#Pet Semetary by Stephen King

[abomnibus]

What are your Top 5 favorite books?

Our utmost favorite books tends to shift around depending upon the wind, but as of this moment, in no particular order:

Wurthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.

Homo Deus, by Yuval Harari.

Les Fleur Du Mal, by Charles Baudelaire.

Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander.

Not technically a book but honorable mention to The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, by Stephen Adly Guirgis.

[creepyclothdoll]

We don’t take kindly to outsiders 

around here, pardner,” said the grizzled and sunburnt face. 

“... Darryl Choi?” I said. But it couldn’t be. 

“Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” the man tipped that face up at me and I saw his familiar dark eyes clearly under his dusty cowboy hat. 

“You’re dead,” I blurted. The cowboy stood and drained his sarsaparilla. 

“This outsider botherin’ ya, Smokes?” the bartender said, polishing a glass behind the gas station counter, which had been apparently repurposed as a saloon bar. There were still vape cartridges and 5-hour-energy drinks on the shelf behind him, gathering dust next to bottles of unlabeled brown liquor and oil lamps. 

“I���m not an outsider,” I argued. “This is my hometown. I took your niece London to prom, Mr. Jarocki.” The bartender narrowed his eyes at me. 

“Name’s Ben Wiley Sr to you,” he said, frowning under his huge white handlebar mustache. “Now, your money’s as good as anyone else’s, kid, but after you quench yer thirst, you better take that steel horse you rode in on and ride along yonder, if you know what’s good for yeh.”

“Yonder?!” I said. “What the hell is going on? This is Massachusetts. Is this a bit?”

The five other cowboys in the gas station, who were all sitting around makeshift tables that had been hammered together from pieces of the Holiday station shelving, stopped their card game and glared at me. One of them reached for his sidearm. 

Darryl clapped his hand around my shoulder.

“Settle down, boys,” he said. “This here fella’s kin, he just don’t know it yet. Sit down, pardner, and I’ll tell my tale.”

“I just came in to pay for gas. The thingy wasn’t working outside,” I said. “I’m actually late to my mom’s memorial service right now.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, son.”

“It’s my mom’s–”

“Sit down.” 

I sat down. The plastic chair squeaked. Mr Jarocki brought me a stein of sasparilla. 

“Folks ‘round here, y’see… we ain’t afraid o’ death no more,” Darryl said. He lit his pipe. Red embers lit his dark eyes. “I met death. He’s a ten-cent man.” Darryl stared through the Holiday station windows past the gas pump and toward the horizon of Peabridge, Massachusetts. 

In 2016, Darryl Choi had been crushed to death by a semi on his way home from UMass Amherst. He was the first friend I ever lost. His death had hit me hard. We weren’t as close as I was with some of my other friends, but we’d cut class a couple of times to vape by the creek and trade Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I didn’t think he could grow facial hair, but he had a lot of it now. 

“Y’ever heard of Pet Semetary?” Darryl asked.

“Yeah, I saw the movie,” I said. “And the remake.” 

“Well, turns out, we got one of those.”

I stared incredulously. If I hadn’t been at Darryl Choi’s funeral, I wouldn’t have believed him. 

“Okay,” I said. 

“Basically, it works just like in ol’ Steve King’s account. You die, they put you in there, you come back wrong. First time they tried it with a person, it was Christina Elspeth, the old schoolmarm.”

“Oh no, Mrs Elspeth died?”

“It don’t matter now,” Darryl grunted. “Listen. They put the schoolmarm in the cemetery and the next day she was crawling back all fulla murderous rage n’ such, same as the dogs n’ cats n’ fish, but worse. Spoutin’ all kinds of vileness. So her husband shot her in the head.”

“Mr Elspeth?!?” 

“Not before she cut him real good across the belly, though. The ol’ fella bled out right quick in his flower garden. So they buried both of ‘em in the Semetary-whatsit again, on account of the headstone already bein’ paid for.”

Mr Elspeth was my youth pastor. He always snuck us leftover communion bread and we’d eat it with marshmallow fluff. I didn’t even know he had a gun.

“So another day passed, and, well, the two of ‘em sprung back outta that dirt mound. Mr Elspeth had come back ‘wrong,’ just like his missus before him– all evil and such. But Mrs Elspeth came back even wronger. Turns out, there’s a step down below ‘evil.’ I’m talkin’ downright… well, sorta like those red fellers we used to play at killin’ as youngsters in that movin’ picture game.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Darryl,” I said. “Can you drop the cowboy accent?”

Darryl glared at me.

“Folks call me Smokes these days,” he said. “Smokes Barlow. Wilbur Lee Barlow if you’re a lawman.”

“I’m not gonna call you Wilbur Lee Barlow,” I said.

“Naw, you’ll call me Smokes, like everyone else,” he replied smoothly. 

“Resident Evil?” I said.

“... Huh?”

“The red zombies from Resident Evil, is that what you were talking about earlier?”

Smokes shrugged.

“Anyhow, the two of ‘em went on a killin’ spree round here. And I guess word got out about the cursed boneyard– everyone and their mother, I mean the ones who survived, hoped maybe their kin would be the exception to the rule. So more n’ more bodies went in the mound, and each of ‘em came out as evil as the last. ‘Cept for Mrs Elspeth, who came back worse for wear.”

“They put her back? Again?”

“Well, see, the headstone had been paid for. So Mrs Elspeth comes back and she’s still spittin’ hell’s worst curses and hankerin’ for a stabbin’, but now she’s also sort of a mad scientist sort. So she breaks into the hospital n’ starts grafting people’s limbs together–”

“Hang on. What the hell do you mean she’s a mad scientist sort?” I said. “She was a music teacher?”

“Well, see, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. She’s running around, hair all crazy, in a stolen lab coat, rantin’ and ravin’ about man playing god and splicing DNA and such, creating humanity’s next evolution and such. So eventually the hospital staff knock her out and toss her back in the hole. Next time she came back, she was a 19th century venture capitalist named Montgomery Prescott III who aimed to turn Peabridge into a factory town.”

“Sorry, when did this all happen?”

“‘Course, by this time, her husband was on his third resurrection too, so Prescott was a force to be reckoned with with the power of science behind him. The two of ‘em did a bang-up job whippin’ this place into shape, corralling all the zombies n’ throwing em in the hole, y’know, for science, and to see if they could monetize it. Prescott Mining & Scientific Enterprise un-buried all the dead from the regular ol’ graveyard and tossed ‘em in the hole, myself included. Then, when they came back, they put all those evil folks to work in the mines, or in the lab.”

“Now those mines were dangerous, of course, with all the coal dust and gas leaks… Prescott didn’t give a damn about safety. Lotta folks died. But they’d just bring ‘em back. A couple weeks in, though, and there were about twenty Montgomery Prescott III’s and about a hundred mad scientists running around, and it turns out, Monty Prescott works for no man. Each of ‘em enlisted a squad of mad scientists and started their own enterprise. Wasn’t too long before they started assassinating the competition. At this point, we’d all just gotten used to throwin’ people in the hole.

“Turns out, after Prescott, you come back as kind of a Dracula. Now I won’t go into all that business– you know ‘Salem’s Lot?”

“No? Is that a gang?”

“What about that there Catholic picture show up there on the Netflix, the one on the island, put together by that Irish feller? Michael somethin. O’Flanagan.”

“Mike Flanagan? Midnight Mass?”

Smokes smiled.

“There ya go. It was all pretty much like that.”

I looked around at the gas station. Other than the restructuring that had transformed it from a regular Holiday gas station into a cowboy saloon, it looked like this place had been through waves of disasters. There were bullet holes all over the ceiling, a massive rusty brown stain that someone had tried to scrub out with lye on the linoleum, burn marks on the walls with strange curling imprints of what looked like vines and needles… 

“I’m guessing that ‘everyone is vampires’ didn’t last long,” I said.

“It just ain’t sustainable,” Smokes shook his head. “Vampires always think it’s a smart idea to make everyone vampires, but, see, it just don’t work out. What do they eat? Turns out, they don’t. They starve. Then it’s back in the hole.” “So things carried on like that for awhile. At a certain point, we were just chuckin’ people in there to see if there was an end point, y’know, how far this thing goes. Turns out, it goes Evil, Mindless Zombie, Mad Scientist, Montgomery Prescott III, Master Vampire, Ghoul, Skeleton Warrior, Skeleton Jazz Musician, Man-eating Plant, Plant-eating Man– or a Vegan, I guess you’d call him, and a real sonofabitch– Haunted Ventriloquist, Haunted Dummy, Haunted Mummy, Christian Family Vlogger, ‘Edna,’ Evil Cowboy, Zombie Cowboy, Plant Cowboy, ‘Edna’ again, then just regular ol’ pure Cowboy.”

“What comes after Cowboy?” I asked.

Smokes shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just Cowboy all the way down after that.”

The cowboys playing poker glanced up at me through clouds of tobacco smoke. I recognized some of these people from around town. Or, rather, I recognized who they used to be.

“So… my mom’s memorial… she’s not really dead, is she?” I said, a wave of hope and relief overwhelming me. “I thought I’d have to say goodbye to her today. But she’ll be back, won’t she?”

Smokes only smiled sadly.

“You won’t find fuel for your steel carriage, pardner,” said Smokes. “I’ll give you a ride to the cemetary.”

I followed Smokes out to the parking lot, where several horses were hitched. 

“Where did you guys get all these horses?” I asked.

“Oh, where there’s cowpokes, there’s horses,” he replied. “That’s a rule of nature.” Smokes fed the horse an apple and stroked her mane before bidding me to climb on behind him. I held onto his waist, which was pretty weird for me because we were never close like that, and we galloped off up the highway toward the middle of town. 

We passed the elementary school, which had been covered in radiation warning signs and barbed wire. Then we passed the old Coney Island restaurant, which had been converted to a one-room schoolhouse. Main Street’s restaurants, law firms, and tattoo parlor had been replaced by a Dry Goods store, an ox stable, a wagoner, an apothecary– the barber was the same, but it looked like he also pulled teeth now.

The park that I played in as a kid had been bulldozed to hell, and in its place was a brown dirt yard with scattered mounds and holes all clustered near the center. A new sign hung over the entrance on a wooden board: Lazarus Mound Cemetary.

“I guess we coulda been more creative,” Smokes said. “But it’s too late for couldas, I reckon.”

A group of cowboys, clad in black, stood over a dirt pile. They held their hats to their chest as the eulogy was read. Smokes followed me to my mother’s fresh grave. I dropped my bouquet of flowers on top of it. 

“Family only,” said one of the cowboys, glaring at me.

“Uncle Matt, it’s me,” I said. He twirled his goatee and grimaced, revealing a new gold tooth. 

“It’s Billy ‘Cobra’ Nash these days,” he said. “Didn’t recognize ya, son. I s’pose you want to say a few words,” he gestured to the mound.

“Well, I would,” I said, “But I’m pretty sure she’ll pop out halfway through.”

“That’s no way to talk about your poor dead mother,” said Great-Grandma Tess, who I hadn’t seen since 2004, when she died from stroke. Except she wasn’t Great-Grandma Tess. She was a short old man with a long rabbity mustache and two guns on either side. 

“Let the kid grieve, Slim,” said Cobra.

The sun set on us. The resurrected cowboy versions of my family members became hungry and bored, and set up a small campfire where they heated up coffee and beans, and spun some yarns. I asked questions about the cowboy economy and how it could sustain itself in this Massachusetts town that didn’t have that many cows, and they responded by cussing me out and telling me to get lost, city boy. I said I couldn’t be a city boy because I was from here, and they took away my beans.

Finally, after about an hour, there was rustling from the mound. 

“Here she comes,” said Cobra.

The dirt shuffled and ran down the side of the mound, a miniature landslide. Finally, a gloved hand emerged. Then an arm. A dirty, dusty head, crowned in a cowboy hat, burst from the pile, coughing. 

“Well, butter my biscuits, if it ain’t The Cheat, just in time for dinner,” said Slim, hands on his hips. 

My mom, who was now a dirt-covered cowboy named The Cheat, clicked his boots together to dislodge some stones from his spurs. 

“Howdy. Miss me, fellas?” The Cheat rasped, spitting pebbles into the fire. 

“Mom?” I said. The Cheat looked me over. 

“They call me Vernon ‘The Cheat’ Maddox now,” my mom said.

“Why Maddox?” I asked. “Mom, what was wrong with Nguyen?”

“Ain’t a cowboy name,” said Mom. 

“A cowboy can’t be Vietnamese?”

“Listen, kid,” said The Cheat, clapping me on the arm. “I’ve had a long day, and to be frank, I can’t abide a city slicker like you before I get my brew. Gotta fill up on beans n’ coffee or I’ll be skinner than a jazz skeleton in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

I watched my mom walk away toward the fire, greeting the other cowboys like old friends.

“It’s like she didn’t even recognize me,” I said, broken.

Smokes patted me on the shoulder. 

“That ain’t your mother no more, pardner,” he said. “Same as I ain’t Darryl Choi.” “What’s the point of raising people from the dead if they’re not themselves?” I said. 

“I reckon you’ve missed the essential theme of the Pet Semetary premise,” Smokes said. “The point is, it’s a curse, not a blessing. To the living, at least. Mister Stephen King said sometimes dead is better. And here in Peabridge, we reckon he was right.”

I heard a metal click. I turned around to see Smokes’ shotgun pointed square at my forehead.

“Whoa,” I said. The cowboys at the fire turned to watch with dim interest, including my own mother. “Darryl, hey, put that away.”

“Dead is better. But you know what’s best? Cowboy,” he said. “Cowboy is the best there is.”

“Best there is,” said the cowpokes around the fire in eerie unison. 

“Wait, wait, wait–” there was a bang. My vision filled with red, and then there was nothing. I saw and felt and heard nothing as Smokes watched my limp body fall backwards into the hole. He kicked dirt over me casually. He holstered his weapon. He sat down around the fire, next to the others.

“How many bullets ya got, Smokes?” asked The Cheat through a mouthful of beans.

“Not enough to get him all the way through,” Smokes replied, lighting his pipe. “But enough to get him past Dracula, for sure.”

“That’s the one you gotta watch out for,” The Cheat said. “I’ll stand vigil with ya, pardner.”

“You go home, Maddox, wash that dust off, tend to your herd. Be on the lookout for Edna– word is she’s still at large in places,” Smokes said. 

“She’ll come around,” said Slim. “They always do.”

The campfire’s embers rose up to the cloudy, dark sky. Smokes leaned back and tipped his hat low over his eyes.

“This town’s got room for plenty more cowboys,” he said. Around the fire, a dozen pairs of black, gleaming eyes turned toward the Lazarus Mound, waiting.

[valengory1234]

I think sometimes we need to remember a books context

[libraryspectre]

Reading Stephen King will have you googling minor characters from his other books to see if he's doing the crossover thing

[luxshine]

Of all Stephen King books, Pet sematary is probably the hardest one to read -or worse, reread- , not gonna lie. But in my trip in all #kingbooksanalysis, I had to get there and see what it says about the very unhealthy ways we have to deal with grief and how they affect us and those around us, and the reason why we follow them instead of the healthy ones.

Also, please, please, please remember to keep your cats INDOORS. I know it sounds weird, but the best way to keep our furry friends safe is by insuring they have a great life away from danger -and the local wildlife, which is also kept safe by this. If you have a yard, consider building a catio, so that your kitties have fresh air, a bit of extra room to roam, but stay away from cars, trucks, other cats, and general unpleasantries.

An Indoor cat is a happy cat, and pretty much all the horrors of this book wouldn't have happened if the Creeds remembered that.

[good-night-space-kid]

Everybody who says the shining is Stephen kings scariest book is Wrong. What the fuck is pet semetary that shits so fucked up and way more disturbing than the shining everybody is wrong

[semetarycosplay]

This feels like a little storyboard of Pet Semetary. Figured it was time to cosplay my namesake, since this is where I got my name from. Photos: Katya Nunez Photography

[patricia-von-arundel]

The book in question was Gone.

Michael Grant (the author) liked the tweets.

saw this thread and really loved it but what i liked most is that it taught this kid that if a book isn’t for you, even if you really want to like it, it’s okay to stop reading it and come back to it another time when you are ready. there were so many books i slogged through as a kid because i felt like i had to prove that i could read them since i *loved* reading so i simply had to finish this book or i didn’t actually love to read. silly, really. the more kids who don’t ascribe to that thinking the better. really great of both the dad and the librarian for allowing the kid access to the stephen king book and allowing him make the decision on whether or not it was for him by himself.

[sundaysadghost]

[moviepanda]

And finally .. to finish all the Pet Semetary movies - the only prequel that makes sense for the story in the book/ movies

But they changed the one thing that was important in this period of time in Ludlow...

I guess I don't have to say that this movie - as well - doesn't live up to it's potential

12/15/2024

[artistryevie]

Halloweentober Day 15: Pet Semetary

Here is both the original Church and Zowie from the 1990's films "Pet Semetery" by Stephen King! especially in the films ^^!

[danvssomethingorother]

Needful Things is my favorite Stephen King novel. I think it really perfected the “small town full of animosity towards each other driven insane by supernatural entity”.

The movie cut a lot of the tension and was just a tv movie with a tv budget it seems. Leland Gaunt was well cast though despite its flaws

The best movie adaptation is Misery. I like the book a lot, it’s definitely the most realistic and down to earth of King’s horror novels (despite popular belief, they are not all horror) but the movie just perfected the story and characters in my opinion.

[askfoxythejokerfox]

Ice Nine Kills Funeral Derangements (Official Music Video)

[neechees]

There's a new DBD villian out so here are your periodical reminders because im already seeing people refer to the new enemy as both "wend!g0es" & "sk*nwalker" & getting them mixed up:

The DBD team has already said that the new enemy wouldnt have anything to do with Native American mythology

Wend!g0es & sk*walkers are from Native American mythology, they are NOT "cryptids" (Algonquian & Navajo respectively)

Therefore, the new enemy is neither of those things

The whole "monster that mimics human speech & humans calling for help" thing was completely made up about ice cannibals by Stephen King in Pet Semetary iirc. This is not an original or even popular part of the "lore" or definitions of ice cannibals. Ice cannibals don't and cannot speak, let alone mimic human speech.

A sk*walker is NOT a "monster that wears human skin", or an animal wearing human skin, or a monster that looks like a "weird looking" animal, it is a human who utilizes ANIMAL SKINS, and as far as I know, they also don't do the "mimicking humans to lure them in" thing, they don't have to because they can already talk and are human.

These two beings from our cultures are not the same thing and have been heavily appropriated & bastardized & amalgamated by both the media & by moniyaws online.

Leave our spirits alone and stop calling the new DBD enemy these things because it's not anything close to what these spirits actually are.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Dad Jokes

Stephen King: so i was down at the bookstore and they were throwing my books around Dean Koontz: oh no! why were they doing that? King: well dean Koontz: they could damage the books! King: well dean Koontz: or hurt someone! King: well dean Koontz: or King: let me finish dean

King: i was all 'what's going on?' and then IT hit me Koontz: why were they doing it? King: well IT hit me Koontz: King: see, IT is the title of one of my King: oh for pete's sake King: the rest of you got it didn't you?

King: the rest of you got it, right? Barker: yeah we got it Barker: it just wasn't funny King: King: oh come on clive i mean i thought it was a little funny Poe: it was very amusing steve Barker: don't encourage him edgar Barker: he's only going to get worse

Stephen King: well, don't worry, i got plenty more! Joe Hill: dad, please, i'm tired King: hi tired, i'm dad Barker: hahaha Barker: ok now THAT ONE was funny Poe: really? "hi tired i'm dad?" that's the one that does it for you? Barker: it was all in the delivery haha

King: IT hit me? get it? IT? King: oh never mind, please yourself then Elon Musk: [rising from bushes] eyyy stephano king King: oh no Musk: itsa funny joke no? Musk: i lika da jokes eyyy!

King: well, elon, i guess we finally have something in common King: no one likes either of our jokes Musk: eyyyy whatsamatta for you, stephano king? everybody lovesa my jokes! Musk: i maka da joka, alla my fans applaud, they clappa da hands! Musk: they say "masterful gambit sir"

Musk: eyyy CHRISTINE say iffa da book falla offa THE STAND, you can CARRIE it to da REVIVAL in your CELL as THE SHINING example for THE DARK TOWER CUJO SKELETON CREW CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT PET SEMETARY RITA HAYWORTH AND THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

King: sigh, i guess i'm just not cut out for comedy Poe: don't feel bad, steve, we can't all be kim newman Kim Newman: [bowtie spinning] good evening ladies and germs, i was on my way to this campfire when this guy told me he hadn't had a bite all week

[rainbow-femme]

We really don’t recognize Stephen King enough for having at least one film adaptation of his work on every possible level of film quality

-Generally considered one of the worst films made: Maximim Overdrive

-Generally considered just not good: Dreamcatcher

-Kinda forgettable but as watchable as any 80s horror movie: Christine

-Not great but has its fans: Pet Semetary

-Not amazing from a technical film making perspective but considered a staple of the genre and generally just fun to watch: Carrie

-Generally considered a good movie: Misery

-Generally considered a great horror movie: It Chapter 1

-Generally considered a great movie of any genre: The Green Mile

-Generally considered one of the best horror movies: The Shining

-Generally considered one of the best films of any genre: The Shawshank redemption

Truly no one is doing it like him