Needful Things

Price ignored him. He was ru

Norris spared a glance at Seaton Thomas, but Seat was staring gloomily out into space, tears rolling down his face and his hand still planted squarely in the center of his chest. Norris followed Trooperjoe Price and found him in the Municipal Building parking lot, where Norris had ticketed Buster Keeton’s red Cadillac about a thousand years ago. A pillar of dying fire stood out clearly in the rainy night, and in its glow both of them could see that Castle Stream Bridge was gone. The traffic light at the far end of town had been knocked into the street.

“Mother of God,” Trooper Price said in a reverent voice. “I’m sure glad this isn’t my town.” The firelight had put roses on his cheeks and embers in his eyes.

Norris’s urge to locate Alan had deepened. He decided he had better get back in his cruiser and try to find Henry Payton firstif there was some sort of big brawl going on, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Alan might be there, too.

He was almost across the sidewalk when a stroke of lightning showed him two figures trotting around the corner of the courthouse next to the Municipal Building. They appeared to be heading for the bright yellow newsvan. One of them he was not sure of, but the other figure-portly and a little bow-legged-was impossible to mistake. It was Danforth Keeton.

Norris Ridgewick took two steps to the right and planted his back against the brick wall at the mouth of the alley. He drew his service revolver. He raised it to shoulder level, its muzzle pointing up into the rainy sky, and screamed “HALT!” at the top of his lungs.

3

Polly backed her car down the driveway, switched on the windshield wipers, and made a left turn. The pain in her hands had been joined by a deep, heavy burning in her arms, where the spider’s muck had fallen on her skin. It had poisoned her somehow, and the poison seemed to be working its way steadily into her. But there was no time to worry about it now.

She was approaching the stop-sign at Laurel and Main when the bridge went up. She winced away from that massive rifleshot and stared for a moment, amazed, at the bright gout of flame which rose up from Castle Stream. For a moment she saw the gantry-like silhouette of the bridge itself, all black angles against the strenuous light, and then it was swallowed in flame.

She turned left again onto Main, in the direction of Needful Things.

4

At one time, Alan Pangborn had been a dedicated maker of home movies-he had no idea how many people he had bored to tears with jumpy films, projected on a sheet tacked to the living-room wall, of his diapered children toddling their uncertain way around the living room, of A

Five years ago he had switched to a video camera, which was both cheaper and easier… and instead of boring people to tears for ten or fifteen minutes, which was the length of time three or four rolls of eight-millimeter film ran when spliced together, you could bore them for hours, all without even plugging in a fresh cassette.

He took this cassette out of its box and looked at it. There was no label. Okay, he thought. That’s perfectly okay. I’ll just have to find out what’s on it for myself, won’t I? His hand moved to the VCR’s ON button… and there it hesitated.

The composite formed by Todd’s and Sean’s and his wife’s faces retreated suddenly; it was replaced by the pallid, shocked face of Brian Rusk as Alan had seen him just this afternoon.

You look unhappy, Brian.

Yessir.

Does that mean you ARE unhappy?

Yessir-and if you turn that switch, you’ll be unhappy, too. He wants you to look at it, but not because he wants to do you a favor.

Mr. Gaunt doesn’t do favors. He wants to poison you, that’s all. just like he’s poisoned everyone else.

Yet he had to look.

His fingers touched the button, caressed its smooth, square shape.

He paused and looked around. Yes; Gaunt was still here.

Somewhere. Alan could feel him-a heavy presence, both menacing and cajoling. He thought of the note Mr. Gaunt had left behind. I know you have wondered long and deeply about what happened during the last few moments of your wife and younger son’s lives…

Don’t do it, Sheriff, Brian Rusk whispered. Alan saw that pallid, hurt, pre-suicidal face looking at him from above the cooler in his bike basket, the cooler filled with the baseball cards. Let the past sleep. It’s better that way. And he lies; you KNOw he lies.

Yes. He did. He did know that.

Yet he had to look.

Alan’s finger pushed the button.

The small green POWER light went on at once. The VCR worked just fine, power outage or no power outage, just as Alan had known it would.

He turned on the sexy red Sony and in a moment the bright white glow of Cha

Don’t do it, Brian Rusk’s voice whispered again, but Alan didn’t listen. He carted the cassette, pushed the carrier down, and listened to the little mechanical clicks as the heads engaged the tape. Then he took a deep breath and pushed the PLAY button. The bright NEEDFUL white snow on the screen was replaced by smooth blackness. A moment later the screen went slate-gray, and a series of numbers flashed up: 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… X.

What followed was a shaky, hand-held shot of a country road.

In the foreground, slightly out of focus but still readable, was a road-sign. 117, it said, but Alan didn’t need it. He had driven that stretch many times, and knew it well. He recognized the grove of pines just beyond the place where the road curved-it was the grove where the Scout had fetched up, its nose crumpled around the largest tree in a jagged embrace.

But the trees in this picture showed no scars of the accident, although the scars were still visible, if you went out there and looked (he had, many times). Wonder and terror slipped silently into Alan’s bones as he realized-not just from the unwounded surfaces of the trees and the curve in the road but from every configuration of the landscape and every intuition of his heart-that this videotape had been shot on the day A

He was going to see it happen.

It was quite impossible, but it was true. He was going to see his wife and son smashed open before his very eyes.

Turn it off! Brian screamed. Turn it off, he’s a poison man and he sells poison things! Turn it off before it’s too late!

But Alan could have done this no more than he could have stilled his own heartbeat by thought alone. He was frozen, caught.

Now the camera pa

It was the Scout. The Scout was coming. The Scout was on its way to the pine tree where it and the people inside it would end forever. The Scout was approaching its terminal point on earth. It was not speeding; it was not moving erratically. There was no sign that A

Alan leaned forward beside the humming VCR, sweat trickling down his cheeks, blood beating heavily in his temples. He felt his gorge rising.

This isn’t real. It’s a put-up job. He had it made somehow.