Pet Sematary is counted among Stephen King's best novels. It is also one of the darkest; in fact, it was promoted (inaccurately) as being too horrifying even for King, who did not answer media questions about it. The premise of this darkness is represented as Louis Gage buries his son in the Micmac burial grounds, and draws a spiral on the site. While the novel is patterned after a spiral down into loss, obsession and death, this spiral pattern is as purposeful as it is inexorable. King notes at the beginning of Part 2 that this work is about exploring the question: "how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity," given that "horror is spawing horror."

While this particular onslaught of terror is not inevitable, King has stacked the deck against the Creed family, allowing a close exploration of...