Needful Things by Stephen King
He yanked and clawed at the noose, but it was as if the slip-knot had been dipped in concrete. The arm which was holding him up trembled wildly. His feet scissored back and forth three feet above the floor. He could not hold this half-chin-up much longer. It was amazing he had been able to keep any slack in the rope at all.
At last he managed to wiggle two of his fingers under the noose and pull it partway open. He shook his head out of it just as a horrible, numbing cramp struck the arm that was holding him up. He toppled to the floor in a sobbing heap, holding his cramped arm to his chest. Lightning flew and turned the spit on his bared teeth into tiny purple arcs of light. He grayed out then ... for how long he didn't know, but the rain was still pelting and the lightning was still flashing when his mind swam back into itself.
He staggered to his feet and walked over to the fishing pole, still holding his arm. The cramp was beginning to loosen now, but Norris was still panting. He seized the pole and examined it closely and angrily.
Bamboo. Dirty, filthy bamboo. It wasn't worth everything; it was worth nothing.
Norns's thin chest hitched in breath, and he uttered a scream of shame and rage. At the same moment he raised his knee and snapped the fishing rod over it. He doubled the pieces and snapped them again. They felt nasty--almost germy--in his hands. They felt fraudulent. He cast them aside and they rattled to a stop by the overturned stool like so many meaningless pick-up sticks.
"There!" he cried. "There! There! THERE!"
Norris's thoughts turned to Mr. Gaunt. Mr. Gaunt with his silver hair and his tweed and his hungry, jostling smile.
"I'm going to get you," Norris Ridgewick whispered. "I don't know what happens after that, but I am going to get you so good."
He walked to the shed door, yanked it open, and stepped out into the pouring rain. Unit 2 was parked in the driveway. He bent his thin Barney Fife body into the wind and walked over to it.
"I dunno what you are," Norris said, "but I'm coming for your lying, conning ass."
He got into the cruiser and backed down the driveway. Humiliation, misery, and anger were equally at war on his face. At the foot of the driveway he turned left and began driving toward Needful Things as fast as he dared.
3
Polly Chalmers was dreaming.
In her dream she was walking into Needful Things, but the figure behind the counter was not Leland Gaunt; it was Aunt Ewie Chalmers. Aunt Ewie was wearing her best blue dress and her blue shawl, the one with the red edging. Gripped between her large and improbably even false teeth was a Herbert Tareyton.
Aunt Evvie! Polly cried in her dream. A vast delight and an even vaster relief--that relief we only know in happy dreams, and in the moment of waking from horrid ones--filled her like light. Aunt Evvie, you're alive!
But Aunt Ewie showed no sign of recognition. Buy anything you want, Miss, Aunt Evvie said. By the way--was your name Polly or Patricia? I disremember, somehow.
Aunt Evvie, you know my name--I'm Trisha. I've always been Trisha to you.
Aunt Ewie took no notice. Whatever your name is, we're having a special today. Everything must go.
Aunt Evvie, what are you doing here?
I BELONG here, Aunt Ewie said. Everyone in town belongs here, Miss Two-Names. In fact, everyone in the WORLD belongs here, because everyone loves a bargain. Everyone loves something for nothing ... even if it costs everything.
The good feeling was suddenly gone. Dread replaced it. Polly looked into the glass cases and saw bottles of dark fluid marked DR. GAUNT'S ELECTRIC TONIC. There were badly made wind-up toys that would cough up their cogs and spit out their springs the second time they were wound. There were crude sex-toys. There were small bottles of what looked like cocaine; these were labelled DR. GAUNT'S KICKAPOO POTENCY POWDER. Cheap novelties abounded: plastic dog-puke, itching powder, cigarette loads, joy buzzers. There was a pair of those X-ray glasses that were supposed to allow you to look through closed doors and ladies' dresses but actually did nothing except put raccoon rings around your eyes. There were plastic flowers and marked playing cards and bottles of cheap perfume labelled DR. GAUNT'S LOVE POTION #9, TURNS LASSITUDE INTO LUST. The cases were a catalogue of the timeless, the tasteless, and the useless.
Anything you want, Miss Two-Names, Aunt Ewie said.
Why are you calling me that, Aunt Evvie? Please--don't you recognize me?
It's all guaranteed to work. The only thing not guaranteed to work after the sale is YOU. So step right up and buy, buy, buy.
Now she looked directly at Polly, and Polly was struck through with terror like a knife. She saw compassion in Aunt Ewie's eyes, but it was a terrible, merciless compassion.
What is your name, child? Seems to me I once knew.
In her dream (and in her bed) Polly began to weep.
Has someone else forgtten your name? Aunt Ewie asked. I wonder. Seems like they have.
Aunt Evvie, you're scaring me!
You're scaring yourself, child, Aunt Ewie responded, looking directly at Polly for the first time. Just remember that when you buy here, Miss Two-Names, you're also selling.
But I need it! Polly cried. She began to weep harder. My hands--!
Yes, this does it, Miss Polly Frisco, Aunt Evvie said, and brought out one of the bottles marked DR. GAUNT'S ELECTRIC TONIC. She set it on the counter, a small, squat bottle filled with something that looked like loose mud. It can't make your pain gone, of course--nothing can do that--but it can effect a transferral.
What do you mean? Why are you scaring me?
It changes the location of your arthritis, Miss Two-Names-instead of your hands, the disease attacks your heart.
No!
Yes.
No! No! NO!
Yes. Oh yes. And your soul as well. But you'll have your pride. That'll be left to you, at least. And isn't a woman entitled to her pride? When everything else is gone--heart, soul, even the man you love-you'll have that, little Miss Polly Frisco, won't you? You'll have that one coin without which your purse would be empty. Let it be your dark and bitter comfort for the rest of your life. Let it serve. It must serve, because if you keep on the way you're going, there surely won't be no other.
Stop, please, can't you--
4
"Stop," she muttered in her sleep. "Please stop. Please."
She rolled over on her side. The azka chinked softly against its chain. Lightning lit up the sky, striking the elm by Castle Stream, toppling it into the rushing water as Alan Pangborn sat behind the wheel of his station wagon, dazzled by the flash.
The follow-shot crack of thunder woke Polly up. Her eyes flew open. Her hand went to the azka at once and closed protectively around it. The hand was limber; the joints moved as easily as ball bearings packed in deep clean oil.
Miss Two-Names ... little Miss Polly Frisco.
"What ... ?" Her voice was thick, but her mind already felt clear and alert, as if she hadn't been asleep at all but in a daze of thought so deep it was nearly a trance. Something was looming in her mind, something the size of a whale. Outside, lightning flashed and flickered across the sky like bright purple sparklers.
Has someone else forgotten your name? ... Seems like they have.
She reached for the night-table and switched on the lamp. Lying next to the Princess phone, the phone equipped with the oversized keypads which she no longer needed, was the envelope she had found lying in the hall with the rest of the mail when she returned home this afternoon. She had re-folded the terrible letter and slid it back inside.
Somewhere in the night, between the racketing bursts of thunder, she thought she could hear people shouting. Polly ignored them; she was thinking about the cuckoo bird, which lays its egg in a strange nest while the owner is away. When the mother-to-be returns, does she notice that something new has been added? Of course not; she simply accepts it as her own. The way Polly had accepted this goddamned letter simply because it happened to be lying on the hall floor with two catalogues and a come-on from Wester
She had just accepted it ... but anyone could drop a letter through a mail-slot, wasn't that true?
"Miss Two-Names," she murmured in a dismayed voice. "Little Miss Polly Frisco." And that was the thing, wasn't it? The thing her subconscious had remembered and had manufactured Aunt Evvie to tell her. She had been Miss Polly Frisco.
Once upon a time, she had.
She reached for the envelope.
No! a voice told her, and that was a voice she knew very well. Don't touch that, Polly--not if you know what's good for you!
Pain as dark and strong as day-old coffee flared deep in her hands.
It can't make your pain gone... but it can effect a transferral.
That whale-sized thing was coming to the surface. Mr. Gaunt's voice couldn't stop it; nothing could stop it.
YOU can stop it, Polly, Mr. Gaunt said. Believe me, you must.
Her hand drew back before it touched the letter. It returned to the azka and became a protective fist around it. She could feel something inside it, something which had been warmed by her heat, scurrying frantically inside the hollow silver amulet, and revulsion filled her, making her stomach feel weak and loose, her bowels rotten.
She let go and reached for the letter again.
Last warning, Polly, the voice of Mr. Gaunt told her.
Yes, Aunt Ewie's voice replied. I think he means it, Trisha. He has always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves, but do you know what? I don't think he's got much use for those who decide it goeth before a fall. I think the time has come for you to decide, once and for all, what your name really is.
She took hold of the envelope, ignoring another warning twinge in her hands, and looked at the neatly typed address. This letter--purported letter, purported Xerox--had been sent to "Ms. Patricia Chalmers."
"No," she whispered. "Wrong. Wrong name." Her hand closed slowly and steadily on the letter, crumpling it. A dull ache filled her fist, but Polly ignored it. Her eyes were bright, feverish. "I was always Polly in San Francisco--I was Polly to everyone, even to Child Welfare!"
That had been part of her attempt to break clean with every aspect of the old life which she fancied had hurt her so badly, never in her darkest nights allowing herself to dream that most of the wounds had been self-inflicted. In San Francisco there had been no Trisha or Patricia; only Polly. She had filled out all three of her ADC applications that way, and had signed her name that way--as Polly Chalmers, no middle initial.
If Alan really had written to the Child Welfare people in San Francisco, she supposed he might have given her name as Patricia, but wouldn't any resulting records search have come up blank? Yes, of course. Not even the addresses would correlate, because the one she'd printed in the space for ADDRESS OF LAST RESIDENCE all those years ago had been her parents' address, and that was on the other side of town.
Suppose Alan gave them both names? Polly and Patricia?
Suppose he had? She knew enough about the workings of government bureaucracies to believe it didn't matter what name or names Alan had given them; when writing to her, the letter would have come to the name and address they had on file. Polly had a friend in Oxford whose correspondence from the University of Maine still came addressed to her maiden name, although she had been married for twenty years.
But this envelope had come addressed to Patricia Chalmers, not Polly Chalmers. And who in Castle Rock had called her Patricia just today?
The same person who had known that Nettie Cobb was really Netitia Cobb. Her good friend Leland Gaunt.
All of that about the names is interestin, Aunt Evvie said suddenly, but it ain't really the important thing. The important thing is the man--your man. He is your man, ain't he? Even now. You know he would never go behind your back like that letter said he done. Don't matter what name was on it or how convincing it might sound... you know that, don't you?
"Yes," she whispered. "I know him."
Had she really believed any of it? Or had she put her doubts about that absurd, unbelievable letter aside because she was afraid--in terror, actually--that Alan would see the nasty truth of the azka and force her to make a choice between him and it?
"Oh no--that's too simple," she whispered. "You believed it, all right. Only for half a day, but you did believe it. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, what have I done?"
She tossed the crumpled letter onto the floor with the revolted expression of a woman who has just realized she's holding a dead rat.
I didn't tell him what I was angry about; didn't give him a chance to explain; just... just believed it. Why? In God's name, why?
She knew, of course. It had been the sudden, shameful fear that her lies about the cause of Kelton's death had been discovered, the misery of her years in San Francisco suspected, her culpability in the death of her baby being evaluated ... and all this by the one man in the world whose good opinion she wanted and needed.
But that wasn't all of it. That wasn't even most of it. Mostly it had been pride--wounded, outraged, throbbing, swollen, malignant pride. Pride, the coin without which her purse would be entirely empty. She had believed because she had been in a panic of shame, a shame which had been born of pride.
I have always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves.
A terrible wave of pain broke in her hands; Polly moaned and held them against her breasts.
Not too late, Polly, Mr. Gaunt said softly. Not too late, even now.
"Oh, fuck pride!" Polly shrieked suddenly into the dark of her closed, stuffy bedroom, and ripped the azka from her neck. She held it high overhead in her clenched fist, the fine silver chain whipping wildly, and she felt the surface of the charm crack like the shell of an egg inside her hand. "FUCK PRIDE!"
Pain instantly clawed its way into her hands like some small and hungry animal ... but she knew even then that the pain was not as great as she had feared; nowhere near as great as she had feared. She knew it as surely as she knew that Alan had never written to Child Welfare in San Francisco, asking about her.
"FUCK PRIDE! FUCK IT! FUCK IT! FUCK IT!" she screamed, and threw the azka across the room.
It hit the wall, bounced to the floor, and split open. Lightning flashed, and she saw two hairy legs poke out through the crack. The crack widened, and what crawled out was a small spider. It scuttered toward the bathroom. Lightning flashed again, printing its elongated, ovate shadow on the floor like an electric tattoo.
Polly leaped from her bed and chased after it. She had to kill it, and quickly ... because even as she watched, the spider was swelling. It had been feeding on the poison it had sucked out of her body, and now that it was free of its containment, there was no telling how big it might grow.
She slapped the bathroom light-switch, and the fluorescent over the sink flickered into life. She saw the spider scurrying toward the tub. When it went through the door, it had been no bigger than a beetle. Now it was the size of a mouse.
As she came in, it turned and scurried toward her-- that horrid clittering sound of its legs beating against the tiles--and she had time to think, It was between my breasts, it was lying AGAINST me, it was lying against me ALL THE TIME--
Its body was a bristly blackish-brown. Tiny hairs stood out on its legs. Eyes as dull as fake rubies stared at her ... and she saw that two fangs stuck out of its mouth like curved vampire teeth. They were dripping some clear liquid. Where the droplets struck the tiles, they left small, smoking craters.
Polly screamed and grabbed the bathroom plunger which stood beside the toilet. Her hands screamed back at her, but she closed them around the plunger's wooden handle just the same and struck the spider with it. It retreated, one of its legs now broken and hanging uselessly askew. Polly chased after it as it ran for the tub.
Hurt or not, it was still growing. Now it was the size of a rat. Its bulging belly had dragged against the tiles, but it went up the shower-curtain with weird agility. Its legs made a sound against the plastic like tiny spats of water. The rings jingled
Polly swung the plunger like a baseball bat, the heavy rubber cup whooshing through the air, and struck the horrid thing again. The rubber cup covered a lot of area but was not, unfortunately, very effective when it connected. The shower-curtain billowed inward and the spider dropped off into the tub with a meaty plop.
In that instant the light went out.
Polly stood in the dark, the plunger in her hand, and listened to the spider scurrying. Then the lightning flashed again and she could see its humped, bristly back protruding over the lip of the tub. The thing which had come out of the thimble-sized azka was as big as a cat now--the thing which had been nourishing itself on her heart's blood even as it abstracted the pain from her hands.
The envelope I left out at the old Camber place--what was that?
With the azka no longer around her neck, with the pain awake and yelling in her hands, she could no longer tell herself it had nothing to do with Alan.
The spider's fangs clicked on the porcelain edge of the tub. It sounded like someone clicking a penny deliberately on a hard surface for attention. Its listless doll's eyes now regarded her over the lip of the tub.
It's too late, those eyes seemed to say. Too late for Alan, too late for you. Too late for everyone.
Polly launched herself at it.
"What did you make me do?" she screamed. "What did you make me do? Oh you monster, WHAT DID YOU MAKE ME DO?"
And the spider rose up on its rear legs, pawing obscenely at the shower-curtain for balance with its front ones, to meet her attack.
5
Ace Merrill began to respect the old dude a little when Keeton produced a key which opened the locked shed with the red diamond-shaped HIGH EXPLOSIVES signs on the door. He began to respect him a little more when he felt the chilly air, heard the steady low whoosh of the air conditioner, and saw the stacked crates. Commercial dynamite. Lots of commercial dynamite. It wasn't quite the same thing as having an arsenal filled with Stinger missiles, but it was close enough for rock and roll. My, yes.
There had been a powerful eight-cell flashlight in the carry-compartment between the van's front seats, along with a supply of other useful tools, and now--as Alan neared Castle Rock in his station wagon, as Norris Ridgewick sat in his kitchen, fashioning a hangman's noose with a length of stout hemp rope, as Polly Chalmers's dream of Aunt Ewie moved toward its conclusion--Ace ran the flashlight's bright spotlight from one crate to the next. Overhead, the rain drummed on the shed's roof. It was coming down so hard that Ace could almost believe he was back in the prison showers.