Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge

Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge on Odlin Road in Bangor is the motel where Louis Creed checks in on the night before he commits the act of grave robbing that sets the final tragedy of Pet Sematary in motion. It is the place where his last rational defenses give way to a cold, methodical plan, and where he sleeps before waking to the full horror of what he has done.

Location and Strategic Function

Louis checks into the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge on Odlin Road, near the Bangor International Airport and Pleasantview Cemetery, after buying a pick, shovel, flashlight, rope, work gloves, and a canvas tarpaulin from Watson's Hardware in Brewer. He registers under the false name "Dee Dee Ramone" and pays cash for his room, a deliberate act of concealment that marks his transition from grieving father to conspirator. The motel's proximity to the cemetery is essential to his plan: it allows him to wait for darkness and then walk to the wrought-iron fence where he has already thrown his tools over. The room itself becomes a temporary command center where he lies on the bed, fully dressed except for his shoes, reviewing his scheme to dig up his son's body, wrap it in the tarp, drive it to Ludlow, and rebury it in the Micmac burying ground beyond the Pet Sematary.

The Night Before the Exhumation

Inside the motel room, Louis's mind runs through the plan obsessively, examining it "from all angles, poked it, prodded it, looked for holes or soft places." He feels he is walking "a narrow beam over a gulf of insanity," with madness fluttering around him "like the wings of night-hunting owls." The room's anonymous décor—a nondescript print of picturesque boats at dock in a New England harbor—underscores his dislocation; he is "nowhere," disconnected from his family, his home, and his work. He falls asleep only after his thoughts drift into a fantasy of working as a medic at Disney World, a dream that briefly offers escape from the grim reality of what he is about to do. He wakes at a quarter past five in the afternoon, the light beginning to slant toward night, and mutters, "Wild work."

The Dinner and the Wait

Before the night's work, Louis eats a large, tasteless dinner in the motel's dining room—a steak, baked potato, bright green beans, and apple pie with melting ice cream—at a corner table, watching people come and go. He half hopes to see someone he knows, which would lead to questions and complications, perhaps offering "a way out." He does spot a couple he knows, Dr. Rob Grinnell and his wife Barbara, but they are seated on the far side of the room and do not see him. After signing the check to his room number, he leaves by the side door, steps into the near-gale-force wind, and then returns to his room to watch four hours of television—eight back-to-back half-hour sitcoms—until the eleven o'clock news comes on. Only then does he turn off the set and go out to do what he has decided to do, the coldness of purpose settling over him like a cloak.

Narrative Significance

The Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge is the last ordinary, commercial space Louis occupies before he crosses irrevocably into the realm of the forbidden. It is a place of transit and anonymity, a liminal zone between the domestic world of Ludlow and the supernatural territory of the Micmac burying ground. Here, in a room that could be anywhere, Louis finalizes his decision to defy the warnings of Jud Crandall and the ghost of Victor Pascow, and to attempt the resurrection of his son. The motel's very ordinariness—its chain-restaurant dining room, its nondescript furnishings, its television playing mindless comedies—contrasts starkly with the grotesque work he is about to undertake, making his descent into madness all the more chilling.