Headscratchers / Pet Sematary

• If you live that close to a road that gets so much truck traffic, and you have small kids, wouldn't it behoove you to build a fence around your front yard?
  • One might think, but then there wouldn't have been a story. They should call this the Hamlet Gambit or something...Perhaps it was just one of many house/yard chores Louis didn't get around to, with his busy schedule of raising the dead.
  • Even if there were a fence, it probably wouldn't do much good - cats climb fences (or slip through the bars), and the gate could easily be open on any given day.
  • My first thought while reading this was the same. Why isn't there a fence? It seems logical to build one. At the same time, my mind is not currently being altered by a Genius Loci or Wendigo.
    • Nailed it. The burial ground has an influence over people, so if it doesn't want a fence, no one will build it.
    • Seeing as the Wendigo exercises influence over a wide area, and has motivated truck drivers to speed up on that particular stretch of road, if a fence was indeed built the Wendigo could just cause a trucker to take it right out. Along with taking it out again and again if it was rebuilt. It could've already been attempted by previous owners for all we know.
    • So what's the movie's excuse?
• Similar question to above, but does the road outside the high school not have a school zone? The whole "Wendigo makes everyone stupid" can only get you so far before it crosses into self-parody territory, especially since I doubt it has influence over the entire county/state/school district.
• If you have to bury your own, then how was the bully revived if no other family members were present?
  • Because Gus clearly belonged to... whatever it is that dwelled in the Cemetery.
  • It could just be a saying, and not an actual "rule".
  • It's probably more an analogue, regardless what the connection is (owner to pet, parent to child, spouse to spouse, friend to friend, etc) the resurrected will return to present themselves to the one who buried them. Barring exceptions beyond their control such as Gage coming back while Louis was asleep, he went to him first, or in the film flashback Judd's dog went to the house for Judd but ran into his mother first who happened to be in the way.
• So what happened to Ellie?
  • She grew up and died.
    • It's indicated in the book that she was well on her way to going completely insane.
  • It's fair to assume she stayed with Rachel's parents (where she was when Rachel returned to Ludlow) and grew up in Chicago. Her mental health was probably not great as an adult, but the character seemed old enough to comprehend death and deal with it.
    • It would be interesting to have a sequel a la Doctor Sleep to see what happened to Ellie and if the burying ground could ever be cleansed/destroyed. Though as this is the only book that King won't talk about (I swear I read that once but I can't remember where, sorry), I doubt it will ever happen. It's a shame though as this is my favorite out of all his works.
  • Three words: Nothing Is Scarier
  • Stephen King actually tweeted about this: she's alive and was raised by adoptive parents, but still has nightmares.
• Why does Rachel's father hate Louis? What was it about him that made undesirable to marry his daughter?
  • She was working to support Louis while he was in medical school (something many spouses of medical/law students do). Irwin didn't like that one bit and saw it as "turning her into a scullery maid."
  • Louis not being Jewish might have been part of it as well.
  • Also, Louis believes that the fact they were rich and he wasn't helped.
  • Louis married his daughter, so movie law dictates that Rachel's dad hates every cell in his body
• It seems to be implied that the mission, so to say, of a revived corpse is to kill those close to the one who revived them, torture the reviver through this, then kill them. What happens to the corpse-thing after it finishes this cycle? What does it do?
  • The Stephen King wiki states: "Once reanimated from death, the "resurrected" corpses showed more aggression than usual and would frequently attack strangers. They lived for roughly 10 years and then died again."
  • It appears the thing has to be "put down" after it's revived, as all the examples in the story are: Billy in the fire, Jud's dog, Gage and the cat with Lewis' syringes. It's not addressed what happens if it's not.
  • I assume that those brought back are Chaotic Evil and have no long-term goals and will just keep finding people and things to torture and kill until they themselves are destroyed.
  • Few revived animals or people were even violent (a bull that "went bad" is mentioned as something of an exception). Even Billy was more unnerving than dangerous. Louis just drew the short stick. If it counts, the sheriff in Pet Semetary Two had some agenda involving making those near him like him, although he dies before it’s ever revealed. There are evidently multiple spirits, some more malicious than others.
  • I don't believe they are supposed to succeed, in my opinion the cemetery just wants to go on playing with other's lives: their real mission is just to spread the story so others, in the future, will keep coming and burying pets and people there. Gage was dead for four days and had a funeral, he wouldn't have lasted long anyway, so he was sent to kill Jud (so that he couldn't stop Louis from raising someone again) and Rachel (it's implied that it became powerful enough to influence events so that she came back at the right time to be alone with Gage): since only Louis knew Rachel was killed, she will be around for a lot more, ruining lives, and Louis will be there to show someone else were to bury their dead pets...
  • It's possible Jud was lying about that part. The examples we do get described Church, Hanratty and Spot all seem to have gone Darker and Edgier post return. Judd almost makes mention of a chow that was buried claiming he turned out fine but he bit the postman and then after "he heard a few things". But assuming most of examples that were buried were small animals a lot of them probably couldn't do that much damage at least compared to that which a large dog, bull or human could.
• How exactly did Victor Pascow know about Louis and the burial ground? It's mentioned offhand that "their souls intertwined'' when he died or something, but I'd prefer to hear a more detailed explanation.
  • Their souls intertwined, which might mean that Victor's spirit had access to everything Louis knew, which would obviously include the burial ground. It could also be that Victor Pascow was specifically commanded by somebody or something (God, angels, what have you) that opposes whatever gave the titular Pet Semetary its mojo to watch over Louis and to try and convince him not to do what he was thinking of doing. Maybe that was something he needed to do before he could pass on.
  • Wild Mass Guess: Victor Pascow had The Shining; more specifically he was a steamhead whose abilities were precognition and being a spirit medium.
• Was the Indian Burial Ground Demon speaking through Gage at the end telling the truth about Norma Crandall (that she cheated on Jud with some of his friends, let them put it up her ass, down in hell etc)? Going by what happened before when a person was resurrected, when everything he said to them was true, it is, but I cannot imagine sweet old Norma Crandall being so slutty and cruel?
  • Probably not. I'm sure telling the truth is a low priority when torturing someone with taunts, although Norma's the only one who really knows and she can't say.
  • It's hard to imagine a nice old guy like Jud Crandall cheating on his wife with prostitutes, but he admits it to Louis.
  • It may be that the demon can lie or tell the truth depending one which it thinks will hurt/scare the person it is speaking to the most, and doing one then the other has got to be a good way of messing with someone's head.
  • Since Gage boasts about how he tricked him (although it might just be referencing to the cat used as a diversion) I believe he was lying.
  • Probably the demon was just playing mind games with him. Jud's no doubt very guilty about cheating on his wife and has idealised her to some degree, so an undead supernatural being claiming that she allowed his friends to sodomise her and is now burning in eternal damnation has to be rather upsetting to hear. We probably shouldn't trust that the supernatural entity living in a graveyard that resurrects anything buried in it as an evil undead zombie is rigorously honest.
  • Nine times out of ten, a demon is lying. The only time they tell the truth is when they know it won't be believed.
  • More accurately, the power behind the reanimation is the Wendigo, not an ordinary demon; it has no connection to the Abrahamic religions, so how would it know anything about what the Christian Hell is actually like, let alone who's ended up there?
  • There may have been some truth to it, but I'm pretty sure the whole thing is not true. The demon claims that Norman had sex with all of Jud's friends, and that's pretty hard to believe. She may have had an affair with one of them, and the demon exaggerated, in order to make Jud angrier and distract him.
• Why exactly did Rachel come home so badly decomposed near the end of the movie version? Church and Gage had been run over by trucks and returned more or less physically intact, while Rachel was "only" stabbed (presumably in the eye) and hanged. Plus they stayed dead far longer than her before being buried in the cemetery.
  • For the film it's probably Rule of Scary, in the book undead!Rachel's appearance isn't described.
  • Rachel isn't decomposed: Gage ate one eye and part of the flesh on her face. (In the book it says "something had been at her", right after it's mentioned that the burial ground awakens "unnatural appetites"). Aside from that, she's just muddy and disheveled, with a few cuts and scrapes. (Gage, on the other hand, does inexplicably look a lot less battered in the movie than he does in the book.)
• Jud tells Louis about a farmer who buried his prize breeding bull in the Indian Burial ground which came back extremely aggressive and dangerous. How the hell did the farmer manage to drag the carcass of a one to two thousand pound animal all the way to the burial ground over rough terrain? It wasn't as though he could take a tractor there.
  • The same way other large objects such as cranes and roller coasters are transported: chop it up and carry it piece by piece. It's not like doing this would make the bull more dead.
  • The book also strongly implies that once someone makes the decision to resurrect their pet/loved one, the Genius Loci nature of the burial ground facilitates their journey to reach it, such as making them immune to falling through the dangerous deadfall. As far as the physical practicalities of moving an animal as large as a bull, an adult human can transport dead livestock by rolling the carcass onto a tarp and dragging it. It would take some effort, but a little determination (supplemented by the supernatural) could manage it.
• Did they ever explain how Pascow knew Louis' name? I get him knowing about the Pet Sematary, being a ghost and having access to spirit world knowledge and so forth, but this happened before he died.
  • It could have been the school sent out a message about the new medical director. Or perhaps more likely, since he was so close to death, he was close enough to death that he his soul was already leaving and he could be possessed by an entity working in opposition to the Wendigo that knew Louis' name. Given the state he was in, maybe it was that entity animating his body and his soul had already left by the time he started talking.
• If the revived are essentially walking corpses (the Wendigo does not restore already dead tissues) then presumably they have no blood circulation (this is stated in the sequel), how the hell can they be "killed" again with morphine injections?! There's no circulation. And even if there was, how does injecting something that's already dead with an overdose of pain medication kill them again? Shouldn't it do nothing regardless?
  • They are physically truly alive, at least in the book. The Wendigo restores physical life, but either doesn't restore the soul, or corrupts the soul so much it might just as well have not restored it. The movies, especially the second movie, are a different story entirely.
  • They shouldn't be able to walk around and kill people without blood circulation either, and yet. Presumably something to do with the resurrection process they undergo is acting as 'circulation' for the purposes of powering them, and that something reacts poorly to injections of morphine. In other words, both Rule of They're Zombies, Jack and Rule of Well Something Has To Be Able To Kill Them Otherwise There's No Tension.
  • The resurrection process in the book involves some sort of restoration job on the body beyond powering it with a twisted lifeforce, because some return with intact bones that had been extensively fractured during the events that killed them. It seems like the Wendigo's power repairs the body to something a little over the bare minimum to function as a technically living being and pass as nothing extraordinary without closer inspection (and prior knowledge of their death by the observer, of course). The injuries that initially led to the death of Jud's dog, for example, aren't the open, infected wounds they were upon its death but have 'healed' to dimpled, hairless skin. Ditto for the gunshot wounds from the mercy kill at the barrel of Jud's father's gun. Also, the autopsy on Jimmy Baterman after his second death picks up on some of the decomposition that had occurred following his first death, again highlighting that the physical aspect of the resurrection is far from perfect (and is probably this way by design, since a supernatural power that goes the whole hog in physically restoring a body isn't much more fantastical than one that falls short of perfect, but the latter results in a distressingly uncanny revenant).
• In the book, when Louis administers the fatal injection to the Gage and, at the moment of death, the "real" Gage seems to return to call out a pained "Daddy" before passing away, is this truly Gage or just a final, spiteful illusion?
  • That one's really up to whatever option you think is worse.

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