Needful Things (49 page)

Mr. Gaunt thought of himself as an electrician of the human soul. In a small town like Castle Rock, all the fuse-boxes were lined up neatly side by side. What you had to do was open the boxes . . . and then start cross-wiring. You hot-wired a Wilma Jerzyck to a Nettie Cobb by using wires from two other fuse-boxes—those of a young fellow like Brian Rusk and a drunk fellow like Hugh Priest, let us say. You hot-wired other people in the same way, a Buster Keeton to a Norris Ridgewick, a Frank Jewett to a George Nelson, a Sally Ratcliffe to a Lester Pratt.

At some point you tested one of your fabulous wiring jobs just to make sure everything was working correctly—as he had done today—and then you laid low and sent a charge through the circuits every once in a while to keep things interesting. To keep things hot. But mostly you just laid low until everything was done . . . and then you turned on the juice.

All
the juice.

All at once.

All it took was an understanding of human nature, and—

“Of course it's
really
a question of supply and demand,” Leland Gaunt mused as he looked out over the sleeping town.

And why? Well . . . just because, actually. Just because.

People always thought in terms of souls, and of course he would take as many of those as he could when he closed up shop; they were to Leland Gaunt what trophies were to the hunter, what stuffed fish were to the fisherman. They were worth little to him these days in any practical sense, but he still bagged his limit if he possibly could, no matter what he might say to the contrary; to do any less would not be playing the game.

Yet it was mostly amusement, not souls, that kept him going. Simple amusement. It was the only reason that mattered after a while, because when the years were long, you took diversion where you could find it.

Mr. Gaunt took his hands from behind his back—those hands which revolted anyone unlucky enough to feel their crepitant touch—and locked them together tightly, the knuckles of his right hand pressing into the palm of his left, the knuckles of his left pressing into the palm of his right. His fingernails were long and thick and yellow. They were also very sharp, and after a moment or two they cut into the skin of his fingers, bringing a blackish-red flow of thick blood.

Brian Rusk cried out in his sleep.

Myra Evans thrust her hands into the fork of her crotch and began to masturbate furiously—in her dream, The King was making love to her.

Danforth Keeton dreamed he was lying in the middle of the homestretch at Lewiston Raceway, and he covered his face with his hands as the horses bore down on him.

Sally Ratcliffe dreamed she opened the door of Lester Pratt's Mustang only to see it was full of snakes.

Hugh Priest screamed himself awake from a dream in which Henry Beaufort, the bartender at The Mellow Tiger, poured lighter fluid all over his fox-tail and set it on fire.

Everett Frankel, Ray Van Allen's Physician's Assistant, dreamed he slipped his new pipe into his mouth only to discover the stem had turned into a razor-blade and he had cut off his own tongue.

Polly Chalmers began to moan softly, and inside the small silver charm she wore something stirred and moved with a rustling like the whir of small dusty wings. And it sent up a faint, dusty aroma . . . like a tremor of violets.

Leland Gaunt relaxed his grip slowly. His big, crooked teeth were exposed in a grin which was both cheerful and surpassingly ugly. All over Castle Rock, dreams blew away and uneasy sleepers rested easy once more.

For now.

Soon the sun would be up. Not long after that a new day would begin, with all its surprises and wonders. He believed the time had come to hire an assistant . . . not that the assistant would be immune to the process which he had now set in motion. Heavens, no.

That would spoil all the fun.

Leland Gaunt stood at the window and looked at the town below, spread out, defenseless, in all that lovely darkness.

Monday the 14th of October, Columbus Day, dawned fair and hot in Castle Rock. The residents grumbled about the heat, and when they met in groups—on the Town Common, at Nan's, on the benches in front of the Municipal Building—they told each other it was unnatural. Probably had something to do with the goddam oil-fires in Kuwait, they said, or maybe that hole in the ozone layer they were always blabbing about on TV. Several of the oldtimers declared it was never seventy degrees at seven o'clock in the morning during the second week of October when
they
were young.

This wasn't true, of course, and most (if not all) of them knew it; every two or three years you could count on Indian summer to get a little out of hand and there would be four or five days that felt like the middle of July. Then one morning you'd wake up with what felt like a summer cold only to see the front lawn stiff with frost and a snow-flurry or two breezing around in the chilly air. They knew all this, but as a topic of conversation, the weather was simply too good to ruin by acknowledging it. No one wanted to argue; arguments when the weather turned unseasonably hot were not a good idea. People were apt to get ugly, and if Castle Rock residents wanted a sobering example of what could happen when people got ugly, they only had to look as far as the intersection of Willow and Ford streets.

“Those two wimmin had it comin,” Lenny Partridge, the town's
oldest resident and premier gossip, opined as he stood on the steps of the bandbox county courthouse which took up the west wing of the Municipal Building. “Both of em crazier'n a pair of rats in a backed-up shit-house. That Cobb woman stuck a meat-fork in her husband, you know.” Lenny hitched at the truss beneath his baggy trousers. “Stuck him just like a pig, she did. Hot damn! Ain't some wimmin crazy?” He looked up at the sky and added: “Hot like this, there's apt to be more contention. I seen it before. First thing Sheriff Pangborn ort to do is order Henry Beaufort to keep the Tiger closed until the weather gets normal again.”

“That's jake with me, oldtimer,” Charlie Fortin said. “I c'n get my beer at Hemphill's for a day or two and do my drinkin at home.”

This earned him laughter from the loose knot of men around Lenny and a fierce scowl from Mr. Partridge himself. The group broke up. Most of these men had to work, holiday or no holiday. Already some of the rickety pulp-trucks parked in front of Nan's were pulling out, headed for logging operations in Sweden and Nodd's Ridge and out by Castle Lake.

Danforth “Buster” Keeton sat in his study, wearing only his underpants. The underpants were soggy. He hadn't left the room since Sunday evening, when he had made a brief trip down to the Municipal Building. He'd gotten the Bureau of Taxation file and brought it home. Castle Rock's Head Selectman was oiling his Colt revolver for the third time. At some point this morning he meant to load it. Then he meant to kill his wife. Then he meant to go down to the Municipal Building, find that son of a bitch Ridgewick (he had no idea that it was Norris's day off) and kill
him.
Last of all, he intended to lock himself in his office and kill himself. He had decided that the only way he could escape the Persecutors forever was by taking these steps. He had been a fool to think otherwise. Not even a board game which magically picked winners at the race-track
could stop Them. Oh no. He had learned that lesson yesterday when he had come home to find those terrible pink slips taped up all over the house.

The telephone on the desk rang. Startled, Keeton squeezed the Colt's trigger. There was a dry snap. If the gun had been loaded, he would have put a bullet spang through the study door.

He scooped the phone up. “Can't you people leave me alone for even a little while?” he shouted angrily.

The quiet voice which replied silenced him at once. It was the voice of Mr. Gaunt, and it poured over Keeton's blistered soul like soothing balm.

“What luck did you have with the toy I sold you, Mr. Keeton?”

“It worked!” Keeton said. His voice was jubilant. He forgot, at least for the moment, that he was planning a strenuous morning of murder and suicide. “I collected on every race, by God!”

“Well, that's fine,” Mr. Gaunt said warmly.

Keeton's face clouded again. His voice dropped to what was almost a whisper. “Then . . . yesterday . . . when I got home . . .” He found he could not go on. A moment later he discovered—to his great amazement and even greater delight—that he didn't have to.

“You discovered They had been in your house?” Mr. Gaunt asked.

“Yes!
Yes!
How did you kn—”

“They are everywhere in this town,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I told you that when last we met, did I not?”

“Yes! And—” Keeton broke off suddenly. His face twisted in alarm. “They could have this line tapped, do you realize that, Mr. Gaunt?
They could be listening in on our conversation right now!”

Mr. Gaunt remained calm. “They could, but They're not. Please don't think I am naive, Mr. Keeton. I have encountered Them before. Many times.”

“I'm sure you have,” Keeton said. He was discovering that the wild joy he had taken in Winning Ticket was little or nothing compared to this; to finding, after what felt like centuries of struggle and darkness, a kindred soul.

“I have a small electronic device attached to my line,” Mr. Gaunt went on in his calm and mellow voice. “If the line is
tapped, a small light goes on. I am looking at that light now, Mr. Keeton, and it is dark. As dark as some of the hearts in this town.”

“You
do
know, don't you?” Danforth Keeton said in a fervent, trembling voice. He felt as if he might weep.

“Yes. And I called to tell you that you mustn't do anything rash, Mr. Keeton.” The voice was soft, lulling. As he listened to it, Keeton felt his mind begin to drift away like a child's helium-filled balloon. “That would make things far too easy for Them. Why, do you realize what would happen if you were to die?”

“No,” Keeton murmured. He was looking out the window. His eyes were blank and dreamy.

“They would have a party!” Mr. Gaunt cried softly. “They would get liquored up in Sheriff Pangborn's office! They would go out to Homeland Cemetery and urinate on your grave!”

“Sheriff Pangborn?” Keeton said uncertainly.

“You don't really believe a drone like Deputy Ridgewick is allowed to operate in a case like this without orders from his higher-ups, do you?”

“No, of course not.” He was beginning to see more clearly now. They; it had always been They, a tormenting dark cloud around him, and when you snatched at that cloud, you came away with nothing. Now he at last began to understand that They had faces and names. They might even be vulnerable. Knowing this was a tremendous relief.

“Pangborn, Fullerton, Samuels, the Williams woman, your own wife. They are all part of it, Mr. Keeton, but I suspect—yes, and rather strongly—that Sheriff Pangborn is the ringleader. If so, he would love it if you killed one or two of his underlings and then put yourself out of the way. Why, I suspect that is exactly what he has been aiming for all along. But you're going to fool him, Mr. Keeton, aren't you?”

“Yessss!”
Keeton whispered fiercely. “What should I do?”

“Nothing today. Go about your business as usual. Go to the races tonight, if you like, and enjoy your new purchase. If you appear the same as always to Them, it will throw Them off balance. It will sow confusion and uncertainty amidst the enemy.”

“Confusion and uncertainty.” Keeton spoke the words slowly, tasting them.

“Yes. I'm laying my own plans, and when the time comes, I'll let you know.”

“Do you promise?”

“Oh yes indeed, Mr. Keeton. You are quite important to me. In fact, I would go so far as to say I could not do without you.”

Mr. Gaunt rang off. Keeton put his pistol and the gun-cleaning kit away. Then he went upstairs, dumped his soiled clothes in the laundry hamper, showered, and dressed. When he came down, Myrtle shrank away from him at first, but Keeton spoke kindly to her and kissed her cheek. Myrtle began to relax. Whatever the crisis had been, it seemed to have passed.

Everett Frankel was a big red-haired man who looked as Irish as County Cork . . . which was not surprising, since it was from Cork that his mother's ancestors had sprang. He had been Ray Van Allen's P.A. for four years, ever since he'd gotten out of the Navy. He arrived at Castle Rock Family Practice at quarter to eight that Monday morning, and Nancy Ramage, the head nurse, asked him if he could go right out to the Burgmeyer farm. Helen Burgmeyer had suffered what might have been an epileptic seizure in the night, she said. If Everett's diagnosis confirmed this, he was to bring her back to town in his car so the doctor—who would be in shortly—could examine her and decide if she needed to go to the hospital for tests.

Ordinarily, Everett would have been unhappy to be sent on a house-call first thing, especially one so far out in the country, but on an unseasonably hot morning like this, a ride out of town seemed like just the thing.

Besides, there was the pipe.

Once he was in his Plymouth, he unlocked the glove compartment and took it out. It was a meerschaurn, with a bowl both deep and wide. It had been carved by a master craftsman, that pipe; birds and flowers and vines circled the
bowl in a pattern that actually seemed to change when one looked at it from different angles. He had left the pipe in the glove compartment not just because smoking was forbidden in the doctor's office but because he didn't like the idea of other people (especially a snoop like Nancy Ramage) seeing it. First they would want to know where he had gotten it. Then they would want to know how much he had paid for it.