Stephen King - Needful Things

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 Rockthe black pearls, the holy relics, the carnival glass, the pipes, the old comic books, the baseball cards, the antique kaleidoscopeswere 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 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.

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 Cumberland 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 snatch of childhood rhyme rose like a whisper in his mind: Simple Simon met a pie-man going 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 bumps 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 Nettle 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 associated 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 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 Hampshire 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 know something, why aren’t there other policemen here?”

Other policemen, he thought. What she means are 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.

“Because they’ve got their hands full,” Alan said, “and because they don’t know the town the way I do.”

“I see.” She turned to go again.

“Miss Hendrie.”

“Sheriff, I’m short-handed this evening and very b-”

“Brian Rusk wasn’t the only Castle Rock fatality today. There were at least three others. Another man, the owner of the local tavern, has been taken to the hospital in Norway with gunshot trauma. He may live, but it’s going to be touch and go with him for the next thirty-six hours or so. And I have a hunch the killing isn’t done.”

He had finally succeeded in capturing all of her attention.

“You believe Sean Rusk knows something about this?”

“He may know why his brother killed himself. If he does, that may open up the rest of it. So if he wakes up, will you tell me?”

She hesitated, then said, “That depends on his mental state when he does, Sheriff. I’m not going to allow you to make a hysterical little boy’s condition worse, no matter what is going on in your town.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Good.” She gave him a look which said,just sit there and don’t make trouble for me, then, and went back behind the high desk. She sat down, and he could hear her putting bottles and boxes on the med-cart.

Alan got up, went to the pay phone in the hall, and dialled Polly’s number again. And once again it simply rang on and on. He dialled You Sew and Sew, got the answering machine, and racked the phone. He went back to his chair, sat in it, and stared at the Mother Goose mural some more.

You forgot to ask me one question, Miss Hendrie, Alan thought.

You forgot to ask me why I’m here if there’s so much going on in the seat of the county I was elected to preserve and protect. You forgot to ask me why I’m not leading the investigation while some lessessentialofficer@IdSeatThomas,forinstance sitshere,waiting for Sean Rusk to wake up. You forgot to ask those things, Miss Hendrie, and I know a secret. I’m glad you forgot. That’s the secret.