Needful Things Read online

  Chuck Evans wasn't home, but Garfield, Chuck and Myra's Angora cat, was. He came trotting into the kitchen, miaowing, hoping for food, and Cora let him have it. The cat flew backward in a cloud of blood and fur. "Eat that, Garfield," Cora remarked. She strode through the puff of gunsmoke and into the hall. She started up the stairs. She knew where she would find the slut. She would find her in bed. Cora knew that as well as she knew her own name.

  "It's bedtime, all right," she said. "You just want to believe it, Myra my dear."

  Cora was smiling.

  12

  Father Brigham and Albert Gendron led a platoon of pissed-off Catholics down Castle Avenue toward Harrington Street. Halfway there, they heard singing. The two men exchanged a glance.

  "Do you think we might be able to teach em a different tune, Albert?" Father Brigham asked softly.

  "I think so, Father," Albert replied.

  "Shall we teach them to sing 'I Ran All the Way Home'?"

  "A very good tune, Father. I think maybe even muck like them might be able to learn that one."

  Lightning flew across the sky. It illuminated Castle Avenue with momentary brilliance, and showed the two men a small crowd advancing up the hill toward them. Their eyes gleamed white and empty, like the eyes of statues, in the lightning-flash.

  "There they are!" someone shouted, and a woman cried: "Get the dirty Mickey Finn sons of bitches!"

  "Let's bag some trash," Father John Brigham breathed happily, and charged the Baptists.

  "Amen, Father," Albert said, running at his side.

  They all began to run then.

  As Trooper Morris rounded the corner, a fresh bolt of lightning jigged across the sky, felling one of the old elms by Castle Stream. In the glare, he saw two mobs of people running toward each other. One mob was running up the hill, the other mob was running down, and both mobs were screaming for blood. Trooper Morris suddenly found himself wishing he had called in sick that afternoon.

  13

  Cora opened the door of Chuck and Myra's bedroom and saw exactly what she had expected: the bitch lying naked in a rumpled double bed which looked as if it had seen a hard tour of duty lately. One of her hands was behind her, tucked under the pillows. The other held a framed picture. The picture was between Myra's meaty thighs. She appeared to be humping it. Her eyes were half-closed in ecstasy.

  "Oooh, E!" she moaned. "Ooooh, E! OOOHH, EEEE-EEEEEEE!"

  Horrified jealousy flared in Cora's heart and rose up her throat until she could taste its bitter juice in her mouth.

  "Oh you shithouse mouse," she breathed, and brought up the automatic.

  At that moment Myra looked at her, and Myra was smiling. She brought her free hand out from under her pillow. In it she held an automatic pistol of her own.

  "Mr. Gaunt said you'd come, Cora," she said, and fired.

  Cora felt the bullet beat the air beside her cheek; heard it thud into the plaster on the left side of the door. She fired her own gun. It struck the picture between Myra's legs, shattering the glass and burying itself in Myra's upper thigh.

  It also left a bullet-hole in the center of Elvis Presley's forehead.

  "Look what you did!" Myra shrieked. "You shot The King, you stupid cunt!"

  She fired three shots at Cora. Two went wild but the third hit Cora in the throat, driving her backward against the wall in a pink spray of blood. As Cora collapsed to her knees, she fired again. The bullet punched a hole in Myra's kneecap and knocked her out of bed. Then Cora fell face-forward onto the floor, the gun slipping from her hand.

  I'm coming to you, Elvis, she tried to say, but something was terribly, terribly wrong. There seemed to be only darkness, and no one in it but her.

  14

  Castle Rock's Baptists, led by the Rev. William Rose, and Castle Rock's Catholics, led by Father John Brigham, came together near the foot of Castle Hill with an almost audible crunch. There was no polite fist-fighting, no Marquis of Queensberry rules; they had come to gouge out eyes and tear off noses. Quite possibly to kill.

  Albert Gendron, the huge dentist who was slow to anger but terrible once his wrath was roused, grabbed Norman Harper by the ears and jerked Norman's head forward. He brought his own head forward at the same time. Their skulls crashed together with a sound like crockery in an earthquake. Norman shuddered, then went limp. Albert threw him aside like a bag of laundry and grabbed for Bill Sayers, who sold tools at the Western Auto. Bill dodged, then threw a punch. Albert took it squarely on the mouth, spat a tooth, grabbed Bill in a bear-hug, and squeezed until he heard a rib snap. Bill began to shriek. Albert threw him most of the way across the street, where Trooper Morris stopped just in time to avoid running him down.

  The area was now a tangle of struggling, punching, gouging, yelling figures. They tripped each other, they slipped in the rain, they got up again, they hit out and were hit in return. The gaudy splashes of lightning made it seem that some weird dance was going on, one where you threw your partner into the nearest tree instead of allemanding her, or dug your knee into his crotch instead of doing a do-si-do.

  Nan Roberts grabbed Betsy Vigue by the back of the dress as Betsy tore tattoos into Lucille Dunham's cheeks with her nails. Nan yanked Betsy toward her, whirled her around, and poked two of her fingers up Betsy's nose all the way to the second knuckles. Betsy uttered a nasal foghorn screech as Nan began to shake her enthusiastically back and forth by her nose.

  Frieda Pulaski belted Nan with her pocket-book. Nan was driven to her knees. Her fingers came out of Betsy Vigue's nose with an audible pop. When she tried to get up, Betsy kicked her in the face and knocked her sprawling in the middle of the street. "You bidch, you wregged by dodze!" Betsy shrieked. "You wregged by DODZE!" She tried to stamp her foot down into Nan's belly. Nan grabbed her foot, twisted her, and dumped the once-upon-a-time Betty La-La face-first into the street. Nan crawled to her; Betsy was waiting; a moment later they were both rolling over and over in the street, biting and scratching.

  "STOP!!!"

  Trooper Morris bellowed, but his voice was drowned out in a volley of thunder which shook the entire street.

  He pulled his gun, raised it skyward ... but before he could fire, someone--God only knows who--shot him in the crotch with one of Leland Gaunt's special sale items. Trooper Morris flew backward against the hood of his cruiser and rolled into the street, clutching the ruins of his sexual equipment and trying to scream.

  It was impossible to tell just how many of the combatants had brought weapons purchased from Mr. Gaunt that day. Not many, and some of those who had been armed had lost the automatics in the confusion of trying to escape the stink-bombs. But at least four more shots were fired in rapid succession, shots that were largely overlooked in the confusion of shouting voices and booming thunder.

  Len Milliken saw Jake Pulaski aiming one of the guns at Nan, who had allowed Betsy to get away and was now trying to choke Meade Rossignol. Len grabbed Jake's wrist and forced it upward into the lightning-dazzled sky a second before the gun went off. Then he brought Jake's wrist down and snapped it over his knee like a stick of kindling wood. The gun clattered onto the wet street. Jake began to howl. Len stepped back and said, "That'll teach you to--" He got no further, for someone chose that moment to sink the blade of a pocket-knife into the nape of his neck, severing Len's spinal cord at the brain-stem.

  Other police-cars were arriving now, their blue lights swinging crazily in the rain-swept dark. The combatants did not heed the amplified yells to cease and desist. When the Troopers attempted to break things up, they found themselves sucked into the brawl instead.

  Nan Roberts saw Father Brigham, his damned black shirt split right up the back. He was holding Rev. Rose by the nape of the neck with one hand. His other hand was rolled up into a tight fist, and he was popping Rev. Rose repeatedly in the nose with it. His fist would slam home, the hand holding the nape of Rev. Rose's neck would rock backward a little, and then it would haul Rev. Rose back into position for the next
blow.

  Bellowing at the top of her lungs, ignoring the confused State Trooper who was telling her--almost begging her--to stop and stop right now, Nan slung away Meade Rossignol and launched herself at Father Brigham.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  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. Nettie 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 order--or 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 it 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.