Needful Things

by Stephen King

  Everett knew perfectly well who "Miss Ratcliffe's young man" was: the high school Physical Education instructor. Given a choice, Everett would have preferred playing the trick on Lester Pratt rather than on his fiancee. Pratt was a beefy young Baptist who usually wore blue tee-shirts and blue sweat-pants with a white stripe running down the outside of each leg. He was the sort of fellow who exuded sweat and Jesus from his pores in apparently equal (and copious) amounts. Everett didn't care much for him. He wondered vaguely if Lester had slept with Sally yet--she was quite the dish. He thought the answer was probably no. He further thought that when Lester got het up after a little too much necking on the porch swing, Sally probably had him do sit-ups in the back yard or run a few dozen wind-sprints around the house.

  "Sally has got the Prattmobile again?"

  "Indeed," Mr. Gaunt said, a trifle testily. "Are you done being witty. Dr. Frankel?"

  "Sure," he said. In truth, he felt a surprisingly deep sense of relief. He had been a little worried about the "prank" Mr. Gaunt wanted him to play. Now he saw that his worry had been foolish. It wasn't as if Mr. Gaunt wanted him to stick a firecracker in the lady's shoe or put Ex-Lax in her chocolate milk or anything like that. What harm could an envelope do?

  Mr. Gaunt's smile, sunny and resplendent, burst forth once again. "Very good," he said. He came toward Everett, who observed with horror that Mr. Gaunt apparently meant to put an arm around him.

  Everett moved hastily backward. In this way, Mr. Gaunt maneuvered him back to the front door and opened it.

  "Enjoy that pipe," he said. "Did I tell you that it once belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the great Sherlock Holmes?"

  "No!" Everett Frankel exclaimed.

  "Of course I didn't," Mr. Gaunt said, grinning. "That would have been a lie ... and I never lie in matters of business, Dr. Frankel. Don't forget your little errand."

  "I won't."

  "Then I'll wish you a good day."

  "Same to y--"

  But Everett was talking to no one. The door with its drawn shade had already been closed behind him.

  He looked at it for a moment, then walked slowly back to his Plymouth. If he had been asked for an exact account of what he had said to Mr. Gaunt and what Mr. Gaunt had said to him, he would have made a poor job of it, because he couldn't exactly remember. He felt like a man who has been given a whiff of light anaesthetic.

  Once he was sitting behind the wheel again, the first thing Everett did was unlock the glove compartment, put the envelope with Lovey written on the front in, and take the pipe out. One thing he did remember was Mr. Gaunt's teasing him, saying that A. Conan Doyle had once owned the pipe. And he had almost believed him. How silly! You only had to put it in your mouth and clamp your teeth on the stem to know better. The original owner of this pipe had been Hermann Goring.

  Everett Frankel started his car and drove slowly out of town. And on his way to the Burgmeyer farm, he had to pull over to the side of the road only twice to admire how much that pipe improved his looks.

  4

  Albert Gendron kept his dental offices in the Castle Building, a graceless brick structure which stood across the street from the town's Municipal Building and the squat cement pillbox that housed the Castle County Water District. The Castle Building had thrown its shadow over Castle Stream and the Tin Bridge since 1924, and housed three of the county's five lawyers, an optometrist, an audiologist, several independent realtors, a credit consultant, a one-woman answering service, and a framing shop. The half dozen other offices in the building were currently vacant.

  Albert, who had been one of Our Lady of Serene Waters' stalwarts since the days of old Father O'Neal, was getting on now, his once-black hair turning salt-and-pepper, his broad shoulders sloping in a way they never had in his young days, but he was still a man of imposing size--at six feet, seven inches tall and two hundred and eighty pounds, he was the biggest man in town, if not the entire county.

  He climbed the narrow staircase to the fourth and top floor slowly, stopping on the landings to catch his breath before going on up, mindful of the heart-murmur Dr. Van Allen said he now had. Halfway up the final flight, he saw a sheet of paper taped to the frosted glass panel of his office door, obscuring the lettering which read ALBERT GENDRON D.D.S.

  He was able to read the salutation on this note while he was still five steps from the top, and his heart began to pound harder, murmur or no murmur. Only it wasn't exertion causing it to kick up its heels; it was rage.

  LISTEN UP YOU MACKEREL-SNAPPER! was printed at the top of the sheet in bright red Magic Marker.

  Albert pulled the note from the door and read it quickly. He breathed through his nose as he did so--harsh, snorting exhalations that made him sound like a bull about to charge.

  LISTEN UP YOU MACKEREL-SNAPPER!

  We have tried to reason with you--"Let him hear who hath understanding"--but it has been no use. YOU ARE SET ON YOUR COURSE OF DAMNATION AND BY THEIR WORKS SHALT YOU KNOW THEM. We have put up with your Popish idolatry and even with your licentious worship of the Babylon Whore. But now you have gone too far. THERE WILL BE NO DICING WITH THE DEVIL IN CASTLE ROCK!

  Decent Christians can smell HELLFIRE and BRIMSTONE in Castle Rock this fall. If you cannot it is because your nose has been stuffed shut by your own sin and degradation. HEAR OUR WARNING AND HEED IT: GIVE UP YOUR PLAN TO TURN THIS TOWN INTO A DEN OF THIEVES AND GAMBLERS OR YOU WILL SMELL THE HELLFIRE! YOU WILL SMELL THE BRIMSTONE!

  "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." Psalm 9:17.

  HEAR AND HEED, OR YOUR CRIES OF LAMENTATION WILL BE LOUD INDEED.

  THE CONCERNED BAPTIST MEN OF CASTLE ROCK

  "Shit on toast," Albert said at last, and crumpled the note into one ham-sized fist. "That idiotic little Baptist shoe-salesman has finally gone out of his mind."

  His first order of business after opening his office was to call Father John and tell him the game might be getting a little rougher between now and Casino Nite.

  "Don't worry, Albert," Father Brigham said calmly. "If the idiot bumps us, he's going to find out how hard we mackerel-snappers can bump back ... am I right?"

  "Right you are, Father," Albert said. He was still holding the crumpled note in one hand. Now he looked down at it and an unpleasant little smile surfaced below his walrus moustache. "Right you are."

  5

  By quarter past ten that morning, the digital read-out in front of the bank announced the temperature in Castle Rock as seventy-seven degrees. On the far side of the Tin Bridge, the unseasonably hot sun produced a bright twinkle, a daystar at the place where Route 117 came over the horizon and headed toward town. Alan Pangborn was in his office, going over reports on the Cobb-Jerzyck murders, and did not see that reflection of sun on metal and glass. It wouldn't have interested him much if he had--it was, after all, only an approaching car. Nevertheless, the savagely bright twinkle of chrome and glass, heading toward the bridge at better than seventy miles an hour, heralded the arrival of a significant part of Alan Pangborn's destiny ... and that of the whole town. In the show window of Needful Things, the sign reading

  CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY

  was taken down by a long-fingered hand which emerged from the sleeve of a fawn sport-jacket. A new sign went up in its place. This one read

  HELP WANTED.

  6

  The car was still doing fifty in a zone posted for twenty-five when it crossed the bridge. It was a unit the high school kids would have regarded with awe and envy: a lime-green Dodge Challenger that had been jacked in the back so the nose pointed toward the road. Through the smoked-glass windows, one could dimly make out the roll-bar which arched across the roof between the front and back seats. The rear end was covered with stickers: HEARST, FUELLY, FRAM, QUAKER STATE, GOODYEAR WIDE OVALS. RAM CHARGER. The straight-pipes burbled contentedly, fat on the ninety-six-octane fuel which could be purchased only at Oxford Plains Speedway once you got north of Portland.


  It slowed a little at the intersection of Main and Laurel, then pulled into one of the slant-parking spaces in front of The Clip Joint with a low squeal of tires. There was no one in the shop getting a haircut just then; both Bill Fullerton and Henry Gendron, his number-two barber, were seated in the customers' chairs under the old Brylcreem and Wildroot Creme Oil signs. They had shared the morning paper out between them. As the driver gunned his engine briefly, causing exhaust to crackle and bang through the pipes, both looked up.

  "A death-machine if I ever saw one," Henry said.

  Bill nodded and plucked at his lower lip with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. "Ayuh."

  They both watched expectantly as the engine died and the driver's door opened. A foot encased in a scuffed black engineer boot emerged from the Challenger's dark innards. It was attached to a leg clad in tight, faded denim. A moment later the driver got out and stood in the unseasonably hot daylight, removing his sunglasses and tucking them into the V of his shirt as he looked around in leisurely, contemptuous fashion.

  "Uh-oh," Henry said. "Looks like a bad penny just turned up."

  Bill Fullerton stared at the apparition with the sports section of the newspaper in his lap and his jaw hanging slightly agape. "Ace Merrill," he said. "As I live and breathe."

  "What in the hell is he doing here?" Henry asked indignantly. "I thought he was over in Mechanic Falls, fuckin up their way of life."

  "Dunno," Bill said, and pulled at his lower lip again. "Lookit im! Gray as a rat and probably twice as mean! How old is he, Henry?"

  Henry shrugged. "More'n forty and less'n fifty is all I know. Who cares how old he is, anyway? He still looks like trouble to me."

  As if he had overheard him, Ace turned toward the plate-glass window and raised his hand in a slow, sarcastic wave. The two men jerked and rustled indignantly, like a pair of old maids who have just realized that the insolent wolf-whistle coming from the doorway of the pool-hall is for them.

  Ace shoved his hands into the pockets of his Low Riders and strolled away--portrait of a man with all the time in the world and all the cool moves in the known universe.

  "You think you oughtta call Sheriff Pangborn?" Henry asked.

  Bill Fullerton pulled at his lower lip some more. At last he shook his head. "He'll know Ace is back in town soon enough," he said. "Won't need me to tell him. Or you either."

  They sat in silence and watched Ace stroll up Main Street until he had passed from their view.

  7

  No one would have guessed, watching Ace Merrill strut indolently up Main Street, that he was a man with a desperate problem. It was a problem Buster Keeton could have identified with to some extent; Ace owed some fellows a large chunk of money. Well over eighty thousand dollars, to be specific. But the worst Buster's creditors could do was put him in jail. If Ace didn't have the money soon, say by the first of November, his creditors were apt to put him in the ground.

  The boys Ace Merrill had once terrorized--boys like Teddy Duchamp, Chris Chambers, and Vern Tessio--would have recognized him at once in spite of his graying hair. During the years when Ace had worked at the local textile mill (it had been closed for the last five years), that might not have been the case. In those days his vices had been beer and petty theft. He had put on a great deal of weight as a result of the former and had attracted a fair amount of attention from the late Sheriff George Bannerman as a result of the latter. Then Ace discovered cocaine.

  He quit his job at the mill, lost fifty pounds running in high--very high--gear, and graduated to first-degree burglary as a result of this marvellous substance. His financial situation began to yo-yo in the grandiose way only high-margin traders on the stock market and cocaine dealers experience. He might start a month flat broke and end it with fifty or sixty thousand dollars tucked under the roots of the dead apple tree behind his place on Cranberry Bog Road. One day it was a seven-course French dinner at Maurice; the next it might be Kraft macaroni and cheese in the kitchen of his trailer. It all depended on the market and on the supply, because Ace, like most cocaine dealers, was his own best customer.

  A year or so after the new Ace--long, lean, graying, and hooked through the bag--emerged from the suit of blubber he had been growing ever since he and public education parted company, he met some fellows from Connecticut. These fellows traded in firearms as well as blow. Ace saw eye to eye with them at once; like him, the Corson brothers were their own best customers. They offered Ace what amounted to a high-caliber franchise for the central Maine area, and Ace accepted gladly. This was a pure business decision no more than the decision to start dealing coke had been a pure business decision. If there was anything in the world Ace loved more than cars and coke, it was guns.

  On one of the occasions when he found himself embarrassed for funds, he had gone to see his uncle, who had loaned money to half the people in town and was reputed to be rolling in dough. Ace saw no reason why he should not qualify for such a loan; he was young (well ... forty-eight ... relatively young), he had prospects, and he was blood.

  His uncle, however, held a radically different view of things.

  "Nope," Reginald Marion "Pop" Merrill told him. "I know where your money comes from--when you have money, that is. It comes from that white shit."

  "Aw, Uncle Reginald--"

  "Don't you Uncle Reginald me," Pop had replied. "You got a spot of it on y'nose right now. Careless. Folks who use that white shit and deal it always get careless. Careless people end up in the Shank. That's if they're lucky. If they ain't, they wind up fertilizing a patch of swamp about six feet long and three feet deep. I can't collect money if the people who owe it to me are dead or doing time. I wouldn't give you the sweat out of my dirty asshole, is what I mean to say."

  That particular embarrassment had come shortly after Alan Pangborn had assumed his duties as Sheriff of Castle County. And Alan's first major bust had come when he surprised Ace and two of his friends trying to crack the safe in Henry Beaufort's office at The Mellow Tiger. It was a very good bust, a textbook bust, and Ace had found himself in Shawshank less than four months after his uncle had warned him of the place. The charges of attempted robbery were dropped in a plea-bargain, but Ace still got a pretty good dose of hard time on a nighttime breaking and entering charge.

  He got out in the spring of 1989 and moved to Mechanic Falls. He had a job to go to; Oxford Plains Speedway participated in the state's pre-release program, and John "Ace" Merrill obtained a position as maintenance man and part-time pit mechanic.

  A good many of his old friends were still around--not to mention his old customers--and soon Ace was doing business and having nosebleeds again.

  He kept the job at the Speedway until his sentence was officially up, and quit the day it was. He'd gotten a phone call from the Flying Corson Brothers in Danbury, Connecticut, and soon he was dealing shooting irons again as well as the Bolivian marching powder.

  The ante had gone up while he was in stir, it seemed; instead of pistols, rifles, and repeating shotguns, he now found himself doing a lively business in automatic and semi-automatic weapons. The climax had come in June of this year, when he sold a ground-fired Thunderbolt missile to a seafaring man with a South American accent. The seafaring man stowed the Thunderbolt below, then paid Ace seventeen thousand dollars in fresh hundreds with non-sequential serial numbers.

  "What do you use a thing like that for?" Ace had asked with some fascination.

  "Anytheeng you want to, senor," the seafaring man had replied unsmilingly.

  Then, in July, everything had crashed. Ace still didn't really understand how it could have happened, except that it probably would have been better if he had stuck with the Flying Corson Brothers for coke as well as guns. He had taken delivery of two pounds of Colombian flake from a guy in Portland, financing the deal with the help of Mike and Dave Corson. They had kicked in about eighty-five thousand. That particular pile of blow had seemed worth twice the asking price--it had tested high blue. A
ce knew that eighty-five big ones was a lot more boost than he was used to handling, but he felt confident and ready to move up. In those days, "No problem!" had been Ace Merrill's main guidepost to living. Things had changed since then. Things had changed a lot.

  These changes began when Dave Corson called from Danbury, Connecticut, to ask Ace what he thought he was doing, trying to pass off baking soda as cocaine. The guy in Portland had apparently managed to stiff Ace, high blue or no high blue, and when Dave Corson began to realize this, he stopped sounding so friendly. In fact, he began to sound positively unfriendly.

  Ace could have done a fade. Instead, he gathered all his courage--which was not inconsiderable. even in his middle age--and went to see the Flying Corson Brothers. He gave them his view of what had happened. He did his explaining in the back of a Dodge van with wall-to-wall carpet, a heated mud-bed, and a mirror on the ceiling. He was very convincing. He had to be very convincing, because the van had been parked at the end of a rutted dirt road some miles west of Danbury, a black fellow named Too-Tall Timmy was behind the wheel, and the Flying Corson Brothers, Mike and Dave, were sitting on either side of Ace with H & K recoilless rifles.

  As he talked, Ace found himself remembering what his uncle had said before the bust at The Mellow Tiger. Careless people end up in the Shank. That's if they're lucky. If they ain't, they wind up fertilizing a patch of swamp about six feet long and three feet deep. Well, Pop had been right about the first half; Ace intended to exercise all his persuasiveness to avoid the second half. There were no pre-release programs from the swamp.

  He was very persuasive. And at some point he said two magic words: Ducky Morin.

  "You bought that crap from Ducky?" Mike Corson said, his bloodshot eyes opening wide. "You sure that's who it was?"

  "Sure I'm sure," Ace had replied. "Why?"

  The Flying Corson Brothers looked at each other and began to laugh. Ace didn't know what they were laughing about, but he was glad they were doing it, just the same. It seemed like a good sign.