Needful Things

by Stephen King

  "You don't want to go back to the way things were, do you, Polly?" Mr. Gaunt asked in a silky voice.

  "No!" she cried. Her breast was moving rapidly up and down. Her hands began to make frantic washing gestures, one against the other, and her wide eyes never left his. "Please, no!"

  "Because things could go from bad to worse, couldn't they?"

  "Yes! Yes, they could!"

  "And nobody understands, do they? Not even the Sheriff. He doesn't know what it's like to wake up at two in the morning with hell in his hands, does he?"

  She shook her head and began to weep.

  "Do as I say and you'll never have to wake up that way again, Polly. And here is something else--do as I say and if anyone in Castle Rock finds out that your child burned to death in a San Francisco tenement, they won't find it out from me."

  Polly uttered a hoarse, lost cry--the cry of a woman hopelessly ensnarled in a grinding nightmare.

  Mr. Gaunt smiled.

  "There are more kinds of hell than one, aren't there, Polly?"

  "How do you know about him?" she whispered. "No one knows. Not even Alan. I told Alan--"

  "I know because knowing is my business. And suspicion is his, Polly--Alan never believed what you told him."

  "He said--"

  "I'm sure he said all kinds of things, but he never believed you. The woman you hired to baby-sit was a drug addict, wasn't she? That wasn't your fault, but of course the things which led to that situation were all a matter of personal choice, Polly, weren't they? Your choice. The young woman you hired to watch Kelton passed out and dropped a cigarette--or maybe it was a joint--into a wastebasket. Hers was the finger that pulled the trigger, you might say, but the gun was loaded because of your pride, your inability to bend your neck before your parents and the other good people of Castle Rock."

  Polly was sobbing harder now.

  "Yet is a young woman not entitled to her pride?" Mr. Gaunt asked gently. "When everything else is gone, is she not at least entitled to this, the coin without which her purse is entirely empty?"

  Polly raised her streaming, defiant face. "I thought it was my business," she said. "I still do. If that's pride, so what?"

  "Yes," he said soothingly. "Spoken like a champion ... but they would have taken you back, wouldn't they? Your mother and father? It might not have been pleasant--not with the child always there to remind them, not with the way tongues wag in pleasant little backwaters like this one--but it would have been possible."

  "Yes, and I would have spent every day trying to stay out from under my mother's thumb!" she burst out in a furious, ugly voice which bore almost no resemblance to her normal tone.

  "Yes," Mr. Gaunt said in that same soothing voice. "So you stayed where you were. You had Kelton, and you had your pride. And when Kelton was dead, you still had your pride ... didn't you?"

  Polly screamed in grief and agony and buried her wet face in her hands.

  "It hurts worse than your hands, doesn't it?" Mr. Gaunt asked. Polly nodded her head without taking her face out of her hands. Mr. Gaunt put his own ugly, long-fingered hands behind his head and spoke in the tone of one who gives a eulogy: "Humanity! So noble! So willing to sacrifice the other fellow!"

  "Stop!" she moaned. "Can't you stop?"

  "It's a secret thing, isn't it, Patricia?"

  "Yes."

  He touched her forehead. Polly uttered a gagging moan but did not draw away.

  "That's one door into hell you'd like to keep locked, isn't it?"

  She nodded inside her hands.

  "Then do as I say, Polly," he whispered. He took one of her hands away from her face and began caressing it. "Do as I say, and keep your mouth shut." He looked closely at her wet cheeks and her streaming, reddened eyes. A little moue of disgust puckered his lips for a moment.

  "I don't know which makes me sicker--a crying woman or a laughing man. Wipe your goddamned face, Polly."

  Slowly, dreamily, she took a lace-edged handkerchief from her purse and began to do it.

  "That's good," he said, and rose. "I'll let you go home now, Polly; you have things to do. But I want you to know it has been a great pleasure doing business with you. I have always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves."

  12

  "Hey, Brian--want to see a trick?"

  The boy on the bicycle looked up fast, the hair flying off his forehead, and Alan saw an unmistakable expression on his face: naked, unadulterated fear.

  "Trick?" the boy said in a trembling voice. "What trick?"

  Alan didn't know what the boy was afraid of, but he understood one thing--his magic, which he had relied upon often as an icebreaker with children, had for some reason been exactly the wrong thing this time. Best to get it out of the way as soon as possible and start over again.

  He held up his left arm--the one with the watch on it--and smiled into Brian Rusk's pale, watchful, frightened face. "You'll notice that there's nothing up my sleeve and that my arm goes all the way up to my shoulder. But now ... presto!"

  Alan passed his open right hand slowly down his left arm, snapping the little packet effortlessly out from beneath his watch with his right thumb as he did so. As he closed his fist, he slipped the almost microscopic loop that held the packet closed. He clasped his left hand over his right, and when he spread them apart, a large tissue-paper bouquet of unlikely flowers bloomed where there had been nothing but thin air a moment before.

  Alan had done this trick hundreds of times and never better than on this hot October afternoon, but the expected reaction--a moment of stunned surprise followed by a grin that was one part amazement and two parts admiration--didn't dawn on Brian's face. He gave the bouquet a cursory glance (there seemed to be relief in that brief look, as if he had expected the trick to be of a far less pleasant nature) and then returned his gaze to Alan's face.

  "Pretty neat, huh?" Alan asked. He stretched his lips in a big smile that felt every bit as genuine as his grandfather's dentures.

  "Yeah," Brian said.

  "Uh-huh. I can see you're blown away." Alan brought his hands together, deftly collapsing the bouquet again. It was easy--too easy, really. It was time to buy a new copy of the Folding Flower Trick; they only lasted so long. The tiny spring in this one was getting loose and the brightly colored paper would soon begin to rip.

  He opened his hands again, smiling rather more hopefully now. The bouquet was gone; was once more just a small packet of paper under his watchband. Brian Rusk did not return his smile; his face wore no real expression at all. The remnants of his summer tan could not cover the pallor beneath, nor the fact that his complexion was in an unusual state of pre-pubescent revolt: a scatter of pimples on the forehead, a bigger one by the comer of his mouth, blackheads nesting on either side of his nose. There were purplish shadows under his eyes, as if his last good night's sleep had been a long time ago.

  This kid is a long way from right, Alan thought. There's something badly sprained, maybe even broken here. There seemed to be two likely possibilities: either Brian Rusk had seen whoever had vandalized the Jerzyck house, or he had done it himself. It was paydirt either way, but if it was the second choice, Alan could barely imagine the size and weight of the guilt which must now be harrowing this boy.

  "That's a great trick, Sheriff Pangborn," Brian said in a colorless, emotionless voice. "Really."

  "Thanks--glad you liked it. Do you know what I want to talk to you about, Brian?"

  "I ... guess I do," Brian said, and Alan was suddenly sure the boy was going to confess to breaking the windows. Right here on this street-corner he was going to confess, and Alan was going to take a giant step toward unravelling what had happened between Nettie and Wilma.

  But Brian said nothing more. He only looked up at Alan with his tired, slightly bloodshot eyes.

  "What happened, son?" Alan asked in the same quiet voice. "What happened while you were at the Jerzycks' house?"

  "Don't know," Brian said. His voice was listless. "But
I dreamed about it last night. Sunday night, too. I dream about going to that house, only in my dream I see what's really making all the noise."

  "And what's that, Brian?"

  "A monster," Brian said. His voice did not change, but a large tear had appeared in each of his eyes, growing on the lower arcs of the lids. "In my dream I knock on the door instead of riding away like I did and the door opens and it's a monster and it eats ... me ... up." The tears brimmed, then rolled slowly down the disturbed skin of Brian Rusk's cheeks.

  And yes, Alan thought, it could be that, too --- simple fright. The sort of fright a little kid might feel when he opens the bedroom door at the wrong time and sees his mother and father screwing. Only because he's too young to know the look of screwing, he thinks they're fighting. Maybe he even thinks, if they're making a lot of noise, that they're trying to kill each other.

  But--

  But it didn't feel right. It was just that simple. It felt as if this kid were lying his head off, in spite of the haggard look in his eyes, the look that said I want to tell you everything. What did that mean? Alan didn't know for sure, but experience taught him that the likeliest solution was that Brian knew whoever had thrown the rocks. Maybe it was someone Brian felt obliged to protect. Or maybe the rock-thrower knew Brian had seen him, and Brian knew that. Maybe the kid was afraid of reprisals.

  "A person threw a bunch of rocks into the Jerzycks' house," Alan said in a low and (he hoped) soothing voice.

  "Yes, sir," Brian said--almost sighed. "I guess so. I guess it could have been that. I thought they were fighting, but it could have been someone throwing rocks. Crash, boom, bang."

  The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang, Alan thought but did not say. "You thought they were fighting?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Is that what you really thought?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Alan sighed. "Well, you know what it was now. And you know it was a bad thing to do. Throwing rocks through somebody's windows is a pretty serious business, even if nothing else comes of it."

  "Yes, sir."

  "But this time, something else did come of it. You know that, don't you, Brian?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Those eyes, looking up at him from that calm, pallid face. Alan began to understand two things: this boy did want to tell him what had happened, but he was almost certainly not going to do so.

  "You look very unhappy, Brian."

  "Yes, sir?"

  " 'Yes, sir' ... does that mean you are unhappy?"

  Brian nodded, and two more tears spilled from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Alan felt two strong, conflicting emotions: deep pity and wild exasperation.

  "What are you unhappy about, Brian? Tell me."

  "I used to have this really nice dream," Brian said in a voice which was almost too low to hear. "It was stupid, but it was nice, just the same. It was about Miss Ratcliffe, my speech teacher. Now I know it's stupid. I didn't used to know, and that was better. But guess what? I know more than that now."

  Those dark, terribly unhappy eyes rose to meet Alan's again.

  "The dream I have . . . the one about the monster who throws the rocks ... it scares me, Sheriff Pangborn ... but what makes me unhappy are the things I know now. It's like knowing how the magician does his tricks."

  He nodded his head a little, and Alan could have sworn Brian was looking at the band of his watch.

  "Sometimes it's better to be dumb. I know that now."

  Alan put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Brian, let's cut through the bullshit, all right? Tell me what happened. Tell me what you saw and what you did."

  "I came to see if they wanted their driveway shovelled this winter," the boy said in a mechanical rote voice that frightened Alan badly. The kid looked like almost any American child of eleven or twelve--Converse sneakers, jeans, a tee-shirt with Bart Simpson on it--but he sounded like a robot which has been badly programmed and is now in danger of overloading. For the first time, Alan wondered if Brian Rusk had maybe seen one of his own parents throwing rocks at the Jerzyck house.

  "I heard noises," the boy was continuing. He spoke in simple declarative sentences, talking as police detectives are trained to talk in court. "They were scary noises. Bangs and crashes and things breaking. So I rode away as fast as I could. The lady from next door was out on her stoop. She asked me what was going on. I think she was scared, too."

  "Yes," Alan said. "Jillian Mislaburski. I talked to her." He touched the Playmate cooler sitting crookedly in the basket of Brian's bike. He was not unaware of the way Brian's lips tightened when he did this. "Did you have this cooler with you on Sunday morning, Brian?"

  "Yes, sir," Brian said. He wiped his cheeks with the backs of his hands and watched Alan's face warily.

  "What was in it?"

  Brian said nothing, but Alan thought his lips were trembling.

  "What was in it, Brian?"

  Brian said a little more nothing.

  "Was it full of rocks?"

  Slowly and deliberately, Brian shook his head--no.

  For the third time, Alan asked: "What was in it?"

  "Same thing that's in it now," Brian whispered.

  "May I open it and see?"

  "Yes, sir," Brian said in his listless voice. "I guess so."

  Alan rotated the cover to one side and looked into the cooler.

  It was full of baseball cards: Topps, Fleer, Donruss.

  "These are my traders. I carry them with me almost everywhere," Brian said.

  "You ... carry them with you."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Why, Brian? Why do you cart a cooler filled with baseball cards around with you?"

  "I told you--they're traders. You never know when you'll get a chance to make a boss trade with someone. I'm still looking for a Joe Foy--he was on the Impossible Dream team in '67--and a Mike Greenwell rookie card. The Gator's my favorite player." And now Alan thought he saw a faint, fugitive gleam of amusement in the boy's eyes; could almost hear a telepathic voice chanting Fooled ya! Fooled ya! But surely that was only him; only his own frustration mocking the boy's voice.

  Wasn't it?

  Well, what did you expect to find inside that cooler, anyway? A pile of rocks with notes tied around them? Did you actually think he was on his way to do the same thing to someone else's house?

  Yes, he admitted. Part of him had thought exactly that. Brian Rusk, The Pint-Sized Terror of Castle Rock. The Mad Rocker. And the worst part was this: he was pretty sure Brian Rusk knew what was going through his head.

  Fooled ya! Fooled ya, Sheriff!

  "Brian, please tell me what's going on around here. If you know, please tell me."

  Brian closed the lid of the Playmate cooler and said nothing. It made a soft little snick! in the drowsy autumn afternoon.

  "Can't say?"

  Brian nodded slowly--meaning, Alan thought, that he was right: he couldn't say.

  "Tell me this, at least: are you scared? Are you scared, Brian?"

  Brian nodded again, just as slowly.

  "Tell me what you're scared of, son. Maybe I can make it go away." He tapped one finger lightly against the badge he wore on the left side of his uniform shirt. "I think that's why they pay me to lug this star around. Because sometimes I can make the scary stuff go away."

  "I--" Brian began, and then the police radio Alan had installed beneath the dash of the Town and Country wagon three or four years ago squawked to life.

  "Unit One, Unit One, this is base. Do you copy? Over?"

  Brian's eyes broke away from Alan's. They turned toward the station wagon and the sound of Sheila Brigham's voice--the voice of authority, the voice of the police. Alan saw that, if the boy had been on the verge of telling him something (and it might only be wishful thinking to believe he had been), he wasn't anymore. His face had closed up like a clamshell.

  "You go on home now, Brian. We're going to talk about this ... this dream of yours .. more later on. Okay?"

  "Yes, sir,"
Brian said. "I guess so."

  "In the meantime, think about what I said: most of what being Sheriff's about is making the scary stuff go away."

  "I have to go home now, Sheriff. If I don't get home pretty soon, my mom's gonna be mad at me."

  Alan nodded. "Well, we don't want that. Go on, Brian."

  He watched the boy go. Brian's head was down, and once again he did not seem to be riding the bike so much as trudging along with it between his legs. Something was wrong there, so wrong that Alan's finding out what had happened to Wilma and Nettie seemed secondary to finding out what had put the tired, haunted expression on that kid's face.

  The women, after all, were dead and buried. Brian Rusk was still alive.

  He went to the tired old station wagon he should have traded a year ago, leaned in, grabbed the Radio Shack mike, and depressed the transmit button. "Yeah, Sheila, this is Unit One. I copy--come on back."

  "Henry Payton called for you, Alan," Sheila said. "He told me to tell you it's urgent. He wants me to patch you through to him. Ten-four?"

  "Go for it," Alan said. He felt his pulse pick up.

  "It may take a couple of minutes, ten-four?"

  "That's fine. I'll be right here. Unit One clear."

  He leaned against the side of the car in the dappled shade, mike in hand, waiting to see what was urgent in Henry Payton's life.

  13

  By the time Polly reached home, it was twenty minutes past three, and she felt torn in two completely different directions. On one hand, she felt a deep, drumming need to be about the errand Mr. Gaunt had given her (she didn't like to think of it in his terms, as a prank--Polly Chalmers was not much of a prankster), to get it done so that the azka would finally belong to her. The concept that the dealing wasn't done until Mr. Gaunt said the dealing was done had not so much as crossed her mind.

  On the other hand, she felt a deep, drumming need to get in touch with Alan, to tell him exactly what had happened ... or as much of it as she could remember. One thing she could remember--it filled her with shame and a low sort of horror, but she could remember it, all right--was this: Mr. Leland Gaunt hated the man Polly loved, and Mr. Gaunt was doing something--something--that was very wrong. Alan should know. Even if the azka stopped working, he should know.

  You don't mean that.

  But yes--part of her meant exactly that. The part that was terrified of Leland Gaunt even though she couldn't remember what, exactly, he had done to induce that feeling of terror.