10 Stephen King Universe Fates Worse Than Death

Pet Semetary is easily one of Stephen King's most disturbing novels and, despite two attempts at adaptation, neither film has truly captured the horror of the source material. The death of Gage is a gut punch like few others in King's bibliography, though, as the novel says, sometimes dead is better.

The burial ground into which Louis puts his son is a place infested with true evil - an evil that sets up shop within his son. He has to watch as Gage comes back, even though the demon wearing his face is nothing like the sweet little boy that went under the wheels of the truck. In that time in which his son comes back, death visits the Creed house again. And again.

While both film adaptations attempt to display the disturbing impact of the return of Louis' dead children, they pale in comparison to the ending of the novel. That final moment, with Rachel's hand coming down on Louis' shoulder, leaves a certainty that whatever happens to Louis now, he is damned beyond salvation.

Sometimes, dead is better.