But that was for later, and even then it was only perhaps. It wouldn’t do for right now, that was for sure.
They would need time to cool down. Right now both of them would be raring to tear a chunk out of his ass, like
(the dog in that pitcher)
like … well, never mind what they’d be like. The important thing was to be down here, business as usual and as innocent as a goddam baby when they got back.
Because they would be back.
But that was all right. It was all right because ‘B’cause things are under control,’ Pop whispered. ‘That’s what I mean to say.’
Now he did go to the front door, and switched the CLOSED sign over to OPEN (he then turned it promptly back to CLOSED again, but this Pop did not observe himself doing, nor would he remember it later). All right; that was a start. What was next? Make it look like just another normal day, no more and no less. He had to be all surprise and what-in-the-tarnation-are-you-talking-about when they came back with steam coming out of their collars, all ready to do or die for what had already been killed just as dead as sheepdip.
So … what was the most normal thing they could find him doing when they came back, with Sheriff Pangborn or without him?
Pop’s eye fixed on the cuckoo clock hanging from the beam beside that nice bureau he’d gotten at an estate sale in Sebago a month or six weeks ago. Not a very nice cuckoo clock, probably one originally purchased with trading stamps by some soul trying to be thrifty (people who could only try to be thrifty were, in Pop’s estimation, poor puzzled souls who drifted through life in a vague and constant state of disappointment).
Still, if he could put it right so it would run a little, he could maybe sell it to one of the skiers who would be up in another month or two, somebody who needed a clock at their cottage or ski-lodge because the last bargain had up and died and who didn’t understand yet (and probably never would) that another bargain wasn’t the solution but the problem.
Pop would feel sorry for that person, and would dicker with him or her as fairly as he thought he could, but he wouldn’t disappoint the buyer. Caveet emperor was not only what he meant to say but often did say, and he had a living to make, didn’t he?
Yes. So he would just sit back there at his worktable and fuss around with that clock, see if he could get it running, and when the Delevans got back, that was what they would find him doing. Maybe there’d even be a few prospective customers browsing around by then; he could hope, although this was always a slack time of year. Customers would be icing on the cake, anyway. The important thing was how it would look: just a fellow with nothing to hide, going through the ordinary motions and ordinary rhythms of his ordinary day.
Pop went over to the beam and took the cuckoo clock down, being careful not to tangle up the counterweights. He carried it back to his worktable, humming a little. He set it down, then felt his back pocket. Fresh tobacco. That was good, too.
Pop thought he would have himself a little pipe while he worked.
CHAPTER 18
‘You can’t know he was in here, Kevin!’ Mr Delevan was still protesting feebly as they went into LaVerdiere’s.
Ignoring him, Kevin went straight to the counter where Molly Durham stood. Her urge to vomit had passed off, and she felt much better. The whole thing seemed a little silly now, like a nightmare you have and then wake up from and after the initial relief you think: I was afraid of THAT? How could I ever have thought THAT was really happening to me, even in a dream?
But when the Delevan boy presented his drawn white face at the counter, she knew how you could be afraid, yes, oh yes, even of things as ridiculous as the things which happened in dreams, because she was tumbled back into her own waking dreamscape again.
The thing was, Kevin Delevan had almost the same look on his face: as though he were so deep inside somewhere that when his voice and his gaze finally reached her, they seemed almost expended.
‘Pop Merrill was in here,’ he said. ‘What did he buy?’
‘Please excuse my son,’ Mr Delevan said. ‘He’s not feeling w -‘
Then he saw Molly’s face and stopped. She looked like she had just seen a man lose his arm to a factory machine.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Oh my God!’
‘Was it film?’ Kevin asked her.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Molly asked faintly. ‘I knew something was the minute he walked in. What is it?
Has he … done something?’
Jesus, John Delevan thought. He DOES know. It’s all true, then.
At that moment, Mr Delevan made a quietly heroic decision: he gave up entirely. He gave up entirely and put himself and what he believed could and could not be true entirely in his son’s hands.
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ Kevin pressed her. His urgent face rebuked her for her flutters and tremors. ‘Polaroid film. From that.’ He pointed at the display.
‘Yes.’ Her complexion was as pale as china; the bit of rouge she had put on that morning stood out in hectic, flaring patches. ‘He was so … strange. Like a talking doll. What’s wrong with him? What -‘
But Kevin had whirled away, back to his father.
‘I need a camera,’ he rapped. ‘I need it right now. A Polaroid Sun 660. They have them. They’re even on special. See?’
And in spite of his decision, Mr Delevan’s mouth would not quite let go of the last clinging shreds of rationality. ‘Why -‘ he began, and that was as far as Kevin let him get.
‘I don’t KNOW why!’ he shouted, and Molly Durham moaned. She didn’t want to throw up now; Kevin Delevan was scary, but not that scary. What she wanted to do right now was simply go home and creep up to her bedroom and draw the covers over her head. ‘But we have to have it, and time’s almost up, Dad!’
‘Give me one of those cameras,’ Mr Delevan said, drawing his wallet out with shaking hands, unaware that Kevin had already darted to the display.
‘Just take one,’ she heard a trembling voice entirely unlike her own say. ‘Just take one and go.’
CHAPTER 19
Across the square, Pop Merrill, who believed he was peacefully repairing a cheap cuckoo clock, innocent as a babe in arms, finished loading Kevin’s camera with one of the film packs. He snapped it shut. It made its squidgy little whine.
Damn cuckoo sounds like he’s got a bad case of laryngitis. Slipped a gear, I guess. Well, I got the cure for that.
‘I’ll fix you,’ Pop said, and raised the camera. He applied one blank eye to the viewfinder with the hairline crack which was so tiny you didn’t even see it when you got your eye up to it. The camera was aimed at the front of the store, but that didn’t matter; wherever you pointed it, it was aimed at a certain black dog that wasn’t any dog God had ever made in a little town called for the want of a better word Polaroidsville, which He also hadn’t ever made.
FLASH!
That squidgy little whine as Kevin’s camera pushed out a new picture.
‘There,’ Pop said with quiet satisfaction. ‘Maybe I’ll do more than get you talking, bird. What I mean to say is I might just get you singing. I don’t promise, but I’ll give her a try.’
Pop grinned a dry, leathery grin and pushed the button again.
FLASH!
They were halfway across the square when John Delevan saw a silent white light fill the dirty windows of the Emporium Galorium. The light was silent, but following it, like an aftershock, he heard a low, dark rumble that seemed to come to his ears from the old man’s junk-store … but only because the old man’s junk-store was the only place it could find a way to get out. Where it seemed to be emanating from was under the earth … or was it just that the earth itself seemed the only place large enough to cradle the owner of that voice?
‘Run, Dad!’ Kevin cried. ‘He’s started doing it!’
That flash recurred, lighting the windows like a heatless stroke of electricity. It was followed by that subaural growl again, the sound of a sonic boom in a wind-tunnel, the sound of some animal which was horrible beyond comprehension being kicked out of its sleep.
Mr Delevan, helpless to stop himself and almost unaware of what he was doing, opened his mouth to tell his son that a light that big and bright could not possibly be coming from the built-in flash of a Polaroid camera, but Kevin had already started to run.