Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [389]
CHAPTER 20
The second Polaroid Pop took forced the first one out of the slot. It fluttered down to the top of the desk, where it landed with a thud heavier than such a square of chemically treated cardboard could possibly make. The Sun dog filled almost the entire frame now; the foreground was its impossible head, the black pits of the eyes, the smoking, teeth-filled jaws. The skull seemed to be elongating into a shape like a bullet or a teardrop as the dog-thing's speed and the shortening distance between it and the lens combined to drive it further out of focus. Only the tops of the pickets in the fence behind it were visible now; the bulk of the thing's flexed shoulders ate up the rest of the frame.
Kevin's birthday string tie, which had rested next to the Sun camera in his drawer, showed at the bottom of the frame, winking back a shaft of hazy sunlight.
'Almost got you, you son of a whore,' Pop said in a high, cracked voice. His eyes were blinded by the light. He saw neither dog nor camera. He saw only the voiceless cuckoo which had become his life's mission. 'You'll sing, damn you! I'll make you sing!'
FLASH!
The third picture pushed the second from the slot. It fell too fast, more like a chunk of stone than a square of cardboard, and when it hit the desk, it dug through the ancient frayed blotter there and sent startled splinters flying up from the wood beneath.
In this picture, the dog's head was torn even further out of focus., it had become a long column of flesh that gave it a strange, almost three-dimensional aspect.
In the third one, still poking out of the slot in the bottom of the camera, the Sun dog's snout seemed, impossibly, to be coming back into focus again. It was impossible because it was as close to the lens as it could get; so close it seemed to be the snout of some sea-monster just below that fragile meniscus we call the surface.
'Damn thing still ain't quite right,' Pop said.
His finger pushed the Polaroid's trigger again.
CHAPTER 21
Kevin ran up the steps of the Emporium Galorium. His father reached for him, caught nothing but the air an inch from the fluttering tail of Kevin's shirt, stumbled, and landed on the heels of his hands. They slid across the second step from the top, sending a quiver of small splinters into his skin.
'Kevin!'
He looked up and for a moment the world was almost lost in another of those dazzling white flashes. This time the roar was much louder. It was the sound of a crazed animal on the verge of making its weakening cage give it up. He saw Kevin with his head down, one hand shielding his eyes from the white glare, frozen in that stroboscopic light as if he himself had turned into a photograph. He saw cracks like quicksilver jigjag their way down the show windows.
'Kevin, look ou -'
The glass burst outward in a glittery spray and Mr Delevan ducked his own head. Glass flew around him in a squall. He felt it patter into his hair and both cheeks were scratched, but none of the glass dug deeply into either the boy or the man; most of it had been pulverized to crumbs.
There was a splintering crunch. He looked up again and saw that Kevin had gained entry just as Mr Delevan had thought they might earlier: by ramming the now-glassless door with his shoulder and tearing the new locking bolt right through the old, rotted wood.
'KEVIN, GODDAMMIT!' he bawled. He got up, almost stumbled to one knee again as his feet tangled together, then lurched upright and plunged after his son.
Something had happened to the goddam cuckoo clock. Something bad.
It was striking again and again - bad enough, but that wasn't all. It had also gained weight in Pop's hands ... and it seemed to be growing uncomfortably hot, as well.
Pop looked down at it, and suddenly tried to scream in horror through jaws which felt as if they had been wired together somehow.
He realized he had