Needful Things

  "What did you tell her?" he muttered. He was totally unaware that he had seized the counterpane of the hospital bed in one hand and was twisting it slowly into his clenched fist. "What did you tell her? And how the hell did you make her believe it?"

  "Mr. Sheriff? Are you okay?"

  Alan forced himself to open his fist. "Yes--fine. You're sure Brian said Mr. Gaunt, aren't you, Sean?"

  "Yes."

  "Thank you," Alan said. He bent over the bars, took Sean's hand, and kissed his cool, pale cheek. "Thank you for talking to me." He let go of the boy's hand and stood up.

  During the last week, there had been one piece of business on his agenda which simply hadn't gotten done--a courtesy call on Castle Rock's newest businessman. No big deal; just a friendly hello, a welcome to town, and a quick rundown on what the procedure was in case of trouble. He had meant to do it, had once even dropped by, but it kept not getting done. And today, when Polly's behavior began to make him wonder if Mr. Gaunt was on the up-and-up, the shit had really hit the fan, and he had wound up here, more than twenty miles away.

  Is he keeping me away? Has he been keeping me away all along?

  The idea should have seemed ridiculous, but in this quiet, shadowy room, it did not seem ridiculous at all.

  Suddenly he needed to get back. He needed to get back just as fast as he could.

  "Mr. Sheriff?"

  Alan looked down at him.

  "Brian said something else, too," Sean said.

  "Did he?" Alan asked. "What was that, Sean?"

  "Brian said Mr. Gaunt wasn't really a man at all."

  10

  Alan walked down the hall toward the door with the EXIT sign over it as quietly as he could, expecting to be frozen in his tracks by a challenging shout from Miss Hendrie's replacement at any moment. But the only person who spoke to him was a little girl. She stood in the doorway of her room, her blonde hair tied in braids which lay on the front of her faded pink flannel nightie. She was holding a blanket. Her favorite, from its ragged well-used look. Her feet were bare, the ribbons at the ends of her braids were askew, and her eyes were enormous in her haggard face. It was a face which knew more about pain than any child's face should know.

  "You've got a gun," she announced.

  "Yes."

  "My dad has a gun."

  "Does he?"

  "Yes. It's bigger than yours. It's bigger than the world. Are you the Boogeyman?"

  "No, honey," he said, and thought: I think maybe the Boogeyman is in my home town tonight.

  He pushed through the door at the end of the corridor, went downstairs, and pushed through another door into a late twilight as sultry as any midsummer evening. He hurried around to the parking lot, not quite running. Thunder bumbled and grumbled out of the west, from the direction of Castle Rock.

  He unlocked the driver's door of the station wagon, got in, and pulled the Radio Shack microphone off its prongs. "Unit One to base. Come back."

  His only response was a rush of brainless static.

  The goddam storm.

  Maybe the Boogeyman ordered it up special, a voice whispered from somewhere deep inside. Alan smiled with his lips pressed together.

  He tried again, got the same response, then tried the State Police in Oxford. They came through loud and clear. Dispatch told him there was a big electrical storm in the vicinity of Castle Rock, and communications had become spotty. Even the telephones only seemed to be working when they wanted to.

  "Well, you get through to Henry Payton and tell him to take a man named Leland Gaunt into custody. As a material witness will do to begin with. That's Gaunt, G as in George. Do you copy? Ten-four."

  "I copy you five-by, Sheriff. Gaunt, G as in George. Ten-four."

  "Tell him I believe Gaunt may be an accessory before the fact in the murders of Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerzyck. Ten-four."

  "Copy. Ten-four."

  "Ten-forty, over and out."

  He replaced the mike, keyed the engine, and headed back toward The Rock. On the outskirts of Bridgton, he swerved into the parking lot of a Red Apple store and used the telephone to dial his office. He got two clicks and then a recorded voice telling him the number was temporarily out of service.

  He hung up and went back to his car. This time he was running. Before he pulled out of the parking lot and back onto Route 117, he turned on the Porta-Bubble and stuck it on the roof again. By the time he was half a mile down the road he had the shuddering, protesting Ford wagon doing seventy-five.

  11

  Ace Merrill and full dark returned to Castle Rock together.

  He drove the Chevy Celebrity across Castle Stream Bridge while thunder rolled heavily back and forth in the sky overhead and lightning jabbed the unresisting earth. He drove with the windows open; there was still no rain falling and the air was as thick as syrup.

  He was dirty and tired and furious. He had gone to three more locations on the map in spite of the note, unable to believe what had happened, unable to believe it could have happened. To coin a phrase, he was unable to believe he had been aced out. At each one of the spots he had found a flat stone and a buried tin can. Two had contained more wads of dirty trading stamps. The last, in the marshy ground behind the Strout farm, had contained nothing but an old ball-point pen. There was a woman with a forties hairdo on the pen's barrel. She was wearing a forties tank-style bathing suit as well. When you held the pen up, the bathing suit disappeared.

  Some treasure.

  Ace had driven back to Castle Rock at top speed, his eyes wild and his jeans splattered with swamp-goo up to the knees, for one reason and one reason only: to kill Alan Pangborn. Then he would simply haul ass for the West Coast--he should have done it long before. He might get some of the money out of Pangborn; he might get none of it. Either way, one thing was certain: that son of a bitch was going to die, and he was going to die hard.

  Still three miles from the bridge, he realized that he didn't have a weapon. He had meant to take one of the autos from the crate in the Cambridge garage, but then that damned tape recorder had started up, scaring the life out of him. But he knew where they were.

  Oh yes.

  He crossed the bridge ... and then stopped at the intersection of Main Street and Watermill Lane, although the right-of-way was his.

  "What the fuck?" he muttered.

  Lower Main was a tangled confusion of State Police cruisers, flashing blue lights, TV vans, and little knots of people. Most of the action was swirling around the Municipal Building. It looked almost as though the town fathers had decided to throw a street-carnival on the spur of the moment.

  Ace didn't care what had happened; the whole town could dry up and blow away as far as he was concerned. But he wanted Pangborn, wanted to tear the fucking thief's scalp off and hang it on his belt, and how was he supposed to do that with what looked like every State cop in Maine hanging out at the Sheriff's Office?

  The answer came at once. Mr. Gaunt will know. Mr. Gaunt has the artillery, and he'll have the answers to go with it. Go see Mr. Gaunt.

  He glanced in his mirror and saw more blue lights top the nearest rise on the other side of the bridge. Even more cops on the way. What the fuck happened here this afternoon? he wondered again, but that was a question which could be answered another time ... or not at all, if that was how things fell out. Meantime, he had his own business, and it began with getting out of the way before the arriving cops rear-ended him.

  Ace turned left on Watermill Lane, then right onto Cedar Street, skirting the downtown area before cutting back to Main Street. He paused at the stop-light for a moment, looking at the nest of flashing blue lights at the bottom of the hill. Then he parked in front of Needful Things.

  He got out of the car, crossed the street, and read the sign in the window. He felt a moment of crashing disappointment--it was not just a gun he needed, but a little more of Mr. Gaunt's blow as well--and then he remembered the service entrance in the alley. He walked up the block and around the corn
er, not noticing the bright yellow van parked twenty or thirty yards farther up, or the man who sat inside it (Buster had moved to the passenger seat now), watching him.

  As he entered the alley, he bumped into a man who was wearing. a tweed cap pulled low over his forehead.

  "Hey, watch where you're going, Daddy-O," Ace said.

  The man in the tweed cap raised his head, bared his teeth at Ace, and snarled. At the same moment he pulled an automatic from his pocket and pointed it in Ace's general direction. "Don't fuck with me, my friend, unless you want some, too."

  Ace raised his hands and stepped back. He was not afraid; he was utterly astonished. "Not me, Mr. Nelson," he said. "Leave me out of it."

  "Right," the man in the tweed cap said. "Have you seen that cocksucker Jewett?"

  "Uh ... the one from the junior high?"

  "The Middle School, right--are there any other Jewetts in town? Get real. for Christ's sake!"

  "I just got here," Ace said cautiously. "I really haven't seen anyone, Mr. Nelson."

  "Well, I'm going to find him, and he's going to be one sorry sack of shit when I do. He killed my parakeet and shit on my mother." George T. Nelson narrowed his eyes and added: "This is a good night to stay out of my way."

  Ace didn't argue.

  Mr. Nelson stuffed the gun back into his pocket and disappeared around the comer, walking with the purposeful strides of one who is indeed highly pissed off. Ace stood right where he was for a moment, hands still raised. Mr. Nelson taught wood shop and metal shop at the high school. Ace had always believed he was one of those guys who wouldn't have nerve enough to slap a deerfly if it lit on his eyeball, but he thought he might just have to change his opinion on that. Also, Ace had recognized the gun. He should have; he had brought a whole case of them back from Boston just the night before.

  12

  "Ace!" Mr. Gaunt said. "You're just in time."

  "I need a gun," Ace said. "Also, some more of that high-class boogerjuice, if you've got any."

  "Yes, yes ... in time. All things in time. Help me with this table, Ace."

  "I'm going to kill Pangborn," Ace said. "He stole my fucking treasure and I'm going to kill him."

  Mr. Gaunt looked at Ace with the flat yellow stare of a cat stalking a mouse ... and in that moment, Ace felt like a mouse. "Don't waste my time telling me things I already know," he said. "If you want my help, Ace, help me. "

  Ace grabbed one side of the table, and they carried it back into the storeroom. Mr. Gaunt bent down and picked up a sign which leaned against the wall.

  THIS TIME I'M REALLY CLOSED,

  it read. He put it on the door and then shut it. He was turning the thumb-lock before Ace realized there had been nothing on the sign to hold it in place--no tack, no tape, no nothing. But it had stayed up just the same.

  Then his eye fell upon the crates which had contained the automatic pistols and the clips of ammunition. There were only three guns and three clips left.

  "Holy Jesus! Where'd they all go?"

  "Business has been good this evening, Ace," Mr. Gaunt said, rubbing his long-fingered hands together. "Extremely good. And it's going to get even better. I have work for you to do."

  "I told you," Ace said. "The Sheriff stole my--"

  Leland Gaunt was upon him before Ace even saw him move. Those long, ugly hands seized him by the front of the shirt and lifted him into the air as if he were made of feathers. A startled cry fell out of his mouth. The hands which held him were like iron. Mr. Gaunt lifted him high, and Ace suddenly found himself looking down into that blazing, hellish face with only the haziest idea of how he had gotten there. Even in the extremity of his sudden terror, he noticed that smoke--or perhaps it was steam--was coming out of Mr. Gaunt's ears and nostrils. He looked like a human dragon.

  "You tell me NOTHING!" Mr. Gaunt screamed up at him. His tongue licked out between those jostling tombstone teeth, and Ace saw it came to a double point, like the tongue of a snake. "I tell you EVERYTHING! Shut up when you are in the company of your elders and betters, Ace! Shut up and listen! Shut up and listen! SHUT UP AND LISTEN!"

  He whirled Ace twice around his head like a carnival wrestler giving his opponent an airplane spin, and threw him against the far wall. Ace's head connected with the plaster. A large fireworks display went off in the center of his brain. When his vision cleared, he saw Leland Gaunt bearing down on him. His face was a horror of eyes and teeth and blowing steam.

  "No!" Ace shrieked. "No, Mr. Gaunt, please! NO!"

  The hands had become talons, the nails grown long and sharp in a moment's time ... or were they that way all along? Ace's mind gibbered. Maybe they were that way all along and you just didn't see it.

  They cut through the fabric of Ace's shirt like razors, and Ace was jerked back up into that fuming face.

  "Are you ready to listen, Ace?" Mr. Gaunt asked. Hot blurts of steam stung Ace's cheeks and mouth with each word. "Are you ready, or should I just unzip your worthless guts and have done with it?"

  "Yes!" he sobbed. "I mean no! I'll listen!"

  "Are you going to be a good little errand boy and follow orders?"

  "Yes!"

  "Do you know what will happen if you don't?"

  "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

  "You're disgusting, Ace," Mr. Gaunt said. "I like that in a person." He slung Ace against the wall. Ace slid down it into a loose kneeling position, gasping and sobbing. He looked down at the floor. He was afraid to gaze directly into the monster's face.

  "If you should even think of going against my wishes, Ace, I'll see that you get the grand tour of hell. You'll have the Sheriff, don't worry. For the moment, however, he is out of town. Now. Stand up."

  Ace got slowly to his feet. His head throbbed; his tee-shirt hung in ribbons.

  "Let me ask you something." Mr. Gaunt was urbane and smiling again, not a hair out of place. "Do you like this little town? Do you love it? Do you keep snapshots of it on the walls of your shitty little shack to remind yourself of its rustic charm on those days when the bee stings and the dog bites?"

  "Hell, no," Ace said in an unsteady voice. His voice rose and fell with the pounding of his heart. He made it to his feet only with the greatest effort. His legs felt as if they were made of spaghetti. He stood with his back to the wall, watching Mr. Gaunt warily.

  "Would it appall you if I said I wanted you to blow this shitty little burg right off the face of the map while you wait for the Sheriff to come back?"

  "I ... I don't know what that word means," Ace said nervously.

  "I'm not surprised. But I think you understand what I mean, Ace. Don't you?"

  Ace thought back. He thought back all the way to a time, many years ago, when four snotnosed kids had cheated him and his friends (Ace had had friends back in those days, or at least a reasonable approximation thereof) out of something Ace had wanted. They had caught one of the snotnoses--Gordie LaChance--later on and had beaten the living shit out of him, but it hadn't mattered. These days LaChance was a bigshot writer living in another part of the state, and he probably wiped his ass with ten-dollar bills. Somehow the snotnoses had won, and things had never been the same for Ace after that. That was when his luck had turned bad. Doors that had been open to him had begun to close, one by one. Little by little he had begun to realize that he was not a king and Castle Rock was not his kingdom. If that had ever been true, those days had begun to pass that Labor Day weekend when he was sixteen, when the snots had cheated him and his friends out of what was rightfully theirs. By the time Ace was old enough to drink legally in The Mellow Tiger, he had gone from being a king to being a soldier without a uniform, skulking through enemy territory.

  "I hate this fucking toilet," he said to Leland Gaunt.

  "Good," Mr. Gaunt said. "Very good. I have a friend--he's parked just up the street--who is going to help you do something about that, Ace. You'll have the Sheriff ... and you'll have the whole town, too. Does that sound good?" He had captured Ace's eyes with his own. Ace stoo
d before him in the tattered rags of his tee-shirt and began to grin. His head no longer ached.

  "Yeah," he said. "It sounds absolutely t-fine."

  Mr. Gaunt reached into his coat pocket and brought out a plastic sandwich bag filled with white powder. He held it out to Ace.

  "There's work to do, Ace," he said.

  Ace took the sandwich bag, but it was still Mr. Gaunt's eyes he looked at, and into.

  "Good," he said. "I'm ready."

  13

  Buster watched as the last man he had seen enter the service alley came back out again. The guy's tee-shirt hung in ragged strips now, and he was carrying a crate. Tucked into the waistband of his bluejeans were the butts of two automatic pistols.

  Buster drew back in sudden alarm as the man, whom he now recognized as John "Ace" Merrill, walked directly to the van and set the crate down.

  Ace tapped on the glass. "Open up the back, Daddy-0," he said. "We got work to do."

  Buster unrolled his window. "Get out of here," he said. "Get out, you ruffian! Or I'll call the police!"

  "Good fucking luck," Ace grunted.

  He drew one of the pistols from the waistband of his pants. Buster stiffened, and then Ace thrust it through the window at him, butt first. Buster blinked at it.

  "Take it," Ace said impatiently, "and then open the back. If you don't know who sent me, you're even dumber than you look." He reached out with his other hand and felt the wig. "Love your hair," he said with a small smile. "Simply marvellous."

  "Stop that," Buster said, but the anger and outrage had gone out of his voice. Three good men can do a lot of damage, Mr. Gaunt had said. I will send someone to you.

  But Ace? Ace Merrill? He was a criminal!

  "Look," Ace said, "if you want to discuss the arrangements with Mr. Gaunt, I think he might still be in there. But as you can see"--he fluttered his hands through the long strips of tee-shirt hanging over his chest and belly--"his mood is a little touchy."