Needful Things

1

The onslaught of the storm slowed Alan down to a crawl in spite of his growing feeling that time had become vitally, bitterly important, and that if he didn’t get back to Castle Rock soon, he might just as well stay away forever. Much of the information he had really needed, it seemed to him now, had been in his mind all along, locked up behind a stout door. The door had a legend printed neatly on it-but not OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT or BOARD ROOM or even PRIVATE DO NOT ENTER.

The legend printed on the door in Alan’s mind had been THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

All he’d needed to unlock it was the right key… the key which Sean Rusk had given him. And what was behind the door?

Why, Needful Things. And its proprietor, Mr. Leland Gaunt.

Brian Rusk had bought a baseball card in Needful Things, and Brian was dead. Nettle Cobb had bought a lampshade in Needful Things, and she was dead, too. How many others in Castle Rock had gone to the well and bought poisoned water from the poison man? Norris had-a fishing rod. Polly had-a magic charm. Brian Rusk’s mother had-a pair of cheap sunglasses that had something to do with Elvis Presley. Even Ace Merrill had-an old book. Alan was willing to bet that Hugh Priest had also made a purchase… and Danforth Keeton…

How many others? How many?

He pulled up on the far side of the Tin Bridge just as a bolt of lightning stroked down from the sky and severed one of the old elms on the other side of Castle Stream. There was a huge electrical crackle and a wild streak of brilliance. Alan threw an arm across his eyes, but an afterimage was still printed on them in stark blue as the radio uttered a loud blurt of static and the elm toppled with ponderous grandeur into the stream.

He dropped his arm, then yelled as thunder bellowed directly overhead, sounding loud enough to crack the world. For a moment his dazzled eyes could make out nothing and he was afraid the tree might have fallen on the bridge, blocking his way into town. Then he saw it lying just upstream of the rusty old structure, buried in a loom of rapids. Alan put the cruiser in gear and made the crossing.

As he did, he could hear the wind, which was now blowing a gale, hooting in the struts and girders of the bridge. It was a creepy, lonely sound.

Rain pelted against the old station wagon’s windshield, turning everything beyond it into a wavering hallucination. As Alan came off the bridge and onto Lower Main Street at its intersection with Watermill Lane, the rain began to come so hard that the wipers, even on fast speed, were entirely useless. He unrolled his window, stuck his head out, and drove that way. He was instantly soaked.

The area around the Municipal Building was loaded with police cars and newsvans, but it also had a weird, deserted look, as if the people who belonged to all these vehicles had suddenly been teleported to the planet Neptune by evil aliens. Alan saw a few newspeople peering out from the shelter of their vans, and one State cop ran down the alley which led to the Municipal Building’s parking lot, rainwater spatting up from his shoes, but that was all.

Three blocks up, toward Castle Hill, an S.P. cruiser shot across Upper Main at high speed, heading west along Laurel Street. A moment later, another cruiser shot across Main. This one was on Birch Street and headed in the opposite direction from the first. It happened so fast-zip, zip-that it was like something you’d see in a comedy movie about bumbling police. Smokey and the Bandit, perhaps. Alan, however, saw nothing funny in it. It gave him a sense of action without purpose, a kind of panicky, helter-skelter movement. He was suddenly sure that Henry Payton had lost control of whatever was happening in Castle Rock tonight… if he’d ever had anything more than an illusion of control in the first place, that was.

He thought he could hear faint cries coming from the direction of Castle Hill. With the rain, thunder, and driving wind it was hard to tell for sure, but he did not think those cries were just imagination.

As if to prove this, a State Police car roared out of the alley next to the Municipal Building, flashing headlights and whirling domelights illuminating silvery streaks of rain, and headed in that direction. It nearly sideswiped an oversized WMTW news-wagon in the process.

Alan remembered feeling, earlier this week, that there was something badly out of joint in his little town-that things he could not see were going wrong and Castle Rock was trembling on the edge of some unthinkable disorder. And now the disorder had come, and it had all been planned by the man (Brian said Mr. Gaunt wasn’t really a man at all) Alan had never quite managed to see.

A scream rose in the night, high and drilling. It was followed by the sound of shattering glass… and then, from somewhere else, a gunshot and a burst of cracked, idiot laughter. Thunder banged in the sky like a pile of dropped boards.

But I have time now, Alan thought. Yes. Plenty of time. Mr.

Gaunt, I think we ought to say hello to each other, and I think it’s high time you found out what happens to people who fuck with my town.

Ignoring the faint sounds of chaos and violence he heard through his open window, ignoring the Municipal Building where Henry Payton was presumably coordinating the forces of law and orderor trying to-Alan drove up Main Street toward Needful Things.

As he did, a violent white-purple bolt of lightning flared across the sky like an electric firetree, and while the accompanying cannonade of thunder was still roaring overhead, all the lights in Castle Rock went out.

2

Deputy Norris Ridgewick, clad in the uniform he kept for parades and other dress occasions, was in the shed attached to the little house he had shared with his mother until she died of a stroke in the fall of 1986, the house where he had lived alone since then.

He was standing on a stool. A heavy length of noosed rope hung down from one of the overhead beams. Norris ran his head into this noose and was pulling it tight against his right ear when lightning flashed and the two electric bulbs which lit the shed winked out.

Still, he could see the Bazun fishing rod leaning against the wall by the door which led into the kitchen. He had wanted that fishing rod so badly and had believed he had gotten it so cheaply, but in the end the price had been high. Too high for Norris to pay.

His house was on the upper arm of Watermill Lane, where the Lane hooks back toward Castle Hill and the View. The wind was right, and he could hear the sounds of the brawl which was still going on there-the screams, the yells, the occasional gunshot.

I’m responsible for that, he thought. Not completely-hell, no-but I’m a part of it. I participated. I’m the reason Henry Beaufort is hurt or dying, maybe even dead over in Oxford. I’m the reason Hugh Priest is on a cooling-board. Me. The fellow who always wanted to be a policeman and help folks, the fellow who wanted that ever since he was a kid. Stupid, funny, clumsy old Norris Ridgewick, who thought he needed a Bazun fishing rod and could get one cheap.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Norris said. “That doesn’t fix it, but for whatever it’s worth, I’m real sorry.”

He prepared to jump off the stool, and suddenly a new voice spoke up inside his head. Then why don’t you try to put it right, you chickenshit coward?

“I can’t,” Norris said. Lightning blazed; his shadow jumped crazily on the shed wall, as if he were already doing the air-dance.

“It’s too late.”

Then at least take a look at what you did i’t FOR, the angry voice insisted. You can do that much, can’t you? Take a look! Take a really GOOD look!

The lightning flashed again. Norris stared at the Bazun rod… and let out a scream of agony and disbelief. He jerked, almost tumbling off the stool and hanging himself by accident.

The sleek Bazun, so limber and strong, was no longer there. It had been replaced by a dirty, splintery bamboo pole, really no more than a stick with a kid’s Zebco reel attached to it by one rusty screw.

“Someone stole it!” Norris cried. All of his bitter jealousy and paranoid covetousness returned in a flash, and he felt that he must rush out into the streets and find the thief He must kill them all, everyone in town, if that was necessary, to get the evil man or woman responsible. “SOMEONE STOLE MY BAZUN!” he wailed again, swaying on the stool.

No, the angry voice replied. This is how it always was. All that’s been stolen is your blinders-the ones you put on yourself, of your own free will.

“No!” Monstrous hands seemed to be clapped against the sides of Norris’s head; now they began to squeeze. “No, no, no!”

But the lightning flashed, again showing him the dirty bamboo rod where the Bazun had been only moments before. He had put it there so it would be the last thing he ever saw when he stepped off the stool.

No one had been in here; no one had moved it; consequently the voice had to be right.

This is how it always was, the angry voice insisted. The only question is this: are you going to do something about it, or are you going to run away into the darkness?

He began to grope for the noose, and at that moment he sensed he was not alone in the shed. In that moment he seemed to smell tobacco and coffee and some faint cologne-Southern Gentleman, perhaps-the smells of Mr. Gaunt.

Either he lost his balance or angry, invisible hands pushed him from the stool. One foot clipped it as he swayed outward and knocked it over.

Norris’s shout was choked off as the slip-knot pulled tight. One flailing hand found the overhead beam and caught it. He yanked himself partway up, providing himself with some slack. His other hand clawed at the noose. He could feel hemp pricking at his throat.

No is right! he heard Mr. Gaunt cry out angrily. No is exactly right, you damned welsher!

He wasn’t here, not really; Norris knew he hadn’t been pushed.

Yet he felt a complete certainty that part of Mr. Gaunt was here just the same… and Mr. Gaunt was not pleased, because this was not the way it was supposed to go. The suckers were supposed to see nothing. Not, at least, until it was too late to matter.

He yanked and clawed at the noose, but it was as if the slipknot had been dipped in concrete. The arm which was holding him up trembled wildly. His feet scissored back and forth three feet above the floor.

He could not hold this half-chin-up much longer.

It was amazing he had been able to keep any slack in the rope at all.

At last he managed to wiggle two of his fingers under the noose and pull it partway open. He shook his head out of it just as a horrible, numbing cramp struck the arm that was holding him up.

He toppled to the floor in a sobbing heap, holding his cramped arm to his chest. Lightning flew and turned the spit on his bared teeth into tiny purple arcs of light. He grayed out then… for how long he didn’t know, but the rain was still pelting and the lightning was still flashing when his mind swam back into itself He staggered to his feet and walked over to the fishing pole, still holding his arm. The cramp was beginning to loosen now, but Norris was still panting. He seized the pole and examined it closely and angrily.

Bamboo. Dirty, filthy bamboo. It wasn’t worth everything; it was worth nothing.

Norris’s thin chest hitched in breath, and he uttered a scream of shame and rage. At the same moment he raised his knee and snapped the fishing rod over it. He doubled the pieces and snapped them again.

They felt nasty-almost germy-in his hands. They felt fraudulent. He cast them aside and they rattled to a stop by the overturned stool like so many meaningless pick-up sticks.

“There!” he cried. “There! There! THERE!”

Norris’s thoughts turned to Mr. Gaunt. Mr. Gaunt with his silver hair and his tweed and his hungry, jostling smile.

“I’m going to get you,” Norris Ridgewick whispered. “I don’t know what happens after that, but I am going to get you so good.”

He walked to the shed door, yanked it open, and stepped out into the pouring rain. Unit 2 was parked in the driveway. He bent his thin Barney Fife body into the wind and walked over to it.

“I dunno what you are,” Norris said, “but I’m coming for your lying, conning ass.”

He got into the cruiser and backed down the driveway.

Humiliation, misery, and anger were equally at war on his face… At the foot of the driveway he turned left and began driving toward Needful Things as fast as he dared.

3

Polly Chalmers was dreaming.

In her dream she was walking into Needful Things, but the figure behind the counter was not Leland Gaunt; it was Aunt Evvie Chalmers.

Aunt Evvie was wearing her best blue dress and her blue shawl, the one with the red edging. Gripped between her large and improbably even false teeth was a Herbert Tareyton.

Aunt Evvie! Polly cried in her dream. A vast delight and an even vaster relief-that relief we only know in happy dreams, and in the moment of waking from horrid ones-filled her like light. Aunt Evvie, you’re alive!

But Aunt Evvie showed no sign of recognition. Buy anything you want, Miss, Aunt Evvie said. By the way is your name Polly or Patricia? I disremember, somehow.

Aunt Evvie, you know my name-I’m Trisha. I’ve always been Trisha to you.

Aunt Evvie took no notice. Whatever your name is, we’re having a special today. Everything must go.

Aunt Evvie, what are you doing here?

I BELONG here, Aunt Evvie said. Everyone in town belongs here, Miss Two-Names. In fact, everyone in the WORLD belongs here, because everyone loves a bargain. Everyone loves somethingfor nothing… even if it costs everything.

The good feeling was suddenly gone. Dread replaced it. Polly looked into the glass cases and saw bottles of dark fluid marked DR.

GAUNT’s ELECTRIC TONIC. There were badly made windup toys that would cough up their cogs and spit out their springs the second time they were wound. There were crude sex-toys.

There were small bottles of what looked like cocaine; these were labelled DR. GAUNT’s KICKAPOO POTENCY POWDER. Cheap novelties abounded: plastic dog-puke, itching powder, cigarette loads, joy buzzers. There was a pair of those X-ray glasses that were supposed to allow you to look through closed doors and ladies’ dresses but actually did nothing except put raccoon rings around your eyes. There were plastic flowers and marked playing cards and bottles of cheap perfume labelled DR. GAUNT’s LOVE POTION #g, TURNSLASSITUDE INTOLUST. The cases were a catalogue of the timeless, the tasteless, and the useless.

Anything you want, Miss Two-Names, Aunt Evvie said.

Why are you calling me that, Aunt Evvie? Please-don’t you recognize me?

It’s all guaranteed to work. The only thing not guaranteed to work after the sale is You, So step right up and buy, buy, buy.

Now she looked directly at Polly, and Polly was struck through with terror like a knife. She saw compassion in Aunt Evvie’s eyes, but it was a terrible, merciless compassion.

What is your name, child? Seems to me I once knew.

In her dream (and in her bed) Polly began to weep.

Has someone else forgotten your name? Aunt Evvie asked. I wonder.

Seems like they have.

Aunt Evvie, you’re scaring me!

You’re scaring yourself, child, Aunt Evvie responded, looking directly at Polly for the first time. just remember that when you buy here, Miss Two-Names, you’re also selling.

But I need it! Polly cried. She began to weep harder. My hands-!

Yes, this does i’t, Miss Polly Frisco, Aunt Evvie said, and brought out one of the bottles marked DR. GAUNT’s ELECTRIC TONIC.

She set it on the counter, a small, squat bottle filled with something that looked like loose mud. It can’t make your pain gone, of course-nothing can do that-but i’t can effect a transferral.

What do you mean? Why are you scaring me?

It changes the location of your arthritis, Miss Two-Names-instead of Your hands, the disease attacks your heart.

No!

Yes.

No! No! NO!

Yes. Oh yes. And your soul as well. But you’ll have your pride.

That’ll be left to you, at least. And isn’t a woman entitled to her pride?

When everything else is gone-heart, soul, even the man you love-you’ll have that, little Miss Polly Frisco, won’t you? You’ll have that one coin without which your purse would be empty. Let it be your dark and bitter comfort for the rest of your life. Let it serve.

It must serve, because if you keep on the way you’re going, there surely won’t be no other.

Stop, please, can’t you?”

4

“Stop,” she muttered in her sleep. “Please stop. Please.”

She rolled over on her side. The azka chinked softly against its chain. Lightning lit up the sky, striking the elm by Castle Stream, toppling it into the rushing water as Alan Pangborn sat behind the wheel of his station wagon, dazzled by the flash.

The follow-shot crack of thunder woke Polly up. Her eyes flew open. Her hand went to the azka at once and closed protectively around it. The hand was limber; the joints moved as easily as ball bearings packed in deep clean oil.

Miss Two-Names… little Miss Polly Frisco.

“What…?” Her voice was thick, but her mind already felt clear and alert, as if she hadn’t been asleep at all but in a daze of thought so deep it was nearly a trance. Something was looming in her mind, something the size of a whale. Outside, lightning flashed and flickered across the sky like bright purple sparklers.

Has someone else forgotten your name?… Seems like they have.

She reached for the night-table and switched on the lamp. Lying next to the Princess phone, the phone equipped with the oversized keypads which she no longer needed, was the envelope she had found lying in the hall with the rest of the mail when she returned home this afternoon. She had re-folded the terrible letter and slid it back inside.

Somewhere in the night, between the racketing bursts of thunder, she thought she could hear people shouting. Polly ignored them; she was thinking about the cuckoo bird, which lays its egg in a strange nest while the owner is away. When the mother-to-be returns, does she notice that something new has been added? Of course not; she simply accepts it as her own. The way Polly had accepted this goddamned letter simply because it happened to be lying on the hall floor with two catalogues and a come-on from Western Maine Cable TV.

She had just accepted it… but anyone could drop a letter through a mail-slot, wasn’t that true?

“Miss Two-Names,” she murmured in a dismayed voice. “Little Miss Polly Frisco.” And that was the thing, wasn’t it? The thing her subconscious had remembered and had manufactured Aunt Evvie to tell her. She had been Miss Polly Frisco.

Once upon a time, she had.

She reached for the envelope.

No! a voice told her, and that was a voice she knew very well.

Don’t touch that, Polly-not if you know what’s good for you!

Pain as dark and strong as day-old coffee flared deep in her hands.

It can’t make your pain gone… but it can effect a transferral.

That whale-sized thing was coming to the surface. Mr. Gaunt’s voice couldn’t stop it; nothing could stop it.

YOU can stop it, Polly, Mr. Gaunt said. Believe me, you must.

Her hand drew back before it touched the letter. It returned to the azka and became a protective fist around it. She could feel something inside it, something which had been warmed by her heat, scurrying frantically inside the hollow silver amulet, and revulsion filled her, making her stomach feel weak and loose, her bowels rotten.

She let go and reached for the letter again.

Last warning, Polly, the voice of Mr. Gaunt told her.

Yes, Aunt Evvie’s voice replied. I think he means it, Trisha.

He has always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves, hut do you know what? I don’t think he’s got much use for those who decide it goeth before a fall. I think the time has come for you to decide, once and for all, what your name really is.

She took hold of the envelope, ignoring another warning twinge in her hands, and looked at the neatly typed address. This letterPurported letter, Purported Xerox-had been sent to “Ms. Patricia Chalmers.”

“No,” she whispered. “Wrong. Wrong name.” Her hand closed slowly and steadily on the letter, crumpling it. A dull ache filled her fist, but Polly ignored it. Her eyes were bright, feverish. “I was always Polly in San Francisco-I was Polly to everyone, even to Child Welfare!”

That had been part of her attempt to break clean with every aspect of the old life which she fancied had hurt her so badly, never in her darkest nights allowing herself to dream that most of the wounds had been self-inflicted. In San Francisco there had been no Trisha or Patricia; only Polly. She had filled out all three of her A.D.C applications that way, and had signed her name that way-as Polly Chalmers, no middle initial.

If Alan really had written to the Child Welfare people in San Francisco, she supposed he might have given her name as Patricia, but wouldn’t any resulting records search have come up blank? Yes, of course. Not even the addresses would correlate, because the one she’d printed in the space for ADDRESS OF LAST RESIDENCE all those years ago had been her parents’ address, and that was on the other side of town.

Suppose Alan gave them both names? Polly and Patricia?

Suppose he had? She knew enough about the workings of government bureaucracies to believe it didn’t matter what name or names Alan had given them; when writing to her, the letter would have come to the name and address they had on file. Polly had a friend in Oxford whose correspondence from the University of Maine still came addressed to her maiden name, although she had been married for twenty years.

But this envelope had come addressed to Patricia Chalmers, not Polly Chalmers. And who in Castle Rock had called her Patricia just today?

The same person who had known that Nettle Cobb was really Netitia Cobb. Her good friend Leland Gaunt.

All of that about the names is interestin, Aunt Evie said suddenly, but it ain’t really the important thing. The important thing is the man-your man. He is your man, ain’t he? Even now. You know he would never go behind your back like that letter said he done. Don’t matter what name was on i’t or how convincing it might sound… you know that, don’t you?

“Yes,” she whispered. “I know him.”

Had she really believed any of it? Or had she put her doubts about that absurd, unbelievable letter aside because she was afraidin terror, actually-that Alan would see the nasty truth of the azka and force her to make a choice between him and it?

“Oh no-that’s too simple,” she whispered. “You believed it, all right. Only for half a day, but you did believe it. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, what have I done?”

She tossed the crumpled letter onto the floor with the revolted expression of a woman who has just realized she’s holding a dead rat.

I didn’t tell him what I was angry about,. didn’t give him a chance to explain; Just… just believed it. Why? In God’s name, why?

She knew, of course. It had been the sudden, shameful fear that her lies about the cause of Kelton’s death had been discovered, the misery of her years in San Francisco suspected, her culpability in the death of her baby being evaluated… and all this by the one man in the world whose good opinion she wanted and needed.

But that wasn’t all of it. That wasn’t even most of it. Mostly it had been pride-wounded, outraged, throbbing, swollen, malignant pride. Pride, the coin without which her purse would be entirely empty. She had believed because she had been in a panic of shame, a shame which had been born of pride.

I have always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves.

A terrible wave of pain broke in her hands; Polly moaned and held them against her breasts.

Not too late, Polly, Mr. Gaunt said softly. Not too late, even now, “Oh, fuck pride! Polly shrieked suddenly into the dark of her closed, stuffy bedroom, and ripped the azka from her neck. She held it high overhead in her clenched fist, the fine silver chain whipping wildly, and she felt the surface of the charm crack like the shell of an egg inside her hand. “FUCK PRIDE!”

Pain instantly clawed its way into her hands like some small and hungry animal… but she knew even then that the pain was not as great as she had feared; nowhere near as great as she had feared.

She knew it as surely as she knew that Alan had never written to Child Welfare in San Francisco, asking about her.

“FUCK PRIDE! FUCK IT! FUCK IT! FUCK IT!” she screamed, and threw the azka across the room.

It hit the wall, bounced to the floor, and split open. Lightning flashed, and she saw two hairy legs poke out through the crack.

The crack widened, and what crawled out was a small spider. It scuttered toward the bathroom. Lightning flashed again, printing its elongated, ovate shadow on the floor like an electric tattoo.

Polly leaped from her bed and chased after it. She had to kill it, and quickly… because even as she watched, the spider was swelling. It had been feeding on the poison it had sucked out of her body, and now that it was free of its containment, there was no telling how big it might grow.

She slapped the bathroom light-switch, and the fluorescent over the sink flickered into life. She saw the spider scurrying toward the tub. When it went through the door, it had been no bigger than a beetle. Now it was the size of a mouse.

As she came in, it turned and scurried toward her-that horrid clittering sound of its legs beating against the tiles-and she had time to think, It was between my breasts, it was lying AGAINST me, it was lying against me ALL THE time-its body was a bristly blackish-brown.

Tiny hairs stood out on its legs. Eyes as dull as fake rubies stared at her… and she saw that two fangs stuck out of its mouth like curved vampire teeth.

They were dripping some clear liquid. Where the droplets struck the tiles, they left small, smoking craters.

Polly screamed and grabbed the bathroom plunger which stood beside the toilet. Her hands screamed back at her, but she closed them around the plunger’s wooden handle just the same and struck the spider with it. It retreated, one of its legs now broken and hanging uselessly askew. Polly chased after it as it ran for the tub.

Hurt or not, it was still growing. Now it was the size of a rat.

Its bulging belly had dragged against the tiles, but it went up the shower-curtain with weird agility. Its legs made a sound against the plastic like tiny spats of water. The rings jingled on the steel bar running overhead.

Polly swung the plunger like a baseball bat, the heavy rubber cup whooshing through the air, and struck the horrid thing again.

The rubber cup covered a lot of area but was not, unfortunately, very effective when it connected. The shower-curtain billowed inward and the spider dropped off into the tub with a meaty plop.

In that instant the light went out.

Polly stood in the dark, the plunger in her hand, and listened to the spider scurrying. Then the lightning flashed again and she could see its humped, bristly back protruding over the lip of the tub. The thing which had come out of the thimble-sized azka was as big as a cat now-the thing which had been nourishing itself on her heart’s blood even as it abstracted the pain from her hands.

The envelope I left out at the old Camber place-what was that?

With the azka no longer around her neck, with the pain awake and yelling in her hands, she could no longer tell herself it had nothing to do with Alan.

The spider’s fangs clicked on the porcelain edge of the tub. It sounded like someone clicking a penny deliberately on a hard surface for attention. Its listless doll’s eyes now regarded her over the lip of the tub.

It’s too late, those eyes seemed to say. Too late for Alan, too late for you. Too late for everyone.

Polly launched herself at it.

“What did you make me do?” she screamed. “What did you make me do? Oh you monster, WHAT DID YOU MAKE ME DO?”

And the spider rose up on its rear legs, pawing obscenely at the shower-curtain for balance with its front ones, to meet her attack.

Ace Merrill began to respect the old dude a little when Keeton produced a key which opened the locked shed with the red diamond-shaped HIGH EXPLOSIVES signs on the door. He began to respect him a little more when he felt the chilly air, heard the steady low whoosh of the air conditioner, and saw the stacked crates.

Commercial dynamite. Lots of commercial dynamite. It wasn’t quite the same thing as having an arsenal filled with Stinger missiles, but it was close enough for rock and roll. My, yes.

There had been a powerful eight-cell flashlight in the carrycompartment between the van’s front seats, along with a supply of other useful tools, and now-as Alan neared Castle Rock in his station wagon, as Norris Ridgewick sat in his kitchen, fashioning a hangman’s noose with a length of stout hemp rope, as Polly Chalmers’s dream of Aunt Evvie moved toward its conclusion-Ace ran the flashlight’s bright spotlight from one crate to the next. Overhead, the rain drummed on the shed’s roof. It was coming down so hard that Ace could almost believe he was back in the prison showers.

“Let’s get on with it,” Buster said in a low, hoarse voice.

“Just a minute, Dad,” Ace said. “It’s break-time.” He handed Buster the flashlight and took out the plastic hal), Mr. Gaunt had given him. He tipped a little pile of coke into the Enuff-hollow on his left hand, and snorted it quickly.

“What’s that?” Buster asked suspiciously.

“South American bingo-dust, and it’s ’ just as tasty a s taters.”

“Huh,” Keeton snorted. “Cocaine. They sell cocaine.”

Ace didn’t have to ask who They were. The old dude had talked about nothing else on the ride up here, and Ace suspected he would talk about nothing else all night.

“Not true, Dad,” Ace said. “They don’t sell it; They’re the ones who want it all to Themselves.” He tipped a little more into the snuff-hollow at the base of his thumb and held his hand out. “Try it and tell me I’m wrong.”

Keeton looked at him with a mixture of doubt, curiosity, and suspicion. “Why do you keep calling me Dad? I’m not old enough to be your dad.”

“Well, I doubt if you ever read the underground comics, but there is this guy named R. Crumb,” Ace said. The coke was at work in him now, sparking all his nerve-endings alight. “He does these comics about a guy named Zippy. And to me, you look just like Zippy’s Dad.”

“is that good?” Buster asked suspiciously.

“” Ace assured him. “But I’ll call you Mr. Keeton, Awesome, if you want.” He paused and then added deliberately, “Just like They do.”

“No,” Buster said at once, “that’s all right. As long as it’s not an insult.”

“Absolutely not,” Ace said. “Go on-try it. A little of this shit and you’ll be singing ’Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go’ until the break of dawn.”

Buster gave him another look of dark suspicion, then snorted the coke Ace had offered. He coughed, sneezed, then clapped a hand to his nose. His watering e*yes stared balefully at Ace. “It burns!”

“Only the first time,” Ace assured him happily.

Anyway, I don’t feel a thing. Let’s stop fooling around and get this dynamite into the van.”

“You bet, Dad.”

It took them less than ten minutes to load the crates of dynamite.

5

After they had put the last one in, Buster said: “Maybe that stuff of yours does do something, after all. Can I have a little more?”

“Sure, Dad.” Ace grinned. “I’ll join you.”

They tooted up and headed back to town. Buster drove, and now he began to look not like Zippy’s Dad but Mr. Toad in Walt Disney’s The Wind i’n the Willows. A new, frantic light had come into the Head Selectman’s eyes. It was amazing how fast the confusion had dropped out of his mind; he now felt he could understand everything They had been up to-every plan, every plot, every machination. He told Ace all about it as Ace sat in the back of the van with his legs crossed, hooking up Hotpoint timers to blasting caps.

For the time being at least, Buster had forgotten all about Alan Pangborn, who was Their ringleader. He was entranced by the idea of blowing Castle Rock-or as much of it as possible-to kingdom come.

Ace’s respect became solid admiration. The old fuck was crazy, and Ace liked crazy people-always had. He felt at home with them.

And, like most people on their first cocaine high, old Dad’s mind was touring the outer planets. He couldn’t shut up. All Ace had to do was keep saying, “Uh-huh,” and “That’s right, Dad,” and “FuckinA, Dad.

Several times he almost called Keeton Mr. Toad instead of Dad, but caught himself. Calling this guy Mr. Toad might be a very bad idea.

They crossed the Tin Bridge while Alan was still three miles from it and got out in the pouring rain. Ace found a blanket in one of the van’s bench compartments and draped it over a bundle of dynamite and one of the cap-equipped timers.

“Do you want help?” Buster asked nervously.

“You better let me handle it, Dad. You’d be apt to fall in the goddam stream, and I’d have to waste time fishing you out. just keep your eyes open, okay?”

“I will. Ace… why don’t we sniff a little more of that cocaine first?”

“Not right now,” Ace said indulgently, and patted one of Buster’s meaty arms. “This shit is almost pure. You want to explode?”

“Not me,” Buster said. “Everything else, but not me.” He began to laugh wildly. Ace joined him.

“Havin some fun tonight, huh, Dad?”

Buster was amazed to find this was true. His depression following Myrtle’s… Myrtle’s accident… now seemed years distant.

He felt that he and his excellent friend Ace Merrill finally had Them right where they wanted Them: in the palm of their collective hand.

“You bet,” he said, and watched Ace slide down the wet, grassy bank beside the bridge with the blanket-wrapped parcel of dynamite held against his belly.

It was relatively dry under the bridge; not that it mattered the dynamite and the blasting caps had been waterproofed.

Ace put his package in the elbow-crook formed by two of the struts, then attached the blasting cap to the dynamite by poking the wires-the tips were already stripped, how convenient-into one of the sticks. He twisted the big white dial of the timer to 40. It began ticking.

He crawled out and scrambled back up the slippery bank.

“Well?” Buster asked anxiously. “Will it blow, do you think?”

“It’ll blow,” Ace said reassuringly, and climbed into the van.

He was soaked to the skin, but he didn’t mind.

“What if They find it? What if They disconnect it before-”

“Dad,” Ac.- said. “Listen a minute. Poke your head out this door and listen.”

Buster did. Faintly, between blasts of thunder, he thought he could hear yells and screams. Then, clearly, he heard the thin, hard crack of a pistol shot.

“Mr. Gaunt is keeping Them busy,” Ace said. “He’s one clever son of a bitch.” He tipped a pile of cocaine into his snuff-hollow, tooted, then held his hand under Buster’s nose. “Here, Dad-it’s Miller Time.”

Buster dipped his head and snorted.

They drove away from the bridge about seven minutes before Alan Pangborn crossed it. Underneath, the timer’s black marker stood at 30.

6

Ace Merrill and Danforth Keeton-aka Buster, aka Zippy’s Dad, aka Toad of Toad Hall-drove slowly up Main Street in the pouring rain like Santa and his helper, leaving little bundles here and there.

State Police cars roared by them twice, but neither had any interest in what looked like just one more TV newsvan. As Ace had said, Mr. Gaunt was keeping Them busy.

They left a timer and five sticks of dynamite in the doorway of

The Samuels Funeral Home. The barber shop was beside it. Ace wrapped a piece of blanket around his arm and popped his elbow through the gless pane in the door. He doubted very much if the barber shop was equipped with an alarm… or if the police would bother responding, even if it was. Buster handed him a freshly prepared bomb-they were using wire from one of the bench compartments to bind the timers and the blasting caps securely to the dynamite-and Ace lobbed it through the hole in the door. They watched it tumble to a stop at the foot of the # I chair, the timer ticking down from 25.

“Won’t nobody be getting a shave in there for awhile, Dad,” Ace breathed, and Buster giggled breathlessly.

They split up then, Ace tossing one bundle into Galaxia while Buster crammed another into the mouth of the bank’s night-deposit slot.

As they returned to the van through the slashing rain, lightning ripped across the sky. The elm toppled into Castle Stream with a rending roar. They stood on the sidewalk for a moment, staring in that direction, both of them thinking that the dynamite under the bridge had gone twenty minutes or more early, but there was no blossom of fire.

“I think it was lightning,” Ace said. “Must have hit a tree.

Come on.”

As they pulled out, Ace driving now, Alan’s station wagon passed them. In the pouring rain, neither driver noticed the other.

They drove up to Nan’s. Ace broke the glass of the door with his elbow and they left the dynamite and a ticking timer, this one set at 20, just inside, near the cash register stand. As they were leaving, an incredibly bright stroke of lightning flashed, and all the streetlights went out.

“It’s the power!” Buster cried happily. “The power’s out!

Fantastic! Let’s do the Municipal Building! Let’s blow it sky-high!”

“Dad, that place is crawling with cops! Didn’t you see them?”

“They’re chasing their own tails,” Buster said impatiently.

“And when these things start to go up, they’re going to be chasing them twice as fast. Besides, it’s dark now, and we can go in through the courthouse on the other side. The master-key opens that door, too.”

“You’ve got the balls of a tiger, Dad-you know that?”

Buster smiled tightly. “So do you, Ace. So do you.”

7

Alan pulled into one of the slant parking spaces in front of Needful Things, turned off the station wagon’s engine, and simply sat for a moment, staring at Mr. Gaunt’s shop. The sign in the window now read

GOODBYE GOODBYE I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU SAY HELLO I SAY GOODBYE.

Lightning stuttered on and off like giant neon, giving the window the look of a blank, dead eye.

Yet a deep instinct suggested that Needful Things, while closed and quiet, might not be empty. Mr. Gaunt could have left town in all the confusion, yes-with the storm raging and the cops running around like chickens with their heads cut off, doing that would have been no problem at all. But the picture of Mr. Gaunt which had formed in his mind on the long, wild ride from the hospital in Bridgton was that of

Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. Alan had an idea that he was dealing with the sort of man who would think installing a jet-powered backflow valve in a friend’s toilet the very height of humor. And would a fellow like that-the sort of fellow who would put a tack in your chair or stick a burning match in the sole of your shoe just for laughs-leave before you sat down or noticed that your socks were on fire and your pantscuffs were catching? Of course not. What fun would that be?

I think you’re still around, Alan thought. I think you want to watch all the fun. Don’t you, you son of a bitch?

He sat quite still, looking at the shop with the green awning, trying to fathom the mind of a man who would set such a complex and mean-spirited set of events in motion. He was concentrating far too deeply to notice that the car parked on his left was quite old, although smoothly, almost aerodynamically, designed. It was Mr.

Gaunt’s Tucker Talisman, in fact.

How did you do it? There’s a lot I want to know, but just that one thing will suffice for tonight. How could you do it? How could you learn so much about us so fast?

Brian said Mr. Gaunt wasn’t really a man at all.

In daylight Alan would have scoffed at this idea, as he had scoffed at the idea that Polly’s charm might have some supernatural healing power. But tonight, cupped in the crazy palm of the gale, staring at the display window which had become a blank dead eye, the idea had its own undeniable, gloomy power. He remembered the day he had come to Needful Things with the specific intention of meeting and talking to Mr. Gaunt, and he remembered the odd sensation that had crept over him as he peered in through the window with his hands cupped at the sides of his face to reduce the glare. He had felt he was being watched, although the shop was clearly empty.

And not only that; he’d felt the watcher was malign, hateful. The feeling had been so strong that for a moment he had actually mistaken his own reflection for the unpleasant (and half-transparent) face of someone else.

How strong that feeling had been… how very strong.

Alan found himself remembering something else-something his grandmother used to tell him when he was small: The devil’s voice is sweet to hear.

Brian said How had Mr. Gaunt come by his knowledge? And why in God’s name would he bother with a wide place in the road like Castle Rock?-Mr. Gaunt wasn’t really a man at all.

Alan suddenly leaned over and groped on the floor of the station wagon’s passenger side. For a moment he thought that what he was feeling around for was gone-that it had fallen out of the car at some point during the day when the passenger door was openand then his fingers happened on the metal curve. It had rolled underneath the seat, that was all. He fumbled it out, held it up… and the voice of depression, absent since he had left Sean Rusk’s hospital room (or maybe it was just that things had been too busy since then for Alan to hear it), spoke up in its loud and unsettlingly merry voice.

Hi, Alan! Hello! I’ve been away, sorry about that, but I’m back now, okay? What you got there? Can of nuts? Nop@that’s what i’t looks like, but that’s not what i’t is, I’s it? It’s the last Joke Todd ever boughtat the auburn Novelty Shop, correct? A fake can of Tastee-Munch Mixed Nuts with a green snake insid@repe-paper wrapped around a spring. And when he brought it to you with his eyes glowing and a hig, goofy smile on his face, you told him to put that silly thing back, didn’t you? And when his face fell, you pretended not to notice-you told him… let me see. What DID you tell him?

“That the fool and his money soon parted,” Alan said dully. He turned the can around and around in his hands, looking at it, remembering Todd’s face. “That’s what I told him.”

Ohhhh, riiiiight, the voice agreed. How could I have forgotten a thing like that? You want to talk about mean-spirited? jeer, Louise!

Good thing you reminded me! Good thing you reminded us BOTH, right? Only Annie saved the day-she said to let him have it. She said… let me see. What DID she say?

“She said it was sort of funny, that Todd was just like me, and that he’d only be young once.” Alan’s voice was hoarse and trembling.

He had begun to cry again, and why not? just why the fucking hell not?

The old pain was back, twisting itself around his aching heart like a dirty rag.

Hurts, doesn’t it? the voice of depression-that guilty, self-hating voice-asked with a sympathy Alan (the rest of Alan) suspected was entirely bogus. It hurts too much, like having to live inside a country-and-western song about goodlove gone bad or goodkids gone dead. Nothing that hurts this much can do you any good. Shove it back in the glove compartment, buddy. Forget about it. Next week, when this madness is all over, you can trade the wagon with the fake can of nuts still in i’t.

Why not? It’s the sort of cheap practical joke that would appeal only to a child, or to a man like Gaunt. Forget it. ForgetAlan cut the voice off in mid-rant. He hadn’t known he could do that until this moment, and it was good knowledge to have, knowledge that might be useful in the future… if he had a future, that was. He looked more closely at the can, turning it this way and that, really looking at it for the first time, seeing it not as a sappy memento of his lost son but as an object which was as much a tool of misdirection as his hollow magic wand, his silk top-hat with the false bottom, or the Folding Flower Trick which still nestled beneath his watchband.

Magic-wasn’t that what this was all about? It was mean-spirited magic, granted; magic calculated not to make people gasp and laugh but to turn them into angry charging bulls, but it was magic, just the same. And what was the basis of all magic? Misdirection. It was a five-foot-long snake hidden inside a can of nuts… or, he thought, thinking of Polly, it’s a disease that looks like a cure.

He opened the car door, and when he got out into the pouring rain, he was still carrying the fake can of nuts in his left hand.

Now that he had drawn back a little from the dangerous lure of sentiment, he remembered his opposition to the purchase of this thing with something like amazement. All his life he had been fascinated with magic, and of course he would have been entranced by the old snake-in-a-can-of-nuts trick as a kid. So why had he spoken to Todd in such an unfriendly way when the boy had wanted to buy it, and then pretended not to see the boy’s hurt? Had it been jealousy of Todd’s youth and enthusiasm? An inability to remember the wonder of simple things? What?

He didn’t know. He only knew it was exactly the sort of trick a Mr. Gaunt would understand, and he wanted it with him now.

Alan bent back into the car, grabbed a flashlight from the small box of jumbled tools sitting on the rear seat, then walked past the nose of Mr. Gaunt’s Tucker Talisman (still without noticing it), and passed under the deep-green awning of Needful Things.

8

Well, here I am. Here I am at last.

Alan’s heart was pounding hard but steadily in his chest. In his mind, the faces of his son and his wife and Sean Rusk seemed to have combined. He glanced at the sign in the window again and then tried the door. It was locked. Overhead, the canvas awning rippled and snapped in the howling wind.

He had tucked the Tastee-Munch can into his shirt. Now he touched it with his right hand and seemed to draw some indescribable but perfectly real comfort from it.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Here I come, ready or not.” He reversed the flashlight and used the handle to smash a hole in the glass. He steeled himself for the wail of the burglar alarm, but it didn’t come.

Either Gaunt hadn’t turned it on or there was no alarm. He reached through the jagged hole and tried the inside knob. It turned, and for the first time, Alan Pangborn stepped into Needful Things.

The smell hit him first; it was deep and still and dusty. it wasn’t the smell of a new shop but of a place which had been untenanted for months or even years. Holding his gun in his right hand, he shone the flashlight around with his left. it illuminated a bare floor, bare walls, and a number of glass cases. The cases were empty, the stock was gone. Everything was blanketed by a thick fall of dust, and the dust was undisturbed by any mark.

No one’s been here for a long, long time.

But how could that possibly be, when he had seen people going in and out all week long?

Because he’s not a man at all. Because the devil’s voice is sweet to hear.

He took two more steps, using the flashlight to cover the empty room in zones, breathing the dry museum dust which hung in the air. He looked behind him and saw, in a flash of lightning, the tracks of his own feet in the dust. He shone the light back into the store, ran it from right to left along the case which had also served Mr.

Gaunt as a counter… and stopped.

A video-cassette recorder/player sat there, next to a Sony portable TV-one of the sporty models, round instead of square, with a case as red as a fire-engine. A cord was looped around the television.

And there was something on top of the VCR. In this light it looked like a book, but Alan didn’t think that was what it was.

He walked over and trained his light first on the TV. It was as thickly coated with dust as the floor and the glass cases. The cord looped around it was a short length of coaxial cable with a connector at either end. Alan moved his light to the thing on top of the VCR, the thing which wasn’t a book but a video cassette in an unmarked black plastic case.

A dusty white business envelope lay beside it. Written on the front of the envelope was the message

He set his gun and his flashlight down on the glass counter, took the envelope, opened it, and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside. Then he picked up the flashlight again and trained its powerful circle of light on the short typed message.

Dear Sheriff Pangborn, By now you will have discovered that I am a rather special sort of businessman-the rare sort who actually does try to stock “something for everyone.” I regret that we never were able to meet face-to-face, but I hope you’ll understand that such a meeting would have been very unwise-from my standpoint, at least. Ha-ha! In any event, I have left you a little something which I believe will interest you very muchThis is not a gift-I am not the Santa Claus type at all, as I think you will agree-but everyone in town has assured me that you are an honorable man, and I believe you will pay the price I require. That price includes a little service… a service which is, in your case, more good deed than prank.

I believe you will agree with me, sir.

I know you have wondered long and deeply about what happened during the last few moments of your wife and younger son’s lives. I believe that all these questions will be answered shortly.

Please believe that I wish you only the best, and that I remain Your faithful and obedient servant Leland Gaunt Alan put the paper down slowly. “Bastard!” he muttered.

He shone the light around again, and saw the VCR’s cord trailing down the far side of the case and ending in a plug which lay on the floor several feet from the nearest electric socket. Which was no problem, since the power was out, anyway.

But you know what? Alan thought. I don’t think that matters.

I don’t think it matters one little bit. I think that once I hook the appliances up and plug them in and feed that cassette to the tapeplayer, everything is going to work just fine. Because there’s no way he could have caused the things he’s caused, or know the things he knows… not if he’s human. The devil’s voice is sweet to hear, Alan, and whatever you do, you must not look at what he’s left for you.

Nevertheless, he put the flashlight down again and picked up the coaxial cable. He examined it for a moment, then bent to plug it into the proper receptacle on the back of the TV. The TasteeMunch can tried to slip out of his shirt as he did so. He caught it with one of his nimble hands before it could fall to the floor, and set it on the glass case next to the VCR.

9

Norris Ridgewick was halfway to Needful Things when he suddenly decided he would be crazy-much crazier than he had been already, and that was really going some to tackle Leland Gaunt alone.

He pulled the microphone off its prongs. “Unit Two to Base,” he said. “This is Norris, come back?”

He released the button. There was nothing but a horrid squeal of static. The heart of the storm was directly over The Rock now.

“Fuck it,” he said, and turned toward the Municipal Building.

Alan might be there; if not, someone would tell him where Alan was. Alan would know what to do… and even if he didn’t, Alan would have to hear his confession: he had slashed Hugh Priest’s tires and sent the man to his death simply because he, Norris Ridgewick, had wanted to own a Bazun fishing rod like his good old dad’s.

He arrived at the Municipal Building while the timer under the bridge stood at 5, and parked directly behind a bright yellow van.

A TV newsvan, from the look.

Norris got out in the pouring rain and ran into the Sheriff’s Office to try to find Alan.

Polly swung the cup end of the bathroom plunger at the obscenely rearing spider, and this time it did not flinch away. Its bristly front legs clasped the shaft, and Polly’s hands cried out in agony as it hauled its quivering weight onto the rubber cup. Her grip wavered, the plunger dropped, and suddenly the spider was scrabbling up the handle like a fat man on a tightrope.

She drew in breath to scream and then its front legs dropped onto her shoulders like the arms of some scabrous dime-a-dance Lothario.

Its listless ruby eyes stared into her own. Its fanged mouth dropped open and she could smell its breath-a stink of bitter spices and rotting meat.

She opened her mouth to scream. One of its legs pawed into her mouth. Rough, gruesome bristles caressed her teeth and tongue.

The spider mewled eagerly.

Polly resisted her first instinct to spit the horrid, pulsing thing out. She released the plunger and grabbed the spider’s leg. At the same time she bit down, using all the strength in her jaws.

Something crunched like a mouthful of Life Savers, and a cold bitter taste like ancient tea filled her mouth. The spider uttered a cry of pain and tried to draw back. Bristles slid harshly through Polly’s fists, but she clamped her howling hands tight around the thing’s leg again before it could completely escape… and twisted it, like a woman trying to twist a drumstick off a turkey. There was a tough, gristly ripping noise. The spider uttered another slobbering cry of pain.

It tried to lunge away. Spitting out the bitter dark fluid which had filled her mouth, knowing it would be a long, long time before she was entirely rid of that taste, Polly yanked it back again. Some distant part of her was astounded at this exhibition of strength, but there was another part of her which understood it perfectly. She was afraid, she was revolted but more than anything else, she was angry.

I was used, she thought incoherently. I sold Alan’s life for this!

For this monster!

The spider tried to gnash at her with its fangs, but its rear legs lost their tenuous grip on the shaft of the plunger and it would have fallen… if Polly had allowed it to fall.

She did not. She gripped its hot, bulging body between her forearms and squeezed. She lifted it up so it squirmed above her, its legs twitching and pawing at her upturned face. Juice and black blood began to run from its body and trickle up her arms in burning streamlets.

“NO MORE!” shrieked Polly. “NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE!”

She threw it. It struck the tiled wall behind the tub and splattered open in a clot of ichor. It hung up for a moment, pasted in place by its own innards, and then fell into the tub with a gooey thump.

Polly grabbed the bathroom plunger again and sprang at it. She began beating it as a woman might beat at a mouse with a broom, but that wasn’t working. The spider only shuddered and tried to crawl away, its legs scrabbling at the rubber shower-mat with its pattern of yellow daisies. Polly pulled the plunger back, reversed it, and then rammed forward with all of her strength, using the shaft like a lance.

She caught the wretched, freakish thing dead center and impaled it. There was a grotesque punching sound, and then the spider’s guts ruptured and ran out onto the shower-mat in a stinking flood.

It wriggled frantically, curling its legs fruitlessly around the stake she had put in its heart… and then, at last, it became still.

Polly stepped back, closed her eyes, and felt the world waver.

She had actually begun to faint when Alan’s name exploded in her mind like a Roman candle. She curled her hands into fists and brought them together, hard, knuckles to knuckles. The pain was bright, sudden, and immense. The world came back in a cold flash.

She opened her eyes, advanced to the tub, and looked in. At first she thought there was nothing there at all. Then, beside the plunger’s rubber cup, she saw the spider. It was no bigger than the nail on her pinky finger, and it was very dead.

The rest never happened at all. It was your imagination.

“The bloody fuck it was,” Polly said in a thin, shaking voice.

But the spider wasn’t the important thing. Alan was the important thing-Alan was in terrible danger, and she was the reason why. She had to find him, and do it before it was too late.

If it wasn’t too late already.

She would go to the Sheriff’s Office. Someone there would know whereNo, Aunt Evvie’s voice spoke up in her mind. Not there. If you go there, it really will be too late. You know where to go. You know where he is.

Yes.

Yes, of course she did.

Polly ran for the door, and one confused thought beat at her mind like moth-wings: Please God, don’t let him buy anything. Oh God, please, please, please don’t let him buy anything.