Needful Things (60 page)

Yes—there was one thing. On the far side of the room, a brown Norway rat was lying beneath the sprung arm of a large Victory rat-trap. Its neck was broken, its front teeth exposed in a dead snarl.

“Good job,” Mr. Gaunt said, rubbing his long-fingered hands together and smiling. “This has been a good evening's work, all told. You have performed to the top of my expectations, Ace—the very top.”

“Thanks, sir.” Ace was astounded. He had never in his life called any man sir until this moment.

“Here's a little something for your trouble.” Mr. Gaunt handed Ace a brown envelope. Ace pressed at it with the tips of his fingers and felt the loose grit of powder inside. “I believe you will want to do some investigating tonight, won't you? This might give you a little extra go-power, as the old Esso ads used to say.”

Ace started. “Oh, shit!
Shit!
I left that book—the book with the map in it—in my car! It's back in Boston! God
damn
it!” He made a fist and slammed it against his thigh.

Mr. Gaunt was smiling. “I don't think so,” he said. “I think it's in the Tucker.”

“No, I—”

“Why
not check for yourself?”

So Ace did, and of course the book was there, sitting on the dashboard with its spine pressing against the Tucker's patented pop-out windshield.
Lost and Buried Treasures of New England.
He took it and thumbed it. The map was still inside. He looked at Mr. Gaunt with dumb gratitude.

“I won't require your services again until tomorrow evening, around this same time,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I suggest you spend the daylight hours at your place in Mechanic Falls. That should suit you well enough; I believe you'll want to sleep late. You still have a busy night ahead of you, if I am not mistaken.”

Ace thought of the little crosses on the map and nodded.

“And,” Mr. Gaunt added, “it might be prudent for you to avoid the notice of Sheriff Pangborn for the next day or two. After that, I don't think it will matter.” His lips pulled back; his teeth sprang forward in large, predatory clumps. “By the end of the week, I think a lot of things which heretofore mattered a great deal to the citizens of this town are going to cease to matter at all. Don't you think so, Ace?”

“If you say so,” Ace replied. He was falling into that strange, dazed state again, and he didn't mind at all. “I don't know how I'm going to get around, though.”

“All taken care of,” Mr. Gaunt said. “You'll find a car parked out front with the keys in the ignition. A company car, so to speak. I'm afraid it's only a Chevrolet—a perfectly
ordinary
Chevrolet—but it will provide you with reliable, unobtrusive transportation, just the same. You'll enjoy the TV newsvan more, of course, but—”

“Newsvan? What newsvan?”

Mr. Gaunt elected not to answer. “But the Chevrolet will meet all your current transportation needs, I assure you. Just don't try to run any State Police speed-traps in it. I'm afraid that wouldn't do. Not with this vehicle. Not at all.”

Ace heard himself say: “I sure would like to have a car like your Tucker, Mr. Gaunt, sir. It's great.”

“Well, perhaps we can do a deal. You see, Ace, I
have a very simple business policy. Would you like to know what it is?”

“Sure.” And Ace was sincere.

“Everything is for sale. That's my philosophy. Everything is for sale.”

“Everything's for sale,” Ace said dreamily. “Wow! Heavy!”

“Right! Heavy! Now, Ace, I believe I'll have a bite to eat. I've just been too busy to do it, holiday or no holiday. I'd ask you to join me, but—”

“Gee, I really can't.”

“No, of course not. You have places to go and holes to dig, don't you? I'll expect you tomorrow night, between eight and nine.”

“Between eight and nine.”

“Yes. After dark.”

“When nobody knows and nobody sees,” Ace said dreamily.

“Got it in one! Goodnight, Ace.”

Mr. Gaunt held out his hand. Ace began to reach for it . . . and then saw there was already something in it. It was the brown rat from the trap in the storeroom. Ace pulled back with a little grunt of disgust. He hadn't the slightest idea when Mr. Gaunt had picked up the dead rat. Or perhaps it was a different one?

Ace decided he didn't care, one way or another. All he knew was that he had no plans to shake hands with a dead rat, no matter how cool a dude Mr. Gaunt was.

Smiling, Mr. Gaunt said: “Excuse me. Every year I grow a little more forgetful. I believe I just tried to give you my dinner, Ace!”

“Dinner,” Ace said in a faint little voice.

“Yes indeed.” A thick yellow thumbnail plunged into the white fur which covered the rat's belly; a moment later, its intestines were oozing into Mr. Gaunt's unmarked palm. Before Ace could see more, Mr. Gaunt had turned away and was pulling the alley door closed. “Now, where did I put that cheese—?”

There was a heavy metallic
snick!
as the lock engaged.

Ace leaned over, sure he was going to vomit between his shoes. His stomach clenched, his gorge rose . . . and then sank back again.

Because he hadn't
seen what he thought he'd seen. “It was a joke,” he muttered. “He had a rubber rat in his coat pocket, or something. It was just a joke.”

Was it? What about the intestines, then? And the cold, jellylike mung which had surrounded them? What about that?

You're just tired, he thought. You imagined it, that's all. It was a rubber rat. As for the rest . . . poof.

But for a moment everything—the deserted garage, the self-directed Tucker, even that ominous piece of graffiti,
YOGSOTHOTH RULES
—tried to cram in on him, and a powerful voice yelled: Get out of here! Get out while there's still time!

But that was the
really
crazy thought. There was money waiting for him out there in the night. Maybe a lot of it. Maybe a son-of-a-bitching
fortune.

Ace stood in the darkness for a few minutes like a robot with a flat power-pack. Little by little some sense of reality—some sense of
himself—
returned, and he decided the rat didn't matter. Neither did the Tucker Talisman. The blow mattered, and the map mattered, and he had an idea that Mr. Gaunt's very simple business policy mattered, but nothing else. He couldn't
let
anything else matter.

He walked down the alley and around the corner to the front of Needful Things. The shop was closed and dark, like all the shops on Lower Main Street. A Chevy Celebrity was parked in one of the slant spaces in front of Mr. Gaunt's shop, just as promised. Ace tried to remember if it had been there when he arrived with the Talisman, and really couldn't do it. Every time he tried to cast his mind back to any memories before the last few minutes, it ran into a roadblock; he saw himself moving to accept Mr. Gaunt's offered hand, most natural thing in the world, and suddenly realizing that Mr. Gaunt was holding a large dead rat.

I believe I'll have a bite to eat. I'd ask you to join me, but—

Well, it was just something else that didn't matter. The Chevy was here now, and that was all that did. Ace opened the door, put the book with the precious map inside it on the seat, then pulled the keys out of the ignition.
He went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He had a good idea of what he would find, and he wasn't disappointed. A pick and a short-handled spade were neatly crossed over each other in an X. Ace looked more closely and saw Mr. Gaunt had even put in a pair of heavy work gloves.

“Mr. Gaunt, you think of everything,” he said, and slammed the trunk. As he did, he saw there was a sticker on the Celebrity's rear bumper, and he bent closer to read it:

I
♥
ANTIQUES

Ace began to laugh. He was still laughing as he drove across the Tin Bridge and headed toward the old Treblehorn place, which he intended to make the site of his first dig. As he drove up Panderly's Hill on the other side of the bridge, he passed a convertible headed in the other direction, toward town. The convertible was filled with young men. They were singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” at the top of their voices, and in perfect one-part Baptist harmony.

One of those young men was Lester Ivanhoe Pratt. Following the touch-football game, he and a bunch of the guys had driven up to Lake Auburn, about twenty-five miles away. There was a week-long tent revival going on up there, and Vic Tremayne had said there would be a special five o'clock Columbus Day prayer-meeting and hymn-sing. Since Sally had Lester's car and they'd made no plans for the evening—no movie, no dinner out at McDonald's in South Paris—he'd gone along with Vic and the other guys, good Christian fellows every one.

He knew, of course, why the other guys were so eager to make the trip, and the reason wasn't religion—not
entirely
religion, anyway. There were always lots of pretty girls at the tent revivals which crisscrossed northern New England between May and the last state fair ox-pull at the end of October, and a good hymn-sing (not to mention a
mess of hot preaching and a dose of that oldtime Jesus spirit) always put them in a merry, eager mood.

Lester, who had a girl, looked upon the plans and schemes of his friends with the indulgence an old married man might show for the antics of a bunch of young bucks. He went along mostly to be friendly, and because he always liked to listen to some good preaching and do some singing after an exhilarating afternoon of head-knocking and body-blocking. It was the best way of cooling down he knew.

It had been a good meeting, but an awful lot of people had wanted to be saved at the end of it. As a result, it had gone on a little longer than Lester would have wished. He had been planning to call Sally and ask her if she wanted to go out to Weeksie's for an ice-cream soda or something. Girls liked to do things like that on the spur of the moment sometimes, he had noticed.

They crossed the Tin Bridge, and Vic let him out on the corner of Main and Watermill.

“Great game, Les!” Bill MacFarland called from the back seat.

“Sure was!” Lester called back cheerily. “Let's do it again Saturday—maybe I can break your arm instead of just spraining it!”

The four young men in Vic's car roared heartily at this piece of wit and then Vic drove away. The sound of “Jesus Is a Friend Forever” drifted back on air which was still strangely summery. You expected a chill to creep into it even during the warmest spells of Indian summer weather after the sun went down. Not tonight, though.

Lester walked slowly up the hill toward home, feeling tired and sore and utterly contented. Every day was a fine day when you'd given your heart to Jesus, but some days were finer than others. This had been one of the finest kind, and all he wanted right now was to shower up, call Sally, and then jump into bed.

He was looking up at the stars, trying to make out the constellation Orion, when he turned into his driveway. As a result he ran balls-first, and at a brisk walking pace, into the rear end of his Mustang.

“Oooof!”
Lester Pratt cried. He backed up, bent over, and clasped his wounded testicles. After a few moments,
he managed to raise his head and look at his car through eyes which were watering with pain. What the heck was his car doing here, anyway? Sally's Honda wasn't supposed to be out of the shop until at least Wednesday—probably Thursday or Friday, with the holiday and all.

Then, in a burst of bright pink-orange light, it came to him. Sally was inside! She had come over while he was out, and now she was waiting for him! Maybe she had decided that tonight was
the
night! Premarital sex was wrong, of course, but sometimes you had to break a few eggs in order to make an omelette. And he was certainly up to the task of atoning for that particular sin if she was.

“Rooty-toot-toot!” cried Lester Pratt enthusiastically. “Sweet little Sally in her birthday suit!”

He ran for the porch in a crabby little strut, still clutching his throbbing balls. Now, however, they were throbbing with anticipation as well as pain. He took the key from beneath the doormat and let himself in.

“Sally?” he called. “Sal, are you here? Sorry I'm late—I went over to the Lake Auburn revival meeting with some of the guys, and . . .”

He trailed off. There was no response, and that meant she wasn't here, after all. Unless . . . !

He hurried upstairs as fast as he could, suddenly sure he would find her asleep in his bed. She would open her eyes and sit up, the sheet falling away from her lovely breasts (which he had felt—well, sort of—but never actually seen); she would hold her arms out to him, those lovely, sleepy, cornflower-blue eyes opening wide, and by the time the clock struck ten, they would be virgins no longer. Rooty-toot!

But the bedroom was as empty as the kitchen and living room had been. The sheets and blankets were on the floor, as they almost always were; Lester was one of those fellows so full of energy and the holy spirit that he could not simply sit up and get out of bed in the morning; he
bounded
up, eager not just to meet the day but to blitz it, knock it to the greensward, and force it to cough up the ball.

Now, however, he walked downstairs with a frown creasing his wide, ingenuous face. The car was here, but Sally wasn't.
What did that mean? He didn't know, but he didn't much like it.

He flipped on the porch light and went out to look in the car; maybe she had left him a note. He got as far as the head of the porch steps, then froze. There was a note, all right. It had been written across the Mustang's windshield in hot-pink spray-paint, probably from his own garage. The big capital letters glared at him:

GO TO HELL YOU CHEATING BASTARD