Steve Masterton

Steve Masterton is the physician's assistant at the University of Maine's Student Medical Center who becomes Louis Creed's closest professional colleague and a crucial witness to the final catastrophe. He is the first person to see Louis after the resurrection of Gage and the murders of Jud Crandall and Rachel Creed, and his horrified encounter with Louis carrying Rachel's body into the woods beyond the Pet Sematary marks the point at which the novel's supernatural horror breaks fully into the everyday world.

Role at the Medical Center and First Encounters

Steve Masterton works as a physician's assistant under Louis Creed at the University of Maine's Student Medical Center in Orono. He is present on Louis's first real day of work when the mortally injured student Victor Pascow is brought in, and it is Steve who screams for Louis to come out of his office when Pascow arrives. During the chaos of Pascow's death, Steve helps hold the dying student's head and later sequesters the students who brought him in. He is also the one who tells Louis that the ambulance is out of commission because its radiator has failed. Steve's professional competence is matched by a sardonic sense of humor: he warns Louis about the tactics of pharmaceutical salesmen, saying they will stoop to offering "all-expenses-paid hunting junkets into the Allagash in November" or even an inflatable Judy doll, and he jokes that the annual visit from drug representatives is "D-day" — the D standing for Darvon.

Friendship and Support After Gage's Death

After Gage Creed is killed by an Orinco truck on Route 15, Steve becomes one of the few people Louis can rely on. He shows up at the Creed house promptly and takes charge of the situation when Louis is temporarily unable to function. Steve recognizes that Rachel is in a state of shock so severe that her "very conception of time seems to have been twisted out of shape" and that Ellie has stopped vocalizing. He forbids Rachel from attending the morning viewing at the funeral home and forbids Ellie from attending at all. He gives Rachel a sedative shot and administers a colorless liquid to Ellie, who drinks it without complaint. Steve also handles the calls from Irwin Goldman, who wants to force his way into the Creed home, and he is firm enough to threaten the old man to keep him away until Rachel is ready. At the funeral lunch at Benjamin's, when Rachel breaks down sobbing, Steve puts an arm around her and hugs her gently, his eyes reproachful and angry at Louis for failing to comfort his own wife.

Witness to the Final Horror

The morning after the funeral, Steve rides his motorcycle out to Ludlow because he is worried about Louis. He arrives to find Jud Crandall's house on fire and sees, from the tail of his eye, a flash of white moving at the edge of the woods beyond the Creed house. He follows the path up through the field and into the woods, past the Pet Sematary, until he reaches the deadfall. There he sees Louis climbing the tangled pile of fallen trees with a white bundle in his arms — a body, one foot in a black low-heeled shoe protruding. Louis's hair has turned white. Steve screams Louis's name, and Louis turns back, his face that of an old, old man. Louis tells Steve he is going to bury Rachel and asks for help, saying the soil is very stony. Steve tries to climb the deadfall after Louis and experiences a "crazy daredevil exhilaration" that nearly pulls him onward, but a branch snapping under his foot breaks the spell. He hears a low, chuckling laugh from the deep woods beyond — a sound so huge he cannot imagine what creature could have made it — and he runs, one shoe off and one shoe on, unable to scream. He gets his bike started and nearly sideswipes an arriving fire engine. By the time he reaches his apartment in Orono, he cannot precisely remember having gone to Ludlow at all. He calls in sick, takes a pill, and goes to bed. Steve never really remembers that day except in deep dreams, where he senses something huge that reached out to touch him and then withdrew its inhuman hand at the very last second. He sometimes wakes shrieking from these dreams, thinking of loons and Prospect, but he does not know what the thought means. The following year he takes a job in St. Louis and never goes into Ludlow again.