Needful Things

  Rosalie Drake came over and said, "I know someone who's feeling better today. A lot better, by the sound."

  Polly looked up and offered Rosalie a smile which was strangely complex. "I do and don't," she said.

  "What you mean is that you do and can't help it."

  Polly considered this for a few moments and then nodded her head. It wasn't exactly right, but it would do. The two women who had died together yesterday were together again today, at the Samuels Funeral Home. They would be buried out of different churches tomorrow morning, but by tomorrow afternoon Nettie and Wilma would be neighbors again ... in Homeland Cemetery, this time. Polly counted herself partially responsible for their deaths--after all, Nettie would never have come back to Castle Rock if not for her. She had written the necessary letters, attended the necessary hearings, had even found Netitia Cobb a place to live. And why? The hell of it was, Polly couldn't really remember now, except it had seemed an act of Christian charity and the last responsibility of an old family friendship.

  She would not duck this culpability, nor let anyone try to talk her out of it (Alan had wisely not even tried), but she was not sure she would have changed what she had done. The core of Nettie's madness had been beyond Polly's power to control or alter, apparently, but she had nevertheless spent three happy, productive years in Castle Rock. Perhaps three such years were better than the long gray time she would have spent in the institution, before old age or simple boredom cashed her in. And if Polly had, by her actions, signed her name to Wilma Jerzyck's death-warrant, hadn't Wilma written the particulars of that document herself? After all, it had been Wilma, not Polly, who had stabbed Nettie Cobb's cheery and inoffensive little dog to death with a corkscrew.

  There was another part of her, a simpler part, which simply grieved for the passing of her friend, and puzzled over the fact that Nettie could have done such a thing when it really had seemed to Polly that she was getting better.

  She had spent a good part of the morning making funeral arrangements and calling Nettie's few relatives (all of them had indicated that they wouldn't be at the funeral, which was only what Polly had expected), and this job, the clerical processes of death, had helped to focus her own grief ... as the rituals of burying the dead are undoubtedly supposed to do.

  There were some things, however, which would not yet leave her mind.

  The lasagna, for instance--it was still sitting in the refrigerator with the foil over the top to keep it from drying out. She supposed she and Alan would eat it for dinner tonight--if he could come over, that was. She wouldn't eat it by herself. She couldn't stand that.

  She kept remembering how quickly Nettie had seen she was in pain, how exactly she had gauged that pain, and how she had brought her the thermal gloves, insisting that this time they really might help. And, of course, the last thing Nettie had said to her: "I love you, Polly."

  "Earth to Polly, Earth to Polly, come in, Pol, do you read?" Rosalie chanted. She and Polly had remembered Nettie together that morning, trading these and other reminiscences, and had cried together in the back room, holding each other amid the bolts of cloth. Now Rosalie also seemed happy--perhaps just because she had heard Polly singing.

  Or because she wasn't entirely real to either of us, Polly mused. There was a shadow over her--not one that was completely black, mind you; it was just thick enough to make her hard to see. That's what makes our grief so fragile.

  "I hear you," Polly said. "I do feel better, I can't help it, and I'm very grateful for it. Does that about cover the waterfront?"

  "Just about," Rosalie agreed. "I don't know what surprised me more when I came back in--hearing you singing, or hearing you running a sewing machine again. Hold up your hands."

  Polly did. They would never be mistaken for the hands of a beauty queen, with their crooked fingers and the Heberden's nodes, which grotesquely enlarged the knuckles, but Rosalie could see that the swelling had gone down dramatically since last Friday, when the constant pain had caused Polly to leave early.

  "Wow!" Rosalie said. "Do they hurt at all?"

  "Sure--but they're still better than they've been in a month. Look."

  She slowly rolled her fingers into loose fists. Then she opened them again, using the same care. "It's been at least a month since I've been able to do that." The truth, Polly knew, was a little more extreme; she hadn't been able to make fists without suffering serious pain since April or May.

  "Wow!"

  "So I feel better," Polly said. "Now if Nettie were here to share it, that would make things just about perfect."

  The door at the front of the shop opened.

  "Will you see who that is?" Polly asked. "I want to finish sewing this sleeve."

  "You bet." Rosalie started off, then stopped for a moment and looked back. "Nettie wouldn't mind you feeling good, you know."

  Polly nodded. "I do know," she said gravely.

  Rosalie went out front to wait on the customer. When she was gone, Polly's left hand went to her chest and touched the small bulge, not much bigger than an acorn, that rested under her pink sweater and between her breasts.

  Azka--what a wonderful word, she thought, and began to run the sewing machine again, turning the fabric of the dress--her first original since last summer--back and forth under the jittery silver blur of the needle.

  She wondered idly how much Mr. Gaunt would want for the amulet. Whatever he wants, she told herself, it won't be enough. I won't--I can't--think that way when it comes time to dicker, but it's the simple truth. Whatever he wants for it will be a bargain.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1

  The Castle Rock selectmen (and selectwoman) shared a single full-time secretary, a young woman with the exotic name of Ariadne St. Claire. She was a happy young woman, not overburdened with intelligence but tireless and pleasing to look at. She had large breasts which rose in soft, steep hills beneath an apparently endless supply of angora sweaters, and lovely skin. She also had very bad eyes. They swam, brown and enlarged, behind the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles. Buster liked her. He considered her too dumb to be one of Them.

  Ariadne poked her head into his office at quarter to four. "Deke Bradford came by, Mr. Keeton. He needs a signature on a fund-release form. Can you do it?"

  "Well, let's see what it is," Buster said, slipping that day's sports section of the Lewiston Daily Sun, folded to the racing card, deftly into his desk drawer.

  He felt better today; purposeful and alert. Those wretched pink slips had been burned in the kitchen stove, Myrtle had stopped sidling away like a singed cat when he approached (he no longer cared much for Myrtle, but it was still annoying to live with a woman who thought you were the Boston Strangler), and he expected to clear another large bundle of cash at the Raceway that night. Because of the holiday, the crowds (not to mention the payoffs) would be bigger.

  He had, in fact, started to think in terms of quinellas and trifectas.

  As for Deputy Dickface and Sheriff Shithead and all the rest of their merry crew ... well, he and Mr. Gaunt knew about Them, and Buster believed the two of them were going to make one hell of a team.

  For all these reasons he was able to welcome Ariadne into his office with equanimity--he was even able to take some of his old pleasure in observing the gentle way her bosom swayed within its no doubt formidable harness.

  She put a fund-release form on his desk. Buster picked it up and leaned back in his swivel chair to look it over. The amount requested was noted in a box at the top--nine hundred and forty dollars. The payee was to be Case Construction and Supply in Lewiston. In the space reserved for Goods and/or Services to Be Supplied, Deke had printed 16 CASES OF DYNAMITE. Below, in the Comments/Explanations section, he had written: We've finally come up against that granite ridge at the gravel pit out on Town Road #5, the one the state geologist warned us about back in '87 (see my report for details). Anyway, there is plenty more gravel beyond it, but we'll have to blow out the rock to get at it. This sho
uld be done before it gets cold and the winter snowfall starts. If we have to buy a winter's worth of gravel over in Norway, the taxpayers are going to howl blue murder. Two or three bangs should take care of it, and Case has a big supply of Taggart Hi-Impact on hand--I checked. We can have it by noon tomorrow, if we want, and start blasting on Wednesday. I have the spots marked if anyone from the Selectmen's Office wants to come out and take a look.

  Below this, Deke had scrawled his signature.

  Buster read Deke's note twice, tapping his front teeth thoughtfully as Ariadne stood waiting. At last he rocked forward in his chair, made a change, added a sentence, initialed both the change and the addition, then signed his own name below Deke's with a flourish. When he handed the pink sheet of paper back to Ariadne, he was smiling.

  "There!" he said. "And everyone thinks I'm such a skinflint!"

  Ariadne looked at the form. Buster had changed the amount from nine hundred and forty dollars to fourteen hundred dollars. Below Deke's explanation of what he wanted the dynamite for, Buster had added this: Better get at least twenty cases while the supply is good.

  "Will you want to go out and look at the gravel pit, Mr. Keeton?"

  "Nope, nope, won't be necessary." Buster leaned back in his chair again and locked his hands together behind his neck. "But ask Deke to give me a call when the stuff arrives. That's a lot of bang. We wouldn't want it to fall into the wrong hands, would we?"

  "No indeed," Ariadne said, and went out. She was glad to go. There was something in Mr. Keeton's smile which she found ... well, a little creepy.

  Buster, meanwhile, had swivelled his chair around so he could look out at Main Street, which was a good deal busier than it had been when he had looked out over the town with such despair on Saturday morning. A lot had happened since then, and he suspected that a lot more would happen in the next couple of days. Why, with twenty cases of Taggart Hi-Impact Dynamite stored in the town's Public Works shed--a shed to which he, of course, had a key--almost anything could happen.

  Anything at all.

  2

  Ace Merrill crossed the Tobin Bridge and entered Boston at four o'clock that afternoon, but it was well past five before he finally reached what he hoped was his destination. It was in a strange, mostly deserted slum section of Cambridge, near the center of a meandering snarl of streets. Half of them seemed to be posted one-way; the other half were dead ends. The ruined buildings of this decayed area were throwing long shadows over the streets when Ace stopped in front of a stark one-story cinderblock building on Whipple Street. It stood in the center of a weedy vacant lot.

  There was a chainlink fence around the property, but it presented no problem; the gate had been stolen. Only the hinges remained. Ace could see what were probably bolt-cutter scars on them. He eased the Challenger through the gap where the gate had been and drove slowly toward the cinderblock building.

  Its walls were blank and windowless. The rutted track he was on led to a closed garage door in the side of the building which faced the River Charles. There were no windows in the garage door, either. The Challenger rocked on its springs and bounced unhappily through holes in what might once have been an asphalt surface. He passed an abandoned baby carriage sitting in a strew of broken glass. A decayed doll with half a face reclined inside, staring at him with one moldy blue eye as he passed. He parked in front of the closed garage door. What the hell was he supposed to do now? The cinderblock building had the look of a place which had been deserted since 1945 or so.

  Ace got out of the car. He took a scrap of paper from his breast pocket. Written on it was the address of the place where Gaunt's car was supposed to be stored. He looked doubtfully at it again. The last few numbers he had passed suggested that this was probably 85 Whipple Street, but who the fuck could tell for sure? Places like this never had street numbers, and there didn't seem to be anyone around he could ask. In fact, this whole section of town had a deserted, creepy feel Ace didn't much like. Vacant lots. Stripped cars which had been looted of every useful part and every centimeter of copper wire. Empty tenements waiting for the politicians to get their kickbacks straight before they fell under the wrecking ball. Twisty side-streets that dead-ended in dirty courtyards and trashy cul-de-sacs. It had taken him an hour to find Whipple Street, and now that he had, he almost wished it had stayed lost. This was the part of town where the cops sometimes found the bodies of infants stuffed into rusty garbage cans and discarded refrigerators.

  He walked over to the garage door and looked for a push-belt. There was none. He leaned the side of his head against the rusty metal and listened for the sounds of someone inside. It could be a chop-shop, he supposed; a dude with a supply of high-tension coke like the stuff Gaunt had laid on him might very well know the sort of people who sold Porsches and Lamborghinis for cash after the sun went down.

  He heard nothing but silence.

  Probably not even the right place, he thought, but he had been up and down the goddam street and it was the only place on it big enough--and strong enough--to store a classic car in. Unless he had fucked up royally and come to the wrong part of town. The idea made him nervous. I want you back by midnight, Mr. Gaunt had said. If you're not back by midnight, I will be unhappy. When I'm unhappy, I sometimes lose my temper.

  Mellow out, Ace told himself uneasily. He's just some old dude with a bad set of false teeth. Probably a fag.

  But he couldn't mellow out, and he didn't really think Mr. Leland Gaunt was just some old dude with a bad set of false teeth. He also thought he didn't want to find out for sure one way or the other.

  But the current thing was this: it was going to be dark before long, and Ace didn't want to be in this part of town after dark. There was something wrong with it. Something that went beyond the spooky tenements with their blank, staring windows and the cars standing on naked wheelrims in the gutter. He hadn't seen a single person on the sidewalk or sitting on a stoop or looking out a window since he started getting close to Whipple Street ... but he had had the sensation that he was being watched, just the same. Still had it, in fact: a busy crawling in the short hairs on the back of his neck.

  It was almost as though he were not in Boston at all anymore. This place was more like the motherfucking Twilight Zone.

  If you're. not back by midnight, I will be unhappy.

  Ace made a fist and hammered on the rusty, featureless face of the garage door. "Hey! Anybody in there want to look at some Tupperware?"

  No answer.

  There was a handle at the bottom of the door. He tried it. No joy. The door wouldn't even rattle in its frame, let alone roll up on its tracks.

  Ace hissed air out between his teeth and looked around nervously. His Challenger was standing nearby, and he had never in his life wanted so much to just get in and go. But he didn't dare.

  He walked around the building and there was nothing. Nothing at all. Just expanses of cinderblock, painted an unpleasant snot-green. An odd piece of graffiti had been spray-painted on the back of the garage, and Ace looked at it for some moments, not understanding why it made his skin crawl.

  YOGSOTHOTH RULES,

  it read in faded red letters.

  He arrived back at the garage door and thought, Now what?

  Because he could think of nothing else, he got back into the Challenger and just sat there, looking at the garage door. At last, he laid both hands on the horn and honked a long, frustrated blast.

  At once the garage door began to roll silently up on its tracks.

  Ace sat watching it, gape-mouthed, and his first urge was to simply start the Challenger up and drive away as fast as he could and as far as he could. Mexico City might do for a start. Then he thought of Mr. Gaunt again and got slowly out of his car. He walked over to the garage as the door came to rest below the ceiling inside.

  The interior was brightly lit by half a dozen two-hundred-watt bulbs hanging at the ends of thick electrical cords. Each bulb had been shaded with a piece of tin shaped into a cone, so t
hat the lights cast circular pools of brightness on the floor. On the far side of the cement floor was a car covered with a dropcloth. There was a table littered with tools standing against one wall. Three crates were stacked against another wall. On top of them was an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder.

  The garage was otherwise empty.

  "Who opened the door?" Ace asked in a dry little voice. "Who opened the fucking door?"

  But to this there was no answer.

  3

  He drove the Challenger inside and parked it against the rear wall--there was plenty of room. Then he walked back to the doorway. There was a control box mounted on the wall next to it. Ace pushed the DOWN button. The waste ground on which this enigmatic blockhouse of a building stood was filling up with shadows, and they made him nervous. He kept thinking he saw things moving out there.

  The door rolled down without a single squeak or rattle. While he waited for it to close all the way, Ace looked around for the sonic sensor which had responded to the sound of his horn. He couldn't see it. It had to be here someplace, though--garage doors did not open all by themselves.

  Although, he thought, if shit like that happens anywhere in this town, Whipple Street's probably the place.

  Ace walked over to the stack of crates with the tape recorder on top. His feet made a hollow gritting sound on the cement. Yog-Sothoth rules, he thought randomly, and then shivered. He didn't know who the fuck Yog-Sothoth was, probably some Rastafarian reggae singer with ninety pounds of dreadlocks growing out of his dirty scalp, but Ace still didn't like the sound that name made in his head. Thinking about that name in this place seemed like a bad idea. It seemed like a dangerous idea.

  A scrap of paper had been taped to one of the recorder's reels. Two words were written on it in large capital letters: