Dark Passages: Pet Sematary

In the following excerpt from Stephen King's Pet Sematary, protagonist Louis Creed encounters the Wendigo while bearing the corpse of his young son Gage to the Micmac Burial Ground.  The passage is masterfully written, creating and sustaining suspense as it chronicles an ominous approach.  Notice how King grounds the scene in realistic detail, focusing on the impact of the Wendigo's approach on the natural landscape and registering Louis's multi-sensory experience (the author also presents a bit of Faulknerian inner monologue, parenthesized and italicized).  At the same time, King manages to convey an air of mystery, to strike the Lovecraftian chord of terror from beyond:

Something was coming.

Louis came to a total halt, listening to that sound...that inexorable, approaching sound.  His mouth fell open, every tendon that held his jaw shut simply giving up.

It was a sound like nothing he had ever heard in his life--a living sound, a big sound.  Somewhere nearby, growing closer, branches were snapping off.  There was a crackle of underbrush breaking under unimaginable feet.  The jellylike ground under Louis's feet began to shake in sympathetic vibration.  He became aware that he was moaning

(oh my God oh dear God what is that what is coming through this fog?)

and once more clutching Gage to his chest, he became aware that the peepers and frogs had fallen silent, he became aware that the wet, damp air had taken on an eldritch, sickening smell like warm, spoiled pork.

Whatever it was, it was huge.

Louis's wondering, terrified face tilted up and up, like a man following the trajectory of a launched rocket.  The thing thudded toward him, and there was the ratcheting sound of a tree--not a branch, but a whole tree--falling over somewhere close by.

Louis saw something.

The mist stained to a dull slate-gray for a moment, but this diffuse, ill-defined watermark was better than sixty feet high.  It was no shade, no insubstantial ghost; he could feel the displaced air of its passage, could hear the mammoth thud of its feet coming down, the suck of mud as it moved on.

For a moment he believed he saw twin yellow-orange sparks high above him.  Sparks like eyes. (328-329)

Work Cited

King, Stephen.  Pet Sematary.  New York: Doubleday & Company, 1983.