16 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 begin reading alone in the kitchen at 11:07 AM (MDT).

I am on the verge of tears for the characters in the story as part two begins.

I also continue to laugh out loud at various points in the book thanks to Louis Creed’s insanely prosaic inner dialogue.

The characters are at a viewing and funeral for the deceased.

I remember the viewing for and funeral of my stepfather. I stood with my mother and younger brother as friends and strangers came to shake our hands, hug us and offer sympathy and “reassuring” words. I played the part of the adult. I was just about to graduate from college and I was getting practice in one of the most reliable parts of adulthood: death.

I am sitting in the front pew of McIntyre Baptist Church with my mom, brother and Memaw. We are watching a video montage of photographs of my now-dead stepfather. The montage is set to music. We are clasping one another and crying. I am doing my best to take in the moment as soberly as possible. Remembering him with his hairdo that made him look eerily like fitness guru Richard Simmons. There are no pictures of him bloated and out of his mind from the fluid building up in his body and distending his abdomen as his liver slowly failed. I think the montage is meant to be a reassuring remembrance.

I am hugging two friends and crying uncontrollably as a mechanical wench lowers the casket into the ground. I do not really visit his grave, but I do think of him from time to time, usually when hearing an Elvis Presley or Reba McEntire song on the radio.

He died the morning of my college graduation. I am trying to smile in the photographs, but can’t quite manage it.

A few years later, I am in a heated argument with my mom—the kind of argument in which you think, “Well, that’s it. We will never speak again and the next time we will be in the same place will be at a funeral.” I tell her I do not believe in god, sin, hell or heaven. Tears are in her eyes as she drives her Chevrolet van down Highway 441 past the C & S auto mechanic shop. I assume we are driving back from Milledgeville (the antebellum capital) to Irwinton via McIntyre. She asks me where I think my stepdad is, if I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t remember answering.

On page 436 of the novel, I make a new prediction. I later learn my prediction was wrong.

Manic, hysterical desperation. What drives us over the edge?

I make another prediction on page 451. This prediction is also wrong.

“Something is trying to keep me away from him.” (p. 501)

The characters in this book deal with forces beyond their control. Forces that manipulate and even murder them.

I have faced “real” demons before. Perhaps that is why I am not completely drawn in to the mystical part of this novel. One period of my Christian phase can be called The Wesley House Period. This time centers on my involvement with the Methodist campus ministry at my undergraduate alma mater, Georgia College & State University. (Go, Bobcats!)

This period allowed for full-fledged demon battling. The time the minister, Bill, was afflicted with a demon on his side of the house. (The house was divided, fittingly enough. One side was the public, student side where I played bass in the praise band and ate pizza rolls and played Crazy Taxi on some gaming system and began forming the most influential romantic relationship of my life up to this point. The other was where the pastor and his family lived. His family consisted of his wife Amy, his daughter Charlotte and his son Jay.)  A group of us bold Christians prayed in a room with dim lighting, possibly candles, and placed “holy” water on doorjambs.

One night, I drive home in my red Pontiac Sunfire, tingling with fear the entire 20-minute drive. My girlfriend, Bevan, has a feeling that something sinister is in the air and I should not look back on the drive to my mother’s house. I did look back in the rearview mirror on the dark, lonely drive and swore I saw a shadowy presence distinct from the shadows of the road behind.

I am on pins-and-needles as the book draws to a close and inevitable conclusions that have been building for 500 pages are reached. I hold the book farther from my face hoping that will prevent something malevolent from jumping off the pages and startling me (or worse).

“Fuck yes,” I say as I begin part three. “This is some damn good storytelling.”

The suspense grows. I turn my back to the basement stairs like some plant drawn to the sun outside. The dog’s nails click-clack on the plastic mat behind me, giving me a start. I turn so my back is to the TV and not the stairs to prevent unexpected surprises.

I finish the book.

My first trip into the basement afterwards finds me unsettled. I do have a background fear that the resurrected evil will be waiting for me downstairs in the laundry room, turning the Tide of my life. I purposely walk down the stairs as calmly as possible, forcing myself not to rush. I am sure I look like my own revivified creature with little control of my limbs.

The book lingers, but I am not experiencing the paralyzing fear I expected or that I would have had for certain had I seen the film.

Thus endeth Day Three and the reading of Pet Sematary.

(Feel free to go back and read day one and day two of my journey as well.)