The first of these stories, The Dark Half, was published in 1989. While it is primarily the story of Thad Beaumont and is in large part set in a town called Ludlow (the town where the Creeds lived in Pet Sematary), the town of Castle Rock figures in the tale, and the book serves to introduce Sheriff Bannerman’s replacement, a fellow named Alan Pangborn. Sheriff Pangborn is at the center of the last story in this sequence, a long novel called Needful Things, which is scheduled to be published next year and will conclude my doings with what local people call The Rock.
The connective tissue between these longer works is the story which follows. You will meet few if any of Castle Rock’s larger figures in ‘The Sun Dog,’ but it will serve to introduce you to Pop Merrill, whose nephew is town bad boy (and Gordie LaChance’s bete noire in ‘The Body’) Ace Merrill. ‘The Sun Dog’ also sets the stage for the final fireworks display … and, I hope, exists as a satisfying story on its own, one that can be read with pleasure even if you don’t give a hang about The Dark Half or Needful Things.
One other thing needs to be said: every story has its own secret life, quite separate from its setting, and ‘The Sun Dog’ is a story about cameras and photographs. About five years ago, my wife, Tabitha, became interested in photography, discovered she was good at it, and began to pursue it in a serious way, through study, experiment, and practice-practice-practice. I myself take bad photos (I’m one of those guys who always manage to cut off my subjects’ heads, get pictures of them with their mouths hanging open, or both), but I have a great deal of respect for those who take good ones … and the whole process fascinates me.
In the course of her experiments, my wife got a Polaroid camera, a simple one accessible even to a doofus like me. I became fascinated with this camera. I had seen and used Polaroids before, of course, but I had never really thought about them much, nor had I ever looked closely at the images these cameras produce.
The more I thought about them, the stranger they seemed. They are, after all, not just images but moments of time … and there is something so peculiar about them.
This story came almost all at once one night in the summer of 1987, but the thinking which made it possible went on for almost a year. And that’s enough out of me, I think. It’s been great to be with all of you again, but that doesn’t mean I’m letting you go home just yet.
I think we have a birthday party to attend in the little town of Castle Rock.
CHAPTER 1
September 15th was Kevin’s birthday, and he got exactly what he wanted: a Sun.
The Kevin in question was Kevin Delevan, the birthday was his fifteenth, and the Sun was a Sun 660, a Polaroid camera which does everything for the novice photographer except make bologna sandwiches.
There were other gifts, of course; his sister, Meg, gave him a pair of mittens she had knitted herself, there was ten dollars from his grandmother in Des Moines, and his Aunt Hilda sent – as she always did – a string tie with a horrible clasp. She had sent the first of these when Kevin was three, which meant he already had twelve unused string ties with horrible clasps in a drawer of his bureau, to which this would be added –
lucky thirteen. He had never worn any of them but was not allowed to throw them away. Aunt Hilda lived in Portland. She had never come to one of Kevin’s or Meg’s birthday parties, but she might decide to do just that one of these years. God knew she could; Portland was only fifty miles south of Castle Rock. And suppose she did come … and asked to see Kevin in one of his other ties (or Meg in one of her other scarves, for that matter)? With some relatives, an excuse might do. Aunt Hilda, however, was different. Aunt Hilda presented a certain golden possibility at a point where two essential facts about her crossed: she was Rich, and she was Old.
Someday, Kevin’s Mom was convinced, she might DO SOMETHING for Kevin and Meg. It was understood that the SOMETHING would probably come after Aunt Hilda finally kicked it, in the form of a clause in her will. In the meantime, it was thought wise to keep the horrible string ties and the equally horrible scarves. So this thirteenth string tie (on the clasp of which was a bird Kevin thought was a woodpecker) would join the others, and Kevin would write Aunt Hilda a thank-you note, not because his mother would insist on it and not because he thought or even cared that Aunt Hilda might DO
SOMETHING for him and his kid sister someday, but because he was a generally thoughtful boy with good habits and no real vices.
He thanked his family for all his gifts (his mother and father had, of course, supplied a number of lesser ones, although the Polaroid was clearly the centerpiece, and they were delighted with his delight), not forgetting to give Meg a kiss (she giggled and pretended to rub it off but her own delight was equally clear) and to tell her he was sure the mittens would come in handy on the ski team this winter – but most of his attention was reserved for the Polaroid box, and the extra film packs which had come with it.
He was a good sport about the birthday cake and the ice cream, although it was clear he was itching to get at the camera and try it out. And as soon as he decently could, he did.
That was when the trouble started.
He read the instruction booklet as thoroughly as his eagerness to begin would allow, then loaded the camera while the family watched with anticipation and unacknowledged dread (for some reason, the gifts which seem the most wanted are the ones which so often don’t work). There was a little collective sigh –
more puff than gust – when the camera obediently spat out the cardboard square on top of the film packet, just as the instruction booklet had promised it would.
There were two small dots, one red and one green, separated by a zig-zag lightning-bolt on the housing of the camera. When Kevin loaded the camera, the red light came on. It stayed on for a couple of seconds. The family watched in silent fascination as the Sun 660 sniffed for light. Then the red light went out and the green light began to blink rapidly.
‘It’s ready,’ Kevin said, in the same straining-to-be-offhand-but-not-quite-making-it tone with which Neil Armstrong had reported his first step upon the surface of Luna. ‘Why don’t all you guys stand together?’
‘I hate having my picture taken!’ Meg cried, covering her face with the theatrical anxiety and pleasure which only sub-teenage girls and really bad actresses can manage.
‘Come on, Meg,’ Mr Delevan said.
‘Don’t be a goose, Meg,’ Mrs Delevan said.
Meg dropped her hands (and her objections), and the three of them stood at the end of the table with the diminished birthday cake in the foreground.
Kevin looked through the viewfinder. ‘Squeeze a little closer to Meg, Mom,’ he said, motioning with his left hand. ‘You too, Dad.’ This time he motioned with his right.
‘You’re squishing me!’ Meg said to her parents.
Kevin put his finger on the button which would fire the camera, then remembered a briefly glimpsed note in the instructions about how easy it was to cut off your subjects’ heads in a photograph. Off with their heads, he thought, and it should have been funny, but for some reason he felt a little tingle at the base of his spine, gone and forgotten almost before it was noticed. He raised the camera a little. There. They were all in the frame. Good.
‘Okay!’ he sang. ‘Smile and say Intercourse!’
‘Kevin!’ his mother cried out.
His father burst out laughing, and Meg screeched the sort of mad laughter not even bad actresses often essay; girls between the ages of ten and twelve own sole title to that particular laugh.
Kevin pushed the button.
The flashbulb, powered by the battery in the film pack, washed the room in a moment of righteous white light.
It’s mine, Kevin thought, and it should have been the surpassing moment of his fifteenth birthday. Instead, the thought brought back that odd little tingle. It was more noticeable this time.
The camera made a noise, something between a squeal and a whirr, a sound just a little beyond description but familiar enough to most people, just the same: the sound of a Polaroid camera squirting out what may not be art but what is often serviceable and almost always provides instant gratification.