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.Still.'Leave it,' he said roughly in the darkness, and the sound of his own voice startled him and got him moving andhe went upstairs without another look back.CHAPTER 7Very early the next morning, Kevin Delevan had a nightmare so horrible he could only remember parts of it, likeisolated phrases of music heard on a radio with a defective speaker.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20.ing%20-%20A%20note%20On%20The%20sun%20Dog.HTM (59 of 119)7/28/2005 9:22:38 PM The Sun DogHe was walking into a grungy little mill-town.Apparently he was on the bum, because he had a pack on his back.The name of the town was Oatley, and Kevin had the idea it was either in Vermont or upstate New York.Youknow anyone hiring here in Oatley? he asked an old man pushing a shoppingcart along a cracked sidewalk.Therewere no groceries in the cart; it was full of indeterminate junk, and Kevin realized the man was a wino.Getaway! the wino screamed.Get away! Feef! Fushing feef! Fushing FEEF!Kevin ran, darted across the street, more frightened of the man's madness than he was of the idea anyone mightbelieve that he, Kevin, was a thief.The wino called after him: This ain't Oatley! This is Hildasville! Get out oftown, you fushing feef!It was then that he realized that this town wasn't Oatley or Hildasville or any other town with a normal name.How could an utterly abnormal town have a normal name?Everything - streets, buildings, cars, signs, the few pedestrians - was two-dimensional.Things had height, theyhad width.but they had no thickness.He passed a woman who looked the way Meg's ballet teacher might lookif the ballet teacher put on a hundred and fifty pounds.She was wearing slacks the color of Bazooka bubble gum.Like the wino, she was pushing a shopping-cart.It had a squeaky wheel.It was full of Polaroid Sun 660 cameras.She looked at Kevin with narrow suspicion as they drew closer together.At the moment when they passed eachother on the sidewalk, she disappeared.Her shadow was still there and he could still hear that rhythmicsqueaking, but she was no longer there.Then she reappeared, looking back at him from her fat flat suspiciousface, and Kevin understood the reason why she had disappeared for a moment.It was because the concept of 'aside view' didn't exist, couldn't exist, in a world where everything was perfectly flat.This is Polaroidsville, he thought with a relief which was strangely mingled with horror.And that means this isonly a dream.Then he saw the white picket fence, and the dog, and the photographer standing in the gutter.There were rimlessspectacles propped up on his head.It was Pop Merrill.Well, son, you found him, the two-dimensional Polaroid Pop said to Kevin without removing his eye from theshutter.That's the dog, right there.The one tore up that kid out in Schenectady.YOUR dog, is what I mean to say.Then Kevin woke up in his own bed, afraid he had screamed but more concerned at first not about the dream butto make sure he was all there, all three dimensions of him.He was.But something was wrong.Stupid dream, he thought.Let it go, why can't you? It's over.Photos are burned, all fifty-eight of them.And thecamera's busHis thought broke off like ice as that something, that something wrong, teased at his mind again.It's not over, he thought.It's n-file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20.ing%20-%20A%20note%20On%20The%20sun%20Dog.HTM (60 of 119)7/28/2005 9:22:39 PM The Sun DogBut before the thought could finish itself, Kevin Delevan fell deeply, dreamlessly asleep.The next morning, hebarely remembered the nightmare at all.CHAPTER 8The two weeks following his acquisition of Kevin Delevan's Polaroid Sun were the most aggravating, infuriating,humiliating two weeks of Pop Merrill's life.There were quite a few people in Castle Rock who would have said itcouldn't have happened to a more deserving guy.Not that anyone in Castle Rock did know.and that was justabout all the consolation Pop could take.He found it cold comfort.Very cold indeed, thank you very much.But who would have ever believed the Mad Hatters would have, could have, let him down so badly?It was almost enough to make a man wonder if he was starting to slip a little.God forbid.CHAPTER 9Back in September, he hadn't even bothered to wonder if he would sell the Polaroid; the only questions were howsoon and how much.The Delevans had bandied the word supernatural about, and Pop hadn't corrected them,although he knew that what the Sun was doing would be more properly classed by psychic investigators as aparanormal rather than supernatural phenomenon.He could have told them that, but if he had, they might bothhave wondered how come the owner of a small-town used-goods store (and part-time usurer) knew so muchabout the subject.The fact was this: he knew a lot because it was profitable to know a lot, and it was profitable toknow a lot because of the people he thought of as 'my Mad Hatters.'Mad Hatters were people who recorded empty rooms on expensive audio equipment not for a lark or a drunkenparty stunt, but either because they believed passionately in an unseen world and wanted to prove its existence, orbecause they wanted passionately to get in touch with friends and/or relatives who had 'passed on' ('passed on':that's what they always called it; Mad Hatters never had relatives who did something so simple as die).Mad Hatters not only owned and used Ouija Boards, they had regular conversations with 'spirit guides' in the'other world' (never 'heaven,' 'hell,' or even 'the rest area of the dead' but the 'other world') who put them in touchwith friends, relatives, queens, dead rock-and-roll singers, even arch-villains.Pop knew of a Mad Hatter inVermont who had twice-weekly conversations with Hitler.Hitler had told him it was all a bum rap, he had suedfor peace in January of 1943 and that son of a bitch Churchill had turned him down.Hitler had also told him PaulNewman was a space alien who had been born in a cave on the moon.Mad Hatters went to seances as regularly (and as compulsively) as drug addicts visited their pushers.Theybought crystal balls and amulets guaranteed to bring good luck; they organized their own little societies andinvestigated reputedly haunted houses for all the usual phenomena: teleplasma, table-rappings, floating tables andbeds, cold spots, and, of course, ghosts.They noted all of these, real or imagined, with the enthusiasm of dedicated bird-watchers.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20.ing%20-%20A%20note%20On%20The%20sun%20Dog
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