Jud Crandall leading Louis to the Micmac burying ground

On the night after Thanksgiving, Jud Crandall crossed the road to Louis Creed's house carrying a pick and shovel. Church, Ellie Creed's cat, had been killed by a truck on Route 15, and Jud insisted they bury the animal immediately, not in the morning. Louis, exhausted and grieving, followed Jud into the dark woods, carrying the cat's body in a green Hefty bag. The path led first to the Pet Sematary, the children's graveyard with its rough markers and concentric circles, and then beyond it to a deadfall—a tangled pile of fallen trees that Jud called "the barrier." Jud warned Louis not to look down and to move quickly and surely. Louis climbed the deadfall with the same strange, effortless confidence he had felt in a dream months earlier, when the ghost of Victor Pascow had led him here. On the far side, the path continued through a marshy area Jud called Little God Swamp, where the air felt heavier and more electrical, and where Louis heard a high, gobbling laugh that Jud dismissed as a loon. They crossed the swamp by stepping from tussock to tussock, and finally climbed forty-five stone steps cut into a rock face. At the top, they emerged onto a flat, windswept plateau—the Micmac burying ground. The place was littered with collapsed cairns of stone, and Louis saw that the graves were arranged in a spiral pattern, not concentric circles like the Pet Sematary. Jud explained that the Micmac Indians had leveled the hilltop and buried their dead here, along with their pets. He told Louis that each person must bury his own, and that the soil was thin and stony. Louis dug a grave with the pick and shovel, working in the starlight, and lowered the Hefty bag into the hole. Jud helped him pile stones into a cairn over the grave. On the walk back, Louis felt a strange exhilaration, but also a growing unease. Jud spoke cryptically about the power of the place, saying it was "an evil, curdled place" and that he hoped he had done right. Louis asked if anyone had ever buried a person there, and Jud's arm jerked, knocking over beer bottles. He said no, and that Louis should not even talk about such things. But Louis saw something in Jud's eyes—a look of dark, capering glee—that made him suspect the old man was lying. The hike ended at Louis's driveway, where Jud said goodnight and crossed the road. Louis went inside, exhausted, and found that only two hours had passed since they had started. The next morning, Church returned, alive but changed—clumsy, foul-smelling, and with a predatory gleam in its eyes. Louis knew then that the Micmac burying ground had brought the cat back from the dead, and that he had been initiated into a terrible secret.