by Stephen King
Part of Four Past Midnight
First published 1991
Kevin Delevan is fifteen years old when he gets a Polaroid camera as a birthday gift. He points it at anything. It always takes the same picture. A huge, ugly dog fills the frame, and in every new shot the animal is closer to the surface of the film, pressing forward as if the paper itself is the only thing holding it back. Kevin lives in Castle Rock, Maine, and Castle Rock has Pop Merrill, the shrewdest dealer in town, a man who sees money in strange things. Pop gets hold of the camera and starts thinking about buyers. He is not thinking about what the dog wants. Kevin knows the creature should not exist. He knows the gap between the photograph and the real world is getting thinner with every shot. Pop keeps shooting anyway. The Sun Dog is not a pet, not a trick, and not a product anyone can sell and walk away from. What Kevin has to figure out, before Pop runs out of film, is whether there is any way to stop something that has been moving toward him all along.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, horror, supernatural, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, creepy, dark, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: cursed-artifact, escalating-threat, innocent-bystander-in-danger
Setting: Castle Rock, Maine
Period: 20th-century
7 pages · Audio CD · HighBridge Audio
Content warnings: death, violence