The spiral

The spiral is the oldest and most potent symbol of power in Pet Sematary, a pattern that recurs across the novel's geography of death and in the mind of Louis Creed. It is the organizing principle of the Pet Sematary itself, where the graves of children's pets are arranged in rough, diminishing concentric circles. Louis Creed, observing this pattern on his first visit, notes that the memorials have been placed in a series of concentric rings, a design that seems to have emerged from the collective unconscious of the generations of North Ludlow children who built it. The pattern is not merely decorative; it is a kind of scale-model Stonehenge, a pagan charm that lends the place a crazy sort of profundity. The spiral is also the shape of the Micmac burying ground beyond the deadfall. When Louis reaches that high, windswept plateau, he sees that the cairns there, many burst apart by whatever had clawed its way out from beneath them, have fallen in such a way that the shape of a gigantic spiral is still apparent. This is not a human design but a mark of the place's inherent, ancient power. The spiral is the oldest sign of power in the world, man's oldest symbol of that twisty bridge which may exist between the world and the Gulf. It is a symbol the Egyptians chiseled on the tombs of the Pharaohs, a symbol the Phoenicians drew on the barrows of their fallen kings; it is found on cave walls in ancient Mycenae; the guild-kings of Stonehenge created it as a clock to time the universe; it appears in the Judeo-Christian Bible as the whirlwind from which God spoke to Job. In the novel, the spiral is a visual come-on, an advertisement for the power that lies beyond the Pet Sematary, a power that is old and always restless. Louis Creed, sitting by his son's grave in Pleasantview Cemetery, finds his fingers tracing a spiral in the raked dirt without his conscious knowledge, a sign that the place's influence has already taken root in him. The spiral is the mark of the Wendigo, the pattern of the power that corrupts, and the shape of the madness that finally claims Louis Creed.