Louis Creed killing the resurrected Gage

Louis Creed killing the resurrected Gage is the climax of the novel's descent into horror, the moment when a father must destroy the son he brought back from the dead. After Gage—now a vessel for the Wendigo's malice—has murdered Jud Crandall and Rachel Creed with a scalpel stolen from Louis's medical bag, Louis corners the thing wearing his son's body in the upstairs hallway of Jud's house. The scene is a brutal inversion of the love that drove Louis to the Micmac burying ground: the same hands that dug up Gage's grave now hold syringes loaded with enough morphine to kill a horse.

The Confrontation

Louis finds Gage at the top of the stairs, his mouth smeared with blood, the scalpel still in his hand. The thing grins and speaks in a voice that is both childish and ancient, calling Louis by name. When it lunges, the scalpel whickers past Louis's face, and Gage overbalances—clumsy, as Church had been after his return. Louis kicks his feet from under him and straddles the writhing body, pinning the hand that holds the scalpel. The face beneath him ripples and changes: it becomes Jud's dead stare, Victor Pascow's ruined features, Louis's own pale and lunatic reflection, and finally the low-browed, yellow-eyed visage of the Wendigo itself.

The Killing

Louis claws for the first syringe. The thing bucks beneath him, nearly throwing him off, and the hypo flies from his hand and rolls down the hall. He grabs a second syringe and jams it into the small of Gage's back, depressing the plunger all the way. The creature screams, its body straining and sunfishing. Louis gets the third syringe and drives it into Gage's arm. He rolls off and backs away. Gage staggers to his feet, takes five steps, and the scalpel falls from his hand, sticking blade-first into the floorboards. After a dozen more steps, he falls to his knees. For one moment, Louis sees his real son—face unhappy and filled with pain—and hears him cry "Daddy!" before Gage pitches forward onto his face. Louis slides his fingers down Gage's throat, finds the pulse, and holds it, monitoring until there is nothing inside, nothing outside.

Aftermath

Louis crouches in a far corner of the hallway, pulling himself into a ball, tighter and tighter, with a thumb in his mouth. He remains that way for more than two hours. Then, little by little, a dark idea comes to him. He strips a sheet from the bed, wraps his wife's body in it with gentle love, and begins to hum. He finds gasoline in Jud's garage, douses the house, and lights a match at the front door before stepping out into the May sunshine. The blast of heat is immediate and savage. Louis stands on the porch for a moment, remembering the beers he and Jud shared there a million years ago, then steps out. He carries Rachel's body up the path through the woods, past the Pet Sematary, over the deadfall, and into the Micmac burying ground, where he will bury her with his bare hands—because the soil of a man's heart is stonier, and a man grows what he can and tends it.