It’s the night before my first trip to the archives, and I still haven’t decided where I’m going to start. I open the Doubleday hardcover copy of Pet Sematary I’ve just purchased at the Big Chicken Barn in Ellsworth, a vast consignment store full of creepy old dolls and spittoons—the perfect setting for a Stephen King story. It’s the same version I read in 1983, at age fifteen, when I took it out of the Witherle Memorial Library in Castine.

I’ve decided that to immerse myself fully in this project, I need to return to these originals. I want to re-create all of the sensory experiences that were a part of my first fearful encounters with King’s writing—to see the covers, smell the pages, and feel the unique heft of each book.

I burrow under my covers with Pet Sematary and begin. This edition has the face of a demonic, green-eyed cat on it: Church, the family pet that comes back to life after Louis Creed inters him in a Native American burial ground whose earth has gone sour.…