Needful Things

1

The timer under Castle Stream Bridge, which had been known as the Tin Bridge to residents of The Rock since time out of mind, reached 0 at 7:38 p.m. on the night of Tuesday, October 15th, in the year of Our Lord 1991. The tiny burst of electricity which was intended to ring the bell licked across the bare wires Ace had wrapped around the terminals of the nine-volt battery which ran the gadget. The bell actually did begin to ring, but it-and the rest of the timer-was swallowed a split second later in a flash of light as the electricity triggered the blasting cap and the cap in turn triggered the dynamite.

Only a few people in Castle Rock mistook the dynamite blast for thunder. The thunder was heavy artillery in the sky; this was a gigantic rifleshot blast. The south end of the old bridge, which was built not of tin but of old rusty iron, lifted off the bank on a squat ball of fire. It rose perhaps ten feet into the air, becoming a gently inclined ramp, and then fell back in a bitter crunch of popping cement and the clatter-clang of flying metal. The north end of the bridge twisted loose and the whole contraption fell askew into Castle Stream, which was now in full spate. The south end came to rest on the lightning-downed elm.

On Castle Avenue, where the Catholics and the Baptists-along with nearly a dozen State Policemen-were still locked in strenuous debate, the fighting paused. All the combatants stared toward the fire-rose at the Castle Stream end of town. Albert Gendron and Phil Burgmeyer, who had been duking it out with great ferocity seconds before, now stood side by side, looking into the glare.

Blood was running down the left side of Albert’s face from a temple wound, and Phil’s shirt was mostly torn off.

Nearby, Nan Roberts squatted atop Father Brigham like a very large (and, in her rayon waitress’s uniform, very white) vulture. She had been using his hair to raise the good Father’s head and slam it repeatedly into the pavement. Rev. Rose lay close by, unconscious as a result of Father Brigham’s ministrations.

Henry Payron, who had lost a tooth since his arrival (not to mention any illusions he might once have held about religious harmony in America), froze in the act of pulling Tony Mislaburski off Baptist Deacon Fred Mellon.

They all froze, like children playing Statues.

“Jesus Christ, that was the bridge,” Don Hemphill muttered.

Henry Payton decided to take advantage of the lull. He tossed Tony Mislaburski aside, cupped his hands around his wounded mouth, and bawled: “All right, everybody! This is the police! I’m ordering you-” Then Nan Roberts raised her voice in a shout. She had spent many long years bawling orders into the kitchen of her diner, and she was used to being heard no matter how stiff the racket was. It was no contest; her voice overtopped Payton’s easily.

“THE GODDAM CATHOLICS ARE USING DYNAMITE!” she bugled.

There were fewer participants now, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in angry enthusiasm.

Seconds after Nan’s cry, the rumble was on again, now spreading into a dozen skirmishes along a fifty-yard stretch of the rain-swept avenue.

2

Norris Ridgewick burst into the Sheriff’s office moments before the bridge went, yelling at the top of his lungs. “Where’s Sheriff Pangborn? I’ve got to find Sheriff P-” He stopped. Except for Seaton Thomas and a State cop who didn’t look old enough to drink beer yet, the office was deserted.

Where the hell was everybody? There were, it seemed, about six thousand State Police units and other assorted vehicles parked helter-skelter outside. One of them was his own VW, which would easily have won the blue ribbon for helter-skelter, had ribbons been awarded.

It was still lying on its side where Buster had tipped it.

“Jesus!” No@-ris cried. “Where is everybody?”

The State cop who didn’t look old enough to drink beer yet took in Norris’s uniform and then said, “There’s a brawl going on upstreet somewhere-the Christians against the cannibals, or some damn thing.

I’m supposed to be monitoring in dispatch, but with this storm I can’t transmit or receive doodlysquat.” He added morosely: “Who are you?”

“Deputy Sheriff Ridgewick.”

“Well, I’m Joe Price. What kind of town have you got here anyhow, Deputy? Everyone in it has gone stone crazy.”

Norris ignored him and went to Seaton Thomas. Seat’s complexion was dirty gray, and he was breathing with great difficulty.

One of his wrinkled hands was pressed squarely in the middle of his chest.

“Seat, where’s Alan?”

“Dunno,” Seat said, and looked at Norris with dull, frightened eyes. “Something bad’s happening, Norris. Really bad. All over town.

The phones are out, and that shouldn’t be, because most of the lines are underground now. But do you know something? I’m glad they’re out.

I’m glad because I don’t want to know.”

“You should be in the hospital,” Norris said, looking at the old man with concern.

“I should be in Kansas,” Seat said drearily. “Meantime, I’m just gonna sit here and wait for it to be over. I ain’t-” The bridge blew up then, cutting him off-that great rifleshot noise ripped the night like a claw.

’Jesus!” Norris and Joe Price cried in unison.

“Yep,” Seat Thomas said in his weary, frightened, nagging, unsurprised voice, “they’re going to blow up the town, I guess. I guess that comes next.”

Suddenly, shockingly, the old man began to weep.

“Where’s Henry Payton?” Norris shouted at Trooper Price.

Price ignored him. He was running for the door to see what had blown up.

Norris spared a glance at Seaton Thomas, but Seat was staring gloomily out into space, tears rolling down his face and his hand still planted squarely in the center of his chest. Norris followed Trooperjoe Price and found him in the Municipal Building parking lot, where Norris had ticketed Buster Keeton’s red Cadillac about a thousand years ago. A pillar of dying fire stood out clearly in the rainy night, and in its glow both of them could see that Castle Stream Bridge was gone. The traffic light at the far end of town had been knocked into the street.

“Mother of God,” Trooper Price said in a reverent voice. “I’m sure glad this isn’t my town.” The firelight had put roses on his cheeks and embers in his eyes.

Norris’s urge to locate Alan had deepened. He decided he had better get back in his cruiser and try to find Henry Payton firstif there was some sort of big brawl going on, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Alan might be there, too.

He was almost across the sidewalk when a stroke of lightning showed him two figures trotting around the corner of the courthouse next to the Municipal Building. They appeared to be heading for the bright yellow newsvan. One of them he was not sure of, but the other figure-portly and a little bow-legged-was impossible to mistake. It was Danforth Keeton.

Norris Ridgewick took two steps to the right and planted his back against the brick wall at the mouth of the alley. He drew his service revolver. He raised it to shoulder level, its muzzle pointing up into the rainy sky, and screamed “HALT!” at the top of his lungs.

3

Polly backed her car down the driveway, switched on the windshield wipers, and made a left turn. The pain in her hands had been joined by a deep, heavy burning in her arms, where the spider’s muck had fallen on her skin. It had poisoned her somehow, and the poison seemed to be working its way steadily into her. But there was no time to worry about it now.

She was approaching the stop-sign at Laurel and Main when the bridge went up. She winced away from that massive rifleshot and stared for a moment, amazed, at the bright gout of flame which rose up from Castle Stream. For a moment she saw the gantry-like silhouette of the bridge itself, all black angles against the strenuous light, and then it was swallowed in flame.

She turned left again onto Main, in the direction of Needful Things.

4

At one time, Alan Pangborn had been a dedicated maker of home movies-he had no idea how many people he had bored to tears with jumpy films, projected on a sheet tacked to the living-room wall, of his diapered children toddling their uncertain way around the living room, of Annie giving them baths, of birthday parties, of family outings. In all these films, people waved and mugged at the camera. It was as though there were some sort of unspoken law: When someone points a movie camera at you, you must wave, or mug, or both. If you do not, you may be arrested on a charge of Second-Degree Indifference, which carries a penalty of up to ten years, said time to be spent watching endless reels of JUMPY home movies.

Five years ago he had switched to a video camera, which was both cheaper and easier… and instead of boring people to tears for ten or fifteen minutes, which was the length of time three or four rolls of eight-millimeter film ran when spliced together, you could bore them for hours, all without even plugging in a fresh cassette.

He took this cassette out of its box and looked at it. There was no label. Okay, he thought. That’s perfectly okay. I’ll just have to find out what’s on it for myself, won’t I? His hand moved to the VCR’s ON button… and there it hesitated.

The composite formed by Todd’s and Sean’s and his wife’s faces retreated suddenly; it was replaced by the pallid, shocked face of Brian Rusk as Alan had seen him just this afternoon.

You look unhappy, Brian.

Yessir.

Does that mean you ARE unhappy?

Yessir-and if you turn that switch, you’ll be unhappy, too. He wants you to look at it, but not because he wants to do you a favor.

Mr. Gaunt doesn’t do favors. He wants to poison you, that’s all. just like he’s poisoned everyone else.

Yet he had to look.

His fingers touched the button, caressed its smooth, square shape.

He paused and looked around. Yes; Gaunt was still here.

Somewhere. Alan could feel him-a heavy presence, both menacing and cajoling. He thought of the note Mr. Gaunt had left behind. I know you have wondered long and deeply about what happened during the last few moments of your wife and younger son’s lives…

Don’t do it, Sheriff, Brian Rusk whispered. Alan saw that pallid, hurt, pre-suicidal face looking at him from above the cooler in his bike basket, the cooler filled with the baseball cards. Let the past sleep. It’s better that way. And he lies; you KNOw he lies.

Yes. He did. He did know that.

Yet he had to look.

Alan’s finger pushed the button.

The small green POWER light went on at once. The VCR worked just fine, power outage or no power outage, just as Alan had known it would.

He turned on the sexy red Sony and in a moment the bright white glow of Channel 3 snow lit his face with pallid light. Alan pushed the EJECT button and the VCR’s cassettecarrier popped up.

Don’t do it, Brian Rusk’s voice whispered again, but Alan didn’t listen. He carted the cassette, pushed the carrier down, and listened to the little mechanical clicks as the heads engaged the tape. Then he took a deep breath and pushed the PLAY button. The bright NEEDFUL white snow on the screen was replaced by smooth blackness. A moment later the screen went slate-gray, and a series of numbers flashed up: 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… X.

What followed was a shaky, hand-held shot of a country road.

In the foreground, slightly out of focus but still readable, was a road-sign. 117, it said, but Alan didn’t need it. He had driven that stretch many times, and knew it well. He recognized the grove of pines just beyond the place where the road curved-it was the grove where the Scout had fetched up, its nose crumpled around the largest tree in a jagged embrace.

But the trees in this picture showed no scars of the accident, although the scars were still visible, if you went out there and looked (he had, many times). Wonder and terror slipped silently into Alan’s bones as he realized-not just from the unwounded surfaces of the trees and the curve in the road but from every configuration of the landscape and every intuition of his heart-that this videotape had been shot on the day Annie and Todd had died.

He was going to see it happen.

It was quite impossible, but it was true. He was going to see his wife and son smashed open before his very eyes.

Turn it off! Brian screamed. Turn it off, he’s a poison man and he sells poison things! Turn it off before it’s too late!

But Alan could have done this no more than he could have stilled his own heartbeat by thought alone. He was frozen, caught.

Now the camera panned jerkily to the left, up the road. For a moment there was nothing, and then there was a sun-twinkle of light.

It was the Scout. The Scout was coming. The Scout was on its way to the pine tree where it and the people inside it would end forever. The Scout was approaching its terminal point on earth. It was not speeding; it was not moving erratically. There was no sign that Annie had lost control or was in danger of losing it.

Alan leaned forward beside the humming VCR, sweat trickling down his cheeks, blood beating heavily in his temples. He felt his gorge rising.

This isn’t real. It’s a put-up job. He had it made somehow.

It’s not them; there may be an actress and a young actor inside pretending to be them, but it’s not them. It can’t be.

Yet he knew it was. What else would you see in images transmitted by a VCR to a TV which wasn’t plugged in but worked anyway? What else but the truth?

A lie! Brian Rusk’s voice cried out, but it was distant and easily ignored. A lie, Sheriff, a lie! A LIE!

Now he could see the license plate on the approaching Scout.

24912 V. Annie’s license plate.

Suddenly, behind the Scout, Alan saw another twinkle of light.

Another car, approaching fast, closing the distance.

Outside, the Tin Bridge blew up with that monstrous riflecrack sound. Alan didn’t look in that direction, didn’t even hear it. Every ounce of his concentration was fixed on the screen of the red Sony TV, where Annie and Todd were approaching the tree which stood between them and all the rest of their lives.

The car behind them was doing seventy, maybe eighty miles an hour.

As the Scout approached the cameraman’s position, this second car-of which there had never been any report-approached the Scout. Annie apparently saw it, too; the Scout began to speed up, but it was too little. And it was too late.

The second car was a lime-green Dodge Challenger, jacked in the back so the nose pointed at the road. Through the smokedglass windows, one could dimly make out the roll-bar arching across the roof inside.

The rear end was covered with stickers: HEARST, FUELLY, FRAM, QUAKER STATE… Although the tape was silent, Alan could almost hear the blast and crackle of exhaust through the straight-pipes.

Ace!” he cried out in agonized comprehension. Ace! Ace Merrill!

Revenge! Of course! Why had he never thought of it before?

The Scout passed in front of the camera, which panned right to follow. Alan had one moment when he could see inside and yes; it was Annie, the paisley scarf she had been wearing that day tied in her hair, and Todd, in his Star Trek tee-shirt. Todd was looking back at the car behind him. Annie was looking up into the rearview mirror. He could not see her face, but her body was leaning tensely forward in the seat, pulling her shoulder-harness taut. He had that one brief last look at them-his wife and his son-and part of him realized he did not want to see them this way if there was no hope of changing the result: he did not want to see the terror of their last moments.

But there was no going back now.

The Challenger bumped the Scout. It wasn’t a hard hit, but Annie had sped up and it was hard enough. The Scout missed the curve and veered off the road and toward the grove of trees where the large pine waited.

“NO!” Alan shouted.

The Scout jounced into the ditch and out of it. It rocked up on two wheels, came back down, and smashed into the hole of the pine tree with a soundless crunch. A rag doll with a paisley scarf in its hair flew through the windshield, struck a tree, and bounced into the underbrush.

The lime-green Challenger stopped at the edge of the road.

The driver’s door opened.

Ace Merrill got out.

He was looking toward the wreck of the Scout, now barely visible in the steam escaping its ruptured radiator, and he was laughing.

“NO!” Alan screamed again, and pushed the VCR over the side of the glass case with both hands. It struck the floor but didn’t break and the coaxial cord was just a little too long to pull out. A line of static ran across the TV screen, but that was all. Alan could see Ace getting back into his car, still laughing, and then he grabbed the red TV, lifted it above his head as he executed a half-turn, and threw it against the wall. There was a flash of light, a hollow bang, and then nothing but the hum of the VCR with the tape still running inside.

Alan dealt it a kick and it fell mercifully silent.

Get him. He lives in Mechanic Falls.

This was a new voce. It was cold and it was insane but it had its own merciless rationality. The voice of Brian Rusk was gone; now there was only this one voice, repeating the same two things over and over.

Get him. He lives in Mechanic Falls. Get him. He lives in Mechanic Falls. Get him. Get him. Get him. ’fleAcross the street there were two more of those monstrous ri shot explosions as the barber shop and The Samuels Funeral Home blew up at almost the same instant, belching glass and fiery debris into the sky and the street. Alan took no notice.

Get him. He lives in Mechanic Falls.

He picked up the Tastee-Munch can without a thought, grabbing it only because it was something he had brought in and thus was something he should take back out. He crossed to the door, scuffing his previous trail of footprints to incomprehensibility, and left Needful Things.

The explosions meant nothing to him. The jagged, burning hole in the line of buildings on the far side of Main Street meant nothing to him.

The rubble of wood and glass and brick in the street meant nothing to him. Castle Rock and all the people who lived there, Polly Chalmers among them, meant nothing to him. He had an errand to do in Mechanic Falls, thirty miles from here. That meant something. In fact, it meant everything.

Alan strode around to the driver’s side of the station wagon.

He tossed his gun, his flashlight, and the joke can of nuts on the seat. In his mind, his hands were already around Ace Merrill’s throat and starting to squeeze.

5

“HALT!” Norris screamed again. “HALT RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!”

He was thinking it was a most incredibly lucky break. He was less than sixty yards from the holding cell where he intended to store Dan Keeton for safekeeping. As for the other fellow… well, that would depend on what the two of them had been up to, wouldn’t it? They weren’t exactly wearing the expressions of men who have been ministering to the sick and comforting the griefstricken.

Trooper Price looked from Norris to the men standing by the old-fashioned board sign which read CASTLE COUNTY COURTHOUSE. Then he looked back at Norris again. Ace and Zippy’s Dad looked at each other.

Then both of them eased their hands downward, toward the butts of the guns which protruded over the waistbands of their pants.

Norris had pointed the barrel of his revolver skyward, as he had been taught to do in situations like this. Now, still following procedure, he clasped his right wrist in his left fist and levelled the revolver. If the books were right, they would not realize that the muzzle was pointed directly between them; each would believe Norris was aiming at him. “Move your hands away from your weapons, my friends.

Do it now!”

Buster and his companion exchanged another glance and dropped their hands to their sides.

Norris snapped a look at the Trooper. “You,” he said. “Price.

Want to give me a little help here? If you’re not too tired, that is.”

“What are you doing?” Price asked. He sounded worried and unwilling to pitch in. The night’s activities, with the hammering demolition of the bridge to cap them, had reduced him to bystander status. He apparently felt uncomfortable about stepping back into a more active role. Things had gotten too big too fast.

“Arresting these two boogers,” Norris snapped. “What in the hell does it look like?”

“Arrest this, fellow,” Ace said, and flipped Norris the bird.

Buster uttered a high, yodelling laugh.

Price looked at them nervously and then returned his troubled gaze to Norris. “Uh… on what charge?”

Buster’s friend laughed.

Norris directed his full attention back to the two men, and was alarmed to see their positions relative to each other had changed.

When he had thrown down on them, they had been almost shoulder to shoulder. Now they were almost five feet apart, and still sidling.

“Standstill!” he bawled. They stopped and exchanged another glance. “Move back together!”

They only stood there in the pouring rain, hands dangling, looking at him.

“I’m arresting them on an illegal-weapons charge to start with!”

Norris yelled furiously to Trooper Joe Price. “Now get your thumb out of your butt and give me a help!”

This shocked Price into action. He tried to take his own revolver out of its holster, discovered the safety strap was still on, and began fumbling with it. He was still fumbling when the barber shop and the funeral home blew up.

Buster, Norris, and Trooper Price all looked upstreet. Ace did not. He had been waiting for just this golden moment. He pulled the automatic from his belt with the speed of a Western quick-draw artist and fired. The bullet took Norris high in the left shoulder, clipping his lung and smashing his collarbone. Norris had taken a step away from the brick wall when he noticed the two men drifting apart; now he was driven back against it. Ace fired again, chipping a crater in the brick an inch from Norris’s ear. The ricochet made a sound like a very large, very angry insect.

“oh Christ!” Trooper Price screamed, and began to labor more enthusiastically to free the safety strap over the butt of his gun.

“Burn that guy, Dad!” Ace yelled. He was grinning. He fired at Norris again, and this third bullet tore a hot groove in the skinny Deputy’s left side as he collapsed to his knees. Lightning flashed overhead. Incredibly, Norris could still hear brick and wood from the latest explosions rattling down on the street.

Trooper Price at long last managed to unsnap the strap over his gun. He was pulling it free when a bullet from the automatic Keeton held took his head off from the eyebrows on up. Price was hammered out of his boots and thrown against the brick wall of the alley.

Norris raised his own gun once more. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. Still holding it in both hands, he aimed at Keeton.

Buster was a clearer target than his friend. More important, Buster had just killed a cop, and that shit most definitely did not go down in Castle Rock. They were hicks, maybe, but not barbarians.

Norris pulled the trigger at the same moment Ace tried to shoot him again.

The recoil of his revolver sent Norris flying backward. Ace’s bullet buzzed through empty air where his head had been half a second before. Buster Keeton also went flying backward, hands clapped to his belly. Blood poured through his fingers.

Norris lay against the brick wall near Trooper Price, panting harshly, one hand pressed against his wounded shoulder. Christ, this has been a really lousy day, he thought.

Ace levelled the automatic at him, then thought better of itat least for the time being. He went to Buster instead and dropped on one knee beside him. North of them, the bank went up in a roar of fire and pulverized granite. Ace didn’t even look in that direction. He moved old Dad’s hands to get a better look at the wound. He was sorry this had happened. He had been getting to like old Dad pretty well.

Buster screamed. “Oh, it hurts! Oh, it hurrrrts!”

Ace just bet it did. Old Dad had taken a.45 slug just above his belly-button. The entrance hole was the size of a headbolt. Ace didn’t have to roll him over to know the exit hole would be the size of a coffee cup, probably with chunks of old Dad’s spine sticking out of it like bloody candy-canes.

“It hurrrts! HURRRRRRTS!” Buster screamed up into the rain.

“Yeah.” Ace put the muzzle of the automatic against Buster’s temple. “Tough luck, Dad. I’m going to give you some painkiller.”

He pulled the trigger three times. Buster’s body jumped and was still.

Ace got to his feet, meaning to finish the goddam Deputy-if there was anything left to finish-when a gun roared and a bullet whined through the windy air less than a foot over his head. Ace ’de the Slier’if’s looked up and saw another cop standing just outsi Office door to the parking lot. This one looked older than God.

He was shooting at Ace with one hand while the other pressed against his chest above his heart.

Seat Thomas’s second try plowed into the earth right next to Ace, splashing muddy water on the toes of his engineer boots. The old buzzard couldn’t shoot for shit, but Ace suddenly realized he had to get the hell out of here, anyway. They had put enough dynamite in the courthouse to blow the whole building sky-high, they had set the timer for five minutes, and here he was, all but leaning against it while fucking Methuselah took potshots at him.

Let the dynamite take care of both of them.

It was time to go see Mr. Gaunt.

Ace got up and ran into the street. The old Deputy fired again, but this one wasn’t even close. Ace ran behind the yellow newsvan, but made no attempt to get into it. The Chevrolet Celebrity was parked at Needful Things. it would do excellently as a getaway carBut first he intended to find Mr. Gaunt and get paid off. Surely he had something coming, and surely Mr. Gaunt would give it to himAlso, he had a certain thieving Sheriff to find"Payback’s a bitch,” Ace muttered, and ran up Main Street toward Needful Things.

6

Frank jewett was standing on the courthouse steps when he finally saw the man he had been looking for. Frank had been there for some time now, and none of the things going on in Castle Rock tonight had meant much to him. Not the screams and shouts from the direction of Castle Hill, not Danforth Keeton and some elderly Hell’s Angel running down the courthouse steps about five minutes ago, not the explosions, not the most recent rattle of gunshots, this time from right around the corner in the parking lot next to the Sheriff’s Office. Frank had other fish to fry and other lemons to squeeze. Frank had a personal APB out on his excellent old “friend,” George T. Nelson.

And boy-howdy! At last! There was George T. Nelson himself, in the flesh, strolling by on the sidewalk below the courthouse steps!

Except for the automatic pistol jammed into the waistband of George T. Nelson’s Sans-A-Belt polyester slacks (and the fact that it was still raining like hell), the man might have been on his way to a picnic. just strolling along in the rain was Monsieur George T.

Motherfucking Nelson, just breezing along with the Christina breeze, and what had the note in Frank’s office said? Oh yes:

Remember, $2, 000 at my house by 7:15 at the latest or you will wish you were born without a dick. Frank glanced at his watch, saw it was closer to eight o’clock than to 7:15, and decided that didn’t matter much.

He raised George T. Nelson’s Spanish Llama and pointed it at the head of the son of a bitching shop teacher who had caused all his trouble. it NELSON!” he screamed. “GEORGE NELSON! TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT ME, YOU PRICK!”

George T. Nelson wheeled around. His hand dropped toward the butt of his automatic, then fell away when he saw he was covered.

He placed his hands on his hips instead and peered up the courthouse steps at Frank Jewett, who stood there with rain dripping from his nose, his chin, and the muzzle of his stolen gun.

“You going to shoot me?” George T. Nelson asked.

“You bet I am!” Frank snarled.

“Just shoot me down like a dog, huh?”

“Why not? It’s what you deserve!”

To Frank’s amazement, George T. Nelson was smiling and nodding.

“Ayup,” he said, “and that’s what I’d expect from a chickenshit bastard who’d break into a friend’s house and kill a defenseless little birdie.

Exactly what I’d expect. So go ahead, you yellowbelly foureyes fuck.

Shoot me and get it over with.”

Thunder bellowed overhead, but Frank didn’t hear it. The bank blew up ten seconds later and he barely heard that. He was too busy struggling with his fury… and his amazement. Amazement at the gall, the bold, bare-ass gall of Monsieur George T. Motherfucker Nelson.

At last Frank managed to break the lock on his tongue. “Killed your bird, right! Shit on that stupid picture of your mom, right again! And what did you do? What did you do, George, besides make sure that I’ll lose my job and never teach again? God, I’ll be lucky not to end up in jail!” He saw the total injustice of this in a sudden black flash of comprehension; it was like rubbing vinegar into a raw scrape. “Why didn’t you just come and ask me for money, if you needed it? Why didn’t you just come and ask? We could have worked something out, you dumb bastard!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” George T. Nelson shouted back. “All I know is that you’re brave enough to kill teenytiny parakeets but you don’t have balls enough to take me on in a fair fight!”

“Don’t know what… don’t know what I’m talking about?” Frank sputtered. The muzzle of the Llama wavered wildly back and forth.

He could not believe the gall of the man below him on the sidewalk; simply could not believe it. To be standing there with one foot on the pavement and the other practically in eternity and to simply go on lying…

“No! I don’t! Not the slightest idea!”

In the extremity of his rage, Frank jewett regressed to the childhood response to such outrageous, boldface denial: “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

“Coward!” George T. Nelson smartly returned. “Baby-coward!

Parakeet-killer!”

“Blackmailer!”

“Loony! Put the gun away, loony! Fight me fair!”

Frank grinned down at him. “Fair? Fight you fair? What do you know about fair?”

George T. Nelson held up his empty hands and waggled the fingers at Frank. “More than you, it looks like.”

Frank opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He was temporarily silenced by George T. Nelson’s empty hands.

“Go on,” George T. Nelson said. “Put it away. Let’s do it like they do in the Westerns, George. If you’ve got the sack for it, that is. Fastest man wins.”

Frank thought: Well, why not? just why the hell not?

He hadn’t much else to live for, one way or the other, and if he did nothing else, he could show his old “friend” he wasn’t a coward.

“Okay,” he said, and shoved the Llama into the waistband of his own pants. He held his hands out in front of him, hovering just I above the butt of the gun. “How do you want to do it, GeorgiePorgie?”

George T. Nelson was grinning. “You start down the steps,” he said. “I start up. Next time the thunder goes overhead-”

“All right,” Frank said. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

He started down the stairs. And George T. Nelson started up.

7

Polly had just spotted the green awning of Needful Things up ahead when the funeral parlor and the barber shop went up. The glare of light and the roar of sound were enormous. She saw debris burst out of the heart of the explosion like asteroids in a science fiction movie and ducked instinctively. It was well that she did; several chunks of wood and the stainless-steel lever from the side of Chair #2-Henry Gendron’s chair-smashed through the windshield of her Toyota. The lever made a weird, hungry humming sound as it flew through the car and exited by way of the rear window. Broken glass whispered through the air in a widening shotgun cloud.

The Toyota, with no driver to steer it, bumped up over the curb, struck a fire hydrant, and stalled.

Polly sat up, blinking, and stared out through the hole in the windshield. She saw someone coming out of Needful Things and heading toward one of the three cars parked in front of the store.

In the bright light of the fire across the street, she recognized Alan easily.

“Alan!” She yelled it, but Alan didn’t turn. He moved with single-minded purpose, like a robot.

Polly shoved open the door of her car and ran toward him, screaming his name over and over. From down the street came the rapid rattle of gunfire. Alan did not turn in that direction, nor did he look at the conflagration which, only moments ago, had been the funeral parlor and the barber shop. He seemed to be locked entirely on his own interior course of action, and Polly suddenly realized that she was too late. Leland Gaunt had gotten to him. He had bought something after all, and if she didn’t make it to his car before he embarked on whatever wild-goose chase it was that Gaunt was sending him on, he would simply leave… and God only knew what might happen then.

She ran faster.

8

“Help me,” Norris said to Seaton Thomas, and slung an arm around Seat’s neck. He staggered to his feet.

“I think I winged him,” Seaton said. He was puffing, but his color had come back.

“Good,” Norris said. His shoulder hurt like fire… and the as if pain seemed to be sinking deeper into his flesh all the time, seeking his heart. “Now just help me.”

“You’ll be all right,” Seaton said. In his distress over Norris, Seat had forgotten his fear that he was, in his words, coming down with a heart attack. “Soon as I get you insid"No,” Norris gasped.

“Cruiser.”

“What?”

Norris turned his head and glared at Thomas with frantic, painfilled eyes. “Get me in my cruiser! I have to GO to Needful Things!”

Yes. The moment the words were out of his mouth, everything seemed to fall into place. Needful Things was where he had bought the Bazun fishing rod- It was the direction In which the man who had shot him had gone running. Needful Things was the place where everything had started; Needful Things was - where it all must end.

Ga@ia blew up, flooding Main Street with fresh glare. A Double Dragon machine rose out of the ruins, turned over twice, and landed upside down in the street with a crunch.

“Norris, you been shot-”

“Of course I’ve been shot!” Norris screamed. Bloody froth flew from his lips. “Now get me in the cruiser!”

“It’s a bad idea, Norris-”

“No It’s not,” Norris said grimly. He turned his head and spat blood. “It’s the only idea. Now come on.

Help me.”

Seat Thomas began to walk him toward Unit 2.

9

If Alan hadn’t glanced into his rearview mirror before backing out into the street, he would have run Polly down, completing the evening by crushing the woman he loved under the rear wheels of his old station wagon. He did not recognize her; she was only a shape behind his car, a woman-shape outlined against the cauldron of flames on the other side of the street. He jammed on the brakes, and a moment later she was hammering at his window.

Ignoring her, Alan began to back up again. He had no time for the town’s problems tonight; he had his own. Let them slaughter each other like stupid animals, if that was what they wanted to do.

He was going to Mechanic Falls. He was going to get the man who had killed his wife and son in revenge for a piddling four years in the Shank.

Polly grabbed his doorhandle and was half-pulled, half-dragged, out into the debris-strewn street. She punched down on the button below the handle, her hand shrieking with pain, and the door flew open with her clinging desperately to it and her feet dragging as Alan made his reverse turn. The nose of the station wagon was pointing down Main Street. In his grief and fury, Alan had totally forgotten that there was no bridge to cross down that way anymore.

“Alan!” she screamed. “Alan, stop!”

It got through. Somehow it got through in spite of the rain, the thunder, the wind, and the heavy, hungry crackle of the fire. In spite of his compulsion.

He looked at her, and Polly’s heart broke at the expression in his eyes. Alan wore the look of a man floating in the gut of a nightmare.

“Polly?” he asked distantly.

“Alan, you have to stop!”

She wanted to let go of the doorhandle-her hands were agony-but she was afraid that if she did, he would simply drive away and leave her there in the middle of Main Street.

No… she knew he would.

“Polly, I have to go. I’m sorry you’re mad at me that you think I did something-but we’ll sort it out. Only I have to g-”

“I’m not mad at you anymore, Alan. I know it wasn’t you. it was him, playing us off against each other, like he has just about everyone else in Castle Rock. Because that’s what he does. Do you understand, Alan? Are you hearing me? Because that is what he does!

Now stop! Turn off the goddamned engine and listen to me!”

“I have to go, Polly,” he said. His own voice seemed to be coming to him from far away. On the radio, perhaps. “But I’ll be ha-”

“No you won’t!” she cried. Suddenly she was furious with himfurious at all of them, all the greedy, frightened, angry, acquisitive people in this town, herself included. “No you won’t, because if you leave now, there won’t be a goddam thing to come back TO!”

The video-game parlor blew up. Debris stormed around Alan’s car, parked in the middle of Main Street. Alan’s talented right hand stole over, picked up the Tastee-Munch can, as if for comfort, and held it on his lap.

Polly took no notice of the explosion; she stared at Alan with her dark, pain-filled eyes.

“Polly-”

“Look!” she shouted suddenly, a.-id tore open the front of her blouse. Rainwater struck the swells of her breasts and gleamed in the hollow of her throat. “Look, I took it off-the charm! it’s gone!

Now take yours off, Alan! If you’re a man, take yours Off!”

He was having trouble understanding her from the depths of whatever nightmare it was which held him, the nightmare Mr. Gaunt had spun around him like a poisonous cocoon… and in a sudden flash of insight she understood what that nightmare was. What it must be.

“Did he tell you what happened to Annie and Todd?” she asked softly.

His head rocked back as if she had slapped him, and Polly knew she had hit the mark.

“Of course he did. What’s the one thing in all the world, the one useless thing, that you want so badly that you get it mixed up with needing it? That’s your charm, Alan-that’s what he’s put around your neck.”

She let go of the doorhandle and thrust both of her arms into the car. The glow from the domelight fell on them. The flesh was a dark, liverish red. Her arms were so badly swollen that her elbows were becoming puffy dimples.

“There was a spider inside of mine,” she said softly.

“’Hinkypinky-spider, crawling up the spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out.’Just a little spider. But it grew. It ate my pain and it grew. This is what it did before I killed it and took my pain back. I wanted so badly for the pain to be gone, Alan. That was what I wanted, but I don’t need it to be gone. I can love you and I can love life and bear the pain all at the same time. I think the pain might even make the rest better, the way a good setting can make a diamond look better.”

“Polly"Of course it has poisoned me,” she continued thoughtfully, “and I think the poison may kill me if something isn’t done. But why not? It’s fair. Hard, but fair. I bought the poison when I bought the charm. He has sold a lot of charms in his nasty little shop this last week. The bastard works fast, I’ll give him that much.

Hinkypinky-spider, crawling up the spout. That’s what was in mine.

What’s inside yours? Annie and Todd, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“Polly, Ace Merrill killed my wife! He killed Todd! He-”

“No!” she screamed, and seized his face in her throbbing hands.

“Listen to me! Understand me! Alan, it’s not just your life, can’t you see? He makes you buy back your own sickness, and he makes you pay double! Don’t you understand that yet? Don’t you get it?”

He stared at her, mouth agape… and then, slowly, his mouth closed. A sudden look of puzzled surprise settled on his face.

“Wait,” he said. “Something was wrong. Something was wrong in the tape he left me. I can’t quite…

“You can, Alan! Whatever the bastard sold you, it was wrong, just like the name on the letter he left me was wrong.”

He was really hearing her for the first time. “What letter?”

“It’s not important now-if there’s a later, I’ll tell you then.

10

The point is, he oversteps. I think he always oversteps. He’s so stuffed with pride it’s a wonder he doesn’t explode. Alan, please try to understand: Annie is dead, Todd is dead, and if you go out chasing Ace Merrill while the town is burning down around your ears-” A hand appeared over Polly’s shoulder. A forearm encircled her neck and jerked her roughly backward. Suddenly Ace Merrill was standing behind her, holding her, pointing a gun at her, and grinning over her shoulder at Alan.

“Speak of the devil, lady,” Ace said, and overhead -thunder cracked across the sky.

Frank jewett and his good old “friend” George T. Nelson had been facing each other on the courthouse steps like a pair of strange bespectacled gunslingers for almost four minutes now, their nerves twanging like violin strings tuned into the ultimate octave.

“Yig!” said Frank. His hand grabbed for the automatic pistol stuck in the waistband of his pants.

“Awk!” said George T. Nelson, and grabbed for his own.

They drew with identical feverish grins-grins that looked like big, soundless screams-and threw down. Their fingers pressed the triggers. The two reports overlapped so perfectly that they sounded like one. Lightning flashed as the two bullets flew… and nicked each other in mid-flight, deflecting just enough to miss what should have been a pair of point-blank targets.

Frank jewett felt a puff of air beside his left temple.

George T. Nelson felt a sting on the right side of his neck.

They stared at each other unbelievingly over the smoking guns.

“Huh?” said George T. Nelson.

“Wha?” said Frank Jewett.

They began to grin identical, unbelieving grins. George T. Nelson took a hesitant step up toward Frank; Frank took a hesitant step down toward George. In another moment or two they might have been embracing, their quarrel dwarfed by those two small puffs of eternity… but then the Municipal Building blew up with a roar that seemed to split the world in two, vaporizing them both where they stood.

That final explosion dwarfed all the others. Ace and Buster had planted forty sticks of dynamite in two clusters of twenty at the Municipal Building. One of these bombs had been left sitting on the judge’s chair in the courtroom. Buster had insisted that they place the other on Amanda Williams’s desk in the Selectmen’s Wing.

“Women have no business in politics, anyway,” Buster explained to Ace.

The sound of the explosion was shattering, and for a moment every window of the town’s biggest building was filled with supernatural violet-orange light. Then the fire lashed out through the windows, through the doors, through the vents and grilles, like merciless, muscular arms. The slate roof lifted off intact like some strange gabled spaceship, rose on a cushion of fire, then shattered into a hundred thousand jagged fragments.

In -the next instant the building itself blew outward in every direction, turning Lower Main Street into a hail of brick and glass where no living thing bigger than a cockroach could survive. Nineteen men and women were killed in the blast, five of them newspeople who had come to cover the escalating weirdness in Castle Rock and became part of the story instead.

State Police cars and news vehicles were thrown end over end through the air like Corgi toys. The yellow van which Mr. Gaunt had provided Ace and Buster cruised serenely up Main Street nine feet above the ground, wheels spinning, rear doors hanging by their mangled hinges, tools and timers spilling out the back. It banked to the left on a hot hurricane thermal and crash-landed in the front office of the Dostie Insurance Agency, snowplowing typewriters and file-cabinets before its mangled grille.

A shudder like an earthquake blundered through the ground.

11

Windows shattered all over town. Weathervanes, which had been pointing steadily northeast in the prevailing wind of the thunderstorm (which was now beginning to abate, as if embarrassed by the entrance of this avatar), began to whirl crazily. Several flew right off their spindles, and the next day one would be found buried deeply in the door of the Baptist Church, like a marauding Indian’s arrow.

On Castle Avenue, where the tide of battle was turning decisively in favor of the Catholics, the fighting stopped. Henry Payton stood by his cruiser, his drawn gun dangling by his right knee, and stared toward the fireball in the south. Blood trickled down his cheeks like tears. Rev. William Rose sat up, saw the monstrous glow on the horizon, and began to suspect that the end of the world had come, and that what he was looking at was Star Wormwood.

Father john Brigham wandered down to him in drunken loops and staggers. His nose was bent severely to the left and his mouth was a mass of blood. He considered punting Rev. Rose’s head like a football and helped him to his feet instead.

On Castle View, Andy Clutterbuck did not even look up. He sat on the front step of the Potter house, weeping and cradling his dead wife in his arms. He was still two years from the drunken plunge through the ice of Castle Lake which would kill him, but he was at the end of the last sober day of his life.

On Dell’s Lane, Sally Ratcliffe was in her bedroom closet with a small, squirming Conga-line of insects descending the side-seam of her dress. She had heard what had happened to Lester, understood that she had somehow been to blame (or believed she understood, and in the end it came to the same thing), and had hanged herself with the tie of her terrycloth bathrobe. One of her hands was thrust deep into the pocket of her dress. Clasped in this hand was a splinter of wood. it was black with age and spongy with rot.

The woodlice with which it had been infested were leaving in search of a new and more stable home. They reached the hem of Sally’s dress and began marching down one dangling leg toward the floor.

Bricks whistled through the air, turning the buildings some distance away from ground-zero into what looked like the aftermath of an artillery barrage. Those closer looked like cheese-graters, or collapsed entirely.

The night roared like a lion with a poisoned spear caught in its throat.

12

Seat Thomas, who was driving the cruiser Norris Ridgewick insisted they take, felt the car’s rear end rise gently, as if lifted by a giant’s hand. A moment later, a storm of bricks had engulfed the car.

Two or three punched through the trunk. One honked on the roof.

Another landed on the hood in a spray of brick-dust the color of old blood and slithered off the front.

“Jeezum, Norris, the whole town’s blowing up!” Seat cried shrilly.

“Just drive,” Norris said. He felt as if he were burning up; sweat stood out on his rosy, flushed face in big drops. He suspected that Ace had not wounded him mortally, that he had only winged him both times, but there was still something dreadfully wrong. He could feel sickness worming its way into his flesh, and his vision kept wanting to waver. He held grimly onto consciousness. As his fever grew, he became more and more certain that Alan needed HIM, and that if he was very lucky and very brave, he might yet be able to expiate the terrible wrong he had set in motion by slashing Hugh’s tires.

Ahead of him he saw a small group of figures in the street near the green awning of Needful Things. The column of fire towering out of the ruins of the Municipal Building lit the figures in tableau, like actors on a stage. He could see Alan’s station wagon, and Alan himself getting out of it. Facing him, his back turned to the cruiser in which Norris Ridgewick and Seaton Thomas were approaching, was a man with a gun. He was holding a woman in front of him like a shield. Norris couldn’t see enough of the woman to make out who she was, but the man who was holding her hostage was wearing the tattered remains of a Harley-Davidson tee-shirt. He was the man who had tried to kill Norris at the Municipal Building, the man who had blown Buster Keeton’s brains out. Although he’d never met him, Norris was pretty sure he’d run afoul of town bad boy Ace Merrill.

“Jeezum-crow, Norris! That’s Alan! What’s going on now?”

Whoever the guy is, he can’t hear us coming, Norris thought.

Not with all the other noise. If Alan doesn’t look this way, doesn’t tip the shitbag offNorris’s service revolver was lying in his lap. He unrolled the passenger-side window of the cruiser and then raised the gun. Had it weighed a hundred pounds before? It weighed at least twice that now.

“Drive slow, Seat-slow as you can. And when I tap you with my foot, stop the car. Right away. Don’t bother to think things over. “With your foot! What do you mean, with your f-”

“Shut up, Seat,” Norris said with weary kindness. “Just remember what I said.”

Norris turned sideways, stuck his head and shoulders out the window, and clutched the bar which held the cruiser’s roof-flashers.

Slowly, laboriously, he pulled himself up and out until he was sitting in the window. His shoulder howled with agony, and fresh blood began to soak his shirt. Now they were less than thirty yards from the three people standing in the street, and he could aim directly along the roof at the man holding the woman. He couldn’t shoot, at least not yet, because he would be likely to hit her as well as him. But if either of them moved…

It was as close as Norris dared go. He tapped Seat’s leg with his foot. Seat brought the cruiser to a gentle halt in the brick-and rubble-littered street.

Move, Norris prayed. One of you please mov I don’t care which one, and it only has to be a little, but please, please move.

He did not notice the door of Needful Things open; his concentration was too fiercely focused on the man with the gun and the hostage. Nor did he see Mr. Leland Gaunt walk out of his shop and stand beneath the green awning.

13

“That money was mine, you bastard!” Ace shouted at Alan, “and if you want this bitch back with all her original equipment, you better tell me what the hell you did with it!”

Alan had stepped out of the station wagon. “Ace, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Wrong answer!” Ace screamed. “You know exactly what I’m talking about! POP’s money! In the cans! If you want the bitch, tell me what you did with it! This offer is good for a limited time only, you cocksucker!”

From the tail of his eye, Alan caught movement from below them on Main Street- It was a cruiser, and he thought it was a County unit, but he did not dare take a closer look. If Ace knew he was being blindsided, he would take polly’s life. He would do it in less time than it took to blink.

So instead he fixed his sight-line upon her face. Her dark eyes were weary and filled with pain… but they were not afraid.

Alan felt sanity begin to fill him again- It was funny stuff, sanity.

When it was taken away, you didn’t know it. You didn’t feel its departure. You only really knew it when it was restored like some rare wild bird which lived and sang within you not by decree but by choice.

“He got it wrong,” he said quietly to Polly. “Gaunt got it wrong on the tape.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ace’s voice was Jagged, coked-up. He dug the muzzle of the automatic into Polly’s temple.

Of all of them, only Alan saw the door of Needful Things open stealthily, and he would not have seen it if he had not directed his gaze so stringently away from the cruiser which was creeping up the street. Only Alan saw-ghostly, at the very edge of vision-the tall figure that came out, a figure dressed not in a sport-coat or a smoking jacket but in a black broadcloth coat.

A travelling coat.

In one hand Mr. Gaunt held an old-fashioned valise, the sort in which a drummer or a travelling salesman might have carried his goods and samples in days of old. It was made of hyena-hide, and it was not still. It puffed and bulged, puffed and bulged below the long white fingers which gripped its handle. And from inside, like the sound of a distant wind or the ghostly cry one hears in hightension wires, came the faint sound of screams. Alan did not hear this horrid and unsettling sound with his ears; he seemed to hear it with his heart and in his mind.

Gaunt stood beneath the canopy where he could see both the approaching cruiser and the tableau by the station wagon, and in his eyes there was an expression of dawning irritation. perhaps even concern.

Alan thought: And he doesn’t know that I’ve seen him. I’m almost sure of that. Please, God, let me be right.

14

Alan didn’t answer Ace. He spoke to Polly instead, tightening his hands on the Tastee-Munch can as he did. Ace hadn’t even noticed the can, it seemed, very likely because Alan had made absolutely no attempt to hide it.

“Annie wasn’t wearing her seatbelt that day,” Alan said to Polly.

“Did I ever tell you that?”

“I… I don’t remember, Alan.”

Behind Ace, Norris Ridgewick was pulling himself laboriously out of the cruiser’s window.

“That’s why she went through the windshield.” In just a moment I’m going to have to go for one of them, he thought. Ace or Mr.

Gaunt? Which way? Which one? “That’s what I always wondered about-why her belt wasn’t buckled. She didn’t even think about it, the habit was so deeply ingrained. But she didn’t do it that day.”

“Last chance, cop!” Ace shrieked. “I’ll take my money or this bitch!

You choose!”

Alan went on ignoring him. “But on the tape, her belt was still buckled,” Alan said, and suddenly he knew. Knowing rose in the middle of his mind like a clear silver column of flame. “It was still buckled AND YOU FUCKED UP, MR. GAUNT!”

Alan wheeled toward the tall figure standing beneath the green canopy eight feet away. He grasped the top of the Tastee-Munch can as he took a single large step toward Castle Rock’s newest entrepreneur, and before Gaunt could do anything-before his eyes could do more than begin to widen-Alan had spun the lid off Todd’s last joke, the one Annie had said to let him have because he would only be young once.

The snake sprang out, and this time it was no joke.

This time it was real.

It was only real for a few seconds, and Alan never knew if anyone else had seen it, but Gaunt did; of that he was absolutely sure. It was long-much longer than the crepe-paper snake that had flown out a week or so ago when he had removed the can’s top in the Municipal Building parking lot after his long, solitary ride back from Portland.

Its skin glowed with a shifting iridescence and its body was mottled with diamonds of red and black, like the skin of some fabulous rattler. its jaws opened as it struck the shoulder of Leland Gaunt’s broadcloth coat, and Alan squinted against the dazzling, chromic gleam of its fangs. He saw the deadly triangular head draw back, then dart down toward Gaunt’s neck. He saw Gaunt grab for it and seize it… but before he did, the snake’s fangs sank into his flesh, not once but several times. The triangular head blurred up and down like the bobbin of a sewing machine.

Gaunt screamed-although with pain, fury, or both, Alan could not tell-and dropped the valise in order to seize the snake with both hands. Alan saw his chance and leaped forward as Gaunt held the whipping snake away from him, then hurled it to the sidewalk at his booted feet. When it landed, it was again what it had been before-nothing but a cheap novelty, five feet of spring wrapped in faded green crepe-paper, the sort of trick only a kid like Todd could truly love and only a creature like Gaunt could truly appreciate.

Blood was trickling from Gaunt’s neck in tiny threads from three pairs of holes. He wiped it away absently with one of his strange, long-fingered hands as he bent to pick up his valise… and stopped suddenly. Bent over like that, long legs cocked, long arm reaching, he looked like a woodcut of Ichabod Crane. But what he was reaching for was no longer there. The hyena-hide valise with its gruesome, respiring sides now sat on the pavement between Alan’s feet.

He had taken it while Mr. Gaunt had been occupied with the snake, and he had done it with his customary speed and dexterity.

There was no doubt about Gaunt’s expression now; a thunderous combination of rage, hate, and unbelieving surprise contorted his features. His upper lip curled back like a dog’s muzzle, exposing the rows of jostling teeth. Now all of those teeth came to points, as if filed for the occasion.

He held his splayed hands out and hissed: “Give it to me-it’s mine!”

Alan didn’t know that Leland Gaunt had assured dozens of Castle Rock residents, from Hugh Priest to Slopey Dodd, that he hadn’t the slightest interest in human souls-poor, wrinkled, diminished things that they were. If he had known, Alan would have laughed and pointed out that lies were Mr. Gaunt’s chief stock in trade. Oh, he knew what was in the bag, all right-what was in there, screaming like powerlines in a high wind and breathing like a frightened old man on his deathbed.

He knew very well.

Mr. Gaunt’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a macabre grin.

His horrible hands stretched out farther toward Alan.

“I’m warning you, Sheriff-don’t fuck with me. I’m not a man you want to fuck with. That hag is mine, I say!”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Gaunt. I have an idea that what’s in there is stolen property. I think you’d better-” Ace had been staring at Gaunt’s subtle but steady transformation from businessman to monster, his mouth agape. The arm around Polly’s throat had relaxed a little, and she saw her chance. She twisted her head and buried her teeth up to the gumline in Ace Merrill’s wrist. Ace shoved her away without thinking, and Polly went sprawling into the street. Ace levelled the gun at her.

“Bitch!” he cried.

15

“There,” Norris Ridgewick murmured gratefully.

He had rested the barrel of his service revolver along one of the flasher-bars. Now he held his breath, caught his lower lip in his teeth, and squeezed the trigger. Ace Merrill was suddenly hurled over the woman in the street-it was Polly Chalmers, and Norris had time to think he should have known-with the back of his head spreading and flying outward in clumps and clots.

Suddenly Norris felt very faint.

But he also felt very, very blessed.

16

Alan took no notice of Ace Merrill’s end.

Neither did Leland Gaunt.

They faced each other, Gaunt on the sidewalk, Alan standing by his station wagon in the street with the horrible, breathing valise between his feet.

Gaunt took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Something passed over his face-a kind of shimmer. When he opened his eyes again, a semblance of the Leland Gaunt who had fooled so many people in The Rock was back-charming, urbane Mr. Gaunt. He glanced down at the paper snake lying on the sidewalk, grimaced with distaste, and kicked it into the gutter. Then he looked back at Alan and held out one hand.

“Please, Sheriff-let’s not argue. The hour is late and I’m tired.

You want me out of your town, and I want to go. I will go… as soon as you give me what’s mine. And it is mine, I assure you.”

“Assure and be damned. I don’t believe you, my friend.”

Gaunt stared at Alan with impatience and anger. “That bag and its contents belong to me! Don’t you believe in free trade, Sheriff Pangborn? What are you, some sort of Communist? I dickered for each and every one of the things in that valise! I got them fair and square. If it’s a reward you want, an emolument, a commission, a finder’s fee, a dip out of the old gravy-boat, whatever you want to call it, that I can understand and that I will gladly pay. But you must see that this is a business matter, not a legal m-”

“You cheated!”

Polly screamed. “You cheated and you lied and you cozened!”

Gaunt shot her a pained glance, then looked back at Alan. “I didn’t, you know. I dealt as I always do. I show people what I have to sell… and let them make up their own minds. So… if you please…”

“I think I’ll keep it,” Alan said evenly. A small smile, as thin and sharp as a rind of November ice, touched his mouth. “Let’s just call it evidence, okay?”

“I’m afraid you can’t do that, Sheriff.” Gaunt stepped off the sidewalk and into the street. Small red pits of light glowed in his eyes. “You can die, but you can’t keep my property. Not if I mean to take it. And I do.” He began to walk toward Alan, the red pinpricks in his eyes deepening. He left a boot-track in an oatmealcolored lump of Ace’s brains as he came.

Alan felt his belly try to fold in on itself, but he didn’t move.

Instead, prompted by some instinct he made no effort to understand, he put his hands together in front of the station wagon’s left headlight. He crossed them, made a bird-shape, and began to bend his wrists rapidly back and forth.

The sparrows are flying again, Mr. Gaunt, he thought.

A large projected shadow-bird-more hawk than sparrow and unsettlingly realistic for an insubstantial shade-suddenly flapped across the false front of Needful Things. Gaunt saw it from the corner of his eye, whirled toward it, gasped, and retreated again.

“Get out of town, my friend,” Alan said. He rearranged his hands and now a large shadow-dog-perhaps a Saint Bernardslouched across the front of You Sew and Sew in the spotlight thrown by the station wagon’s headlights. And somewhere nearperhaps coincidentally, perhaps not-a dog began to bark. A large one, by the sound.

Gaunt turned in that direction. He was looking slightly harried now, and definitely off-balance.

“You’re lucky I’m cutting you loose,” Alan went on. “But what would I charge you with, come to that? The theft of souls may be covered in the legal code Brigham and Rose deal with, but I don’t think I’d find it in mine. Still, I’d advise you to go while you still can.”

“Give me my bag!”

Alan stared at him, trying to look unbelieving and contemptuous while his heart hammered away wildly in his chest. “Don’t you understand yet? Don’t you get it? You lose, Have you forgotten how to deal with that?”

Gaunt stood looking at Alan for a long second, and then he nodded"I knew I was wise to avoid you,” he said. He almost seemed to be speaking to himself. “I knew it very well. All right. You win.” He began to turn away; Alan relaxed slightly. “I’ll go-” He turned back, quick as a snake himself, so quick he made Alan look slow. His face had changed again; its human aspect was entirely gone. it was the face of a demon now, with long, deeply scored cheeks and drooping eyes that blazed with orange fire! But NOT WITHOUT MY PROPERTY!” he screamed, and leaped for the bag.

Somewhere-close by or a thousand miles away-Polly shrieked, “Look out, Alan!” but there was no time to look out; the demon, smelling like a mixture of sulphur and fried shoeleather, was upon him. There was only time to act or time to die.

Alan passed his right hand down the inside of his left wrist, groping for the tiny elastic loop protruding from his watchband.

Part of him was announcing that this would never work, even another miracle of transmutation couldn’t save him this time, because the Folding Flower Trick was used up, it wasHis thumb slipped into the loop.

The tiny paper packet snapped out. Alan thrust his hand forward, sliding the loop free for the last time as he did so.

“ABRACADABRA, YOU LYING FUCK!” he cried, and what suddenly bloomed in his hand was not a bouquet of ’ flowers but a blazing bouquet of light that lit Upper Main Street with a fabulous, shifting radiance. Yet he realized the colors rising from his fist in an incredible fountain were one color, as all the colors translated by a glass prism or a rainbow in the air are one color. He felt a jolt of power run up his arm, and for a moment he was filled with a great and incoherent ecstasy: The white! The coming of the white!

Gaunt howled with pain and rage and fear… but did not back away. Perhaps it was as Alan had suggested: it had been so long since he had lost the game that he had forgotten how. He tried to dive in below the bouquet of light shiminering over Alan’s closed hand, and for just a moment his fingers actually touched the handles of the valise between Alan’s feet.

Suddenly a foot clad in a bedroom slipper appeared-Polly’s foot.

She stamped down on Gaunt’s hand. “Leave it alone!” she screamed.

He looked up, snarling… and Alan)jammed the fistful of radiance into his face. Mr. Gaunt gave voice to a long, gibbering wail of pain and fear and scrabbled backward with blue fire dancing in his hair. The long white fingers made one final effort to seize the handles of the valise, and this time it was Alan who stamped on them.

“I’m telling you for the last time to get out,” he said in a voice he did not recognize as his own. It was too strong, too sure, too full of power. He understood he probably could not put an end to the thing which crouched before him with one cringing hand raised to shield its face from the shifting spectrum of light, but he could make it be gone.

Tonight that power was his… if he dared to use it. If he dared to stand and be true. “And I’m telling you for the last time that you’re going without this.”

“They’ll die without me!” the Gaunt-thing moaned. Now its hands hung between its legs; long claws clicked and clittered in the scattered debris which lay ir, the street. “Every single one of them will die without me, like plants without water in the desert. Is that what you want? Is it?”

Polly was with Alan then, pressed against his side. “Yes,” she said coldly. “Better that they die here and now, if that’s what has to happen, than that they go with you and live. They-we-did some lousy things, but that price is much too high.” The Gaunt-thing hissed and shook its claws at them. Alan picked up the bag and backed slowly into the street with

Polly by his side. He raised the fountain of light-flowers so that they cast an amazing, revolving glow upon Mr. Gaunt and his Tucker Talisman. He pulled air into his chest-more air than his body had ever contained before, it seemed. And when he spoke, the words roared from him in a vast voice which was not his own.

"GO HENCE, DEMON! YOU ARE CAST OUT FROM THIS PLACE!”

The Gaunt-thing screamed as if burned by scalding water.

The green awning of Needful Things burst into flame and the showwindow blew inward, its glass pulverized to diamonds. From above Alan’s closed hand, bright rays of radiance blue, red, green, orange, deep-hued violet-struck out in every direction. For a moment a tiny, exploding star seemed balanced on his fist.

The hyena-hide valise burst open with a rotted pop, and the trapped, wailing voices escaped in a vapor which was not seen but felt by all of them-Alan, Polly, Norris, Seaton.

Polly felt the hot, sinking poison in her arms and chest disappear.

The heat slowly gathering around Norris’s heart dissipated.

All over Castle Rock, guns and clubs were cast down; people looked at each other with the wondering eyes of those who have awakened from a dreadful dream.

And the rain stopped.

17

Still screaming, the thing which had been Leland Gaunt hopped and scrambled across the sidewalk to the Tucker. it pulled the door open and flopped behind the wheel. The motor screamed into life.

It was not the sound of any engine made by human hands. A long lick of orange fire belched from the exhaust pipe. The tail lights flared and they were not red glass but ugly little eyes-the eyes of cruel imps.

Polly Chalmers screamed and turned her face against Alan’s shoulder, but Alan could not turn away. Alan was doomed to see and to remember all his life what he saw, as he would remember the night’s brighter marvels: the paper snake that became momentarily real, the paper flowers that had turned into a bouquet of light and a reservoir of power.

The three headlights blazed on. The Tucker backed out into the street, smoking the macadam beneath its tires to boiling gooit screamed around in a reverse turn to the right, and although it did not touch Alan’s car, the station wagon flew backward several feet just the same, as if repelled by some powerful magnet. The front end of the Talisman had begun to glow with a foggy white radiance, and beneath this glow it seemed to be changing and reforming itself The car shrieked, pointing downhill toward the boiling cauldron which had been the Municipal Building, the litter of smashed cars and vans, and the roaring stream that no bridge spanned. The engine cranked up to insane revs, souls howling in a discordant frenzy, and the bright, misty glow began to spread backward, engulfing the car.

For one single moment the Gaunt-thing looked out the drooping, melting driver’s-side window at Alan, seeming to mark him forever with its red, lozenge-shaped eyes, and its mouth opened in a yawning snarl.

Then the Tucker began to roll.

It picked up speed as it went downhill, and the changes picked up speed, as well. The car melted, rearranged itself The roof peeled backward, the shiny hubcaps grew spokes, the tires grew simultaneously higher and thinner. A form began to extrude itself from the remains of the Tucker’s grille. It was a black horse with eyes as red as Mr.

Gaunt’s, a horse encased in a milky shroud of brightness, a horse whose hooves struck up fire from the pavement and left deep, smoking tracks impressed in the center of the street.

The Talisman had become an open buckboard with a hunchbacked dwarf sitting up high on the seat. The dwarf’s boots were propped on the splashboard, and the caliph-curled toes of those boots appeared to be on fire.

And still the changes were not done. As the glowing buckboard raced toward the lower end of Main Street, the sides began to grow; a wooden roof with overhanging eaves knit itself out of that nourishing protean shroud. A window appeared. The spokes of the wheels took on ghostly flashes of color as the wheels themselvesand the hooves of the black horse-left the pavement.

The Talisman had become a buckboard; the buckboard now became a medicine-show wagon of the sort which might have crisscrossed the country a hundred years ago. There was a legend written on the side, and Alan could just make it out.

it said.

Fifteen feet in the air and still rising, the wagon passed through the flames sprawling out from the ruins of the Municipal Building.

The hooves of the black horse galloped on some invisible road in the sky, still striking off sparks of brilliant blue and orange.

It rose over Castle Stream, a glowing box in the sky; it passed over the downed bridge which lay in the torrent like the skeleton of a dinosaur.

Then a raft of smoke from the burning hulk of the Municipal Building blew across Main Street, and when the smoke cleared, Leland Gaunt and his hellwagon were gone.

18

Alan walked Polly down to the cruiser which had brought Norris and Seaton upstreet from the Municipal Building. Norris was still sitting in the window, clinging to the flasher-bars. He was too weak to lower himself back inside without falling.

Alan slipped his hands around Norris’s belly (not that Norris, who was built like a tent-peg, had much) and helped him to the ground. “Norris?”

“What, Alan?” Norris was weeping. “From now on you can change your clothes in the crapper any time you want,” Alan said. “Okay?” Norris did not seem to hear. Alan had felt the blood soaking into his First Deputy’s shirt. “How bad are you hit?”

“Not too bad. At least I don’t think so. But this"-he swept his hand at the town, encompassing all the burning and all the rubble"all this is my fault. Mine!”

“You’re wrong,” Polly said. “You don’t understand!” Norris’s face was a twisted rag of grief and shame. “I’m the one who slashed Hugh Priest’s tires! I set him off!”

“Yes,” Polly said, “probably you did. You’ll have to live with that. Just as I’m the one who set Ace Merrill off, and I’ll have to live with that.” She pointed toward where Catholics and Baptists were straggling off in different directions, unhampered by the few dazed cops who were still standing. Some of the religious warriors were walking alone; some walked together. Father Brigham appeared to be supporting Rev. Rose, and Nan Roberts had her arm around Henry Payton’s waist. “But who set them off, Norris? And Wilma? And Nettle? And all the others? All I can say is that if you did it all yourself, you must be a real bear for work.”

Norris burst into loud, anguished sobs. “I’m just so sorry.”

“So am I,” Polly said quietly. “My heart is broken.” Alan gave Norris and Polly a brief hug, and then leaned in the passenger window of Seat’s cruiser. “How are you feeling, old buddy?”

“Pretty perky,” Seat said. He looked, in fact, absolutely agogConfused, but agog. “You folks look lots worsen I do.”

“I think we better get Norris to the hospital, Seat. If you’ve got room in there, we could all go.”

“You bet, Alan! Climb in! Which hospital?”

“Northern Cumberland,” Alan said. “There’s a little boy there I want to see. I want to make sure his father got to him.”

“Alan, did I see what I thought I saw? Did that fella’s car turn into a wagon and go flying off into the sky?”

“I don’t know, Seat,” Alan said, “and I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth: I never want to know.”

Henry Payton had just arrived, and now he touched Alan on the shoulder. His eyes were shocked and strange. He had the look of a man who will soon make some big changes in his way of living, his way of thinking, or both. “What happened, Alan?” he asked.

“What really happened in this goddam town?” It was Polly who answered. “There was a sale. The biggest going-out-of-business sale you ever saw… but in the end, some of us decided not to buy.” Alan had opened the door and helped Norris into the front seat. Now he touched Polly’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. Norris is hurting, and he’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Hey!” Henry said. “I’ve got a lot of questions, and-”

“Save them.” Alan got in back next to Polly and closed the door. “We’ll talk tomorrow, but for now I’m off-duty. In fact, I think

I’m off-duty in this town forever. Be content with this-it’s over. Whatever went on in Castle Rock is over.”

“But-” Alan leaned forward and tapped Seat on one bony shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said quietly. “And don’t spare the horses.” Seat began to drive, heading up Main Street, heading north. The cruiser turned left at the fork and began to climb Castle Hill toward Castle View. As they topped the hill, Alan and Polly turned back together to look at the town, where fire bloomed like rubles. Alan felt sadness, and loss, and a strange, cheated grief. My town, he thought. It was my town. But not anymore. Not ever again. They turned to face forward again at the same instant, and ended up looking into each other’s eyes instead.

“You will never know,” she said softly. “What really happened to Annie and Todd that day-you will never know.”

“And no longer want to,” Alan Pangborn said. He kissed her cheek gently. “That belongs in the darkness. Let the darkness bear it away.”

They topped the View and picked up Route 119 on the other side, and Castle Rock was gone; the darkness had borne that away, too.

YOU’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.

Sure you have. Sure. I never forget a face.

Come on over, let me shake your hand! Tell you something: I recognized you by the way you walk even before I saw your face good.

You couldn’t have picked a better day to come back to junction City, the nicest little town in Iowa-at least on this side of Ames. Go ahead, you can laugh; it was meant as a joke.

Can you sit a spell with me? Right here on this bench by the War Memorial will be fine. The sun’s warm and from here we can see just about all of downtown. You want to mind the splinters, that’s all; this bench has been here since Hector was a pup. Nowlook over there.

No, a little to your right. The building where the windows have been soaped over. That used to be Sam Peebles’s office. Real-estate man, and a damned good one. Then he married Naomi Higgins from down the road in Proverbia and off they went, just like young folks almost always do these days. from That place of his stood empty for over a year-the econ y’s been rotten out here since all that Mideast business started-but now somebody’s finally taken it over. Been lots of talk about it, too, I want to tell you. But you know how it is; in a place like junction City, where things don’t change much from one year to the next, the openin of a new store is big news. Won’t be long, either, from the look of things; the last of the workmen packed up their tools and left last Friday. Now what I think isWho?

Oh, her! Why, that’s Irma Skillins. She used to be the principal atjun ’ ction City High School-the first woman principal in this part of the state, I heard. She retired two years ago, and it seems like she retired from everything else at the same time-Eastern Star, Daughters of the American Revolution, the junction City Players.

She even quit the church choir, I understand. I imagine part of it’s the rheumatiz-she’s got it awful bad now. See the way she leans on that cane of hers? A person gets like that, I imagine they’d do just about anything to get a little relief.

Look at that! Checking that new store out pretty close, ain’t she? Well, why not? She may be old, but she ain’t dead, not by a long chalk. Besides, you know what they say; ’twas curiosity killed the cat, but it was satisfaction that brought him back.

Can I read the sign? You bet I can! I got glasses two years ago, but they’re just for close work; my long vision has never been better.

It says OPENING SOON on top, and under that, ANSWERED PRAYERS, A NEW KIND OF STORE. And the last line-wait a minute, it’s a little smaller-the last line says You won’t believe your eyes! I probably will, though. It says in Ecclesiastes that there ain’t nothing new under the sun, and I pretty much hold to that. But Irma will be back.

If nothing else, I imagine she’ll want to get a good look at whoever it was decided to put that bright red awning over Sam Peebles’s old office!

I might even have a look inside myself I suppose most everyone in town will before everything’s said and done.

Interesting name for a store, ain’t it? Answered Prayers. Makes you wonder what’s for sale inside.

Why, with a name like that it could be anything.

Anything at all.

October 24, 1988

January 28, 1991