Needful Things

by Stephen King

  "It is a sinful abomination," Rev. Rose said. The color had faded from his cheeks. His nostrils flared.

  "That's a moral judgment, not a legal one. It's done this way all over the country."

  "Yes," Rev. Rose said. He got to his feet, clutching his Bible before him like a shield. "By the Catholics. The Catholics love gambling. I intend to put a stop to this, Chief-uh Pangborn. With your help or without it."

  Alan also got up. "A couple of things, Reverend Rose. It's Sheriff Pangborn, not Chief. And I can't tell you what to say from your pulpit any more than I can tell Father Brigham what sort of events he can run in his church, or the Daughters of Isabella Hall, or the K of C Hall--as long as they're not expressly forbidden by the State's laws, that is--but I can warn you to be careful, and I think I have to warn you to be careful."

  Rose looked at him coldly. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that you're upset. The posters your people have been putting up around town are okay, and the letters to the paper are okay, but there's a line of infringement you must not cross. My advice is to let this one go by."

  "When-uh Jesus saw the whores and the money-lenders in-uh the Temple, He did not consult any written Code of Laws, Sheriff. When-uh Jesus saw those evil men and women defiling the house of the Lord-uh, He looked for no line of infringement. Our Lord did what He-uh knew to be right!"

  "Yes," Alan said calmly, "but you're not Him."

  Rose looked at him for a long moment, eyes blazing like gas-jets, and Alan thought: Uh-oh. This guy's just as mad as a hatter.

  "Good day, Chief Pangborn," Rose said coldly.

  This time Alan did not bother to correct him. He only nodded and held out his hand, knowing perfectly well it would not be shaken. Rose turned and stalked toward the door, Bible still held against his chest.

  "Let this one go by, Reverend Rose, okay?" Alan called after him.

  Rose neither turned nor spoke. He strode out the door and slammed it shut behind him hard enough to rattle the glass in the frame. Alan sat down behind his desk and pressed the heels of his palms to his temples.

  A few moments later, Sheila Brigham poked her head timidly in through the door. "Alan?"

  "Is he gone?" Alan asked without looking up.

  "The preacher? Yes. He slammed out of here like a March wind."

  "Elvis has left the building," Alan said hollowly.

  "What?"

  "Never mind." He looked up. "I'd like some hard drugs, please. Would you check the evidence locker, Sheila, and see what we have?"

  She smiled. "Already have. The cupboard's bare, I'm afraid. Would a cup of coffee do?"

  He smiled back. The afternoon had begun, and it had to be better than this morning--had to. "Sold."

  "Good deal." She closed the door, and Alan at last let his hands out of jail. Soon a series of blackbirds was flying through a band of sunshine on the wall across from the window.

  7

  On Thursdays, the last period of the day at Castle Rock Middle School was set aside for activities. Because he was an honor student and would not be enrolled in a school activity until casting for the Winter Play took place, Brian Rusk was allowed to leave early on that day--it balanced out his late Tuesdays very nicely.

  This Thursday afternoon he was out the side door almost before the sixth-period bell had stopped ringing. His packsack contained not only his books but the rain-slicker his mother had made him wear that morning, and it bulged comically on his back.

  He rode away fast, his heart beating hard in his chest. He had something (a deed)

  to do. A little chore to get out of the way. Sort of a fun chore, actually. He now knew what it was. It had come to him clearly as he had been daydreaming his way through math class.

  As Brian descended Castle Hill by way of School Street, the sun came out from behind the tattering clouds for the first time that day. He looked to his left and saw a shadow-boy on a shadow-bike keeping pace with him on the wet pavement.

  You'll have to go fast to keep up with me today, shadow-kid, he thought. I got places to go and things to do.

  Brian pedaled through the business district without looking across Main Street at Needful Things, pausing briefly at intersections for a perfunctory glance each way before hurrying on again. When he reached the intersection of Pond (which was his street) and Ford streets, he turned right instead of continuing up Pond Street to his house. At the intersection of Ford and Willow, he turned left. Willow Street paralleled Pond Street; the back yards of the houses on the two streets backed up against each other, divided in most cases by board fences.

  Pete and Wilma Jerzyck lived on Willow Street.

  Got to be a little careful here.

  But he knew how to be careful; he had worked all that out in his mind on the ride from school, and it had come easily, almost as though it had also been there all along, like his knowledge of the thing he was supposed to do.

  The Jerzyck house was quiet and the driveway was empty, but that didn't necessarily make everything safe and okay. Brian knew that Wilma worked at least part of the time at Hemphill's Market out on Route 117, because he had seen her there, running a cash-register with the ever-present scarf tied over her head, but that didn't mean she was there now. The beat-up little Yugo she drove might be parked in the Jerzyck garage, where he couldn't see.

  Brian pedaled his bike up the driveway, got off, and put down the kickstand. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears and his throat now. It sounded like the ruffle of drums. He walked to the front door, rehearsing the lines he would speak if it turned out Mrs. Jerzyck was there after all.

  Hi, Mrs. Jerzyck, I'm Brian Rusk, from the other side of the block? I go to the Middle School and pretty soon we're going to be selling magazine subscriptions, so the band can get new uniforms, and I've been asking people if they want magazines. So I can come back later when I've got my sales kit. We get prizes if we sell a lot.

  It had sounded good when he was working it out in his head, and it still sounded good, but he felt tense all the same. He stood on the doorstep for a minute, listening for sounds inside the house--a radio, a TV tuned to one of the stories (not Santa Barbara, though; it wouldn't be Santa Barbara time for another couple of hours), maybe a vacuum. He heard nothing, but that didn't mean any more than the empty driveway.

  Brian rang the doorbell. Faintly, somewhere in the depths of the house, he heard it: BingBong!

  He stood on the stoop, waiting, looking around occasionally to see if anyone had noticed him, but Willow Street seemed fast asleep. And there was a hedge in front of the Jerzyck house. That was good. When you were up to

  (a deed)

  something that people--your Ma and Pa, for instance--wouldn' t exactly approve of, a hedge was about the best thing in the world.

  It had been half a minute, and nobody was coming. So far so good ... but it was also better to be safe than sorry. He rang the doorbell again, thumbing it twice this time, so the sound from the belly of the house was BingBong! BingBong!

  Still nothing.

  Okay, then. Everything was perfectly okay. Everything was, in fact, most sincerely awesome and utterly radical.

  Sincerely awesome and utterly radical or not, Brian could not resist another look around--a rather furtive one this time--as he trundled his bike, with the kickstand still down, between the house and the garage. In this area, which the friendly folks at the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company in South Paris called a breezeway, Brian parked his bike again. Then he walked on into the back yard. His heart was pounding harder than ever. Sometimes his voice shook when his heart was pounding hard like this. He hoped that if Mrs. Jerzyck was out back, planting bulbs or something, his voice wouldn't shake when he told her about the magazine subscriptions. If it did, she might suspect he wasn't telling the truth. And that could lead to kinds of trouble he didn't even want to think about.

  He halted near the back of the house. He could see part of the Jerzyck back yard, but not all of it. And suddenly this didn't seem
like so much fun anymore. Suddenly it seemed like a mean trick--no more than that, but certainly no less. An apprehensive voice suddenly spoke up in his mind. Why not just climb back on your bike again, Brian? Go on back home. Have a glass of milk and think this over.

  Yes. That seemed like a very good--a very sane--idea. He actually began to turn around ... and then a picture came to him, one which was a great deal more powerful than the voice. He saw a long black car--a Cadillac or maybe a Lincoln Mark IV--pulling up in front of his house. The driver's door opened and Mr. Leland Gaunt stepped out. Only Mr. Gaunt was no longer wearing a smoking jacket like the one Sherlock Holmes wore in some of the stories. The Mr. Gaunt who now strode across the landscape of Brian's imagination wore a formidable black suit--the suit of a funeral director--and his face was no longer friendly. His dark-blue eyes were even darker in anger, and his lips had pulled back from his crooked teeth ... but not in a smile. His long, thin legs went scissoring up the walk to the Rusk front door, and the shadow-man attached to his heels looked like a hangman in a horror movie. When he got to the door he would not pause to ring the bell, oh no. He would simply barge in. If Brian's Ma tried to get in his way he would push her aside. If Brian's Pa tried to get in his way he would knock him down. And if Brian's little brother, Sean, tried to get in his way he would heave him the length of the house, like a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary. He would stride upstairs, bellowing Brian's name, and the roses on the wallpaper would wilt when that hangman's shadow passed over them.

  He'd find me, too, Brian thought. His face as he stood by the side of the Jerzyck house was a study in dismay. It wouldn't matter if I tried to hide. It wouldn't matter if I went all the way to BOMBA Y. He'd find me. And when he did--

  He tried to block the picture, to turn it off, and couldn't. He saw Mr. Gaunt's eyes growing, turning into blue chasms which went down and down into some horrid indigo eternity. He saw Mr. Gaunt's long hands, with their queerly even fingers, turning into claws as they descended upon his shoulders. He felt his skin crawl at that loathsome touch. He heard Mr. Gaunt bellowing: You have something of mine, Brian, and you haven't paid for it!

  I'll give it back! he heard himself screaming at that twisted, burning face. Please oh please I'll give it back I'll give it back, just don't hurt me!

  Brian returned to himself, as dazed as he had been when he came out of Needful Things on Tuesday afternoon. The feeling -now wasn't as pleasant as it had been then.

  He didn't want to give back the Sandy Koufax card, that was the thing.

  He didn't want to, because it was his.

  8

  Myra Evans stepped under the awning of Needful Things just as her best friend's son was finally walking into Wilma Jerzyck's back yard. Myra's glance, first behind her and then across Main Street, was even more furtive than Brian's glance across Willow Street had been.

  If Cora--who really was her best friend--knew she was here, and, more important, why she was here, she would probably never speak to Myra again. Because Cora wanted the picture, too.

  Never mind that, Myra thought. Two sayings occurred to her, and both seemed to fit this situation. First come, first served was one. What she doesn't know won't hurt her was the other.

  All the same, Myra had donned a large pair of Foster Grant sunglasses before coming downtown. Better safe than sorry was another worthwhile piece of advice.

  Now she advanced slowly on the door and studied the sign which hung there:

  TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

  Myra did not have an appointment. She had come down here on the spur of the moment, galvanized into action by a call from Cora not twenty minutes ago.

  "I've been thinking about it all day! I've simply got to have it, Myra--I should have bought it on Wednesday, but I only had four dollars in my purse and I wasn't sure if he'd take a personal check. You know how embarrassing it is when people won't. I've been kicking myself ever since. Why, I hardly slept a wink last night. I know you'll think it's silly, but it's true."

  Myra didn't think it was silly at all, and she knew it was true, because she had hardly slept a wink last night, either. And it was wrong of Cora to assume that picture should be hers simply because she had seen it first--as if that gave her some sort of divine right, or something.

  "I don't believe she saw it first, anyway," Myra said in a small, sulky voice. "I think I saw it first."

  The question of who had seen that absolutely delicious picture first was really moot, anyway. What wasn't moot was how Myra felt when she thought of coming into Cora's house and seeing that picture of Elvis hung above the mantel, right between Cora's ceramic Elvis figure and Cora's porcelain Elvis beer-stein. When she thought of that, Myra's stomach rose to somewhere just under her heart and hung there, knotted like a wet rag. It was the way she'd felt during the first week of the war against Iraq.

  It wasn't right. Cora had all sorts of nice Elvis things, had even seen Elvis in concert once. That had been at the Portland Civic Center, a year or so before The King was called to heaven to be with his beloved mother.

  "That picture should be mine," she muttered, and, summoning all her courage, she knocked on the door.

  It was opened almost before she could lower her hand, and a narrow-shouldered man almost bowled her over on his way out.

  "Excuse me," he muttered, not raising his head, and she barely had time to register the fact that it was Mr. Constantine, the pharmacist at LaVerdiere's Super Drug. He hurried across the street and then onto the Town Common, holding a small wrapped package in his hands, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

  When she looked back, Mr. Gaunt was in the doorway, smiling at her with his cheery brown eyes.

  "I don't have an appointment ..." she said in a small voice. Brian Rusk, who had grown used to hearing Myra pronouncing on things in a tone of total authority and assurance, would not have recognized that voice in a million years.

  "You do now, dear lady," Mr. Gaunt said, smiling and standing aside. "Welcome back! Enter freely, and leave some of the happiness you bring!"

  After one final quick look around that showed her no one she knew, Myra Evans scurried into Needful Things.

  The door swung shut behind her.

  A long-fingered hand, as white as the hand of a corpse, reached up in the gloom, found the ring-pull which hung down, and drew the shade.

  9

  Brian didn't realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out in a long, whistling sigh.

  There was no one in the Jerzyck back yard.

  Wilma, undoubtedly encouraged by the improving weather, had hung out her wash before leaving for work or wherever she had gone. It flapped on three lines in the sunshine and freshening breeze. Brian went to the back door and peered in, shading the sides of his face with his hands to cut the glare. He was looking into a deserted kitchen. He thought of knocking and decided it was just another way to keep from doing what he had come to do. No one was here. The best thing was to complete his business and then get the hell out.

  He walked slowly down the steps and into the Jerzyck back yard. The clotheslines, with their freight of shirts, pants, underwear, sheets, and pillow-cases, were to the left. To the right was a small garden from which all the vegetables, with the exception of a few puny pumpkins, had been harvested. At the far end was a fence of pine boards. On the other side, Brian knew, was the Haverhills' place, only four houses down from his own.

  The heavy rain of the night before had turned the garden into a swamp; most of the remaining pumpkins sat half-submerged in puddles. Brian bent, picked up a handful of dark-brown garden muck in each hand, and then advanced on the clothesline with dribbles of brown water running between his fingers.

  The clothesline closest to the garden was hung with sheets along its entire length. They were still damp, but drying quickly in the breeze. They made lazy flapping sounds. They were pure, pristine white.

  Go on, Mr. Gaunt's voice whispered in his mind. Go for it, Brian-just lik
e Sandy Koufax. Go for it!

  Brian drew his hands back over his shoulders, palms up to the sky. He was not entirely surprised to find he had a hard-on again, as in his dream. He was glad he hadn't chickened out. This was going to be fun.

  He brought his hands forward, hard. The mud slung off his palms in long brown swoops that spread into fans before striking the billowing sheets. It splattered across them in runny, ropy parabolas.

  He went back to the garden, got two more handfuls, threw them at the sheets, went back, got more, and threw that, too. A kind of frenzy descended on him. He trundled busily back and forth, first getting the mud, then throwing it.

  He might have gone on all afternoon if someone hadn't yelled. At first he thought it was him the someone was yelling at. He hunched his shoulders and a terrified little squeal escaped him. Then he realized it was just Mrs. Haverhill, calling her dog from the other side of the fence.

  Just the same, he had to get out of here. And quick. He paused for a moment, though, looking at what he had done, and he felt a momentary quiver of shame and unease.

  The sheets had protected most of the clothes, but the sheets themselves were plastered with muck. There were only a few isolated white patches left to show what color they had originally been.

  Brian looked at his hands, which were caked with mud. Then he hurried over to the comer of the house, where there was a faucet bib. It hadn't been turned off yet; when he turned the handle, a cold stream of water poured from the spigot. He thrust his hands into it and rubbed them together hard. He washed until all the mud was gone, including the goo under his fingernails, unmindful of the spreading numbness. He even held his shirt-cuffs under the spigot.

  He turned off the faucet, went back to his bike, put up the kickstand, and walked it back down the driveway. He had a very bad moment when he saw a small yellow compact car coming, but it was a Civic, not a Yugo. It went past without slowing, its driver unmindful of the little boy with the red, chapped hands frozen beside his bike in the Jerzyck driveway, the little boy whose face was nearly a billboard with one word--GUILTY!--screaming across it.