Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [385]
And then Kevin actually said it: looked at him and said it. 'It's coming, Dad. Please. It's my life.' He looked at his father, pleading with his pallid face and his fey, floating eyes. 'The dog is coming. It won't do any good to just break in and take the camera. It's gone way past that now. Please don't stop me. Please don't wake me up. It's my life.'
Mr Delevan made one last great effort not to give in to this creeping craziness ... and then succumbed.
'Come on,' he said, hooking his hand around his son's elbow and almost dragging him into the square. 'Whatever it is, let's get it done.' He paused. 'Do we have enough time?'
'I'm not sure,' Kevin said, and then, reluctantly: 'I don't think so.'
CHAPTER 17
Pop waited behind the board fence, looking at the Delevans through a knothole. He had put his tobacco in his back pocket so that his hands would be free to clench and unclench, clench and unclench.
You're on my property, his mind whispered at them, and if his mind had had the power to kill, he would have reached out with it and struck them both dead. You're on my property, goddammit, you're on my property!
What he ought to do was go get old John Law and bring him down on their fancy Castle View heads. That was what he ought to do. And he would have done it, too, right then, if they hadn't been standing over the wreckage of the camera the boy himself had supposedly destroyed with Pop's blessing two weeks ago. He thought maybe he would have tried to bullshit his way through anyway, but he knew how they felt about him in this town. Pangborn, Keeton, all the rest of them. Trash. That's what they thought of him. Trash.
Until they got their asses in a crack and needed a fast loan and the sun was down, that was.
Clench, unclench. Clench, unclench.
They were talking, but Pop didn't bother listening to what they were saying. His mind was a fuming forge. Now the litany had become: They're on my goddam property and I can't do a thing about it! They're on my goddam property and I can't do a thing about It! Goddam them! Goddam them!
At last they left. When he heard the rusty screech of the gate in the alley, Pop used his key on the one in the board fence. He slipped through and ran across the yard to his back door - ran with an unsettling fleetness for a man of seventy, with one hand clapped firmly against his upper right leg, as if, fleet or not, he was fighting a bad rheumatism pain there. In fact, Pop was feeling no pain at all. He didn't want either his keys or the change in his purse jingling, that was all. In case the Delevans were still there, lurking just beyond where he could see. Pop wouldn't have been surprised if they were doing just that. When you were dealing with skunks, you expected them to get up to stinking didos.
He slipped his keys out of his pocket. Now they rattled, and although the sound was muted, it seemed very loud to him. He cut his eyes to the left for a moment, sure he would see the brat's staring sheep's face. Pop's mouth was set in a hard, strained grin of fear. There was no one there.
Yet, anyway.
He found the right key, slipped it into the lock, and went in. He was careful not to open the door to the shed too wide, because the hinges picked up a squeal when you exercised them too much.
Inside, he turned the thumb-bolt with a savage twist and then went into the Emporium Galorium. He was more than at home in these shadows. He could have negotiated the narrow, junk-lined corridors in his sleep ... had, in fact, although that, like a good many other things, had slipped his mind for the time being.
There was a dirty little side window near the front of the store that looked out upon the narrow alleyway the Delevans had used to trespass their way into his backyard. It also gave a sharply angled view on the sidewalk and part of the town common.
Pop slipped up to this window between piles of useless, valueless magazines that breathed their dusty yellow museum scent into the dark air. He looked out into the alley and saw it, was empty. He looked to