15 March 2012

[Warning: While I do not intend to reveal any specific plot points or twists in this series of blogs, I may do so from time to time. I will also comment on the pacing of the novel. If you do not care to have any plot points or pacing revealed to you, please read no further until you read Pet Sematary for yourself. – JPR]

I made it through part one of the book without the expected desire to run and hide in a panic room.

Yet.

I keep feeling something is coming. The pacing currently mimics the way real (imagined) horrors seep into the brain over time.

In yesterday’s post I forgot to mention my talisman to stave off fear. I am using a Dr. Doofenshmirtz bookmark to hold my place in Pet Sematary.

During the first day of reading, I only read as long as the sun was up. The sun goes down, the book goes shut and I try to leave it behind until the shadows are again powerless to daylight rationality.

The second day of reading sees me turning the pages until nearly midnight.

I feel I am missing the true horror. I can’t bring myself to believe in ghosts or resurrection. I feel I should be more frightened in certain scenes. Perhaps I am purposely detaching.

That said, I must admit a feeling of dis-ease and discomfort and anxiety for Louis Creed, especially the times when he is alone and in the dark. I can imagine what his mind must be thinking, how he is trying to make sense of nonsensical happenings. In fact, his rationalizations mirror my own. His protestations that certain events must be imagined or dreamt and his logical explications are intimately familiar.

The description of the woods reminds me of forest mysteries that were a constant of my life growing up in the South. Woods surrounded the houses where we slept, ate, argued and stayed awake thinking the foil in the vent above our bed was shaped exactly like Freddy Krueger.

I remember being out in the woods with two different groups of people—once we were trying to imagine frightful spirits and sounds by being quiet and turning off our flashlights (torches for our UK audience), the other time we were listening to the stillness and imagining Jesus and god and the holy spirit around us, which is an equally disquieting notion.

The pacing makes me uneasy. I am waiting for, what I’m sure is the big reveal of the horror. The sun goes down and I continue to read. I already know I will read This Is A Book By Demetri Martin after I read Pet Sematary.

Chapter 25 – Things are about to get interesting. GF is watching What A Girl Wants while I read.

What if we wanted to bring the dead back to life? What are the consequences? How would they be?

The plot is thickening. As Louis is stumbling in the dark, I am in that situation with him, fearful of the damn cat scraping across my leg.

Page 225 – I make two predictions. We shall see if either comes true.

I let the family dog out into the still, silent Utah night. As I do, I ask him not to frighten me and to protect me from the cat as I am reading a book about a creepy, reincarnated cat. No lights are on in the neighbors’ house across the street. The dog patrols the lawn and shits on the ground.

I make another prediction about the book. I don’t know what page I am on.

I am waiting for the minor murders to turn into an outright bloodbath.

What secrets do we all hide? What do we try to bury that comes back and gnaws at our insignificant edges? We ignore the gnawing and its return and our responsibility and then it destroys the most central parts of our lives.

Chapter 35 – This is the last good day, apparently. The events are foreshadowed as being only seven weeks away. I begin feeling more anxious, boiling like a soup slowly starting to bubble on a heated burner.

End of part one. Just learned of an impending death and actually smiled and chuckled because I had predicted the death. Did I laugh out of crazy fear? To hide my horror? Who knows.

The book is darkly comic. I find myself laughing like Louis Creed during particularly macabre moments.

I will not take the book downstairs into the basement where I sleep. I also frequently put a notebook or magazine over the cover of the creepy, green-eyed cat when I am not reading the book.

I went to bed near on 2 AM and had trouble sleeping. The sense of disharmony was heavy on my brain as I sought to absorb the 200-hundred odd pages I read during the day. Fortunately, I did not lie awake fearing every sound. I did lie awake having to pee and not wanting to step into the darkened corridor and walk up the stairs. I fell asleep and woke again sweaty and still needing to pee. When I heard footsteps upstairs, I seized the moment and walked up to the bathroom. I saw GF’s dad and knew I was not alone in the world, the only person awake in the stillness of the early morning. A time when every light on the highway is startling and overwhelming and makes me wonder what business any other human would have on the road at this time of day. Yes, someone else was awake and I was not alone.

Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the same for Louis Creed.

Thus endeth Day Two.