Needful Things Read online

  But he was passing the new shop at just that moment, and the sign in the doorway caught his eye. Something about it had changed. He stopped his bike and looked at it.

  GRAND OPENING OCTOBER 9TH--BRING YOUR FRIENDS!

  at the top was gone. It had been replaced by a small square sign, red letters on a white background.

  OPEN

  it said, and

  OPEN

  was all it said. Brian stood with his bike between his legs, looking at this, and his heart began to beat a little faster.

  You're not going in there, are you? he asked himself. I mean, even if it really is opening a day early, you're not going in there, right?

  Why not? he answered himself.

  Well ... because the window's still soaped over. The shade on the door's still drawn. You go in there, anything could happen to you. Anything.

  Sure. Like the guy who runs it is Norman Bates or something, he dresses up in his mother's clothes and stabs his customers. Ri-iight.

  Well, forget it, the timid part of his mind said, although that part sounded as if it already knew it had lost. There's something funny about it.

  But then Brian thought of telling his mother. Just saying nonchalantly, "By the way, Ma, you know that new store, Needful Things? Well, it opened a day early. I went in and took a look around."

  She'd push the mute button on the remote control in a hurry then, you better believe it! She'd want to hear all about it!

  This thought was too much for Brian. He put down his bike's kickstand and passed slowly into the shade of the awning--it felt at least ten degrees cooler beneath its canopy--and approached the door of Needful Things.

  As he put his hand on the big old-fashioned brass doorknob, it occurred to him that the sign must be a mistake. It had probably been sitting there, just inside the door, for tomorrow, and someone had put it up by accident. He couldn't hear a single sound from behind the drawn shade; the place had a deserted feel.

  But since he had come this far, he tried the knob ... and it turned easily under his hand. The latch clicked back and the door of Needful Things swung open.

  3

  It was dim inside, but not dark. Brian could see that track lighting (a specialty of the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company) had been installed, and a few of the spots mounted on the tracks were lit. They were trained on a number of glass display cases which were arranged around the large room. The cases were, for the most part, empty. The spots highlighted the few objects which were in the cases.

  The floor, which had been bare wood when this was Western Maine Realty and Insurance, had been covered in a rich wall-to-wall carpet the color of burgundy wine. The walls had been painted eggshell white. A thin light, as white as the walls, filtered in through the soaped display window.

  Well, it's a mistake, just the same, Brian thought. He hasn't even got his stock in yet. Whoever put the OPEN sign in the door by mistake left the door unlocked by mistake, too. The polite thing to do in these circumstances would be to close the door again, get on his bike, and ride away.

  Yet he was loath to leave. He was, after all, actually seeing the inside of the new store. His mother would talk to him the rest of the afternoon when she heard that. The maddening part was this: he wasn't sure exactly what he was seeing. There were half a dozen

  (exhibits)

  items in the display cases, and the spotlights were trained on them--a kind of trial run, probably--but he couldn't tell what they were. He could, however, tell what they weren't: spool beds and moldy crank telephones.

  "Hello?" he asked uncertainly, still standing in the doorway. "Is anybody here?"

  He was about to grasp the doorknob and pull the door shut again when a voice replied, "I'm here."

  A tall figure--what at first seemed to be an impossibly tall figure--came through a doorway behind one of the display cases. The doorway was masked with a dark velvet curtain. Brian felt a momentary and quite monstrous cramp of fear. Then the glow thrown by one of the spots slanted across the man's face, and Brian's fear was allayed. The guy was quite old, and his face was very kind. He looked at Brian with interest and pleasure.

  "Your door was unlocked," Brian began, "so I thought--"

  "Of course it's unlocked," the tall man said. "I decided to open for a little while this afternoon as a kind of ... of preview. And you are my very first customer. Come in, my friend. Enter freely, and leave some of the happiness you bring!"

  He smiled and stuck out his hand. The smile was infectious. Brian felt an instant liking for the proprietor of Needful Things. He had to step over the threshold and into the shop to clasp the tall man's hand, and he did so without a single qualm. The door swung shut behind him and latched of its own accord. Brian did not notice. He was too busy noticing that the tall man's eyes were dark blue--exactly the same shade as Miss Sally Ratcliffe's eyes. They could have been father and daughter.

  The tall man's grip was strong and sure, but not painful. All the same, there was something unpleasant about it. Something ... smooth. Too hard, somehow.

  "I'm pleased to meet you," Brian said.

  Those dark-blue eyes fastened on his face like hooded railroad lanterns.

  "I am equally pleased to make your acquaintance," the tall man said, and that was how Brian Rusk met the proprietor of Needful Things before anyone else in Castle Rock.

  4

  "My name is Leland Gaunt," the tall man said, "and you are--?"

  "Brian. Brian Rusk."

  "Very good, Mr. Rusk. And since you are my first customer, I think I can offer you a very special price on any item that catches your fancy."

  "Well, thank you," Brian said, "but I don't really think I could buy anything in a place like this. I don't get my allowance until Friday, and--" He looked doubtfully at the glass display cases again. "Well, you don't look like you've got all your stock in yet."

  Gaunt smiled. His teeth were crooked, and they looked rather yellow in the dim light, but Brian found the smile entirely charming just the same. Once more he found himself almost forced to answer it. "No," Leland Gaunt said, "no, I don't. The majority of my--stock, as you put it--will arrive later this evening. But I still have a few interesting items. Take a look around, young Mr. Rusk. I'd love to have your opinion, if nothing else ... and I imagine you have a mother, don't you? Of course you do. A fine young man like yourself is certainly no orphan. Am I right?"

  Brian nodded, still smiling. "Sure. Ma's home right now." An idea struck him. "Would you like me to bring her down?" But the moment the proposal was out of his mouth, he was sorry. He didn't want to bring his mother down. Tomorrow, Mr. Leland Gaunt would belong to the whole town. Tomorrow, his Ma and Myra Evans would start pawing him over, along with all the other ladies in Castle Rock. Brian supposed that Mr. Gaunt would have ceased to seem so strange and different by the end of the month, heck, maybe even by the end of the week, but right now he still was, right now he belonged to Brian Rusk and Brian Rusk alone, and Brian wanted to keep it that way.

  So he was pleased when Mr. Gaunt raised one hand (the fingers were extremely narrow and extremely long, and Brian noticed that the first and second were of exactly the same length) and shook his head. "Not at all," he said. "That's exactly what I don't want. She would undoubtedly want to bring a friend, wouldn't she?"

  "Yeah," Brian said, thinking of Myra.

  "Perhaps even two friends, or three. No, this is better, Brian--may I call you Brian?"

  "Sure," Brian said, amused.

  "Thank you. And you will call me Mr. Gaunt, since I am your elder, if not necessarily your better--agreed?"

  "Sure." Brian wasn't sure what Mr. Gaunt meant by elders and betters, but he loved to listen to this guy talk. And his eyes were really something--Brian could hardly take his own eyes off them.

  "Yes, this is much better." Mr. Gaunt rubbed his long hands together and they made a hissing sound. This was one thing Brian was less than crazy about. Mr. Gaunt's hands rubbing together that way sounded like a snake
which is upset and thinking of biting. "You will tell your mother, perhaps even show her what you bought, should you buy something--"

  Brian considered telling Mr. Gaunt that he had a grand total of ninety-one cents in his pocket and decided not to.

  "--and she will tell her friends, and they will tell their friends ... you see, Brian? You will be a better advertisement than the local paper could ever think of being! I could not do better if I hired you to walk the streets of the town wearing a sandwich board!"

  "Well, if you say so," Brian agreed. He had no idea what a sandwich board was, but he was quite sure he would never allow himself to be caught dead wearing one. "It would be sort of fun to look around." At what little there is to look at, he was too polite to add.

  "Then start looking!" Mr. Gaunt said, gesturing toward the cases. Brian noticed that he was wearing a long red-velvet jacket. He thought it might actually be a smoking jacket, like in the Sherlock Holmes stories he had read. It was neat. "Be my guest, Brian!"

  Brian walked slowly over to the case nearest the door. He glanced over his shoulder, sure that Mr. Gaunt would be trailing along right behind him, but Mr. Gaunt was still standing by the door, looking at him with wry amusement. It was as if he had read Brian's mind and had discovered how much Brian disliked having the owner of a store trailing around after him while he was looking at stuff. He supposed most storekeepers were afraid that you'd break something, or hawk something, or both.

  "Take your time," Mr. Gaunt said. "Shopping is a joy when one takes one's time, Brian, and a pain in the nether quarters when one doesn't."

  "Say, are you from overseas somewhere?" Brian asked. Mr. Gaunt's use of "one" instead of "you" interested him. It reminded him of the old stud-muffin who hosted Masterpiece Theatre, which his mother sometimes watched if the TV Guide said it was a love-story.

  "I," Gaunt said, "am from Akron."

  "Is that in England?"

  "That is in Ohio," Leland Gaunt said gravely, and then revealed his strong, irregular teeth in a sunny grin.

  It struck Brian as funny, the way lines in TV shows like Cheers often struck him funny. In fact, this whole thing made him feel as if he had wandered into a TV show, one that was a little mysterious but not really threatening. He burst out laughing.

  He had a moment to worry that Mr. Gaunt might think he was rude (perhaps because his mother was always accusing him of rudeness, and as a result Brian had come to believe he lived in a huge and nearly invisible spider's web of social etiquette), and then the tall man joined him. The two of them laughed together, and all in all, Brian could not remember when he had had such a pleasant afternoon as this one was turning out to be.

  "Go on, look," Mr. Gaunt said, waving his hand. "We will exchange histories another time, Brian."

  So Brian looked. There were only five items in the biggest glass case, which looked as if it might comfortably hold twenty or thirty more. One was a pipe. Another was a picture of Elvis Presley wearing his red scarf and his white jump-suit with the tiger on the back. The King (this was how his mother always referred to him) was holding a microphone to his pouty lips. The third item was a Polaroid camera. The fourth was a piece of polished rock with a hollow full of crystal chips in its center. They caught and flashed gorgeously in the overhead spot. The fifth was a splinter of wood about as long and as thick as one of Brian's forefingers.

  He pointed to the crystal. "That's a geode, isn't it?"

  "You're a well-educated young man, Brian. That's just what it is. I have little plaques for most of my items, but they're not unpacked yet--like most of the stock. I'll have to work like the very devil if I'm going to be ready to open tomorrow." But he didn't sound worried at all, and seemed perfectly content to remain where he was.

  "What's that one?" Brian asked, pointing at the splinter. He was thinking to himself that this was very odd stock indeed for a small-town store. He had taken a strong and instant liking to Leland Gaunt, but if the rest of his stuff was like this, Brian didn't think he'd be doing business in Castle Rock for long. If you wanted to sell stuff like pipes and pictures of The King and splinters of wood, New York was the place where you wanted to set up shop ... or so he had come to believe from the movies he'd seen, anyway.

  "Ah!" Mr. Gaunt said. "That's an interesting item! Let me show it to you!"

  He crossed the room, went around the end of the case, pulled a fat ring of keys from his pocket, and selected one with hardly a glance. He opened the case and took the splinter out carefully. "Hold out your hand, Brian."

  "Gee, maybe I better not," Brian said. As a native of a state where tourism is a major industry, he had been in quite a few gift shops in his time, and he had seen a great many signs with this little poem printed on them: "Lovely to look at I delightful to hold, I but if you break it, / then it's sold." He could imagine his mother's horrified reaction if he broke the splinter--or whatever it was--and Mr. Gaunt, no longer so friendly, told him that its price was five hundred dollars.

  "Why ever not?" Mr. Gaunt asked, raising his eyebrows--but there was really only one brow; it was bushy and grew across the top of his nose in an unbroken line.

  "Well, I'm pretty clumsy."

  "Nonsense," Mr. Gaunt replied. "I know clumsy boys when I see them. You're not one of that breed." He dropped the splinter into Brian's palm. Brian looked at it resting there in some surprise; he hadn't even been aware his palm was open until he saw the splinter resting on it.

  It certainly didn't feel like a splinter; it felt more like--

  "It feels like stone," he said dubiously, and raised his eyes to look at Mr. Gaunt.

  "Both wood and stone," Mr. Gaunt said. "It's petrified."

  "Petrified," Brian marvelled. He looked at the splinter closely, then ran one finger along its side. It was smooth and bumpy at the same time. It was somehow not an entirely pleasant feeling. "It must be old."

  "Over two thousand years old," Mr. Gaunt agreed gravely.

  "Cripes!" Brian said. He jumped and almost dropped the splinter. He closed his hand around it in a fist to keep it from falling to the floor ... and at once a feeling of oddness and distortion swept over him. He suddenly felt--what? Dizzy? No; not dizzy but far. As if part of him had been lifted out of his body and swept away.

  He could see Mr. Gaunt looking at him with interest and amusement, and Mr. Gaunt's eyes suddenly seemed to grow to the size of tea-saucers. Yet this feeling of disorientation was not frightening; it was rather exciting, and certainly more pleasant than the slick feel of the wood had been to his exploring finger.

  "Close your eyes!" Mr. Gaunt invited. "Close your eyes, Brian, and tell me what you feel!"

  Brian closed his eyes and stood there for a moment without moving, his right arm held out, the fist at the end of it enclosing the splinter. He did not see Mr. Gaunt's upper lip lift, doglike, over his large, crooked teeth for a moment in what might have been a grimace of pleasure or anticipation. He had a vague sensation of movement--a corkscrewing kind of movement. A sound, quick and light: thudthud ... thudthud ... thudthud. He knew that sound. It was--

  "A boat!" he cried, delighted, without opening his eyes. "I feel like I'm on a boat!"

  "Do you indeed," Mr. Gaunt said, and to Brian's ears he sounded impossibly distant.

  The sensations intensified; now he felt as if he were going up and down across long, slow waves. He could hear the distant cry of birds, and, closer, the sounds of many animals--cows lowing, roosters crowing, the low, snarling cry of a very big cat--not a sound of rage but an expression of boredom. In that one second he could almost feel wood (the wood of which this splinter had once been a part, he was sure) under his feet, and knew that the feet themselves were not wearing Converse sneakers but some sort of sandals, and--

  Then it was going, dwindling to a tiny bright point, like the light of a TV screen when the power cuts out, and then it was gone. He opened his eyes, shaken and exhilarated.

  His hand had curled into such a tight fist around the splinter that he
actually had to will his fingers to open, and the joints creaked like rusty door-hinges.

  "Hey, boy," he said softly.

  "Neat, isn't it?" Mr. Gaunt asked cheerily, and plucked the splinter from Brian's palm with the absent skill of a doctor drawing a splinter from flesh. He returned it to its place and re-locked the cabinet with a flourish.

  "Neat," Brian agreed in a long outrush of breath which was almost a sigh. He bent to look at the splinter. His hand still tingled a little where he had held it. Those feelings: the uptilt and downslant of the deck, the thudding of the waves on the hull, the feel of the wood under his feet ... those things lingered with him, although he guessed (with a feeling of real sorrow) that they would pass, as dreams pass.

  "Are you familiar with the story of Noah and the Ark?" Mr. Gaunt inquired.

  Brian frowned. He was pretty sure it was a Bible story, but he had a tendency to zone out during Sunday sermons and Thursday night Bible classes. "Was that like a boat that went around the world in eighty days?" he asked.

  Mr. Gaunt grinned again. "Something like that, Brian. Something very like that. Well, that splinter is supposed to be from Noah's Ark. Of course I can't say it is from Noah's Ark, because people would think I was the most outrageous sort of fake. There must be four thousand people in the world today trying to sell pieces of wood which they claim to be from Noah's Ark--and probably four hundred thousand trying to peddle pieces of the One True Cross--but I can say it's over two thousand years old, because it's been carbon-dated, and I can say it came from the Holy Land, although it was found not on Mount Ararat, but on Mount Boram."

  Most of this was lost on Brian, but the most salient fact was not. "Two thousand years," he breathed. "Wow! You're really sure?"

  "I am indeed," Mr. Gaunt said. "I have a certificate from M.I.T., where it was carbon-dated, and that goes with the item, of course. But, you know, I really believe it might be from the Ark." He looked at the splinter speculatively for a moment, and then raised his dazzling blue eyes to Brian's hazel ones. Brian was again transfixed by that gaze. "After all, Mount Boram is less than thirty kilometers, as the crow flies, from Mount Ararat, and greater mistakes than the final resting place of a boat, even a big one, have been made in the many histories of the world, especially when stories are handed down from mouth to ear for generations before they are finally committed to paper. Am I right?"