Rome

Rome is the Italian city where Timmy Baterman, a young soldier from Ludlow, was killed in action during World War II, an event that sets in motion the story of his father's desperate and disastrous attempt to resurrect him using the forbidden Micmac burying ground. The city serves as the distant, war-torn origin point for a tragedy that returns to haunt the small Maine town, illustrating the novel's theme that death, once accepted, should not be tampered with, and that the attempt to reverse it can unleash a far greater horror than the original loss.

Timmy Baterman's Death and the Return Home

According to the letter Bill Baterman received from his son's platoon lieutenant, Timmy was shot down on the road to Rome on July 15, 1943. His body was shipped home two days later, arriving at Limestone, Maine, on the nineteenth. It was then placed aboard a train that Jud Crandall, who helped unload the coffin at Orrington, called a "mystery train," carrying the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers to their hometowns across the state. Timmy had died charging a machine-gun nest and was awarded the Silver Star posthumously. He was buried in Pleasantview Cemetery with full military honors on July 22.

The Consequences of Resurrection

Bill Baterman, unable to accept his son's death, exhumed Timmy's body and reburied it in the Micmac burying ground beyond the Pet Sematary. Within days, Timmy was seen walking the roads of Ludlow, a shambling, grinning figure in an old pair of chino pants and a faded flannel shirt. His eyes were described as "like raisins stuck in bread dough," and he stank of the grave. The thing that returned was not Timmy but a monster that seemed to know the darkest secrets of everyone it encountered, revealing them with a malicious glee. It told Alan Purinton that his wife was unfaithful, George Anderson that his grandson only wanted his money, and Jud Crandall about his visits to a whorehouse in Bangor. The creature spoke only of the bad, using its knowledge to torment and destroy.

The Final Act

Two nights after the townsmen confronted Bill Baterman, his house burned to the ground. The fire was clearly set, with range oil splashed from one end of the house to the other. Inside, Bill Baterman was found dead in his easy chair, having shot himself in the mouth with an old Colt .45. Timmy's body lay on the bed, shot twice in the chest. The county medical examiner determined that Timmy Baterman had been dead for two or three weeks before the fire. Jud Crandall told this story to Louis Creed on the night before Gage's funeral, as a warning against using the Micmac burying ground to bring back the dead, a warning that Louis ultimately failed to heed.