton, who accepted the call, a little mystified.
