Needful Things

by Stephen King

  She opened the top desk drawer and removed a pair of heavy scissors. She bent and yanked on the lower left-hand drawer. It was locked. Mr. Gaunt had told her that would probably be the case. Sally glanced into the outer office, saw it was still empty, the door to the hallway still shut. Good. Great. She jammed the tips of the scissors into the crack at the top of the locked drawer and levered them up, hard. Wood splintered, and Sally felt her nipples grow strangely, pleasantly hard. This was sort of fun. Scary, but fun.

  She reseated the scissors--the points went in farther this time--and levered them up again. The lock snapped and the drawer rolled open on its casters, revealing what was inside. Sally's mouth dropped open in shocked surprise. Then she began to giggle--breathy, stifled sounds that were really closer to screams than to laughter.

  "Oh Mr. Jewett! What a naughty boy you are!"

  There was a stack of digest-sized magazines inside the drawer, and Naughty Boy was, in fact, the name of the one on top. The blurry picture on the cover showed a boy of about nine. He was wearing a '50's-style motorcycle cap and nothing else.

  Sally reached into the drawer and pulled out the magazines--there were a dozen of them, maybe more. Happy Kids. Nude Cuties. Blowing in the Wind. Bobby's Farm World. She looked into one and could barely believe what she was seeing. Where did things like this come from? They surely didn't sell them down at the drugstore, not even on the top rack Rev. Rose sometimes preached about in church, the one with the sign that said ONLY EYES 18 YRS AND OLDER PLEASE.

  A voice she knew very well suddenly spoke up in her head. Hurry, Sally. The meeting's almost over, and you don't want to be caught in here, do you?

  And then there was another voice as well, a woman's voice, one Sally could almost put a name to. Hearing this second voice was like being on the telephone with someone while someone else spoke in the background on the other end of the line.

  More than fair, this second voice said. It seems divine.

  Sally tuned the voice out and did what Mr. Gaunt had told her to do: she scattered the dirty magazines all over Mr. Jewett's office. Then she replaced the scissors and left the room quickly, pulling the door shut behind her. She opened the door of the outer office and peeked out. No one there ... but the voices from Room 6 were louder now, and people were laughing. They were getting ready to break up; it had been an unusually short meeting.

  Thank God for Mr. Gaunt! she thought, and slipped out into the hall. She had almost reached the front doors when she heard them coming out of Room 6 behind her. Sally didn't look around. It occurred to her that she hadn't thought of Mr. Lester Big-Prick Pratt for the last five minutes, and that was really fine. She thought she might go home and draw herself a nice bubble-bath and get into it with her wonderful splinter and spend the next two hours not thinking about Mr. Lester Big-Prick Pratt, and what a lovely change that would be! Yes, indeed! Yes, ind--

  What did you do in there? What was in that envelope? Who put it there, outside the cafeteria? When? And, most important of all, Sally, what are you starting?

  She stood still for a moment, feeling little beads of sweat form on her forehead and in the hollows of her temples. Her eyes went wide and startled, like the eyes of a frightened doe. Then they narrowed and she began to walk again. She was wearing slacks, and they chafed at her in a strangely pleasant way that made her think of her frequent necking sessions with Lester.

  I don't care what I did, she thought. In fact, I hope it's something really mean. He deserves a mean trick, looking like Mr. Weatherbee but having all those disgusting magazines. I hope he chokes when he walks into his office.

  "Yes, I hope he fucking chokes," she whispered. It was the first time in her life she had actually said the f-word out loud, and her nipples tightened and began to tingle again. Sally began to walk faster, thinking in some vague way that there might be something else she could do in the bathtub. It suddenly seemed to her that she had a need or two of her own. She wasn't sure exactly how to satisfy them ... but she had an idea she could find out.

  The Lord, after all, helped those who helped themselves.

  8

  "Does that seem like a fair price?" Mr. Gaunt asked Polly.

  Polly started to reply, then paused. Mr. Gaunt's attention suddenly seemed to be diverted; he was gazing off into space and his lips were moving soundlessly, as if in prayer.

  "Mr. Gaunt?"

  He started slightly. Then his eyes returned to her and he smiled. "Pardon me, Polly. My mind wanders sometimes."

  "The price seems more than fair," Polly told him. "It seems divine." She took her checkbook from her purse and began to write. Every now and then she would wonder vaguely just what she was up to here, and then she would feel Mr. Gaunt's eyes call hers. When she looked up and met them, the questions and doubts subsided again.

  The check she handed to him was drawn in the amount of forty-six dollars. Mr. Gaunt folded it neatly and tucked it into the lapel pocket of his sport-jacket.

  "Be sure to fill out the counterfoil," Mr. Gaunt said. "Your snoopy friend will undoubtedly want to see it."

  "He's coming to see you," Polly said, doing exactly as Mr. Gaunt had suggested. "He thinks you're a confidence man."

  "He's got lots of thoughts and lots of plans," Mr. Gaunt said, "but his plans are going to change and his thoughts are going to blow away like fog on a windy morning. Take my word for it."

  "You ... you're not going to hurt him, are you?"

  "Me? You do me a very great wrong, Patricia Chalmers. I am a pacifist--one of the world's great pacifists. I wouldn't raise a hand against our Sheriff. I just meant that he's got business on the other side of the bridge this afternoon. He doesn't know it yet, but he does."

  "Oh."

  "Now, Polly?"

  "Yes?"

  "Your check does not constitute complete payment for the azka."

  "It doesn't?"

  "No." He was holding a plain white envelope in his hands. Polly didn't have the slightest idea where it had come from, but that seemed perfectly all right. "In order to finish paying for your amulet, Polly, you have to help me play a little trick on someone."

  "Alan?" Suddenly she was as alarmed as a woods-rabbit which gets a dry whiff of fire on a hot summer afternoon. "Do you mean Alan?"

  "I most certainly do not," he said. "Asking you to play a trick on someone you know, let alone someone you think you love, would be unethical, my dear."

  "It would?"

  "Yes ... although I believe you really ought to think carefully about your relationship with the Sheriff, Polly. You may find that it all comes down to a fairly simple choice: a little pain now to save a great deal of pain later. Put another way, those who marry in haste often live to repent in leisure."

  "I don't understand you."

  "I know you don't. You'll understand me better, Polly, after you check your mail. You see, I'm not the only one who has attracted his snooping, sniffy nose. For now, let us discuss the small prank I want you to play. The butt of this joke is a fellow whom I have just recently employed. His name is Merrill."

  "Ace Merrill?"

  His smile faded. "Don't interrupt me, Polly. Don't ever interrupt me when I am speaking. Not unless you want your hands to swell up like innertubes filled with poison gas."

  She shrank away from him, her dreamy, dreaming eyes wide. "I ... I'm sorry."

  "All right. Your apology is accepted ... this time. Now listen to me. Listen very carefully."

  9

  Frank Jewett and Brion McGinley, the Middle School's geography teacher and basketball coach, walked from Room 6 into the outer office just behind Alice Tanner. Frank was grinning and telling Brion a joke he'd heard earlier that day from a textbook salesman. It had to do with a doctor who was finding it difficult to diagnose a woman's illness. He had narrowed it down to two possibles--AIDS or Alzheimer's--but that was as far as he could go.

  "So the gal's husband takes the doctor aside," Frank went on as they walked into the outer office. Alice was
bending over her desk, thumbing through a little pile of messages there, and Frank lowered his voice. Alice could be quite the stick when it came to jokes which were even slightly off-color.

  "Yeah?" Now Brion was also beginning to grin.

  "Yeah. He's real upset. He says, 'Jeez, Doc--is that the best you can do? Isn't there some way we can figure out which one she has?' "

  Alice selected two of the pink message forms and started into the inner office with them. She got as far as the doorway and then stopped short, as if she'd walked into an invisible stone wall. Neither of the grinning middle-aged small-town white guys noticed.

  " 'Sure, it's easy,' the doc says. 'Take her about twenty-five miles into the woods and leave her there. If she finds her way back, don't fuck her.' "

  Brion McGinley gaped foolishly at his boss for a moment, then exploded into hearty guffaws of laughter. Principal Jewett joined him. They were laughing so hard that neither of them heard Alice the first time she called Frank's name. There was no problem the second time. The second time she nearly shrieked it.

  Frank hurried over to her. "Alice? What--" Then he saw what, and a terrible, glassy fright filled him. His words dried up. He felt the flesh of his testicles crawling madly; his balls seemed to be trying to pull themselves back to where they had come from.

  It was the magazines.

  The secret magazines from the bottom drawer.

  They had been spread all over the office like nightmare confetti: boys in uniforms, boys in haylofts, boys in straw hats, boys riding hobby-horses.

  "What in God's name?" The voice, hoarse with horror and fascination, came from Frank's left. He turned his head in that direction (the tendons in his neck creaking like rusty screen-door springs) and saw Brion McGinley staring at the wild strew of magazines. His eyes were all but falling out of his face.

  A prank, he tried to say. A stupid prank, that's all, those magazines are not mine. You only have to look at me to know that magazines like that would hold no ... hold no interest for a man ... a man of my ... my ...

  His what?

  He didn't know, and it didn't really matter, anyway, because he had lost his ability to speak. Entirely lost it.

  The three adults stood in shocked silence, staring into the office of Middle School Principal Frank Jewett. A magazine which had been precariously balanced on the edge of the visitor's chair riffled its pages in response to a puff of hot air through the half-open window and then fell to the floor. Saucy Young Guys, the cover promised.

  A prank, yes, I'll say it was a prank, but will they believe me? Suppose the desk drawer was forced? Will they believe me if it was?

  "Mrs. Tanner?" a girl's voice asked from behind them.

  All three of them--Jewett, Tanner, McGinley--whirled around guiltily. Two girls in red-and-white cheerleading outfits, eighth-graders, stood there. Alice Tanner and Brion McGinley moved almost simultaneously to block the view into Frank's office (Frank Jewett himself seemed rooted to the spot, turned to stone), but they moved just a little too late. The cheerleaders' eyes widened. One of them--Darlene Vickery--clapped her hands to her small rosebud mouth and stared at Frank Jewett unbelievingly.

  Frank thought: Oh good. By noon tomorrow, every student in this school will know. By supper tomorrow night, everyone in town will know.

  "You girls leave," Mrs. Tanner said. "Someone has played a nasty joke on Mr. Jewett--a very nasty joke--and you are not to say one word. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Tanner," Erin McAvoy said; three minutes later she would be telling her best friend, Donna Beaulieu, that Mr. Jewett's office had been decorated with pictures of boys wearing heavy metal bracelets and little else.

  "Yes, Mrs. Tanner," Darlene Vickery said; five minutes later she would be telling her best friend, Natalie Priest.

  "Go on," Brion McGinley said. He was trying to sound brisk, but his voice was still thick with shock. "Off you go."

  The two girls fled, cheerleader skirts flipping about their sturdy knees.

  Brion turned slowly to Frank. "I think--" he began, but Frank paid no notice. He walked into his office, moving slowly, like a man in a dream. He closed the door with the word PRINCIPAL lettered on it in neat black strokes, and slowly began picking up the magazines.

  Why don't you just give them a written confession? part of his mind screamed.

  He ignored the voice. A deeper part of him, the primitive voice of survival, was also speaking, and this part told him that right now he was at his most vulnerable. If he talked to Alice or Brion now, if he tried to explain this, he would hang himself as high as Haman.

  Alice was knocking on the door. Frank ignored her and continued his dream-walk around the office, picking up the magazines he had accumulated over the last nine years, writing away for them one by one and picking them up at the post office in Gates Falls, sure each time that the State Police or a team of Postal Inspectors would fall on him like a ton of bricks. None ever had. But now ... this.

  They won't believe they belong to you, the primitive voice said. They won't allow themselves to believe it--to do that would upset too many of their comfy small-town conceptions of life. Once you get yourself under control, you should be able to put it over. But ... who would have done something like this? Who could have done something like this? (It never occurred to Frank to ask himself what mad compulsion had caused him to bring the magazines here--here, of all places--in the first place.)

  There was only one person Frank Jewett could think of--the one person from The Rock with whom he'd shared his secret life. George T. Nelson, the high school wood shop teacher. George T. Nelson, who, under his bluff, macho exterior, was just as gay as old dad's hatband. George T. Nelson, with whom Frank Jewett had once attended a sort of party in Boston, the sort of party where there were a great many middle-aged men and a small group of undressed boys. The sort of party that could land you in jail for the rest of your life. The sort of party--

  There was a manila envelope sitting on his desk blotter. His name was written on the center of it. Frank Jewett felt a horrible sinking sensation in the pit of his belly. It felt like an elevator out of control. He looked up and saw Alice and Brion peering in at him, almost cheek to cheek. Their eyes were wide, their mouths open, and Frank thought: Now I know what it feels like to be a fish in an aquarium.

  He waved at them--go away! They didn't go, and this somehow did not surprise him. This was a nightmare, and in nightmares, things never went the way you wanted them to. That was why they were nightmares. He felt a terrible sense of loss and disorientation ... but somewhere beneath it, like a living spark beneath a heap of wet kindling, was a little blue flame of anger.

  He sat behind his desk and put the stack of magazines on the floor. He saw that the drawer they'd been in had been forced, just as he had feared. He ripped open the envelope and spilled out the contents. Most of them were glossy photographs. Photographs of him and George T. Nelson at that party in Boston. They were cavorting with a number of nice young fellows (the oldest of the nice young fellows might have been twelve), and in each picture George T. Nelson's face was obscured but Frank Jewett's was crystal clear.

  This didn't much surprise Frank, either.

  There was a note in the envelope. He took it out and read it.

  Frank old Buddy,

  Sorry to do this, but I have to leave town and have no time to fuck around. I want $2,000. Bring it to my house tonight at 7:00 p.m. So far you can wiggle out of this thing, it will be tough but no real problem for a slippery bastard like you, but ask yourself how you're going to like seeing copies of these pix nailed up on every phone pole in town, right under those Casino Nite posters. They will run you out of town on a rail, old Buddy. Remember, $2,000 at my house by 7:15 at the latest or you will wish you were born without a dick.

  Your friend,

  George

  Your friend.

  Your friend!

  His eyes kept returning to that closing line with a kind of incredulous, wondering horror.<
br />
  Your motherfucking backstabbing Judas-kissing FRIEND!

  Brion McGinley was still hammering on the door, but when Frank Jewett finally looked up from whatever it was on his desk which had taken his attention, Brion's fist paused in mid-stroke. The principal's face was waxy white except for two bright clown-spots of flush on his cheeks. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a narrow smile.

  He didn't look in the least like Mr. Weatherbee.

  My friend, Frank thought. He crumpled the note with one hand as he shoved the glossy photographs back into the envelope with the other. Now the blue spark of anger had turned orange. The wet kindling was catching fire. I'll be there, all right. I'll be there to discuss this matter with my friend George T. Nelson.

  "Yes indeed," Frank Jewett said. "Yes indeed." He began to smile.

  10

  It was going on quarter past three and Alan had decided Brian Rusk must have taken a different route; the flood of home-going students had almost dried up. Then, just as he was reaching into his pocket for his car-keys, he saw a lone figure biking down School Street toward him. The boy was riding slowly, seeming almost to trudge over the handlebars, and his head was bent so low Alan couldn't see his face.

  But he could see what was in the carrier basket of the boy's bike: a Playmate cooler.

  11

  "Do you understand?" Gaunt asked Polly, who was now holding the envelope.

  "Yes, I ... I understand. I do." But her dreaming face was troubled.

  "You don't look happy."

  "Well ... I..."

  "Things like the azka don't always work very well for people who aren't happy," Mr. Gaunt said. He pointed at the tiny bulge where the silver ball lay against her skin, and again she seemed to feel something shift strangely inside. At the same moment, horrible cramps of pain invaded her hands, spreading like a network of cruel steel hooks. Polly moaned loudly.

  Mr. Gaunt crooked the finger he had pointed in a come-along gesture. She felt that shift in the silver ball again, more clearly this time, and the pain was gone.