Church's Death and Resurrection

On the evening of Thanksgiving Day, Louis Creed discovered that Church, his daughter Ellie's cat, had been struck and killed by a truck on Route 15. Jud Crandall found the body on his lawn and summoned Louis, who confirmed the cat's neck was broken and the animal was dead. Rather than bury Church in the ordinary Pet Sematary, Jud led Louis on a night journey through the woods, over a treacherous deadfall, across the eerie Little God Swamp, and up a flight of stone steps to a high, flat-topped hill—the ancient Micmac burying ground. There, Louis dug a grave in the stony soil, interred Church's body in a green Hefty bag, and built a cairn of stones over it. Jud explained that the Micmacs had leveled the hilltop for their own burials and that the place held a dangerous, restless power. He told Louis, "This place has power, Louis. Not so much here, but... the place we're going." The next morning, Church returned. Louis found the cat in the garage, alive and apparently whole, but profoundly changed. The cat's former grace was gone; it moved with a clumsy, lurching gait. Its eyes had become muddy and strange, and it carried a persistent, loathsome smell of the grave. Louis discovered dried blood on Church's muzzle and tiny shreds of green plastic from the Hefty bag caught in its whiskers—undeniable evidence that the cat had indeed been dead and had clawed its way back from the burial. Church no longer purred, except on one terrifying occasion when Louis woke to find it curled on his chest. It killed birds and mice with a new, joyless ferocity, leaving their remains as offerings. Ellie, once devoted to the cat, soon complained that it "smells funny" and asked to have it removed from her room. Louis himself came to regard the cat with revulsion and fear, recognizing that what had returned was not truly Church but a poor, soulless imitation. The event taught Louis that the Micmac burying ground could reverse death, but at a terrible cost: the returned being was diminished, alien, and somehow wrong. This lesson, however, would not prevent him from later attempting the same desperate act with his son Gage.