Stephen King's Pet Sematary
Part one.
Part two.
Part three.
Episode one
Opening scene:
1915 MikMaq Reservation Territory, Maine, USA
Chief: We have been walking for four days. I say we rest here. I feel sleepy, even drawn to this place.
Elder Medicine Man: The medicine of this place is not good. The ground here is sour. The drifting clouds have a dark grey colour. My grandfather told me about this area, it is not good. We should keep on walking another few days to get out of here.
Chief: As Chief, I say we rest here. Most of the people are too tired to walk on.
That night, the sleeping medicine man has a dream of a buffalo that wanders onto a flat rock plateau and lies down and dies. The spirit of the buffalo is tranformed into an owl. The owl is a death omen. Next to the moth, the owl is king of all death omens.
Sound: Hoot of owl.
The Chief: Today is a good day for a buffalo hunt. I feel it.
The Medicine Man awakes and sees a woman elder of the tribe. He walks next to her.
Medicine Man: Where is the Chief. I must tell him not to go to the buffalo hunt. I had a bad dream. I tried to wake up earlier, but some force stopped me from waking up earlier and I overslept.
Medicine Woman: It's too late. The Chief is already left.
A buffalo is seen. It charges. One of the Indians kills the buffalo with a tomahawk.
During the ritual ceremonial cardioectomy, where the heart of the buffalo is taken from the body of the buffalo and eaten raw, as it is along with the pancreas and liver, one of the sweetbreads.
However the young warrior is disgusted and exclaims: The heart is supposed to have a red colour. This heart has a blue colour like it died some time ago. And the meat smells slightly rotted.
However, the Chief was charged and when he fell off his horse, he died. His body was taken to the burial plateau where the buffalo died. The young warrior attends the interment ceremony.
One morning, a young Native wakes up and says: Where is my horse? Has anyone seen it?
Narrator:
The Chief who was supposed to be dead was eating a carcass of a dead horse. The horse that went missing. The Chief did not even cook it first. He thought he was acting in secret but was soon discovered by the others in the tribe and then he was killed with arrows for the last time.
Sooon after this, the Natives decide to leave the area.
1975
A doctor returns home in his hatchback car.
This episode is dedicated to all my Native Friends
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Episode Two
Doctor Louis Creed: Rachel, you would not believe the day that I had today. I thought it was going to be slow, and then a college student was wheeled in. From looking at him, right away, I knew that he was going to die. Nothing could be done for him. I was surprised that he was still breathing. I could see his brain inside his head like looking through an open window.
College campus hospital. Car pulls into parking lot. Dreamlike dreamspace entrance into hospital.
Pascow is wheeled into the hospital.
Victor Pascow: The pet semetary is not the real pet sematary. The soil of a man's heart is stonier. Injun bring my fish.
That night, Louis sleeps with his wife. In the bedroom, Victor Pascow stands at the foot of the and motions Louis with a beckoning gesture.
Louis follows and walks down a dark forest path. Through the woods. To an old graveyard. Louis thought it was an old Indian graveyard, but it is actually some kind of strange cemetary evident looking at the tombstones. BIFFER BIFFER HELL OF A SNIFFER, UNTIL HE DIED HE MADE US RICHER, and SMUCKY THE CAT, HE WAS OBEDIANT 1971 - 1974.
Victor Pascow motions to a dead fall which the flash light illuminated only part of in the dark. The wood seemed to move and turn into the bones of animals.
Victor: That deadfall is the barrier. It was not meant to be crossed. Remember, there is more power here than you know. It is old and restless.
Louis wakes up thinking it was just a dream but he sees some leaves and an acorn on his bed.
The seasons come and go. Inside the house, it goes from normal to Halloween decorations with the children running through the room in Halloween costumes and laughing, Ellie and then Gage.
Then Christmas and then New Years decorations.
Outside, on the fence post, a jack o lantern, then snow, then snow melts and Spring time.
Spring.
There is a knock on the door.
A thin average height spectacled old man: I saw the sticker on your car. You are a doctor. I just live half a mile down the road. Strange that we have not met before. We are neighbours. My name is Jud. My wife is sick.
Summer.
The cat Church is found on the road. It is picked up. Sticky goo is between the cat and the ground before it is ripped away.
Obviously since it is summer, Louis as a University staff member does not have to work. His wife works and his daughter is at school since it is June and University is finished in April but elementary school goes on until the end of June.
Jud: We want to bury the cat before your wife and daughter come home. Do you love your daughter? Do you want to spare her the pain? I have an idea. Come with me. We are going to bury the cat in the Pet Sematary. Grab your shovel.
They walk through the woods. The same ones walked with Pascow. They reach the first Pet Sematary. BIFFER BIFFER HELL OF A SNIFFER.
Jud: We rest here.
Louis: But we are here.
Jud: No. Next we go up that deadfall.
Narrator: Even though the deadfall was treacherous. Louis never lost his footing and neither did Jud.
They brought the cat to the flat rocky plateau, opened the garbage bag and let it out onto the ground.
On his bed, Louis sleeps. In the morning, his wife had already left for work. Nestled on top of him was the cat. He thought it was a dream but when he saw the red spot of blood under the chin a couple of drum beats of alarm are heard.
At Jud's house over the kitchen table with bottles of beer, Jud tells his story.
Jud: It was Stanley Bouchard who told me about the Pet Sematary. Old Tosspot Stanny B. My dog Spot had died the first time in 1937, the first time. The second time he died he outlived old Stanny B by two years.
His grandfather was a trader who had an old wagon with crosses all over it as he was a Preacher and the Indians liked having him around when they wanted to hear the words that the old Blackrobes used to speak. The wagon also had Indian objects all over it. His grandfather also had a trading post and he used to trade with the MicMac Indians who came around to trade and it was them who told his grandfather about the Pet Sematary.
I followed Stanny through the woods then past the first pet cemetary then over the deadfall and through the woods. The cry of loons and what appeared to be glowing eyes. Stan was leading the way but part way through the woods I could swear I was following an Indian from the old times with war paint and grinnng.
My mother was carrying a hamper of laundry in the kitchen backed up against the fridge and a cabinet. There was Spot. Calm but with a strange energy. My mother sensed it.
Lester Morgan had a prize winning Black Angus bull called Hanratty. Died and Hanratty pulled it up even over the deadfall and all the way there on a sled. Incredible.
Although there were lots of animals buried up there over the year. The bull was the only animal that turned mean. And it was killed two weeks later.
Most of the animals turned out pretty good actually, just slow, a little weird as if it were drugged.
I could tell you that the reason why I took you up there was to make your daughter feel better. But that ain't why I took you up there. It ain't why!
I did it the same reason why Stanny B took me there. I did it the same reason Lester Morgan did it. He took Linda Lavesque up there after her dog got run over.
The reason is because the place gets ahold of you and because it's got a power!
Hanratty the bull was the only one who ever turned mean. Linda's little Pekinese poodle bit the postman, and other little things but that was it. My dog Spot behaved perfectly until he died a second time five years later although he always seemed a little doped and he always smelled of dirt.
Because you looked after my wife a few weeks ago, I did this for you to return the favour.
Louis: Did anyone ever bury a human being there?
Jud: Hell no! And who ever would! What would make you even think of something like that?
A few weeks later, Gage, aged four dies of a fever. The baby dies at ten am. The wife is at work. The daughter Ellie is at elementary school. Louis, being a doctor is an old hand when it comes to knowing the signs of death. Louis carries the child through the woods.
Jud talks about Timmy Baterman: I see that you just went to the Pet Sematary. I can tell just looking at you. Your son Gage died and you buried him there.
I can see what you are planning. Before you go on, let me tell you this. Louis.
Back in those days during the war, the train still stopped in Orrington and Bill Baterman had a funeral hack waiting at the train depot to pick up the body of his son Timmy. The coffin was unloaded by four men. I was one of them. The man from Graves and Registration which was the Army's version of undertakers was sitting drunk in a train full of coffins.
We put Timmy into the back of a mortuary Cadillac. In those days it was not uncommon to refer to thm as hrry up wagons since the major concern was to get the coffins into the ground before they rotted.
Huey Garber was driving the train that day. The army fella comes up walking to Huey as he is taking a swig from a fifth of rye whisky and says, "You are driving a mystery train today, you know that? At least that's what they call a funeral train down in Alabama."
When he got off the train, Huey got drunker than he had ever been in his entire life and he said that if that was what they called a mystery train, he never wanted to drive no mystery train again.
A few days later, Timmy is seen walking down the street. His eyes were sunken like raisins in bread dough. He emitted a strange frequency similar to one that is experienced when one encounters a ghost of the dead.
Bill Baterman was sitting on the front stairs of his house with a pitcher of beer. Timmy was in the yard staring at the sunset. His face was orange with the light of the sun. His face had deep red pockmarks which was where the machine gun bullets got him.
Bill Baterman had lost forty pounds, and the expression on his face. He looked damned, Louis.
That night, the house was burned down. Bill Baterman had burned the house down along with himself and his son Timmy Baterman."
When Louis returns to his house, the telephone rings.
In the family car with mother and daughter.
Ellie Creed to her mother sitting next to her as she is driving: Daddy I had a dream. A ghost named Victor Paxcow was sent to warn Daddy. He told Daddy not to go to the Pet Sematary. That is what he said before he dis, dis, I don't remember the word."
Victor Paxcow's ghost appears: Discorporated.
The front door of the house opens. Standing there at the doorway, silhouetted is a young child and a cat.
Production note: The above is the ideal. I employ an 85% rule in my artwork. I try only for 85% accuracy. Often I fluke out and get 100% anyways. Like the zen story of the archer who got the target only when he thought the master was not around to scrutinize him. I am only going to do 85% of the actions portrayed in the above synopsis. The changing of the seasons, the New Years, etc. I have added parts that were not in the original narrative, so it evens out.
Early versions.
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