WTF Book of the Month: Pet Sematary

"Death is a mystery, and burial a secret"

by Laura Gies

In honour of Halloween, this month’s WTF book is Pet Semetary (for anyone outraged by my poor spelling, this is how the title of the book is spelled) by Stephen King.

Best WTF moment: the possessed body of toddler Gage taunts and kills his elderly neighbour with a scalpel.

As creepy as zombies and other undead are, they are made exponentially more so when they started as adorable animals or cute kids. This is a technique King grasps in most of his novels. From the dead kids in It to the possessed dog in Cujo, to the lonely twin girls in The Shining (come play with us Danny, forever, and ever, and ever), evil lurking beneath seemingly benign characters are a frequent staple of a King novel. In Pet Semetary he manages to use both creepy kids and animals.

The horror in this story is the sympathy you feel for the protagonist, Louis Creed. His family is destroyed not through anything he did, but a simple accident, and the horrifying events that follow stem from his trying to put things back to rights. You see his descent into madness. There is no moral to this story, no “and then the sun came up and all was right with the world” ending. Things go from bad to worse, and Creed doesn’t learn the lesson imparted to the viewer, don’t mess with the dead. Instead, he blames timing or ritual, and tries again.

Not only is this a must-read for anyone that likes a good spine tingling horror, but also should be on the list of anyone that tries to keep up with pop culture references. The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III featured an homage to this horror classic, as Bart and Lisa try to resurrect Snowball, instead bringing to life a cemetery full of Zombies to plague upon the residents of Springfield.

On the lighter side for a King novel (my copy weighs in at 411 pages), if you feel like getting in a nice creepy read before Halloween, it’s a good choice. Just remember, “death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”

3 out of 5