Needful Things

by Stephen King

  Sheila reversed the gun, locked her hands on the barrel, and cocked it back over her shoulder like Ted Williams. Then she brought it around in a hard, smooth swing.

  Lester turned his head at the last moment, just in time to catch the gun's steel-edged walnut stock between his eyes. There was a nasty crunch as the gunstock smashed a hole into Lester's skull and turned his forebrain to jelly. It sounded as if someone had stepped very hard on a full box of popcorn. Lester Pratt was dead before he hit the floor.

  Sheila Brigham looked at him and began to scream.

  19

  "Did you think I wouldn't know who it was?" Buster Keeton was grunting as he dragged Norris--who was dazed but unhurt--the rest of the way out of the VW's driver's-side window. "Did you think I wouldn't know, with your name right at the bottom of every goddam sheet of paper you taped up? Did you? Did you?"

  He cocked one fist back to strike Norris, and Alan Pangborn slipped a handcuff around it just as neatly as you please.

  "Huh!" Buster exclaimed, and wheeled ponderously around.

  Inside the Municipal Building, someone started to scream.

  Alan glanced in that direction, then used the cuff on the other end of the chain to pull Buster over to the open door of his own Cadillac. Buster flailed at him as he did so. Alan took several punches harmlessly on his shoulder, and snapped the free cuff around the doorhandle of the car.

  He turned around and Norris was there. He had time to register the fact that Norris looked just terrible, and to dismiss it as a consequence of being rammed amidships by the Head Selectman.

  "Come on," he said to Norris. "We've got trouble."

  But Norris ignored him, at least for the moment. He brushed past Alan and punched Buster Keeton squarely in the eye. Buster let out a startled squawk and fell back against the door of his car. It was still open and his weight drove it shut, catching the tail of his sweat-soaked white shirt in the latch.

  "That's for the rat-trap, you fat shit!" Norris cried.

  "I'll get you!" Buster screamed back. "Don't think I won't! I'll get All of You People!"

  "Get this," Norris growled. He was moving in again with his fists cocked at the sides of his puffed-up pigeon chest when Alan grabbed him and hauled him back.

  "Quit it!" he shouted into Norris's face. "We've got trouble inside! Bad trouble!"

  The scream lifted in the air again. People were gathering on the sidewalks of Lower Main Street now. Norris looked toward them, then back at Alan. His eyes had cleared, Alan saw with relief, and he looked like himself again. More or less.

  "What is it, Alan? Something to do with him?" He jerked his chin toward the Cadillac. Buster was standing there, looking sullenly at them and plucking at the handcuff on his wrist with his free hand. He seemed not to have heard the screams at all.

  "No," Alan said. "Have you got your gun?"

  Norris shook his head.

  Alan unsnapped the safety-strap on his holster, drew his service .38, and handed it to Norris.

  "What about you, Alan?" Norris asked.

  "I want my hands free. Come on, let's go. Hugh Priest is in the office, and he's gone crazy."

  20

  Hugh Priest had gone crazy, all right--not much doubt about that--but he was a good three miles from the Castle Rock Municipal Building.

  "Let's talk about--" he began, and that was when Henry Beaufort leaped up from behind the bar like a jack-in-the-box, blood soaking the right side of his shirt, the shotgun levelled.

  Henry and Hugh fired at the same time. The crack of the automatic pistol was lost in the shotgun's blurred, primal roar. Smoke and fire leaped from the truncated barrel. Hugh was lifted off his feet and driven across the room, bare heels dragging, his chest a disintegrating swamp of red muck. The gun flew out of his hand. The ends of the fox-tail were burning.

  Henry was thrown against the backbar as Hugh's bullet punctured his right lung. Bottles tumbled and crashed all around him. A large numbness swarmed through his chest. He dropped the shotgun and staggered toward the telephone. The air was full of crazy perfume: spilled booze and burning fox-hair. Henry tried to draw in breath, and although his chest heaved, he seemed to get no air. There was a thin, shrill sound as the hole in his chest sucked wind.

  The telephone seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, but he finally got it up to his ear and pressed the button which automatically dialed the Sheriff's Office.

  Ring ... ring . . . ring . . .

  "What the fuck's the matter with you people?" Henry gasped raggedly. "I'm dying up here! Answer the goddam telephone!"

  But the telephone just went on ringing.

  21

  Norris caught up with Alan halfway down the alley and they walked side by side into the Municipal Building's small parking lot. Norris was holding Alan's service revolver with his finger curled around the trigger guard and the stubby barrel pointed up into the hot October sky. Sheila Brigham's Saab was in the lot along with Unit 4, John LaPointe's cruiser, but that was all. Alan wondered briefly where Hugh's car was, and then the side door to the Sheriff's Office burst open. Someone carrying the shotgun from Alan's office in a pair of bloody hands bolted out. Norris levelled the short-barrelled .38 and slid his finger inside the trigger-guard.

  Alan registered two things at once. The first was that Norris was going to shoot. The second was that the screaming person with the gun was not Hugh Priest but Sheila Brigham.

  Alan Pangborn's almost heavenly reflexes saved Sheila's life that afternoon, but it was a very close thing. He didn't bother trying to shout or even using his hand to deflect the pistol barrel. Neither would have stood much chance of success. He stuck out his elbow instead, then jerked it up like a man doing an enthusiastic buck-and-wing at a country dance. It struck Norris's gun-hand an instant before Norris fired, driving the barrel upward. The pistol-shot was an amplified whipcrack in the enclosed courtyard. A window in the Town Services Office on the second floor shattered. Then Sheila dropped the shotgun she had used to brain Lester Pratt and was running toward them, screaming and weeping.

  "Jesus," Norris said in a small, shocked voice. His face was as pale as paper as he thrust the pistol, butt first, toward Alan. "I almost shot Sheila--oh dear Jesus Christ."

  "Alan!" Sheila was crying. "Thank God!"

  She ran into him without slowing, almost knocking him over. He holstered his revolver and then put his arms around her. She was trembling like an electric wire with too much current running through it. Alan suspected he was trembling pretty badly himself, and he had come close to wetting his pants. She was hysterical, blind with panic, and that was probably a blessing: he didn't think she had the slightest idea how close she had come to taking a round.

  "What's going on in there, Sheila?" he asked. "Tell me quick." His ears were ringing so badly from the gunshot and the succeeding echo that he could almost swear he heard a telephone somewhere.

  22

  Henry Beaufort felt like a snowman melting in the sun. His legs were giving way beneath him. He crumpled slowly into a kneeling position with the ringing, unanswered phone still tolling in his ear. His head swam with the mingled stench of booze and burning fur. Another hot smell was mingling with these now. He suspected it was Hugh Priest.

  He was vaguely aware that this wasn't working and he ought to dial another number for help, but he didn't think he could. He was beyond wringing another number out of the telephone--this was it. So he knelt behind the bar in a growing pool of his own blood, listening to the chimney-hoot of air from the hole in his chest, clinging desperately to consciousness. The Tiger didn't open for an hour yet, Billy was dead, and if no one answered this telephone soon, he would also be dead when the first customers came trickling in for their various happy-hour potations.

  "Please," Henry whispered in a screamy, breathless voice. "Please answer the phone, someone please answer this fucking phone."

  23

  Sheila Brigham began to regain some control, and Alan got the most important thing out o
f her right away: she had decommissioned Hugh with the butt of the shotgun. No one was going to try to shoot them when they went through the door.

  He hoped.

  "Come on," he said to Norris, "let's go."

  "Alan . . . When she came out ... I thought . . ."

  "I know what you thought, but no harm was done. Forget it, Norris. John's inside. Come on."

  They went to the door and stood on either side of it. Alan looked at Norris. "Go in low," he said.

  Norris nodded his head.

  Alan grabbed the doorknob, jerked the door open, and lunged inside. Norris went in under him in a crouch.

  John had managed to find his feet and stagger most of the way to the door. Alan and Norris hit him like the front line of the old Pittsburgh Steelers and John suffered a final painful indignity: he was knocked flat by his colleagues and sent skidding across the tiled floor like one of the weights in a barroom bowling game. He struck the far wall with a thud and let out a scream of pain which was both surprised and somehow weary.

  "Jesus, that's John!" Norris cried. "What a French fire-drill!"

  "Help me with him," Alan said.

  They hurried across the room to John, who was slowly sitting up on his own. His face was a mask of blood. His nose was canted severely to the left. His upper lip was swelling like an overinflated innertube. As Alan and Norris reached him, he cupped one hand under his mouth and spat a tooth into it.

  "He'th craythee," John said in a mushy, dazed voice. "Theela hit him with the thotgun. I think thee killed him."

  "John, are you all right?" Norris asked.

  "I'm a fuckin meth," John said. He leaned forward and vomited extravagantly between his own spread legs to prove it.

  Alan looked around. He was vaguely aware that it wasn't just his ears; a telephone really was ringing. But the phone wasn't the important thing now. He saw Hugh lying face-down by the rear wall and went over. He dropped his ear against the back of Hugh's shirt, listening for a heartbeat. All he could hear at first was the ringing in his ears. The goddam telephones were ringing on every desk, it sounded like.

  "Answer that fucking thing or take it off the hook!" Alan snapped at Norris.

  Norris went to the closest phone--it happened to be on his own desk--punched the button that was flashing, and picked it up. "Don't bother us now," he said. "We have an emergency situation here. You'll have to call back later." He dropped it back into its cradle without waiting for a response.

  24

  Henry Beaufort took the telephone--the heavy, heavy telephone--away from his ear and looked at it with dimming, unbelieving eyes.

  "What did you say?" he whispered.

  Suddenly he could no longer hold the telephone receiver; it was just too damned heavy. He dropped it on the floor, slowly collapsed onto his side, and lay there panting.

  25

  As far as Alan could tell, Hugh was all finished. He grabbed him by the shoulders, rolled him over ... and it wasn't Hugh at all. The face was too completely covered with blood, brains, and bits of bone for him to be able to tell who it was, but it surely wasn't Hugh Priest.

  "What in the fuck is going on here?" he said in a low, amazed voice.

  26

  Danforth "Buster" Keeton stood in the middle of the street, handcuffed to his own Cadillac, and watched Them watching him. Now that the Chief Persecutor and his Deputy Persecutor were gone, They had nothing else to watch.

  He looked at Them and knew Them for what They were--each and every one of Them.

  Bill Fullerton and Henry Gendron were standing in front of the barber shop. Bobby Dugas was standing between them with a barber's apron still snapped around his neck and hanging down in front of him like an oversized dinner napkin. Charlie Fortin was standing in front of the Western Auto. Scott Garson and his puke lawyer friends Albert Martin and Howard Potter were standing in front of the bank, where they had probably been talking about him when the ruckus broke out.

  Eyes.

  Fucking eyes.

  There were eyes everywhere.

  All looking at him.

  "I see you!" Buster cried suddenly. "I see You all! All You People! And I know what to do! Yes! You bet!"

  He opened the door of his Cadillac and tried to get in. He couldn't do it. He was cuffed to the outside doorhandle. The chain between the cuffs was long, but not that long.

  Someone laughed.

  Buster heard that laugh quite clearly.

  He looked around.

  Many residents of Castle Rock stood in front of the businesses along Main Street, looking back at him with the black buckshot eyes of intelligent rats.

  Everyone was there but Mr. Gaunt.

  Yet Mr. Gaunt was there; Mr. Gaunt was inside Buster's head, telling him exactly what to do.

  Buster listened ... and began to smile.

  27

  The Budweiser truck Hugh had almost sideswiped in town stopped at a couple of the little mom-n-pops on the other side of the bridge and finally pulled into the parking lot of The Mellow Tiger at 4:01 p.m. The driver got out, grabbed his clipboard, hitched up his green khaki pants, and marched toward the building. He stopped five feet away from the door, eyes widening. He could see a pair of feet in the bar's doorway.

  "Holy Joe!" the driver exclaimed. "You okay, buddy?"

  A faint wheezing cry drifted to his ears: ". . . . . . help . . . . . ."

  The driver ran inside and discovered Henry Beaufort, barely alive, crumpled behind the bar.

  28

  "Ith Lethter Pratt," John LaPointe croaked. Supported by Norris on one side and Sheila on the other, he had hobbled over to where Alan knelt by the body.

  "Who?" Alan asked. He felt as if he had accidentally stumbled into some mad comedy. Ricky and Lucy Go to Hell. Hey Lester, you got some 'splainin to do.

  "Lethter Pratt," John said again with painful patience. "He'th the Phidthical Educaythun teather at the high thcool."

  "What's he doing here?" Alan asked.

  John LaPointe shook his head wearily. "Dunno, Alan. He jutht came in and went craythee."

  "Somebody give me a break," Alan said. "Where's Hugh Priest? Where's Clut? What in God's name is going on here?"

  29

  George T. Nelson stood in the doorway of his bedroom, looking around unbelievingly. The place looked as if some punk band--the Sex Pistols, maybe the Cramps--had had a party in it, along with all their fans.

  "What--" he began, and could say no more. Nor did he need to. He knew what. It was the coke. Had to be. He'd been dealing among the faculty at Castle Rock High for the last six years (not all the teachers were appreciators of what Ace Merrill sometimes called Bolivian Bingo Dust, but the ones who were qualified as big appreciators), and he'd left half an ounce of almost pure coke under the mattress. It was the blow, sure it was. Someone had talked and someone else had gotten greedy. George supposed he'd known that as soon as he'd pulled into the driveway and saw the broken kitchen window.

  He crossed the room and yanked up the mattress with hands that felt dead and numb. Nothing underneath. The coke was gone. Nearly two thousand dollars' worth of almost pure coke, gone. He sleepwalked toward the bathroom to see if his own small stash was still in the Anacin bottle on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. He'd never needed a hit as badly as he did just now.

  He reached the doorway and stopped, eyes wide. It wasn't the mess that riveted his attention, although this room had also been turned upside down with great zeal; it was the toilet. The ring was down, and it was thinly dusted with white stuff.

  George had an idea that white stuff was not Johnson's Baby Powder.

  He walked across to the toilet, wetted his finger, and touched it to the dust. He put his finger in his mouth. The tip of his tongue went numb almost at once. Lying on the floor between the john and the tub was an empty plastic Baggie. The picture was clear. Crazy, but clear. Someone had come in, found the coke ... and then flushed it down the crapper. Why? Why? He didn't know, but he decided when h
e found the person who had done this, he would ask. Just before he tore his head right off his shoulders. It couldn't hurt.

  His own three-gram stash was intact. He carried it out of the bathroom and then stopped again as a fresh shock struck his eyes. He hadn't seen this particular abomination as he crossed the bedroom from the hall, but from this angle it was impossible to miss.

  He stood where he was for a long moment, eyes wide with amazed horror, his throat working convulsively. The nests of veins at his temples beat rapidly, like the wings of small birds. He finally managed to produce one small, strangled word: "..... mom ..... !"

  Downstairs, behind George T. Nelson's oatmeal-colored sofa, Frank Jewett slept on.

  30

  The bystanders on Lower Main, who had been called out to the sidewalk by the yelling and the gunshot, were now being entertained by a new novelty: the slow-motion escape of their Head Selectman.

  Buster leaned as far into his Cadillac as he could and turned the ignition switch to the ON position. He then pushed the button that lowered the power window on the driver's side. He closed the door again and carefully began to wriggle in through the window.

  He was still sticking out from the knees down, his left arm pulled back behind him at a severe angle by the handcuff around the doorhandle, the chain lying across his large left thigh, when Scott Garson came up.

  "Uh, Danforth," the banker said hesitantly, "I don't think you're supposed to do that. I believe you're arrested."

  Buster looked under his right armpit, smelling his own aroma--quite spicy by now, quite spicy indeed--and saw Garson upside down. He was standing directly behind Buster. He looked as if he might be planning to try to haul Buster back out of his own car.

  Buster pulled his legs up as much as he could and then shot them out, hard, like a pony kicking up dickens in the pasture. The heels of his shoes struck Garson's face with a smack which Buster found entirely satisfying. Garson's gold-rimmed spectacles shattered. He howled, reeled backward with his bleeding face in his hands, and fell on his back in Main Street.