The Creed Family Moves to Ludlow

The Creed family—Louis, Rachel, Ellie, and Gage—arrive in Ludlow, Maine, after a stressful cross-country move from Chicago, and their first evening is marked by mishaps, exhaustion, and the unexpected kindness of their elderly neighbor Jud Crandall, who immediately becomes a father figure to Louis.

Arrival and First Impressions

Louis Creed, who had lost his father at three and never known a grandfather, never expected to find a father as he entered middle age, but that was exactly what happened when he met Jud Crandall on the evening he and his family moved into the big white frame house in Ludlow. The search committee at the university had moved slowly, the hunt for a house within commuting distance had been hair-raising, and by the time they neared the place—all the landmarks right, like the astrological signs the night before Caesar was assassinated, Louis thought morbidly—they were all tired and tense and on edge. Gage was cutting teeth and fussed almost ceaselessly; he would not sleep, no matter how much Rachel sang to him. Rachel, still not entirely sure about this move to Maine from Chicago, burst into tears, and Ellie promptly joined her. In the back of the station wagon, Church, the family cat, paced restlessly. Louis himself felt a little like crying and briefly fantasized about driving away without his family. Then they rounded a final curve, and there was the house: a big old New England colonial, newly sided and insulated, surrounded by a luxuriant sprawl of lawn. Beyond the house was a large field for the children to play in, and beyond the field were woods that went on damn near forever, abutting state lands. Rachel stopped crying abruptly and declared the house beautiful, a huge weight off Louis's chest. Ellie asked, "Is this home?" and Louis replied, "It's going to be, honey." Gage, on Rachel's lap, said "Home"—his first real word—and they all laughed together.

The Chaotic First Evening

In Louis Creed's memory, that one moment always held a magical quality, partly because it really was magical, but mostly because the rest of the evening was so wild. In the next three hours, neither peace nor magic made an appearance. Louis had stored the house keys away neatly in a small manila envelope labeled "Ludlow House—keys received June 29," but they were not in the glove compartment. While he hunted for them, growing increasingly irritated, Ellie fell from a tire swing and cut her knee on a rock. Louis painted the wound with Mercurochrome despite her hysterical wails. Then Gage began to scream, writhing in Rachel's arms; a bee had stung his neck. As chaos mounted, an old man of perhaps seventy—Jud Crandall—appeared on the grass, wearing biballs over a blue chambray shirt, his face sunburned, smoking an unfiltered cigarette. With a single decisive movement, he removed the stinger from Gage's neck. Louis burst out laughing, and Jud regarded him with a crooked smile. Jud introduced himself, offered to take Rachel and the children to his house to put baking soda on the sting, and mentioned that his wife Norma would like to say hello. Just then, the moving van arrived, and Jud revealed he had a set of keys to the house from the previous owners. Louis felt the first faint tug of affection for the old man.

The Evening Beer and the Pet Sematary

By nine o'clock the movers were gone, and the children were asleep. Louis, too jived-up to sleep, crossed the road to Jud's porch, where the old man offered him a beer. They sat in comfortable silence, listening to the Red Sox game on the radio, and Louis felt the oddest feeling of coming home. Jud warned him about the dangerous road, Route 15, which used up a lot of animals. He then told Louis about the path behind the Creed house, which led to a place the local kids called the "Pet Sematary." Louis, thinking of his daughter's cat Church, listened as Jud described the cemetery and the animals buried there—dogs, cats, a pet raccoon run down by an Orinco truck. Jud advised Louis to get Church fixed, as a fixed cat doesn't tend to wander as much. Louis took the advice under advisement. As he left, Jud invited him to come over any evening, and Louis walked back to his new house, pausing to look at his sleeping son Gage, his heart abruptly filling with a love for the boy so strong that it seemed almost dangerous. He kissed his fingers and pressed them to Gage's cheek through the bars of the crib. Looking out the window, he saw the cigarette ember over at Jud's house and thought, "The old sleep poorly. Perhaps they stand watch."