Four Past Midnight

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.'