Pet Sematary Part 3 - Stephen King - Horror Book - Supernatural Horror

Grief driven by madness, or madness driven by grief? We never settled it.

We break down part three of PET SEMATARY by Stephen King — full spoiler discussion of the final act.

Gage is back, and nothing after that goes well. We argue about how much the Wendigo actually knows and whether a word it says is true, whether a toddler can kill in cold blood, and why King arms a doctor with a scalpel and a bottle of morphine. Then the craft: why the tension in Pet Sematary never stops climbing when most authors peak and release, what separates horror that works from horror that doesn't, and why he almost left this manuscript in a drawer. Plus the connections hiding across his catalog.

Tell us what makes good horror work for you in the comments.

• (00:00) - Intro: Gage Comes Back Wrong
• (01:04) - Creepy Kids and Why King Works
• (05:20) - Can We Trust the Wendigo?
• (08:45) - Side Quest: DARE Was an MLM
• (12:01) - Gage, the Wendigo, and Cold Blood
• (14:12) - Side Quest: Use Your Hands
• (16:03) - Gage Is Only a Shell
• (19:48) - Scalpels, Morphine, and Doctors
• (21:44) - The Wendigo Delays Rachel
• (24:03) - Tension That Never Stops Rising
• (27:02) - Horror Authors Who Do It Right
• (29:33) - What Makes Horror Actually Work
• (32:35) - Horror Needs Contrast
• (34:56) - Why King's Endings Get Ragged On
• (39:15) - Louis's Descent Into Madness
• (40:40) - The Book King Almost Didn't Publish
• (43:01) - Grief, Madness, or Both?
• (44:51) - What Happens to Ellie?
• (46:41) - Who's Actually Responsible?
• (49:18) - Ludlow vs Derry
• (51:46) - Ambiguity vs Spoon-Feeding
• (54:50) - Side Quest: Apologizing to Miéville
• (56:30) - Why Spec Fic Frustrates Us
• (58:05) - Final Thoughts

The Side Quest Book Club Podcast is a weekly deep-dive book review for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror fans who love getting lost in worlds. Hosts Jonathan and Slava break down Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere (including the Stormlight Archive), the works of Stephen King, and the best and most overlooked fantasy, sci-fi, and speculative fiction.

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Jonathan

Host

Slava

Digital Strategist. Co-Host. Aspiring writer of stories.

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

Hey SideQuesters, welcome back to another episode discussing... You forgot the book name, didn't you? I forgot what part we're talking about. Hey, we're talking about books. I was gonna finish the chapter and yeah, it's just you Judd, you Judd.

And I was like, I really hope that nobody is walking past my car and hearing... You won't really like to take it in the ass, Judd. Hey SideQuesters, welcome back to another episode discussing part three of Pet Sematary. All right, so at the end of part two, we had Gage being buried by Lewis in the McMack burial ground and Gage has returned.

There's a hint of Gage's return with him taking the the scapel. And so now we have the evil power possessing Gage's body in part three and the chaos that... Feels like Chucky. Chucky indeed.

What came first, Chucky or this book? Chucky was like the 80s, wasn't it? Yeah, this book was the 80s too. I mean, this book was the 80s. Yeah.

Maybe this was just like a theme in the 80s. Children who are small, torturing adults... Well, Chucky was a doll, right? A doll. Yeah.

Yeah, but yeah, it's children. It's still creepy. It's innocence.

Perverted. Yeah. Wrapped in death.

Perverted innocence and death. When I was a kid and I had a neighbor and the family was really into that kind of genre of movies and shows and stuff. And so they liked watching Chucky.

I hated it. I was like, no way could I watch that stuff. So I actually... And I bring that up because I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this.

Yeah, the storytelling in this book by Stephen King. Yeah, King does it well. King does horror and creep really well.

And I mentioned this book before and I got some flack from it from our illustrious co-host here. But Gerald's Game by Stephen King. It starts out with a man and a wife doing some sexual role play and he dies in the middle of it.

And it's kind of creepy enough putting. But the rest of the book is you're inside this woman's head and it's man against himself kind of thing. She's reliving certain things of her life.

And it's a woman in a nightgown or maybe even naked. I forgot the actual details. Tied to a bed.

Having an existential crisis. And King pulls it off. It's not gratuitous.

It's not overly sexual. It's not weird in any sexual way. It's just a creepy husband who's forcing his wife to do this and dies in the middle of the act.

And the rest of the book is him, you know, in the woman's head. You're in the woman's head as the reader. So King does this stuff well.

Like in it, there's a weird sex scene. But, you know, I don't want to give it too much credit because it is a weird sex scene. But he kind of pulls it off without, you know, sounding like a freaking weird pedophile.

He does other things in other books that are grotesque. And somehow it works because you know. And you know this because he tells the story well.

You know that he's just telling the story. This is actually essential to the plot. It's not gratuitous crap.

So kudos to King on that. That's why I love him so much. So Pet Sematary the book came out in 1983.

And Chucky came out in 1988. However, Pet Sematary the movie came out in 1989, five months after Chucky. All right.

Do with that what you will, audience. Go watch them. Back to back.

Double feature. Triple feature. This is releasing during October.

So there you go. Just in time for scary stuff. Excellent.

Children running around with knives. Scalpels. Graveyards.

Yeah, but this thing about creepy kids. And Jonathan, you mentioned something earlier. I think before we hit record is there was a time frame 80s and 90s.

I think you mentioned that there was a lot of horror with creepy little kids. Doing creepy little shit. Yeah, I was reading that or listening to it when I had just pulled into work.

And so I only had like a few seconds left in the chapter. So I was going to finish the chapter. And yeah, it's just you, Judd, you, Judd.

And I was like, I really hope that nobody is walking past my car and hearing. Your wife really liked to take it in the ass, Judd. What's that new guy listening to? Gosh.

But he's going to be looking for a new job here in a minute. Goodness. Oh, man.

Soon as you walk in, HR walks up. Hey, can we talk to you for a second? Yeah, we need to talk for a minute. Reports came in.

I was just in my car. Reports came in that you are listening to explicit material on company grounds. So we believe that the Wendigo tells the truth, right? That's our understanding.

Based on it knowing information when Judd was telling Lewis the tale of when someone previously buried a real person in the Micmac. Tim Flanders, what was it? Flanderson. Flanagan? Flanagan or some of that.

I forget. Tim, Irish name. And Lewis asks, well, is what the Wendigo said true? And he's like, it was.

I'm not going to tell you what it was. Doesn't matter. But it was worse.

So we know that the Wendigo has some omnipresent or like, omnipresent is probably not the right word, but like secret knowledge. Omniscience. Omniscience.

But I'm not sure it's omniscience. How much do we trust the Wendigo? Well, it's not omnipresence either then, because omni is everywhere. So it's some sort of knowledge.

Some sort of knowledge. Yeah, secret knowledge. That's why I changed it to secret knowledge, because like omniscience would mean that like there should be more power, more thought that we get in the epilogue where like the friend, or sorry, the end of it, where the friend moves away from Ludlow, right? Does that make sense, right? Yeah.

Because if it was omniscient or omnipresent, then it would have a better draw. Like it was relegated to a specific area being Derry, and this one is relegated to like Ludlow. So some sort of secret knowledge of humans themselves and their lives.

And it's probably, and again, I can't prove this through data, but like it's probably Ludlow itself based on, you know, hints here and there of like, this is the geographic territory that it gets to strongly influence. I would assume, because I'm reading this as like as a demon, right? I would assume it knows what it has observed. Or encourage people to do.

Yes. Or both. And so I would, but I also then don't know how much, so you said like we assume that the Wendigo is telling the truth.

I don't know that the Wendigo is telling the truth. Like when he's taunting Judd with the affairs of his wife, you know, is this something that actually happened? Or is this something that was a, you know, like something that Judd had accused his wife of at one point? Like it was rumors. Exactly.

Rumored to be true, but the Wendigo is exploiting it? Yeah. Could be. I, when I heard it, when I was going through the audiobook, I was sad.

I was like, oh Judd, that's too bad. Uh, because my understanding is that the Wendigo is telling enough of the truth based on, you know, the data that we got for Tim Flanders, where he, you know, the guy fell backwards because he was telling him stuff. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no.

You know, it's like revealing your deep, dark secrets. And that, kids, is why you shouldn't have deep, dark secrets. Do it all out in the open.

It's like Dare. We need to come up with a new version of Dare. Don't always keep secrets.

Dlucker. Doesn't lower all the tongue. Dax.

Just add new words to Dare. Just keep Dare and just don't... What's the word for it? Admit. Don't admit.

Really anything. Or really everything. Dara.

Dara. Dara. That's funny.

Did you know that Dare, so quick side quest here. It's an MLM. Was an MLM.

Yeah. For cops. Yep.

I think we've talked about that on the show. Yeah, you can tell the audience again in brief. But yeah, it's hilarious.

It didn't work out. All the people who were recruiting other people for Dare were smoking pot. And if you're younger, Dare was a... I don't even know what the acronym is.

Like, don't... No, it's... What was the acronym? Now I forgot. Damn it. Dare was like an anti-drug program for after school.

Like during school, you'd go to an assembly mid-school day. Drug Abuse Resistance Education. What the hell? That's what it stood for? Okay.

Oh, yeah. Dare to Resist Drugs and Violence. Oh, right, right, right.

Because of the slogan. Dare to... I thought it was saying drugs are really everywhere. That's true too.

Based on who was leading us in the Dare seminars or assemblies. So when, you know, 90s and early 2000s, you would go to... And 80s. You would go to these seminars, these assemblies.

These assemblies where you'd have, like, Smokey the Bear come in and tell you, only you can prevent forest fires. And like, crime... What's the crime dog? Take a bite out of crime. Take a bite out of crime.

McGruff. Wasn't there some kind of rumor that the guy who voiced McGruff was some kind of pedophile or drug dealer or some... Assassin or something? I mean, they said the same thing about Bozo the Clown. Yeah.

So anyway, we had a lot of, like, caricatures or avatars or mascots. That's the word. A lot of mascots in the 80s and 90s.

I don't know why. That was just like the thing that was going on. So, you know, in case you didn't know, now you know.

Reading Rainbow. Yeah. McGruff, the crime dog actor, gets 16 years in prison.

CBS News. John Morales, the actor who played the crime-fighting cartoon character McGruff the Crime Dog, was sentenced to 16 years in prison, stemming from a 2011 arrest in which police seized 1,000 marijuana plants, 27 weapons, including a grenade launcher, and 9,000 rounds of ammunition. Holy crap.

Oh, man. Grenade launcher. Oh, that's great.

Okay, that is not the same thing that went on in the rumor. Well, at least he wasn't a pedophile, because goodness. Was that? That would have been bad.

I thought that that's what you were leading into. You're like... Yeah, I thought that was what happened. The weapons, and then it's this... But, yeah, the grenade launcher is fine.

I probably should still be arrested. Who doesn't have a grenade launcher? Well, the Second Amendment doesn't say anything about not owning a grenade launcher, so... Oh, no. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. Calm down. It's not as cool.

It's just a joke. It's a joke, people. Slava pulls out his grenade launcher.

I'll explain humor to you later, Jonathan. Don't. Don't tell me any jokes.

No strawberries. None of your stupid jokes. Okay, fine.

I'll just tell Josh later. Anyway, back to reality in this book. The character of Gage, because he's a kid, it really shows the darkness of the Micmac burial ground and what the Wendigo does to its, I would say, victims, right? They're not willing to be brought back to life.

They're dead. They're happy wherever the hell they are, maybe. And people here on this side of the veil, for reasons that vary across the spectrum, go and resurrect them.

It's the only thing that could happen. What do you think is going to happen? Is he going to come back as a sweet old boy? No. No, he's going to come back as a murderous... That's King's latest twist.

Yeah. Actually, it ends happily ever after. But he smells of death.

He does all this horrible taunting. He murders Judd in a horrific way. I have a question.

So you know the phrase, murdered in cold blood. Does Gage murder Judd in cold blood? Where's the line here? And this is really important for me. What do you mean, where's the line? Where does it become cold blood? Yeah.

When is it just murder? When is it murdered in cold blood? Do you know the phrase I'm talking about, right? Yeah, I know the phrase you're talking about. It's willful and premeditated, and calculated homicide, committed without emotion, passion, or remorse. Thank you, internet.

Gage murdered in cold blood. No remorse. Yeah.

Well, I want to know. Yeah, unlike hot-blooded crimes of passion, which is probably how you're going to die, Jonathan, these killings are planned and advanced, often demonstrating a callous disregard for human life or showing extreme cruelty. That's a way to go, though.

I feel like being in a crime of passion, that's a goal. Josh, are you nominating me? Hey, I'm subletting for death this week. Jonathan, you're up.

Well, I would just, you know, I feel like ensuing that type of passion would be not the worst thing in life. So you know what always gets me is, and I did martial arts growing up, so you watch these TV shows, someone starts getting choked and they just like forget that they have hands. They're like, use your hands, hit them in the groin, slap them in the face, grab his fucking twisted, plunge out their eyes, literally anything to defend yourself.

You know what? Uh-oh. 2% of the population has the wherewithal to do that and even less have the skills necessary to execute. There's no skills to plug out an eye.

No, but I'm talking about you've taken self-defense courses, you know, so there's people going to shock. all right, as you say, physiologically, there's a survival mechanism that triggers in your lizard brain. For some people.

Yeah. I've been in situations where that lizard brain has gotten me out of those situations without taking any self-defense courses. But despite my large presence on your screen audience, I'm a pretty small guy, you know, but Joe Pesci syndrome, if you're a small guy and you act crazy and you lash out at whoever is attacking you, they will back down.

So yes, to your point, Jonathan, but how many people even have that concept in their head? Most people are sheep. They're followers. They react by peeing their pants instead of doing anything about the situation.

That's really how I want to go out. Yeah, I just pissed myself. You know what? Just kill me.

You know who doesn't act that way though, Slava? You know who's part of this 2% club? All of our listeners. They would defend themselves. Of course they would.

I didn't say anything about them. That's why they're part of this book club. It's the other people.

Yeah, it's all, yes. Okay, bringing us back to the book. Finally! I want to ask a question.

How old do we remember how old Gage is? What Gage was? He's learning to talk. So two and a half, maybe? He learns to talk from the windigo. He learns our seltzer words.

That's what surprised me. I mean, it didn't really surprise me, but it's like, okay, is this toddler able to say these words? Was he able to even say these words when it was him walking the earth? No. Absolutely not.

I don't think so, Josh. But definitely possessed. He's undead.

So he's a shell of himself. Whatever we believe is a soul by we, all humanity, I'm throwing in here. It's not there.

It's just a shell of a human. He smells like death. He has dirt and grime all over him.

And he's a reanimated corpse. So yeah, it's not him. Well, I wouldn't even say a soul.

Actually, I'm adjusting. Let me hold it. I'll do that again.

Paris, cut that out. Or don't. No, do.

Please do. Please cut that out. Well, you guys don't see this, but like all the stuff that our editor cuts out for us, Slava's basically just jabbing at me the entire time.

That's really what gets cut out. It's not the ums. He leaves those and he wants to make sure that I look like a moron.

It's not the uhs. It's not the crickets because I have a lot of that. It's Slava coming after me.

Our Paris is kind enough. Our Paris. Our editor is kind enough to try to make me look good.

No, no, no, no. Oh yeah, so soul, right? So it's not even necessarily soul, but like an imbuing of power. It's just like the body's a conduit, right? Like, you know, we don't, we don't have anything proving otherwise in said book, but seems pretty clear to me if you have secret knowledge and can speak in, you know, mysterious, but like daunting, daunting is not the right word, like scary ways, right? To other people.

Insert cricket noise. I hope you can hear Gage in the background yelling mama. Yeah, sorry.

Continue Jonathan. Conduit. He's just a conduit for power in the body of said loved one.

That was my thought. That was the really big buildup for, you know, not a lot of payoff. Well, you know, something that was interesting with Gage is what the people like, what I don't remember what Jud saw, but when Gage's mom, Rachel, when she sees Gage, she doesn't see Gage.

She sees Zelda, her sister. So, and I think Louis also does not see Gage initially when he sees, when he sees him. That makes sense, right? Yeah, definitely.

Rachel has a vision or a hallucination of Zelda. I'm not sure if Louis doesn't see Gage. I don't remember the Louis part.

Yeah, I think Louis sees Gage, realizes what he has to do and he has to wrestle with him. So this little kid also has some superhuman strength because a grown-ass man has to wrestle a two-year-old and kill him. Right.

Yeah. Well, he has more mobility than you would assume a toddler his age has. Like he's, yeah, I mean, stabbing.

I mean, I'm sure you toddlers can be, can cause quite the chaos with things. But not to the level of grabbing a scalpel and stabbing somebody. I think it's interesting that King uses medical devices and medicine to have people killed.

So Gage uses a scalpel. Louis uses a high dose of morphine to kill Gage. I'm not sure if King did that intentionally or it was just convenient or he's like, hey, this guy's a doctor.

Of course, there'll be morphine and a scalpel around somewhere. Either way, I don't know if there's a metaphor there or some kind of analogy or whatever the hell King was doing. But I found that interesting.

That stood out to me. Just, you know, the blimp on the story. Why did that strike you as interesting for like the medical stuff? Well, because it begged the question or brought the question to my mind, is King doing something with this? Is this just a convenient plot device? Is this nothing? As you're writing, sometimes things flow out of you.

Like even, you know, when I write, sometimes I write things and I didn't expect that that would be what the character is going to do. You're just in the story and your mind says, oh, this is a natural next progression. In your mind's eye, you see a whole scene.

So it's interesting only for that. Like what was King thinking when he wrote that? I mean, it's fine. It's not like he could have used a gun, a bat.

You know, I don't care what he used. Like Gage is a reanimated corpse powered by an entity. He could have used a car, I suppose, right? He did on Gage.

He did on Gage. Yeah, less believable, but yeah. I think there's more to like King writing Lewis as a doctor to I think points that we talked about.

I think I want to say in part two, like his approach to death and trying to be like logical, right? And clinical. I think there's more to that then. And so I think because he's a doctor, then you have.

Yeah, and that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. As we continue through the story, we quickly get Rachel's POV and she's frantically trying to drive back.

And at each turn, she's somehow stopped, but momentarily. So she eventually succeeds. But she's delayed the brand new rental car battery.

Cables rattle off. It's not just dies or anything. There's something physical that happens to the car.

And if it dies and it's because of an entity, that's also a physical thing. But there's more. It's more tactical, if you will.

Something had to touch the cables to rattle them off, right? And of course, somebody can say, well, whoever looked at the car before they rented it to her didn't check the cables. Or when they check the cables, they didn't, you know, tie them all the way down. They didn't screw them on correctly.

Whatever it is. The Wendigo is actively possessing the car. Doing stuff to the car.

Doing stuff to flights. Doing things to Rachel to delay her. I don't think it wants to prevent her.

I think it wants to delay her. Because she's mama bear, right? She's going to go find her family, go find her kid. She loves Louis.

She needs to fix this. She needs to get the bottom of it. So I'm sure the Wendigo suspects that, knows that.

But he only delays her. And I don't know. I like that.

Do you often check the battery cables before you use your car? No, of course not. But if I'm renting a car and they have to do a point inspection, I'm sure they check the battery. Like Rachel is not supposed to check the battery cables.

But somebody had to. Times are tight right now. You got to check the battery cables before you take your rental car out.

Well, lesson learned. Thank you, Stephen King. It saves you 25 bucks a day.

And getting murdered and then reanimated. No, no, that's part of the package. That's the low tier, the basic tier.

You can rent this car, but you'll be murdered. You don't want to be murdered. You got to get the gold package.

But it's only 25 bucks a day, not 50. And you know, times are tight. Toll not included.

Toll's not included. And you have to refill the car when you return it. We will charge your family for the return of the car and the fuel.

So the whole book is leading up to this moment. It's building this tension. And even when it's giving me the payoff, it feels like the tension continues to grow.

Now, we've read a bunch of other books on here. Most other authors, I don't feel like, do that at all, let alone well. If you can see, like, they're trying to like, okay, it's building up.

So like, this is an odd comparison, but Sanderson writes a lot of like, we have these Sanderlanches. There's like a moment in the story near the end where it goes, and then all of the avalanche comes together. That's not tension.

That's like my payoff. Whereas King, on the other hand, like the tension doesn't feel like it stops rising. And the thing is King's pacing, it just keeps building because we as the audience are like, oh, I know you as a character.

Don't do that. Oh, he's doing it. Oh, look, learn your lesson.

Get off the tree. Get out of the graveyard. Just go home.

But we know what he's going to do, right? And then at the end where it's like, he's bringing his wife up to the Mic Mac. You're like, you just killed two of your family members. I'm including, you know, church and that.

What are you doing? And he's like, oh, it's because I waited too many days. Yeah, that's why I like, I was surprised at how much I liked this book because I would not expect to really enjoy this kind of horrific, like creepy type of book. But to your point, Jonathan, that building suspense and building pending doom, you're reading it and thinking, you know, there's like almost a point of sanity that Lewis like, I mean, he kills the cat, he kills Gage like, okay, he realizes this is like, he has gone insane.

Like, this is not actually Gage that he brought back. So you got to think like, yeah, of course, he's going to see that. I mean, just like live your life now with your daughter.

I don't know how you're going to manage to do that. But he clearly doesn't have that point of realization and said he like rationalizes. Yeah, during Rachel.

Yeah, I waited too long with Gage. Okay, how does that even click? You know, but you kind of see why that clicks. Yeah, and he doesn't learn his lesson from church.

Church King comes back all f***ed up and he doesn't learn his lesson. And he goes, yeah, the kid will be fine. Because reasons, I guess, I don't know.

And then to your point, Josh, and then, oh, yeah, cat came back all messed up. Gage was definitely messed up. The problem here is I waited too long.

Yeah. Was it, buddy? He convinces himself. You sure about that? No, but I want to jump in real quick before Jonathan, you comment.

Writing horror, writing creepiness is very hard to do. King does it well. I think Koontz does it well, but he's more of a thriller guy.

And, you know, I like Koontz a lot, but you got to pick and choose which, in my mind, which books are really good horror and which are just, ah, this is a decent thriller. Kathy Koja does it well in Cypher. It's body horror.

It's creepy. It's violent, but it's done well. Clive Barker does it well.

And a recent book I found, it's more thriller again, but has horror elements to it. It's a night film by Marisha Pessel. And I'm going to quickly give you a one-sentence overview.

It's a mystery thriller about a disgraced journalist, Scott McGrath, investigating the apparent suicide of Ashley Cordova, the daughter of a reclusive cult horror film director named Stanislav Cordova. And the way she does tension is amazing. Like, I'm like on chapter 60 something, and there's this building, it's very slow burn.

And it's told from a first POV, the journalist is telling the story. You don't get a lot of other POV. Well, you don't get any POV, it's first-person POV, but it's this gradual drip of revealing information that you know something's wrong.

Because there's a suicide, there's this reclusive director. He's a tyrant. He's known to do crazy stuff.

He made an actor work with missing fingers after he got his fingers cut off in an accident on set. And he's just like, no, you're not going to the ambulance. We need you on this film.

So, and slowly things are being revealed about Cordova. And that's, I think, they're all different examples. But whether it's a slow burn, a slow build, whether it's describing horror like Koja does well, like body horror, Clive Barker, the way he deals with the supernatural and the demonic, Stephen King, they all have that, you know, that it factor, no pun intended, where however they write, there's just something in the prose that immerses you into the story.

And the audience will know, that's the thing that I always say, that phrase, I'm immersed by the story. Or, excuse me, I'm immersed into the story. I am captivated by a character.

I am able to identify with the character. That's the secret sauce to all of this. And, you know, side quest over.

What do you think the differences are, Slava? Because you've read way more horror than Josh and I, right? What are the differences that, off the top of your head, not looking like scholarly journal, that you make someone better at horror than not, right? Like, cause we, when we kicked this podcast off, we read Lovecraft. We both commented on like, man, he covers madness well. He creates tension.

There's like a questioning of like narrator's truthfulness and honesty because they're going mad. There's an eeriness to it, right? But then sometimes you read stuff. I should get a badge for this.

Like China Mayville and he's not horror, but like, there's no tension there to me, right? Like it didn't. And so I guess I'm asking for you to help me figure out like, why is there tension with King? Why is there tension with Lovecraft? And, you know, I haven't read all these other people that you mentioned, but why do I have tension here, but not with something like the China Mayville thing? Like, what is it that makes good writing have tension? What am I trying to identify here that I am having trouble? I think I have an answer with one caveat. China Mayville is just a dystopian speculative novel.

So it's a completely different genre, but your question still stands. Like there could have been tension in City in the City. First of all, and this is not a knock on China Mayville, but the ability of the author, like the pros of the author and maybe speculative fiction doesn't have tension the way you expect it to have.

Maybe there's a different intent outcome for it, but tension is done well when the author knows what he's doing. Tension is done well in horror when the author is singular in his exploration of the human condition. Because the horror, that's what it does.

Who are the real monsters? Even if we're talking about actual demons, like with Clive Barker, if we're talking about a person going mad because some mysterious hole is drawing him to do horrible body mutilations, whatever that is, if the author is focused on his message, his intent, and his exploration of the human condition in such a way that there's no side quests that break the tension and he's able to piece those chain links together, that's what makes it good tension. Like Exorcist, it's creepy. There's a building to it.

There's this backstory of the priest. There's this backstory of the mother, the actress, and the daughter playing with the Ouija board, and all these events are happening across town. And it's not disjointed because of the way Peter Blatty, William Peter Blatty, links it together, really.

That's what I'm trying to say. That'll be my off-the-cuff answer. Would you say, and Josh, if you have thoughts on this, by all means chime in, would you say that good horror then requires nuanced contrast to create tension? I think so, yeah.

Right, because I'm thinking about Pet Sematary here. I'm thinking about Louis. I'm thinking about the fact that we get introduced to him.

We know he's a doctor. We know that they kind of have money troubles. They move to a new town.

His wife and him have a well-enough relationship. And it's like, all right, so we understand the characters in a couple chapters, and then something happens, and then something supernatural happens. It's the contrast of someone who's very grounded in science now is having to interact with something that's outside their personal warmth, right? And then exorcist, right? Okay, we see what's happened.

We jump into the story at a point, and then we as the readers are kind of skeptical probably. And then it's like, actually, it's this thing, and this is attached to this here, and this is attached to this here. And then we get the view of the priest who doesn't believe.

And so there's this contrast. And so, because I'm really trying to understand, because not everybody reads horror, right? Most people, from what I see, they're like, well, it's not for me. I don't like the jump scares.

I don't want to have that much negativity. It's like, well, if you watch the news, you're probably watching horror anyway. Well, I have a thought.

There's like this underlying goodness that you want to come through the story, you know, like looking for these, like for some redemption in this story. And the book just like continues. Josh.

Wrong. That, well, absolutely. And that's like my point that you're like, oh my goodness, you know, but it does come through in the sense that, you know, like, you know the direction that he should be taking and that he's clearly not taking, if that makes sense.

So he's contrasting the audience's pre-built beliefs of like, oh, hey, nice family, two kids. And he's contrasting it with the story. Is that what you're saying? Exactly.

And there are characters that bring that in, like Judd or... Yeah, and grounds us into the old town. Like, hey, this is a local. Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, it makes sense. Or Steve in the end. I mean, his like, yeah.

And King is interesting. He gets ragged on for some of his endings because they're either too happy, too simplistic or too abrupt. That's the complaint.

When does he have a happy ending? Why haven't we read that book? Well, happy in one sense, right? Happy that everything goes back to normal. No, but Needful Things has a happy ending because the two main characters, main-ish characters, they get together and they beat the evil dude, you know, who is in town causing havoc. It has a happy-ish ending.

The kids beat the Pennywise. But in that book, like in Needful Things, guy leaves town, boy meets girl, ball falls in love with girl, boy keeps girl, and bad guy leaves. In It, there's a sense of, did they really beat it? Will he come back? We don't know.

In Pet Sematary, total dread, right? Like main character's insane and he reanimated his wife. And we know what those reanimated people do. And his daughter's still alive, living with his in-laws.

So bad ending. Bad is not bad writing, but bad as in sad, horrible things going to happen and continue to happen after we leave the world as readers. So King is very varied in his endings.

I recently read The Gunslinger and it's kind of a neutral ending in my estimation because it sets up for the next seven books. But the first Gunslinger, the very first of the Dark Tower series, it's called The Gunslinger. And it's a fascinating Western.

It has a horror elements to it. So that 11, 22, 63? 11, 22, 63? I think that's when Kennedy was assassinated. So there's a time travel book where a guy goes back in time to try to stop the Kennedy Association.

It's a melancholy ending. The main character learns a lesson, learns to leave things alone that he shouldn't touch, and loses the love of his life. But he realizes that's for the best.

So King has varied endings. And take that all of you in the audience for what you will. I just wanted to dovetail what you were saying.

It's the ability of the author just to go in so many different ways with so many different stories. And King himself says, sometimes I don't know where I'm going. I start a book, I know what I want to write about.

I want to write about Billy Grove Gruff. Well, not Gruff. What is it? Billy... McGruff the Crime Dog? Yeah, McGruff the Crime Dog.

There it is. And so it is born out of that. He goes, I was standing in the line of the grocery store.

What would happen if the store was closed down because of monsters? And then he writes The Mist. And that's King. Other authors probably outline their stuff a lot more stringently or whatever it is.

But yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of going another cyclist here with my comment, but it's the prose that gets you there. What was the book or the story that you're saying about the Kennedy assassination? 11-2263.

It's a fascinating book by King. I want to cover it sometime on this channel. It would have to be probably in 27-28 because we're pretty scheduled out.

But it's such a good book. And it only has one supernatural element to it. And it's this time travel ability of the character.

The rest of it is just a great story about a guy trying to do a good deed and the adventures he has on the way. And he meets a girl. Dead is better.

Yes. Than reanimated? Yes, absolutely. But that Kennedy assassination, that's also a series.

On Hulu, yeah. And it's a really well done adaptation. Absolutely well.

So if you saw that, that's going to be the book, only with a lot more information and a lot more in-depth character building. I just added it to the spreadsheets lava for 2027 as a talking point for us. For season seven, 2027, guys, maybe 11-2263.

Beautiful. But as we continue on through the story, we already talked about Gage killing people and then Gage getting killed. And then the final descent into madness is he's entirely driven by trauma.

He's driven insane by trauma, by greed, by all the stuff we already talked about. This is a question you brought up. Like, why does he look ashy? His hair, Jonathan, you texted me this.

His hair turns completely white from him being driven insane. And he sets Judd's house on fire to cover the evidence that Steve Masterson, Lewis's colleague, arrives on the scene and tries to stop Lewis from carrying Rachel's body. And then he kind of goes, you know what? You do you, Lewis.

He just books it. Yeah, probably best. And here's what I have in my notes here.

Refusing to learn his lesson, Lewis carries Rachel over to Deadfall, which was a feat in itself, to the Mi'kmaq burial ground. And we, as the readers, are left with Lewis playing solitaire when a resurrected Rachel approaches from behind, touches him, and her voice is grating and full of dirt, I guess. And, hi, honey.

Or whatever she says. Darling. Darling, yeah.

It ends so well. It ends so well. It's just for a bad ending, right? And not a happy one as the, you know, the ending is great.

But and I just kind of sat there for a while. The first time I read this, I was like, wow, this is a dark story. And I kind of understood why King didn't want to publish it because there's no redemption.

And it was purely driven by his fear of losing his kids and him processing the idea of the human condition. How do we as humans deal with death? That's what he's dealing with here in this story. And yes, it's a popular book and people shit on it.

And that's why I hate those who vehemently crap on King because they just don't understand it. Because, oh, he's popular or his endings are this or it's trite. No, King does this crap really well.

And if you at least listen to one interview with him describing the book you're reading, you'll be like, oh, OK. And so I understand when King's like, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to publish this. Then his wife's like, you should publish this.

And this is the second time she's done this. And it would turn out well for him. So listen to your freaking wives.

Well, listen to your freaking wives because they're smart. Don't just listen to your freaking wife. So it would turn out well for him.

He fulfilled his contract with Doubleday and he made a great book that years later, we are enjoying the hell out of. And so I have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Had reading the book was, I mean, where can this redemption come? Like, where is he? How is he going to have any type of normal life after these decisions? Like after church, it's like, OK, I mean, whatever.

Nobody else knows about the dead cat. And it's just a cat that comes back like, OK, and you can kill that cat. Easily, if it's the haunted neighborhood cat, fine.

Exactly. Whatever. But burying a child, even if nobody else knows that this has happened, like Rachel.

I mean, you just can't have a normal life after that. Well, Judd talks about this. He's like, you convince yourself with reasons, right? When he's descending into that, like, clipped madness, that moment where King is like little words from Judd, little words from his thoughts, little words from he's like, men find their own reasons for doing these things or whatever he says, right? Like, and that's true.

We literally watched Lewis do that. But yes, Josh, to your point, it's like. What do you think is going to happen? But that's the thing is like madness doesn't think it's just driven.

By. You know, grief, passion, that is grief. How do I want to say this? It's driven by.

Grief in. Maybe madness is the word that I want to use here as opposed to passion. Grief driven by madness.

Because madness would be to me a subset of passion. Or is it madness driven by grief? Yeah, I. I would dialogue about this for another hour and a half. We can keep moving because.

Unless you guys want to hear me talk about it. Well, I think there's a lot of things going on here. And he has a particular worldview, which is, you know, I need a medal for saying that word on this podcast.

And he has a particular way of dealing with grief and death and anger. And all those things. Eventually drive him mad, but because of external forces.

If Gabe just died. OK, he might have. The marriage might have broken up.

He might have been the bedrock of the marriage. They might have had a happily ever after ending. It could have gotten a cut a poll of different ways, but because of the windigo.

And influencing him using his worldview, using his weaknesses and even his strengths against him. That's what drives him mad. And it is grief.

It is trauma. It is passion for his kids. And it is, you know, all the negative stuff, hubris, greed and other all those things mixed together.

That's what drives him to the madness that we find him sitting in literally enveloped in madness at the end of the book. What happens when Ali comes home? That is a cyclist we should go on. So OK, the in-laws send Ellie home because Rachel made it right, Louis? Yes, father.

Or father-in-law. And what happens? For all the faults of the grandparents that we get from the story, I would much prefer Ellie to be with the grandparents. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah, you go home to a mother who's undead and a father who's insane and your person across the street that you like kind of looked up to is like a grandpa. He's dead.

You've had these night terrors. You don't know what's going on. Like.

The church is gone. Judd is gone. There's a fire across the street.

You know. Gage is gone. Church is gone.

Judd is gone. Mommy smells funny. Mommy smells like church.

Mommy does smell like church. Yeah. It's uh.

Yeah, they should stay with the parents. She should stay with the parents. They have enough money, supposedly.

Yeah. Well, they're Jewish. Hey.

There it is. You got something to say, Josh? Say it to our faces. Say it to our rich faces.

Jonathan, I need a loan. Yeah. You trying to get my house burned down? That's what they did in the Middle Ages.

They forced Jews to loan money. Jews charged interest. And then people got upset.

Because they were charging interest. Because Christians couldn't loan to each other. Because of reasons.

Yeah. Because usury. Thanks for the answer, Josh.

Yeah, you're welcome. A little church history for you. A little medieval history for you.

But I want to jump back for a couple of seconds into something I wanted to talk about. And then got distracted. In addition to all the other crazy stuff that Lewis has done.

And is doing. And will continue to do. After the book ends.

He kills his second father. Judd was his best friend. Second father figure.

And yes, I know it was Gage who actually killed Judd. But it's his actions. Lewis's actions that made that come about.

And when he finds that out. There's really not a lot of remorse. Or any remorse.

He re-kills Gage. Sets the house on fire to make sure nobody knows what happened there. And kind of moves out of his life.

And you know. In the loose sense of that phrase. And gets Rachel reanimated.

And also that begs the question. Rachel's reanimated. Is she worried about where Gage is? Did he reanimate Gage again? Re-reanimate? Like he's done so much crap.

There's so much crap. Can you re-reanimate? Why not bring Judd back? I wouldn't try. Why not bring Judd back? Gosh.

You're in the. You're in this. Make him live forever in love life.

Yeah. Bring Judd back. Bring Rachel back.

Bring dead again Gage back. Call for your daughter. Put a bullet in her head.

Reanimate her. And you can be a zombie family. Where's Zelda? Bring Zelda back.

Bring Zelda back. Go dig up Zelda. Bring her back.

You guys could be a happy family. Maybe you didn't wait long enough. Maybe you have to wait.

Yeah, there it is. Josh has figured it out. Louis is, you know, off his rocker.

You have to give, give it time. Bring Judd's wife back. You guys could just be a happy family.

Freaking Louis ruins everything. Now who's gonna bury Judd? Or who's gonna bury Louis when he's ready to go? Steve. Well, he could.

Steve left. He can, you know, whatever. And then ask his dead zombie family to reanimate him.

And then there we go. Go to the Mic Mac, dig a grave, and blow your brains out. That's what Louis should do.

No? Too dark? Too soon? I don't... I can't respond publicly because this is gonna go on the internet. So... Well, if we're breaking the story and we're having fun with it, what else are we gonna do? We have to give these people the most hellish experience and existence possible. The Wendigo goes to fight it.

I told you this. Ludlow versus Derry. Yep.

They both raise an army. You know, down here we float. Mike has to make six more phone calls.

The losers are now like in their 80s going like, what the hell? Although it's happening the same time frame. So the losers just forgot about everything. Ben and Beverly are having their, you know, second kid.

And Mike calls again. He's like, hey guys, you gotta go to Ludlow. I know.

I know I said Derry's over. But now there's two of them. It's not only Pennywise.

That's another thing. What if King secretly has been writing like connections, short stories? And like he's gonna... He's in his will. He just like releases all of them.

That'd be awesome. Because there are connections throughout his multiverse. Like even in the story... Ur? Yeah, Ur.

The short story we read for Halloween a couple of years ago. The people that come to admonish the professor who uses that magical Kindle. They're actually from the Dark Tower series.

From the Tower. The Tower knows all. The Tower watches all or something like that.

That's what the phrase they use. That's from the Dark Tower series. Like Christine, the possessed car, makes it to it.

That's what Rockstatter or Rockefeller, whatever the bastard's name is. He picks up the crazy guy. Uh, he picks him up in Christine.

It's not explicitly stated. But if you're a reader of King, you know like, ah, that's Christine. It's a, you know, particular year type of car.

So King has done that. I wouldn't be surprised if there's something that comes out later. Where all the connections are maybe explored in more detail.

I do enjoy that. Like either fan theories or when stories are in the same universe. That have really no real connection with each other.

Or completely different but are in the same universe. You like it when there's no connection with each other? Well, just that there's a... No explicit connection. No explicit, exactly.

But there's allusions to it. And again, Needful Things. The story of Needful Things references the story of Cujo.

And a couple of other stories. So like the guy from The Body. The bully from The Body makes it into Needful Things too.

So King has done this for a long time. I think it's fascinating. Josh, I want to explore that.

Why do you like it when they're not explicitly part of the same world? Or however you said it a minute ago. Well, I like it because it, I don't know. I think it then you can draw those connections yourself.

Have your own imagination within the story. So an example, I don't know if this is the best example. But The Avengers.

Like those series. And I'm not a huge fan. I'm not super into The Avengers.

But they are kind of in this... I don't like you either. Probably not. But they are in the same universe, right? And so I do enjoy that aspect of it.

Of thinking about this world. Where there are different characters, different storylines, different whatever. But in the same universe.

And you can kind of see how they are connected. Have I got a series for you, Josh. It's called The Cosmere.

If you know, you know. Yeah, and Jonathan, I just want to dovetail what Josh said. This is sometimes a point of contention for us.

We say like, well, why didn't he explain this? Why didn't he, you know, give spoon feed me? Yada, yada, yada. Sometimes, this is true for me and apparently for Josh. Sometimes I like the ambiguity in stories.

Or the lack of background. Or the lack of explanation. Because that leaves it up to me to, you know, to decide, right? To explore with my imagination what might happen.

Now there's bad ways of doing that. Where you're like, what the hell am I reading? I don't know what's going on. I don't understand what the characters want.

So there's a bad examples of that. But there's good examples. Should I mention, should I mention the bad example? Go ahead.

Which book is it? China, China, Mayfair, The City. There it is. There you go again.

But there's good examples of it. Like Roadside Picnic. I knew a couple of times.

I remember a couple of times you said, hey, what's the backstory for this guy? Why is he going in the zone? Why was he in prison? What's his deal with the woman and the kid? Blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, that's the point of speculative fiction is sometimes you don't get all the background. And that's a particular example.

So the thing is, I loved Roadside Picnic. And if you guys follow us on Threads, whenever someone is like, hey, I need a book recommendation. The only book that I recommend on Threads, side note, I run our Threads account.

The only book that I recommend is Roadside Picnic. That's it. Someone's like, hey, I need a romanticy, Roadside Picnic.

Hey, I want a new fantasy pick. Roadside Picnic. Roadside Picnic.

Hey, I'm looking for sci-fi, Roadside Picnic. Hey, I'm looking for a young adult's book, Roadside Picnic. It's literally the only book that I recommend on Threads.

It's a really good book. It fits at least two of those categories. Well, I mean, he had a wife and a kid.

Yeah, there you go. Romanticy. Romanticy.

Can I just do a quick apologize to China Mayville? I know this is a Stephen King episode. Look, China, if you ever see this, I don't dislike you. I'm just disappointed.

In one book. In one book. I've never read any of your other works.

And maybe I will. I don't know. You have.

We have. We didn't read another one of his books. We read about four chapters before we quit.

What book? There was another one that was just- The one he wrote with Keanu Reeves. Oh, I didn't read that. We talked about reading it.

Maybe you read four chapters. I read about four chapters and I quit because I couldn't get into it. That doesn't mean I won't go back and finish it.

But we were doing so much at that time. It was still in the midst of our growth. I didn't read it though because we had to kick it down the road.

And that's one of the reasons I punted it. The first reason was like, I'm not really getting into this right now because I'm reading like two or three books, like one for the podcast, one for me, one for just shits and giggles. And I'm like, and now I'm starting a fourth one.

I'm like, I'm going to punt this down the road. So yeah, you only read one China Mayville book. Back to your apology.

Yeah, that's it. I'm sorry for dogging on you all the time. Would you please forgive me? Join our podcast.

Is that how this works? Yes. Did I do that right? Yep. Okay.

Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. I figured I should at some point apologize to China Mayville because I use him as a bit throughout the series now.

But that said, like a lot of the books we've read, I have enjoyed even if I get frustrated about not knowing things back to the point that you brought up earlier. But I also think that that's perhaps why I've never truly dove into speculative fiction as wholeheartedly before we started this podcast. Because I don't like having to ask all these questions and then there's no way to find answers.

This is the same frustration that Christopher and I got into when we were writing our own book and we were doing world building. Because we're like, we would text each other sometimes and go, hey, what do you think happens with Ethan before his parents died? And I go, I mean, it could be this, could be that, could be this other thing. It's like, why isn't there just a Wikipedia for this book to exist? And I'm like, it's because we haven't written it yet, man.

That's why. And one defense of speculative fiction, not all of it is so disjointed. And sometimes that's the gimmick, right? To write it.

Right, yeah, that's the shtick. But not all speculative fiction is like that. Philip K. Dick, purely speculative.

But he writes novellas. He doesn't write anything longer than a novella, I don't think. And so there's only so much you can pack in.

And Blade Runner, we read Blade Runner, was still enjoyable. And we got very little of background or character growth. We got just a slice of life.

And there is character growth in it. If you really dig down into the depths of Blade Runner. But it's not a Stephen King-esque character arc or Brandon Sanderson-esque character arc.

It's just you're following a cop or an assassin, really. Well, I took us on a bit of a side quest there. So sorry about that, folks.

But hope you enjoyed Pet Sematary as much as we did. If you have thoughts on what makes good horror, horror. If you have thoughts on books that you hate, I'd love to hear that.

If you have thoughts on books we should read, drop them in the comments. Also, if you want to hear from a brand new guest that we're about to have on, tune in next time where we review what it was like for John to read Pet Sematary. Is this his first time, Sava? Or it's his favorite book? This is his first time.

His kids have been on. This is his first time. No, no, no.

The book itself, Pet Sematary. Oh, no. He's read it before.

He read it before. Okay, yeah, that's what... Okay, yeah. So John is coming on.

You will recognize what he looks like because two of his sons have been on a bunch of other episodes, JT and Casey. So JT and Casey's dad is going to be on, John. He's going to talk to us about his favorite book, Pet Sematary, in the Stephen King universe.

Can I call it a universe? Of course, it is. It's a Stephen King's multiverse. But yeah, and I think we should take it a different route.

We have exhausted the plot. So maybe we can talk about King himself. Pet Sematary is a standout work for John.

We'll work that out. So you're not going to listen to us rehash the same things, audience. But we'll make it fresh for you.

But John will be here because he inspired us to put this book on our roster. He is the inspiration for us doing Pet Sematary. That is for sure.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this book by Stephen King. Definitely a new genre for me.

So enjoyed talking about it. If you enjoyed this episode, please do us a favor and like and subscribe. Hit that bell.

And see you next time on our next episode as we tie things together with our friend John. And yeah. Yeah, we'll see you in the next one.

Get f***ed, San Diego. There it is. You ever watch Anchorman? He says, go f*** yourself.

But it's similar. Who wrote that on the teleprompter? I told you he reads everything. Parse.

I'm going to just tell you explicitly. Cut that out. That'll be a funny outro.