Needful Things (102 page)

“
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 high-tension 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.

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 bag 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.

“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.

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 oatmeal-colored 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 Bernard—slouched across the front of You Sew and Sew in the spotlight thrown by the station wagon's headlights. And somewhere near—perhaps 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 was—

His 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 shimmering 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.