Needful Things Read online

  "They'll die without me!" the Gaunt-thing moaned. Now its hands hung between its legs; long claws clicked and clittered in the scattered debris which lay in the street. "Every single one of them will die without me, like plants without water in the desert. Is that what you want? Is it?"

  Polly was with Alan then, pressed against his side.

  "Yes," she said coldly. "Better that they die here and now, if that's what has to happen, than that they go with you and live. They--we--did some lousy things, but that price is much too high."

  The Gaunt-thing hissed and shook its claws at them.

  Alan picked up the bag and backed slowly into the street with Polly by his side. He raised the fountain of light-flowers so that they cast an amazing, revolving glow upon Mr. Gaunt and his Tucker Talisman. He pulled air into his chest--more air than his body had ever contained before, it seemed. And when he spoke, the words roared from him in a vast voice which was not his own. "GO HENCE, DEMON! YOU ARE CAST OUT FROM THIS PLACE!"

  The Gaunt-thing screamed as if burned by scalding water. The green awning of Needful Things burst into flame and the show-window blew inward, its glass pulverized to diamonds. From above Alan's closed hand, bright rays of radiance--blue, red, green, orange, deep-hued violet --struck out in every direction. For a moment a tiny, exploding star seemed balanced on his fist.

  The hyena-hide valise burst open with a rotted pop, and the trapped, wailing voices escaped in a vapor which was not seen but felt by all of them--Alan, Polly, Norris, Seaton.

  Polly felt the hot, sinking poison in her arms and chest disappear.

  The heat slowly gathering around Norris's heart dissipated.

  All over Castle Rock, guns and clubs were cast down; people looked at each other with the wondering eyes of those who have awakened from a dreadful dream.

  And the rain stopped.

  17

  Still screaming, the thing which had been Leland Gaunt hopped and scrambled across the sidewalk to the Tucker. It pulled the door open and flopped behind the wheel. The motor screamed into life. It was not the sound of any engine made by human hands. A long lick of orange fire belched from the exhaust pipe. The taillights flared and they were not red glass but ugly little eyes--the eyes of cruel imps.

  Polly Chalmers screamed and turned her face against Alan's shoulder, but Alan could not turn away. Alan was doomed to see and to remember all his life what he saw, as he would remember the night's brighter marvels: the paper snake that became momentarily real, the paper flowers that had turned into a bouquet of light and a reservoir of power.

  The three headlights blazed on. The Tucker backed out into the street, smoking the macadam beneath its tires to boiling goo. It screamed around in a reverse turn to the right, and although it did not touch Alan's car, the station wagon flew backward several feet just the same, as if repelled by some powerful magnet. The front end of the Talisman had begun to glow with a foggy white radiance, and beneath this glow it seemed to be changing and reforming itself.

  The car shrieked, pointing downhill toward the boiling cauldron which had been the Municipal Building, the litter of smashed cars and vans, and the roaring stream that no bridge spanned. The engine cranked up to insane revs, souls howling in a discordant frenzy, and the bright, misty glow began to spread backward, engulfing the car.

  For one single moment the Gaunt-thing looked out the drooping, melting driver's-side window at Alan, seeming to mark him forever with its red, lozenge-shaped eyes, and its mouth opened in a yawning snarl.

  Then the Tucker began to roll.

  It picked up speed as it went downhill, and the changes picked up speed, as well. The car melted, rearranged itself. The roof peeled backward, the shiny hubcaps grew spokes, the tires grew simultaneously higher and thinner. A form began to extrude itself from the remains of the Tucker's grille. It was a black horse with eyes as red as Mr. Gaunt's, a horse encased in a milky shroud of brightness, a horse whose hooves struck up fire from the pavement and left deep, smoking tracks impressed in the center of the street.

  The Talisman had become an open buckboard with a hunchbacked dwarf sitting up high on the seat. The dwarf's boots were propped on the splashboard, and the caliph-curled toes of those boots appeared to be on fire.

  And still the changes were not done. As the glowing buckboard raced toward the lower end of Main Street, the sides began to grow; a wooden roof with overhanging eaves knit itself out of that nourishing protean shroud. A window appeared. The spokes of the wheels took on ghostly flashes of color as the wheels themselves--and the hooves of the black horse--left the pavement.

  The Talisman had become a buckboard; the buckboard now became a medicine-show wagon of the sort which might have crisscrossed the country a hundred years ago. There was a legend written on the side, and Alan could just make it out.

  CAVEAT EMPTOR

  it said.

  Fifteen feet in the air and still rising, the wagon passed through the flames sprawling out from the ruins of the Municipal Building. The hooves of the black horse galloped on some invisible road in the sky, still striking off sparks of brilliant blue and orange. It rose over Castle Stream, a glowing box in the sky; it passed over the downed bridge which lay in the torrent like the skeleton of a dinosaur.

  Then a raft of smoke from the burning hulk of the Municipal Building blew across Main Street, and when the smoke cleared, Leland Gaunt and his hellwagon were gone.

  18

  Alan walked Polly down to the cruiser which had brought Norris and Seaton upstreet from the Municipal Building. Norris was still sitting in the window, clinging to the flasher-bars. He was too weak to lower himself back inside without falling.

  Alan slipped his hands around Norris's belly (not that Norris, who was built like a tent-peg, had much) and helped him to the ground.

  "Norris?"

  "What, Alan?" Norris was weeping.

  "From now on you can change your clothes in the crapper any time you want," Alan said. "Okay?"

  Norris did not seem to hear.

  Alan had felt the blood soaking into his First Deputy's shirt. "How bad are you hit?"

  "Not too bad. At least I don't think so. But this"--he swept his hand at the town, encompassing all the burning and all the rubble--"all this is my fault. Mine!"

  "You're wrong," Polly said.

  "You don't understand!" Norris's face was a twisted rag of grief and shame. "I'm the one who slashed Hugh Priest's tires! I set him off!"

  "Yes," Polly said, "probably you did. You'll have to live with that. Just as I'm the one who set Ace Merrill off, and I'll have to live with that." She pointed toward where Catholics and Baptists were straggling off in different directions, unhampered by the few dazed cops who were still standing. Some of the religious warriors were walking alone; some walked together. Father Brigham appeared to be supporting Rev. Rose, and Nan Roberts had her arm around Henry Payton's waist. "But who set them off, Norris? And Wilma? And Nettie? And all the others? All I can say is that if you did it all yourself, you must be a real bear for work."

  Norris burst into loud, anguished sobs. "I'm just so sorry."

  "So am I," Polly said quietly. "My heart is broken."

  Alan gave Norris and Polly a brief hug, and then leaned in the passenger window of Seat's cruiser. "How are you feeling, old buddy?"

  "Pretty perky," Seat said. He looked, in fact, absolutely agog. Confused, but agog. "You folks look lots worse'n I do."

  "I think we better get Norris to the hospital, Seat. If you've got room in there, we could all go."

  "You bet, Alan! Climb in! Which hospital?"

  "Northern Cumberland," Alan said. "There's a little boy there I want to see. I want to make sure his father got to him."

  "Alan, did I see what I thought I saw? Did that fella's car turn into a wagon and go flying off into the sky?"

  "I don't know, Seat," Alan said, "and I'll tell you the God's honest truth: I never want to know."

  Henry Payton had just arrived, and now he t
ouched Alan on the shoulder. His eyes were shocked and strange. He had the look of a man who will soon make some big changes in his way of living, his way of thinking, or both. "What happened, Alan?" he asked. "What really happened in this goddam town?"

  It was Polly who answered.

  "There was a sale. The biggest going-out-of-business sale you ever saw ... but in the end, some of us decided not to buy."

  Alan had opened the door and helped Norris into the front seat. Now he touched Polly's shoulder. "Come on," he said. "Let's go. Norris is hurting, and he's lost a lot of blood."

  "Hey!" Henry said. "I've got a lot of questions, and--"

  "Save them." Alan got in back next to Polly and closed the door. "We'll talk tomorrow, but for now I'm off-duty. In fact, I think I'm off-duty in this town forever. Be content with this--it's over. Whatever went on in Castle Rock is over."

  "But--"

  Alan leaned forward and tapped Seat on one bony shoulder. "Let's go," he said quietly. "And don't spare the horses."

  Seat began to drive, heading up Main Street, heading north. The cruiser turned left at the fork and began to climb Castle Hill toward Castle View. As they topped the hill, Alan and Polly turned back together to look at the town, where fire bloomed like rubies. Alan felt sadness, and loss, and a strange, cheated grief.

  My town, he thought. It was my town. But not anymore. Not ever again.

  They turned to face forward again at the same instant, and ended up looking into each other's eyes instead.

  "You will never know," she said softly. "What really happened to Annie and Todd that day--you will never know."

  "And no longer want to," Alan Pangborn said. He kissed her cheek gently. "That belongs in the darkness. Let the darkness bear it away."

  They topped the View and picked up Route 119 on the other side, and Castle Rock was gone; the darkness had borne that away, too.

  YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.

  Sure you have. Sure. I never forget a face.

  Come on over, let me shake your hand! Tell you somethin: I recognized you by the way you walk even before I saw your face good. You couldn't have picked a better day to come back to Junction City, the nicest little town in Iowa--at least on this side of Ames. Go ahead, you can laugh; it was meant as a joke.

  Can you sit a spell with me? Right here on this bench by the War Memorial will be fine. The sun's warm and from here we can see just about all of downtown. You want to mind the splinters, that's all; this bench has been here since Hector was a pup. Now--look over there. No, a little to your right. The building where the windows have been soaped over. That used to be Sam Peebles's office. Real-estate man, and a damned good one. Then he married Naomi Higgins from down the road in Proverbia and off they went, just like young folks almost always do these days.

  That place of his stood empty for over a year--the economy's been rotten out here since all that Mideast business started--but now somebody's finally taken it over. Been lots of talk about it, too, I want to tell you. But you know how it is; in a place like Junction City, where things don't change much from one year to the next, the openin of a new store is big news. Won't be long, either, from the look of things; the last of the workmen packed up their tools and left last Friday. Now what I think is--

  Who?

  Oh, her! Why, that's Irma Skillins. She used to be the principal at Junction City High School--the first woman principal in this part of the state, I heard. She retired two years ago, and it seems like she retired from everything else at the same time--Eastern Star, Daughters of the American Revolution, the Junction City Players. She even quit the church choir, I understand. I imagine part of it's the rheumatiz--she's got it awful bad now. See the way she leans on that cane of hers? A person gets like that, I imagine they'd do just about anything to get a little relief.

  Look at that! Checking that new store out pretty close, ain't she? Well, why not? She may be old, but she ain't dead, not by a long chalk. Besides, you know what they say; 'twas curiosity killed the cat, but it was satisfaction that brought him back.

  Can I read the sign? You bet I can! I got glasses two years ago, but they're just for close work; my long vision has never been better. It says OPENING SOON on top, and under that, ANSWERED PRAYERS, A NEW KIND OF STORE. And the last line--wait a minute, it's a little smaller--the last line says You won't believe your eyes! I probably will, though. It says in Ecclesiastes that there ain't nothing new under the sun, and I pretty much hold to that. But Irma will be back. If nothing else, I imagine she'll want to get a good look at whoever it was decided to put that bright red awning over Sam Peebles's old office!

  I might even have a look inside myself. I suppose most everyone in town will before everything's said and done.

  Interesting name for a store, ain't it? Answered Prayers. Makes you wonder what's for sale inside.

  Why, with a name like that it could be anything.

  Anything at all.

  October 24, 1988

  January 28, 1991