Needful Things Part 61

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

"What did you call me? What did you call me?"

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

8.

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

He looked around for a moment at the weedy yard, the sagging barn, the cl.u.s.ters of blindly staring sunflowers. It's not much, but I think this is it, just the same, he thought. The place where I put the Corson Brothers behind me forever and get rich in the bargain. It's here-some of it or all of it. Right here. I can feel it.

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

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

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

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

Bills!

Sheafs and sheafs of bills!

With a cry he seized them, pulled them out... and saw that his eagerness had deceived him. It was only more trading stamps. Red Ball Stamps this time, a kind which had been redeemable only south of the Mason-Dixon line... and there only until 1964, when the company had gone out of business.

"s.h.i.+t fire and save matches!" Ace cried. He threw the stamps aside. They unfolded and began to tumble away in the light, hot breeze that had sprung up. Some of them caught and fluttered from the weeds like dusty banners. Ace cried. He threw the stamps aside. They unfolded and began to tumble away in the light, hot breeze that had sprung up. Some of them caught and fluttered from the weeds like dusty banners. "c.u.n.t! b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Sonofawh.o.r.e!" "c.u.n.t! b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Sonofawh.o.r.e!"

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

He felt in his pocket for the map again. There was one panicky second when he was afraid it wasn't there, that he had lost it somehow, but he had only pushed it all the way down to the bottom in his eagerness to get cracking. He yanked it out and looked at it. The other cross was out behind the barn... and suddenly a wonderful idea came into Ace's mind, lighting up the angry darkness in there like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July.

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

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

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

9.

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

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

A bad feeling began to creep over Ace; a very bad feeling indeed. It began in his belly, then spread upward to his chest and down to his b.a.l.l.s. His lips peeled back from his teeth, very slowly, in an ugly snarl.

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

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

Not far from the shovel and the uprooted rock, Ace saw a pile of loose dirt which had been sc.r.a.ped indifferently back into a hole. Ignoring both his own tools and the shovel which the thief had left behind, Ace fell on his knees again and began pawing dirt out of the hole. In no time at all, he had found the Crisco can.

He brought it out and pried off the lid.

There was nothing inside but a white envelope.

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

Dear Ace,I can't be sure you'll find this, but there's no law against hoping. Sending you to Shawshank was fun, but this has been better. I wish I could see your face when you finish reading this!Not long after I sent you up, I went to see Pop. I saw him pretty often-once a month, in fact. We had an arrangement: he gave me a hundred a month and I let him go on making his illegal loans. All very civilized. Halfway through this particular meeting, he excused himself to use the toilet-"something he et," he said. Ha-ha! I took the opportunity to peek in his desk, which he had left unlocked. Such carelessness was not like him, but I think he was afraid he might load his pants if he didn't go "to visit his Uncle John" right away. Ha!I only found one item of interest, but that one was a corker. It looked like a map. There were lots of crosses on it, but one of the crosses-the one marking this spot-was marked in red. I put the map back before Pop returned. He never knew I looked at it. I came out here right after he died and dug up this Crisco can. There was better than two hundred thousand dollars in it, Ace. Don't worry, though-I decided to "share and share alike" and am going to leave you exactly what you deserve.Welcome back to town, Ace-Hole!Yours sincerely,Alan PangbornCastle County SheriffP.S.: A word to the wise, Ace: now that you know, "take your lumps" and forget the whole thing. You know the old saying-finders keepers. If you ever try to brace me about your uncle's money, I will tear you a new a.s.shole and stuff your head into it.Trust me on this.A.P.

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

A single one-dollar bill fell out of it.

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

"You crab-infested b.a.s.t.a.r.d" b.a.s.t.a.r.d" Ace whispered, and picked up the dollar bill with shaking fingers. Ace whispered, and picked up the dollar bill with shaking fingers.

Welcome back to town, Ace-Hole!

"You SONOFAWh.o.r.e!" Ace screamed so loudly that he felt something in his throat strain and almost rupture. The echo came back dimly:... Ace screamed so loudly that he felt something in his throat strain and almost rupture. The echo came back dimly:... wh.o.r.e... wh.o.r.e... wh.o.r.e... wh.o.r.e... wh.o.r.e... wh.o.r.e...

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

Huh-uh. No way, Jose.

He was going to save this. The son of a b.i.t.c.h had wanted Pop's money, had he? He had stolen what rightfully belonged to Pop's last living relative, had he? Well, all right. Good. Fine. Fine. But he should have But he should have all all of it. And Ace intended to see that the Sheriff had just that. So, after he removed Pusbag's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es with his pocket-knife, he intended to stuff this dollar bill into the b.l.o.o.d.y hole where they had been. of it. And Ace intended to see that the Sheriff had just that. So, after he removed Pusbag's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es with his pocket-knife, he intended to stuff this dollar bill into the b.l.o.o.d.y hole where they had been.

"You want the money, Daddy-O?" Ace asked in a soft, musing voice. "Okay. That's okay. No problem... No... f.u.c.king... problem."

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

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

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

1.

By quarter to six, a weird twilight had begun to creep over Castle Rock; thunderheads were stacking up on the southern horizon. Low, distant boomings muttered over the woods and fields from that direction. The clouds were moving toward town, growing as they came. The streetlights, governed by a master photoelectric cell, came on a full half hour earlier than they usually did at that time of year.

Lower Main Street was a crowded confusion. It had been overrun by State Police vehicles and TV newsvans. Radio calls crackled and entwined in the hot, still air. TV technicians paid out cable and yelled at the people-kids, mostly-who tripped over the loose lengths of it before they could anchor it temporarily to the pavement with duct tape. Photographers from four daily papers stood outside the barricades in front of the Munic.i.p.al Building and took stills which would appear on front pages the following day. A few locals-surprisingly few, if anyone had bothered to notice such things-rubbernecked. A TV correspondent stood in the glare of a hi-intensity lamp and taped his report with the Munic.i.p.al Building in the background. "A senseless wave of violence swished through Castle Rock this afternoon," he began, then stopped. "Swished?" "Swished?" he asked himself disgustedly. "s.h.i.+t, let's take it again from the top." To his left, a TV-dude from another station was watching his crew prepare for what would be a live feed in less than twenty minutes. More of the onlookers had been drawn to the familiar faces of the TV correspondents than to the barricades, where there had been nothing to see since two orderlies from Medical a.s.sistance had brought out the unfortunate Lester Pratt in a black plastic bag, loaded him into the back of their ambulance, and driven away. he asked himself disgustedly. "s.h.i.+t, let's take it again from the top." To his left, a TV-dude from another station was watching his crew prepare for what would be a live feed in less than twenty minutes. More of the onlookers had been drawn to the familiar faces of the TV correspondents than to the barricades, where there had been nothing to see since two orderlies from Medical a.s.sistance had brought out the unfortunate Lester Pratt in a black plastic bag, loaded him into the back of their ambulance, and driven away.

Upper Main, away from the blue strobes of the State Police cruisers and the bright pools of the TV lights, was almost entirely deserted.

Almost.

Every now and then a car or a pick-up truck would park in one of the slant s.p.a.ces in front of Needful Things. Every now and then a pedestrian would saunter up to the new shop, where the display lights were off and the shade was pulled down on the door under the canopy. Every now and then one of the rubberneckers on Lower Main would break away from the s.h.i.+fting knot of onlookers and walk up the street, past the vacant lot where the Emporium Galorium had once stood, past You Sew and Sew, closed and dark, to the new store.

No one noticed this trickle of visitors-not the police, not the camera crews, not the correspondents, not the majority of the bystanders. They were looking at the scene of the crime, and their backs were turned to the place where, less than three hundred yards away, the crime was still going on.

If some disinterested observer had had been keeping an eye on Needful Things, he or she would have quickly detected a pattern. The visitors approached. The visitors saw the sign in the window which read been keeping an eye on Needful Things, he or she would have quickly detected a pattern. The visitors approached. The visitors saw the sign in the window which read CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

The visitors stepped back, identical expressions of frustration and distress on their faces-they looked like hurting junkies who had discovered the pusherman wasn't where he'd promised to be. What do I do now? What do I do now? their faces said. Most stepped forward to read the sign again, as if a second, closer scrutiny would somehow change the message. their faces said. Most stepped forward to read the sign again, as if a second, closer scrutiny would somehow change the message.

A few got into their cars and left or wandered down toward the Munic.i.p.al Building to stare at the free show for awhile, looking dazed and vaguely disappointed. On the faces of most, however, an expression of sudden comprehension dawned. They had the look of people suddenly understanding some basic concept, like how to diagram simple sentences or reduce a pair of fractions to their lowest common denominator.

These people walked around the corner to the service alley which ran behind the business buildings on Main Street-the alley where Ace had parked the Tucker Talisman the night before.

Forty feet down, an oblong of yellow light fell out of an open door and across the patched concrete. This light grew slowly brighter as day slipped into evening. A shadow lay in the center of the oblong, like a silhouette cut from mourner's crepe. The shadow belonged, of course, to Leland Gaunt.

He had placed a table in the doorway. On it was a Roi-Tan cigar box. He put the money which his customers tendered into this box and made change from it. These patrons approached hesitantly, even fearfully in some cases, but all of them had one thing in common: they were angry people with heavy grudges to tote. A few-not many-turned away before they reached Mr. Gaunt's makes.h.i.+ft counter. Some went running, with the wide eyes of men and women who have glimpsed a frightful fiend licking its chops in the shadows. Most, however, stayed to do business. And as Mr. Gaunt bantered with them, treating this odd back-door commerce as an amusing diversion at the end of a long day, they relaxed.

Mr. Gaunt had enjoyed his shop, but he never felt so comfortable behind plate-gla.s.s and under a roof as he did here, on the edge of the air, with the first breezes of the coming storm stirring his hair. The shop, with its clever display lights on ceiling-mounted tracks, was all right... but this was better. This was always always better. better.

He had begun business many years ago-as a wandering peddler on the blind face of a distant land, a peddler who carried his wares on his back, a peddler who usually came at the fall of darkness and was always gone the next morning, leaving bloodshed, horror, and unhappiness behind him. Years later, in Europe, as the Plague raged and the deadcarts rolled, he had gone from town to town and country to country in a wagon drawn by a slat-thin white horse with terrible burning eyes and a tongue as black as a killer's heart. He had sold his wares from the back of the wagon... and was gone before his customers, who paid with small, ragged coins or even in barter, could discover what they had really really bought. bought.

Times changed; methods changed; faces, too. But when the faces were needful they were always the same, the faces of sheep who have lost their shepherd, and it was with this sort of commerce that he felt most at home, most like that wandering peddler of old, standing not behind a fancy counter with a Sweda cash register nearby but behind a plain wooden table, making change out of a cigar-box and selling them the same item over and over and over again.

The goods which had so attracted the residents of Castle Rock-the black pearls, the holy relics, the carnival gla.s.s, the pipes, the old comic books, the baseball cards, the antique kaleidoscopes-were all gone. Mr. Gaunt had gotten down to his real business, and at the end of things, the real business was always the same. The ultimate item had changed with the years, just like everything else, but such changes were surface things, frosting of different flavors on the same dark and bitter cake.

At the end, Mr. Gaunt always sold them weapons... and they always bought.

"Why, thank you, Mr. Warburton!" Mr. Gaunt said, taking a five-dollar bill from the black janitor. He handed him back a single and one of the automatic pistols Ace had brought from Boston.

"Thank you, Miss Milliken!" He took ten and gave back eight.

He charged them what they could afford-not a penny more or a penny less. Each according to his means was Mr. Gaunt's motto, and never mind each according to his needs, because they were all all needful things, and he had come here to fill their emptiness and end their aches. needful things, and he had come here to fill their emptiness and end their aches.

"Good to see you, Mr. Emerson!"

Oh, it was always good, so very good, to be doing business in the old way again. And business had never been better.

2.

Alan Pangborn wasn't in Castle Rock. While the reporters and the State Police gathered at one end of Main Street and Leland Gaunt conducted his going-out-of-business sale halfway up the hill, Alan was sitting at the nurses' station of the Blumer Wing in Northern c.u.mberland Hospital in Bridgton.

The Blumer Wing was small-only fourteen patient rooms-but what it lacked in size it made up for in color. The walls of the inpatient rooms were painted in bright primary shades. A mobile hung from the ceiling in the nurses' station, the birds depending from it swinging and dipping gracefully around a central spindle.

Alan was sitting in front of a huge mural which depicted a medley of Mother Goose rhymes. One section of the mural showed a man leaning across a table, holding something out to a small boy, obviously a hick, who looked both frightened and fascinated. Something about this particular image had struck Alan, and a s.n.a.t.c.h of childhood rhyme rose like a whisper in his mind: Simple Simon met a pie-mangoing to the fair."Simple Simon," said the pie-man,"come and taste my wares!"

A ripple of gooseflesh had broken out on Alan's arms-tiny b.u.mps like beads of cold sweat. He couldn't say why, and that seemed perfectly normal. Never in his entire life had he felt as shaken, as scared, as deeply confused as he did right now. Something totally beyond his ability to understand was happening in Castle Rock. It had become clearly apparent only late this afternoon, when everything had seemed to blow sky-high at once, but it had begun days, maybe even a week, ago. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerzyck had been only the first outward signs.

And he was terribly afraid that things were still progressing while he sat here with Simple Simon and the pie-man.

A nurse, Miss Hendrie according to the small name-plate on her breast, walked up the corridor on faintly squeaking crepe soles, weaving her way gracefully among the toys which littered the hall. When Alan came in, half a dozen kids, some with limbs in casts or slings, some with the partial baldness he a.s.sociated with chemotherapy treatments, had been playing in the hall, trading blocks and trucks, shouting amiably to each other. Now it was the supper hour, and they had gone either down to the cafeteria or back to their rooms.

"How is he?" Alan asked Miss Hendrie.

"No change." She looked at Alan with a calm expression which contained an element of hostility. "Sleeping. He should should be sleeping. He has had a great shock." be sleeping. He has had a great shock."

"What do you hear from his parents?"

"We called the father's place of employment in South Paris. He had an installation job over in New Hamps.h.i.+re this afternoon. He's left for home, I understand, and will be informed when he arrives. He should get here around nine, I would think, but of course it's impossible to tell."

"What about the mother?"

"I don't know," Miss Hendrie said. The hostility was more apparent now, but it was no longer aimed at Alan. "I didn't make that call. All I know is what I see-she's not here. This little boy saw his brother commit suicide with a rifle, and although it happened at home, the mother is not here yet. You'll have to excuse me now-I have to fill the med-cart."

"Of course," Alan muttered. He watched her as she started away, then rose from his chair. "Miss Hendrie?"

She turned to him. Her eyes were still calm, but her raised brows expressed annoyance.

"Miss Hendrie, I really do need to talk with Sean Rusk. I think I need to talk to him very badly."

"Oh?" Her voice was cool.

"Something-" Alan suddenly thought of Polly and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and pushed on. "Something is going on in my town. The suicide of Brian Rusk is only part of it, I believe. And I also believe that Sean Rusk may have the key to the rest of it."

"Sheriff Pangborn, Sean Rusk is only seven years old. And if he does does know something, why aren't there other policemen here?" know something, why aren't there other policemen here?"

Other policemen, he thought. What she means are qualified qualified policemen. Policemen who don't interview eleven-year-old boys on the street and then send them home to commit suicide in the garage. policemen. Policemen who don't interview eleven-year-old boys on the street and then send them home to commit suicide in the garage.