Needful Things

1

“We’re having fun now,” Leland Gaunt said to no one at all. “Yessirree.” Polly Chalmers knew nothing of these things. While Castle Rock was bearing the first real fruits of Mr. Gaunt’s labors, she was out at the end of Town Road #3, at the old Camber place. She had gone there as soon as she had finished her conversation with Alan. Finished it? she thought. Oh my dear, that’s much too civilized. After you hung up on him-isn’t that what you mean? All right, she agreed. After I hung up on him. But he went behind my back. And when I called him on it, he got all flustered and then lied about it. He lied about it. I happen to think that behavior like that deserves an uncivilized response.

Something stirred uneasily in her at this, something which might have spoken if she had given it time and room, but she gave it neither.

She wanted no dissenting voices; did not, in fact, want to think about her last conversation with Alan Pangborn at all. She just wanted to take care of her business out here at the end of Town Road #3 and then go back home. Once she was there, she intended to take a cool bath and then go to bed for twelve or sixteen hours.

That deep voice managed just five words: But, Polly… have you thought. No. She hadn’t. She supposed she would have to think in time, but now was too soon. When the thinking began, the hurting would begin, too. For now she only wanted to take care of business… and not think at all.

The Camber place was spooky… reputed by some to be haunted.

Not so many years ago, two people-a small boy and Sheriff George Bannerman-had died in the dooryard of this house.

Two others, Gary Pervier and Joe Camber himself, had died just down the hill. Polly parked her car over the place where a woman named Donna Trenton had once made the fatal mistake of parking her Ford Pinto, and got out. The azka swung back and fotth between her breasts as she did.

She looked around uneasily for a moment at the sagging porch, the paintless walls overrun by climbing ivy, the windows which were mostly broken and stared blindly back at her. Crickets sang their stupid songs in the grass, and the hot sun beat down as it had on those terrible days when Donna Trenton had fought for her life here, and for the life of her son.

What am I doing here? Polly thought. What in God’s name am I doing here?

But she knew, and it had nothing to do with Alan Pangborn or Kelton or the San Francisco Department of Child Welfare. This little field-trip had nothing to do with love. It had to do with pain.

That was all… but that was enough.

There was something inside the small silver charm. Something that was alive. If she did not live up to her side of the bargain she had made with Leland Gaunt, it would die. She didn’t know if she could stand to be tumbled back down into the horrible, grinding pain to which she had awakened on Sunday morning. If she had to face a lifetime of such pain, she thought she would kill herself.

“And it’s not Alan,” she whispered as she walked toward the barn with its gaping doorway and its ominous swaybacked roof. “He said he wouldn’t raise a hand against him.”

Why do you even care? that worrisome voice whispered.

She cared because she didn’t want to hurt Alan. She was angry at him, yes-furious, in fact-but that didn’t mean she had to stoop to his level, that she had to treat him as shabbily he had treated her.

But, Polly… have you thought. No. No!

She was going to play a trick on Ace Merrill, and she didn’t care about Ace at all-had never even met him, only knew him by reputation.

The trick was on Ace, but…

But Alan, who had sent Ace Merrill away to Shawshank, came into it someplace. Her heart told her so.

And could she back out of this? Could she, even if she wanted to?

Now it was Kelton, as well. Mr. Gaunt hadn’t exactly told her that the news of what had happened to her son would end up all over town unless she did what he told her to do… but he had hinted as much.

She couldn’t bear for that to happen.

Is a woman not entitled to her pride? When everything else is gone, is she not at least entitled to this, the coin without which her purse is entirely empty?

Yes. And yes. And yes.

Mr. Gaunt had told her she’d find the only tool she would need in the barn; now Polly began to walk slowly in that direction.

Go where ye list, but go there alive, Trisha, Aunt Evvie had told her. Don’t be no ghost.

But now, stepping into the Camber barn through doors which hung gaping and frozen on their rusty tracks, she felt like a ghost.

She had never felt more like a ghost in her life. The azka moved between her breasts… on its own now. Something inside. Something alive. She didn’t like it, but she liked the idea of what would happen if that thing died even less.

She would do what Mr. Gaunt had told her to do, at least this once, cut all her ties with Alan Pangborn (it had been a mistake to ever begin with him, she saw that now, saw it clearly), and keep her past her own. Why not?

After all, it was such a little thing.

2

The shovel was exactly where he had told her it would be, leaning against one wall in a dusty shaft of sunlight. She took hold of its smooth, worn handle.

Suddenly she seemed to hear a low, purring growl from the deep shadows of the barn, as if the rabid Saint Bernard which had killed Big George Bannerman and caused the death of Tad Trenton were still here, back from the dead and meaner than ever.

Gooseflesh danced up her arms and Polly left the barn in a hurry. The dooryard was not exactly cheery-not with that empty house glaring sullenly at her-but it was better than the barn.

What am I doing here? her mind asked again, woefully, and it was Aunt Evvie’s voice that came back: Going ghost. That’s what you’re doing. You’re going ghost.

Polly squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop it!” she whispered fiercely.

“Just stop it!”

That’s right, Leland Gaunt said. Besides, what’s the big deal?

It’s only a harmless little joke. And if something serious were to come of itit won’t, o f course, hut just supposing, for the sake of argument, that it did-whose fault would that be?

“Alan’s,” she whispered. Her eyes rolled nervously in their sockets and her hands clenched and unclenched nervously between her breasts. “If he were here to talk to… if he hadn’t cut himself off from me by snooping around in things that are none of his business…

The little voice tried to speak up again, but Leland Gaunt cut it off before it could say a word.

Right again, Gaunt said. As to what you’re doing here, Polly, the answer to that is simple enough: you’re Paying. That’s what you’re doing, and that’s all you’re doing. Ghosts have nothing to do with it.

And remember this, because it is the simplest, most wonderful aspect of commerce: once an item is paid for, it belongs to you. You didn’t expect such a wonderful thing to come cheap, did you? But when you finish paying, it’s yours. You have clear title to the thing you have paid for. Now will you stand here listening to those oldfrightened voices all day, or will you do what you came to do?

Polly opened her eyes again. The azka hung movelessly at the end of its chain. If it had moved-and she was no longer sure it had-it had stopped now. The house was just a house, empty too long and showing the inevitable signs of neglect. The windows were not eyes, but simply holes rendered glassless by adventuresome boys with rocks. If she had heard something in the barn-and she was no longer sure she had-it had only been the sound of a board expanding in the unseasonable October heat.

Her parents were dead. Her sweet little boy was dead. And the dog which had ruled this dooryard so terribly and completely for three summer days and nights eleven years ago was dead.

There were no ghosts.

“Not even me,” she said, and began to walk around the barn.

3

When you go around to the back of the barn, Mr. Gaunt had said, you’ll see the remains of an old trailer. She did; a silver-sided Air-Flow, almost obscured by goldenrod and high tangles of late sunflowers.

You’ll see a large flat rock at the left end of the trailer.

I She found it easily. It was as large as a garden paving stone.

Move the rock and dig. About two feet down you’llfind a Crisco can.

She tossed the rock aside and dug. Less than five minutes after she started, the shovel’s blade clunked on the can. She discarded the shovel and dug into the loose earth with her fingers, breaking the light webwork of roots with her fingers. A minute later she was holdin the Crisco can. It was rusty but intact. The rotting label 9

came loose and she saw a recipe for Pineapple Surprise Cake on the back (the list of ingredients was mostly obscured by a black blotch of mold), along with a Bisquick coupon that had expired in 1969. She got her fingers under the lid of the can and pried it loose.

The whiff of air that escaped made her wince and draw her head back for a moment. That voice tried one last time to ask what she was doing here, but Polly shut it out.

She looked into the can and saw what Mr. Gaunt had told her she would see: a bundle of Gold Bond trading stamps and several fading photographs of a woman having sexual intercourse with a collie dog.

She took these things out, stuffed them into her hip pocket, I and then wiped her fingers briskly on the leg of her jeans. She would wash her hands as soon as she could, she promised herself.

Touching these things which had lain so long under the earth made her feel unclean.

From her other pocket she took a sealed business envelope.

Typed on the front in capital letters was this:

A MESSAGE FOR THE INTREPID TREASURE-HUNTER.

Polly put the envelope n the can, pressed the cover back down, and dropped it into the hole again. She used the shovel to fill in the hole, working quickly and carelessly. All she wanted right now was to get the hell out of here.

When she was done, she walked away fast. The shovel she slung into the high weeds. She had no intention of taking it back to the barn, no matter how mundane the explanation of the sound she had heard might be.

When she reached her car, she opened first the passenger door and then the glove compartment. She pawed through the litter of paper inside until she found an old book of matches. It,took her four tries to produce one small flame. The pain had almost entirely left her hands, but they were shaking so badly that she struck the first three much too hard, bending the paper heads uselessly to the side.

When the fourth flared alight, she held it between two fingers of her right hand, the flame almost invisible in the hot afternoon sunlight, and took the matted pile of trading stamps and dirty pictures from her jeans pocket. She touched the flame to the bundle and held it there until she was sure it had caught. Then she cast the match aside and dipped the papers down to produce the maximum draft. The woman was malnourished and hollow-eyed. The dog looked mangy and just smart enough to be embarrassed. It was a relief to watch the surface of the one photograph she could see bubble and turn brown. When the pictures began to curl up, she dropped the flaming bundle into the dirt where a woman had once beaten another dog, this one a Saint Bernard, to death with a baseball bat.

The flames flared. The little pile of stamps and photos quickly crumpled to black ash. The flames guttered, went out… and at the moment they did, a sudden gust of wind blew through the stillness of the day, breaking the clot of ash up into flakes. They whirled upward in a funnel which Polly followed with eyes that had gone suddenly wide and frightened. Where, exactly, had that freak gust of wind come from?

Oh, please! Can’t you stop being so damnedAt that moment the growling sound, low, like an idling outboard motor, rose from the hot, dark maw of the barn again. It wasn’t her imagination and it wasn’t a creaking board.

It was a dog.

Polly looked that way, frightened, and saw two sunken red circles of light peering out at her from the darkness.

She ran around the car, bumping her hip painfully against the right side of the hood in her hurry, got in, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors. She turned the ignition key. The engine cranked over… but did not start.

No one knows where I am, she realized. No one but Mr. Gaunt… and he wouldn’t tell.

For a moment she imagined herself trapped out here, the way Donna Trenton and her son had been trapped. Then the engine burst into life and she backed out of the driveway so fast she almost ran her car into the ditch on the far side of the road. She dropped the transmission into drive and headed back to town as fast as she dared to go.

She had forgotten all about washing her hands.

4

Ace Merrill rolled out of bed around the same time that Brian Rusk was blowing his head off thirty miles away.

He went into the bathroom, shucking out of his dirty skivvies as he walked, and urinated for an hour or two. He raised one arm and sniffed his pit. He looked at the shower and decided against it. He had a big day ahead of him. The shower could wait.

He left the bathroom without bothering to flush-if it’s yellow, let it mellow was an integral part of Ace’s philosophy-and went directly to the bureau, where the last of Mr. Gaunt’s blow was laid out on a shaving mirror. It was great stuff-easy on the nose, hot in the head. It was also almost gone. Ace had needed a lot of goPower last night, just as Mr. Gaunt had said, but he had a pretty good idea there was more where this had come from.

Ace used the edge of his driver’s license to shape a couple of lines. He snorted them with a rolled-up five-dollar bill, and something that felt like a Shrike missile went off in his head.

“Boom!” cried Ace Merrill in his best Warner Wolf voice. “Let’s go to the videotape!”

He pulled a pair of faded jeans up over his naked hips and then got into a Harley-Davidson tee-shirt. It’s what all the well-dressed treasure-hunters are wearing this year, he thought, and laughed wildly.

My, that coke was fine!

He was on his way out the door when his eye fell on last night’s take and he remembered that he had meant to call Nat Copeland in Portsmouth. He went back into the bedroom, dug through the clothes which were balled helter-skelter in his top bureau drawer, and finally came up with a battered address book. He went back into the kitchen, sat down, and dialled the number he had. He doubted that he would actually catch Nat in, but it was worth a try.

The coke buzzed and whipsawed in his head, but he could already feel the rush tapering off. A headshot of cocaine made a new man of you. The only trouble was, the first thing the new man wanted was another one, and Ace’s supply was severely depleted.

“Yeah?” a wary voice said in his ear, and Ace realized he had beaten the odds again-his luck was in.

“Nat!” he cried.

“Who the fuck says so?”

“I do, old boss! I do!”

“Ace? That you?”

“None other! How you doin, ole Natty?”

“I’ve been better.” Nat sounded less than overjoyed to hear from his old machine-shop buddy at Shawshank. “What do you want, Ace?”

“Now, is that any way to talk to a pal?” Ace asked reproachfully.

He cocked the phone between his ear and shoulder and pulled a pair of rusty tin cans toward him.

One of them had come out of the ground behind the old Treblehorn place, the other from the cellar-hole of the old Masters farm, which had burned flat when Ace was only ten years old. The first can had contained only four books of S amp; H Green Stamps and several banded packets of Raleigh cigarette coupons. The second had contained a few sheafs of mixed trading stamps and six rolls of pennies. Except they didn’t look like regular pennies.

They were white.

“Maybe I just wanted to touch base,” Ace teased. “You know, check on the state of your piles, see how your supply of K-Y’s holdin out.

Things like that.”

“What do you want, Ace?” Nat Copeland repeated wearily.

Ace plucked one of the penny-rolls out of the old Crisco can.

The paper had faded from its original purple to a dull wash pink.

He shook two of the pennies out into his hand and looked at them curiously. If anyone would know about these things, Nat Copeland was the guy.

He had once owned a shop in ICttery called Copeland’s Coins and Collectibles. He’d also had his own private coin collectionone of the ten best in New England, at least according to Nat himself. Then he too had discovered the wonders of cocaine. In the four or five years following this discovery, he had dismantled his coin collection item by item and put it up his nose. In 1985, police responding to a silent alarm at the Long John Silver coinshop in Portland had found Nat Copeland in the back room, stuffing Lady Liberty silver dollars into a chamois bag. Ace met him not long after.

“Well, I did have a question, now that you mention it.”

“A question? That’s all?”

“That’s absolutely all, good buddy.”

“All right.” Nat’s voice relaxed the smallest bit. “Ask, then. I don’t have all day.”

“Right,” Ace said. “Busy, busy, busy. Places to go and people to eat, am I right, Natty?” He laughed crazily. It wasn’t just the blow; it was the day. He hadn’t gotten in until first light, the coke he had ingested had kept him awake until almost ten this morning in spite of the drawn shades and his physical exertions, and he still felt ready to eat steel bars and spit out tenpenny nails. And why not? Why the fuck not? He was standing on the rim of a fortune.

He knew it, he felt it in every fiber. “Ace, is there really something on that thing you call your mind or did you phone just to rag me?”

“No, I didn’t call to rag you. Give me the straight dope, Natty, and I might give you some straight dope. Very straight.”

“Really?” Nat Copeland’s voice lost its edge at once. It became hushed, almost awed. “Are you shitting me, Ace?”

“The best, primo-est shit I ever had, Natty Bumppo, my lad.”

“Can you cut me in?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it a bit,” Ace said, meaning to do no such thing. He had pried three or four more of the strange pennies out of their old, faded roll. Now he pushed them into a straight line with his finger. “But you’ve got to do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“What do you know about white pennies?” There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Nat said cautiously, “White pennies? Do you mean steel pennies?”

“I don’t know what I mean-you’re the coin collector, not me.”

“Look at the dates. See if they’re from the years 1941 to 1945.” Ace turned over the pennies in front of him. One was a 1941; four were 1943s; the last was from 1944. “Yeah. They are. What are they worth, Nat?” He tried to disguise the eagerness in his voice and was not entirely successful. “Not a lot taken one by one,” Nat said, “but a, hell of a lot more than ordinary pennies. Maybe two bucks apiece. Three if they’re U.C.”

“What’s that?”

“Uncirculated. In mint condition. Have you got a lot, Ace?”

“Quite a few,” Ace said, “quite a few, Natty my man.” But he was disappointed. He had six rolls, three hundred pennies, and the ones he was looking at didn’t look in particularly good shape to him. They weren’t exactly beat to shit, but they were a long way from being shiny and new. Six hundred dollars, eight hundred tops.

Not what you’d call a big strike.

“Well, bring them down and let me look,” Nat said. “I can get you top dollar.” He hesitated, then added: “And bring some of that marching powder with you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Ace said. “Hey, Ace! Don’t hang up!”

“Fuck you very much, Natty,” Ace replied, and did just that. He sat where he was for a moment, brooding over the pennies and the two rusty cans. There was something very weird about all of this. Useless trading stamps and six hundred dollars’ worth of steel pennies. What did that add up to? That’s the bitch of it, Ace thought. It doesn’t add up to anything.

Where’s the real stuff? Where’s the goddam LOOT?

He pushed back from the table, went into the bedroom, and snorted the rest of the blow Mr. Gaunt had laid on him. When he came out again, he had the book with the map in it and he was feeling considerably more cheerful. It did add up. It added up just fine.

Now that he had helped his head a little bit, he could see that.

After all, there had been lots of crosses on that map. He had found two caches right where those crosses suggested they would be, each marked with a large, flat stone. Crosses + Flat Stones = Buried Treasure. It did seem that Pop had been a little softer in his old age than people from town had believed, that he’d had a bit of a problem telling the difference between diamonds and dust there at the end, but the big stuff-gold, currency, maybe negotiable securities-had to be out there someplace, under one or more of those flat rocks.

He had proved that. His uncle had buried things of value, not just bunches of moldy old trading stamps. At the old Masters farm he had found six rolls of steel pennies worth at least six hundred dollars. Not much… but an indication.

“It’s out there,” Ace said softly. His eyes sparkled madly.

“It’s all out there in one of those other seven holes. Or two. Or three.”

He knew it.

He took the brown-paper map out of the book and let his finger wander from one cross to the next, wondering if some were more likely than others. Ace’s finger stopped on the old Joe Camber place. It was the only location where there were two crosses close together. His finger began to move slowly back and forth between them.

Joe Camber had died in a tragedy that had taken three other lives.

His wife and boy had been away at the time. On vacation.

People like the Cambers didn’t ordinarily take vacations, but Charity Camber had won some money in the state lottery, Ace seemed to recall. He tried to remember more, but it was hazy in his mind.

He’d had his own fish to fry back then-plenty of them.

What had Mrs. Camber done when she and her boy had returned from their little trip to find that Joe-a world-class shit, according to everything Ace had heard-was dead and gone? Moved out of state, hadn’t they? And the property? Maybe she’d wanted to turn it over in a hurry. In Castle Rock, one name stood above all the rest when it came to turning things over in a hurry; that name was Reginald Marion “Pop” Merrill. Had she gone to see him? He would have offered her short commons-that was his way-but if she was anxious enough to move, short commons might have been okay with her. In other words, the Camber place might also have belonged to Pop at the time of his death.

This possibility solidified to a certainty in Ace’s mind only moments after it occurred to him.

“The Camber place,” he said. “I bet that’s where it is! I know that’s where it is!”

Thousands of dollars! Maybe tens of thousands! Hoppingjesus!

He snatched up the map and slammed it back into the book.

Then he headed out to the Chevy Mr. Gaunt had loaned him, almost running.

One question still nagged: If Pop really had been able to tell the difference between diamonds and dust, why had he bothered to bury the trading stamps at all?

Ace pushed this question impatiently aside and got on the road to Castle Rock.

5

Danforth Keeton arrived back home in Castle View just as Ace was leaving for the town’s more rural environs. Buster was still handcuffed to the doorhandle of his Cadillac, but his mood was one of savage euphoria. He had spent the last two years fighting shadows, and the shadows had been winning. It had gotten to the point where he had begun fearing that he might be going insane… which, of course, was just what They wanted him to believe.

He saw several “satellite dishes” on his drive from Main Street to his home on the View. He had noticed them before, and had wondered if they might not be a part of what was going on in this town. Now he felt sure. They weren’t “satellite dishes” at all. They were mind-disrupters. They might not all be aimed at his house, but you could be sure any which weren’t were aimed at the few other people like him who understood that a monstrous conspiracy was afoot.

Buster parked in his driveway and pushed the garage-door opener clipped to his sun visor. The door began to rise, but he felt a monstrous bolt of pain go through his head at the same instant.

He understood that was a part of it, too-they had replaced his real Wizard garage-door opener with something else, something that shot bad rays into his head at the same time it was opening the door.

He pulled it off the visor and threw it out the window before driving into the garage.

He turned off the ignition, opened the door, and got out. The handcuff tethered him to the door as efficiently as a choke-chain.

There were tools mounted neatly on wall-pegs, but they were well out of reach. Buster leaned back into the car and began to blow the horn.

6

Myrtle Keeton, who’d had her own errand to run that afternoon, was lying on her bed upstairs in a troubled semi-doze when the horn began to blow. She sat bolt upright, eyes bulging in terror. “I did it!”

she gasped. “I did what you told me to do, now please leave me alone!”

She realized that she had been dreaming, that Mr. Gaunt was not here, and let out her breath in a long, trembling sigh.

WHONK! WHONK! WHOOOONNNNNNK!

It sounded like the Cadillac’s horn. She picked up the doll which lay next to her on the bed, the beautiful doll she had gotten at Mr.

Gaunt’s shop, and hugged it to her for comfort. She had done something this afternoon, something which a dim, frightened part of her believed to be a bad thing, a very bad thing, and since then the doll had become inexpressibly dear to her. Price, Mr. Gaunt might have said, always enhances value… at least in the eyes of the purchaser.

WHOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNKK!

It was the Cadillac’s horn. Why was Danforth sitting in the garage, blowing his horn? She supposed she had better go see.

“But he better not hurt my doll,” she said in a low voice. She placed it carefully in the shadows under her side of the bed. “He just better not, because that’s where I draw the line.”

Myrtle was one of a great many people who had visited Needful Things that day, just another name with a check-mark beside it on Mr.

Gaunt’s list. She had come, like many others, because Mr.

Gaunt had told her to come. She got the message in a way her husband would have understood completely: she heard it in her head.

Mr. Gaunt told her the time had come to finish paying for her doll… if she wanted to keep it, that was. She was to take a metal box and a sealed letter to the Daughters of Isabella Hall, next to Our Lady of Serene Waters. The box had grilles set in every side but the bottom. She could hear a faint ticking noise from inside.

She had tried to look into one of the round grilles-they looked like the speakers in old-fashioned table radios-but she had been able to see only a vague cube-shaped object. And in truth, she hadn’t looked very hard. It seemed better-safer-not to.

There had been one car in the parking lot of the little church complex when Myrtle, who was on foot, arrived. The parish hall itself had been empty, though. She peeked over the sign taped to the window set in the top half of the door to make sure, then read the sign.

DAUGHTERS OF ISABELLA MEET TUESDAY AT 7 P.M.

HELP US PLAN “CASINO NITE"!

Myrtle slipped inside. To her left was a stack of brightly painted compartments standing against the wall-this was where the daycare children kept their lunches and where the Sunday School children kept their various drawings and work projects. Myrtle had been told to put her item into one of these compartments, and she did so. It just fit. At the front of the room was the Chairwoman’s table, with an American flag on the left and a banner depicting the Infant of Prague on the right. The table was already set up for the evening meeting, with pens, pencils, Casino Nite sign-up sheets, and, in the middle, the Chairwoman’s agenda. Myrtle had put the envelope Mr.

Gaunt had given her under this sheet so Betsy Vigue, this year’s Daughters of Isabella Activities Chairwoman, would see it as soon as she picked up her agenda.

READ THIS RIGHT AWAY YOU POPE WHORE

was typed across the front of the envelope in capital letters.

Heart bumping rapidly in her chest, her blood-pressure somewhere over the moon, Myrtle had tiptoed out of the Daughters of Isabella Hall. She paused for a moment outside, hand pressed above her ample bosom, trying to catch her breath.

And saw someone hurrying out of the Knights of Columbus Hall beyond the church.

It wasjune Gavineaux. She looked as scared and guilty as Myrtle felt. She raced down the wooden steps to the parking lot so fast she almost fell and then walked rapidly toward that single parked car, low heels tip-tapping briskly on the hot-top.

She looked up, saw Myrtle, and paled. Then she looked more closely at Myrtle’s face… and understood.

“You too?” she asked in a low voice. A strange grin, both jolly and nauseated, rose on her face. It was the expression of a normally well-behaved child who has, for reasons she does not understand herself, put a mouse in her favorite teacher’s desk drawer.

Myrtle felt an answering grin of exactly the same type rise on her own face. Yet she tried to dissemble. “Mercy’s sake! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Yes you do.” June had looked around quickly, but the two women had this corner of that strange afternoon to themselves.

“Mr. Gaunt.”

Myrtle nodded and felt her cheeks heat in a fierce, unaccustomed blush.

“What did you get?” June asked.

“A doll. What did you get?”

“A vase. The most beautiful cloisonne vase you ever saw.”

“What did you do?”

Smiling slyly, June countered: “What did you do?”

“Never mind.” Myrtle looked back toward the Daughters of Isabella Hall and then sniffed. “It doesn’t matter anyway. They’re only Catholics.”

“That’s right,” June (who was a lapsed Catholic herself) replied.

Then she had gone to her car. Myrtle had not asked for a ride and June Gavineaux did not offer one. Myrtle had walked rapidly out of the parking lot. She had not looked up when June shot by her in her white Saturn. All Myrtle had wanted was to go home, take a nap while she cuddled her lovely doll, and forget what she had done.

That, she was now discovering, was not going to be as easy as she had hoped.

7

WHHHHHHOOOOOOO Buster planted his palm on the horn and held it down. The blare rang and blasted in his ears. Where in hell’s name was that bitch?

At last the door between the garage and the kitchen opened.

Myrtle poked her head through. Her eyes were large and frightened.

“Well, finally,” Buster said, letting go of the horn. “I thought you’d died on the john.”

“Danforth? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Things are better than they’ve been for two years. I just need a little help, that’s all.”

Myrtle didn’t move.

“Woman, get your fat ass over here!”

She didn’t want to go-he scared her-but the habit was old and deep and hard to break. She came around to where he stood in the wedge of space behind the car’s open door. She walked slowly, her slippers scuffing the concrete floor in a way that made Buster grind his teeth together.

She saw the handcuffs, and her eyes widened. “Danforth, what happened?”

“Nothing I can’t handle. Pass me that hacksaw, Myrt. The one on the wall. No-on second thought, never mind the hacksaw right now.

Give me the big screwdriver instead. And that hammer.”

She started to draw away from him, her hands going up to her chest and joining there in an anxious knot. Quick as a snake, moving before she could back out of his reach, Buster shot his free hand through the open window and seized her by the hair.

“Ow!” she screamed, grabbing futilely at his fist. “Danforth, ow!

owww!”

Buster dragged her toward him, his face clenched in a horrible grimace. Two large veins pulsed in his forehead. He felt her hand beating against his fist no more than he would have felt a bird’s wing.

“Get what I tell you!” he cried, and pulled her head forward.

He thumped it against the top of the open door once, twice, three times. “Were you born foolish or did you just grow that way? Get it, get i’t, get it!”

“Danforth, you’re hurting me!”

“Right!” he screamed back, and thumped her head once more against the top of the Cadillac’s open door, much harder this time.

The skin of her forehead split and thin blood began to flow down the left side of her face. “Are you going to mind me, woman?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Good.” He relaxed his grip on her hair. “Now give me the big screwdriver and the hammer. And don’t try any funny business, either.”

She waved her right arm toward the wall. “I can’t reach.”

I He leaned forward, extending his own reach a litt e and allowing her to take a step toward the wall where the tools hung. He kept his fingers wrapped firmly in her hair as she groped. Dime-sized drops of blood splattered on and between her slippers.

Her hand closed on one of the tools, and Danforth shook her head briskly, the way a terrier might shake a dead rat. “Not that, Dumbo,” he said. “That’s a drill. Did I ask for a drill? Huh?”

“But Danforth-oww!-I can’t see!”

“I suppose you’d like me to let you go. Then you could run into the house and call Them, couldn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh no. You’re such an innocent little lamb. It was just an accident that you got me out of the way on Sunday so that fucking Deputy could put those lying stickers up all over the house is that what you expect me to believe?”

She looked back at him through the tangles of her hair. Blood had formed fine beads in her eyelashes. “But… but Danforth… you asked me out on Sunday. You said-” He jerked hard on her hair. Myrtle screamed.

“Just get what I asked for. We can discuss this later.”

She felt along the wall again, head down, hair (except for Buster’s fistful) hanging in her face. Her groping fingers touched the big screwdriver.

“That’s one,” he said. “Let’s try for two, what do you say?”

She fumbled some more, and at last her fluttering fingers happened on the perforated rubber sleeve which covered the handle of the Craftsman hammer.

“Good. Now give them to me.”

She pulled the hammer off its pegs, and Buster reeled her in.

He let go of her hair, ready to snatch a fresh handful if she showed any sign of bolting. Myrtle didn’t. She was cowed. She only wanted to be allowed back upstairs, where she would cuddle her beautiful doll to her and go to sleep. She felt like sleeping forever.

He took the tools from her unresisting hands. He placed the tip of the screwdriver against the doorhandle, then whacked the top of the screwdriver several times with the hammer. On the fourth blow, the doorhandle snapped off. Buster slipped the loop of the cuff out of it, then dropped both the handle and the screwdriver to the concrete floor.

He went first to the button which closed the garage door. Then, as it rattled noisily down on its tracks, he advanced on Myrtle with the hammer in his hand.

“Did you sleep with him, Myrtle?” he asked softly.

“What?” She looked at him with dull, apathetic eyes.

Buster began to whack the hammerhead into the palm of his hand.

It made a soft, fleshy sound-thuck! thuck! thuck!

“Did you sleep with him after the two of you put up those goddam pink slips all over the house?”

She looked at him dully, not understanding, and Buster himself had forgotten that she had been with him at Maurice when Ridgewick broke in and did his thing.

“Buster, what are you talking ah-” He stopped, his eyes widening.

“What did you call me?”

The apathy left her eyes. She began to retreat from him, hunching her shoulders protectively. Behind them, the garage door came to rest.

Now the only sounds in the garage were their scuffling feet and the soft clink of the handcuff chain as it swung back and forth.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Danforth.” Then she turned and ran for the kitchen door.

He caught her three steps from it, once again using her hair to draw her to him. “What did you call me?” he screamed, and raised the hammer.

Her eyes turned up to follow its ascent. “Danforth, no, please!”

“What did you call me? What did you call me?”

He screamed it over and over again, and each time he asked the question he punctuated it with that soft, fleshy sound: Thuck.

Thuck. Thuck.

8

Ace drove into the Camber dooryard at five o’clock. He stuffed the treasure map into his back pocket, then opened the trunk. He got the pick and shovel which Mr. Gaunt had thoughtfully provided and then walked over to the leaning, overgrown porch which ran along one side of the house. He took the map out of his back pocket and sat on the steps to examine it. The short-term effects of the coke had worn off, but his heart was still thudding briskly along in his chest.

Treasure-hunting, he had discovered, was also a stimulant.

He looked around for a moment at the weedy yard, the sagging barn, the clusters of blindly staring sunflowers. It’s not much, but I think this is it, just the same, he thought. The place where I put the Corson Brothers behind me forever and get rich in the bargain.

It’s here-some of it or all of it. Right here. I can feel it.

But it was more than feeling-he could hear it, singing softly to him. Singing from beneath the ground. Not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. Perhaps as much as a million.

“A million dollars,” Ace whispered in a hushed, choked voice, and bent over the map.

Five minutes later he was hunting along the west side of the Camber house. Most of the way down toward the back, almost obscured in tall weeds, he found what he was looking for-a large, flat stone. He picked it up, threw it aside, and began to dig frantically. Less than two minutes later, there was a muffled clunk as the blade struck rusty metal. Ace fell on his knees, rooted in the dirt like a dog hunting a buried bone, and a minute later he had unearthed the Sherwin-Williams paint-can which had been buried here.

Most dedicated cocaine users are also dedicated nail-biters and Ace was no exception. He had no fingernails to pry with and he couldn’t get the lid off. The paint around the rim had dried to an obstinate glue. With a grunt of frustration and rage, Ace pulled out his pocket-knife, got the blade under the can’s rim, and levered the cover off. He peered in eagerly.

Bills!

Sheafs and sheafs of bills!

With a cry he seized them, pulled them out… and saw that his eagerness had deceived him. It was only more trading stamps.

Red Ball Stamps this time, a kind which had been redeemable only south of the Mason-Dixon line… and there only until 1964, when the company had gone out of business.

“Shit fire and save matches!” Ace cried. He threw the stamps aside. They unfolded and began to tumble away in the light, hot breeze that had sprung up. Some of them caught and fluttered from the weeds like dusty banners. “Cunt! Bastard! Sonofawhore!”

He rooted in the can, even turned it over to see if there was anything taped to the bottom, and found nothing. He threw it away, stared at it for a moment, then rushed over and booted it like a soccer ball.

He felt in his pocket for the map again. There was one panicky second when he was afraid it wasn’t there, that he had lost it somehow, but he had only pushed it all the way down to the bottom in his eagerness to get cracking. He yanked it out and looked at it.

The other cross was out behind the barn… and suddenly a wonderful idea came into Ace’s mind, lighting up the angry darkness in there like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July.

The can he had just dug up was a blind! Pop might have thought someone would tumble to the fact that he had marked his various stashes with flat rocks. Thus, he had practiced a little of the old bait-and-switch out here at the Camber place. just to be safe. A hunter who found one useless treasure-trove would never guess that there was another stash, right here on this same property but in a more out-of-the-way place…

“Unless they had the map,” Ace whispered. “Like I do.”

He grabbed the pick and shovel and raced for the barn, eyes wide, sweaty, graying hair matted to the sides of his head.

9

He saw the old Air-Flow trailer and ran toward it. He was almost there when his foot struck something and he fell sprawling to the ground. He was up in a moment, looking around. He saw what he had stumbled over at once.

It was a shovel. One with fresh dirt on the blade.

A bad feeling began to creep over Ace; a very bad feeling indeed.

It began in his belly, then spread upward to his chest and down to his balls. His lips peeled back from his teeth, very slowly, in an ugly snarl.

He got to his feet and saw the rock marker lying nearby, dirt side up. It had been thrown aside. Someone had been here first… and not long ago, from the look. Someone had beaten him to the treasure.

“No,” he whispered. The word fell from his snarling mouth like a drop of tainted blood or infected saliva. “No!”

Not far from the shovel and the uprooted rock, Ace saw a pile of loose dirt which had been scraped indifferently back into a hole.

Ignoring both his own tools and the shovel which the thief had left behind, Ace fell on his knees again and began pawing dirt out of the hole. In no time at all, he had found the Crisco can.

He brought it out and pried off the lid.

There was nothing inside but a white envelope.

Ace took it out and tore it open. Two things fluttered out: a sheet of folded paper and a smaller envelope. Ace ignored the second envelope for the time being and unfolded the paper. It was a typed note. His mouth dropped open as he read his own name at the top of the sheet.

Dear Ace, I can’t be sure you’ll find this, but there’s no law against hoping. Sending you to Shawshank was fun, but this has been better. I wish I could see your face when you finish reading this!

Not long after I sent you up, I went to see Pop. I saw him pretty often-once a month, in fact. We had an arrangement: he gave me a hundred a month and I let him go on making his illegal loans. All very civilized. Halfway through this particular meeting, he excused himself to use the toilet-something he et,” he said. Ha-ha! I took the opportunity to peek in his desk, which he had left unlocked. Such carelessness was not like him, but I think he was afraid he might load his pants if he didn’t go “to visit his Uncle John” right away. Ha!

I only found one item of interest, but that one was a corker. It looked like a map. There were lots of crosses on it, but one of the crosses-the one marking this spot-was marked in red. I put the map back before Pop returned. He never knew I looked at it. I came out here right after he died and dug up this Crisco can. There was better than two hundred thousand dollars in it, Ace. Don’t worry, thoughI decided to “share and share alike” and am going to leave you exactly what you deserve.

Welcome back to town, Ace-Hole!

Yours sincerely, Alan Pangborn Castle County Sheriff P.S.: A word to the wise, Ace: now that you know, “take your lumps” and forget the whole thing. You know the old saying-finders keepers. If you ever try to brace me about your uncle’s money, I will tear you a new asshole and stuff your head into it.

Trust me on this.

A.P. Ace let the sheet of paper slide from his numb fingers and opened the second envelope.

A single one-dollar bill fell out of it.

I decided to “share and share alike” and am going to leave you exactly what you deserve.

“You crab-infested bastard,” Ace whispered, and picked up the dollar bill with shaking fingers.

Welcome back to town, Ace-Hole!

“YOU SONOFA WHORE!” Ace screamed so loudly that he felt something in his throat strain and almost rupture. The echo came back dimly:… whore… whore… whore…

He began to tear the dollar up, then forced his fingers to relax.

Huh-uh. No way, jose.

He was going to save this. The son of a bitch had wanted Pop’s money, had he? He had stolen what rightfully belonged to Pop’s last living relative, had he? Well, all right. Good. Fine. But he should have all of it. And Ace intended to see that the Sheriff had just that. So, after he removed Pusbag’s testicles with his pocket-knife, he intended to stuff this dollar bill into the bloody hole where they had been.

“You want the money, Daddy-O?” Ace asked in a soft, musing voice.

“Okay. That’s okay. No problem. No… fucking… problem.”

He got to his feet and began walking back toward the car in a stiff, staggering version of his usual hood strut.

By the time he got there, he was almost running.