Needful Things

17

Still screaming, the thing which had been Leland Gaunt hopped and scrambled across the sidewalk to the Tucker. it pulled the door open and flopped behind the wheel. The motor screamed into life.

It was not the sound of any engine made by human hands. A long lick of orange fire belched from the exhaust pipe. The tail lights flared and they were not red glass but ugly little eyes-the eyes of cruel imps.

Polly Chalmers screamed and turned her face against Alan’s shoulder, but Alan could not turn away. Alan was doomed to see and to remember all his life what he saw, as he would remember the night’s brighter marvels: the paper snake that became momentarily real, the paper flowers that had turned into a bouquet of light and a reservoir of power.

The three headlights blazed on. The Tucker backed out into the street, smoking the macadam beneath its tires to boiling gooit screamed around in a reverse turn to the right, and although it did not touch Alan’s car, the station wagon flew backward several feet just the same, as if repelled by some powerful magnet. The front end of the Talisman had begun to glow with a foggy white radiance, and beneath this glow it seemed to be changing and reforming itself The car shrieked, pointing downhill toward the boiling cauldron which had been the Municipal Building, the litter of smashed cars and vans, and the roaring stream that no bridge spa

For one single moment the Gaunt-thing looked out the drooping, melting driver’s-side window at Alan, seeming to mark him forever with its red, lozenge-shaped eyes, and its mouth opened in a yawning snarl.

Then the Tucker began to roll.

It picked up speed as it went downhill, and the changes picked up speed, as well. The car melted, rearranged itself The roof peeled backward, the shiny hubcaps grew spokes, the tires grew simultaneously higher and thi

Gaunt’s, a horse encased in a milky shroud of brightness, a horse whose hooves struck up fire from the pavement and left deep, smoking tracks impressed in the center of the street.

The Talisman had become an open buckboard with a hunchbacked dwarf sitting up high on the seat. The dwarf’s boots were propped on the splashboard, and the caliph-curled toes of those boots appeared to be on fire.

And still the changes were not done. As the glowing buckboard raced toward the lower end of Main Street, the sides began to grow; a wooden roof with overhanging eaves knit itself out of that nourishing protean shroud. A window appeared. The spokes of the wheels took on ghostly flashes of color as the wheels themselvesand the hooves of the black horse-left the pavement.

The Talisman had become a buckboard; the buckboard now became a medicine-show wagon of the sort which might have crisscrossed the country a hundred years ago. There was a legend written on the side, and Alan could just make it out.

it said.

Fifteen feet in the air and still rising, the wagon passed through the flames sprawling out from the ruins of the Municipal Building.

The hooves of the black horse galloped on some invisible road in the sky, still striking off sparks of brilliant blue and orange.

It rose over Castle Stream, a glowing box in the sky; it passed over the downed bridge which lay in the torrent like the skeleton of a dinosaur.

Then a raft of smoke from the burning hulk of the Municipal Building blew across Main Street, and when the smoke cleared, Leland Gaunt and his hellwagon were gone.

18

Alan walked Polly down to the cruiser which had brought Norris and Seaton upstreet from the Municipal Building. Norris was still sitting in the window, clinging to the flasher-bars. He was too weak to lower himself back inside without falling.

Alan slipped his hands around Norris’s belly (not that Norris, who was built like a tent-peg, had much) and helped him to the ground. “Norris?”

“What, Alan?” Norris was weeping. “From now on you can change your clothes in the crapper any time you want,” Alan said. “Okay?” Norris did not seem to hear. Alan had felt the blood soaking into his First Deputy’s shirt. “How bad are you hit?”

“Not too bad. At least I don’t think so. But this"-he swept his hand at the town, encompassing all the burning and all the rubble"all this is my fault. Mine!”

“You’re wrong,” Polly said. “You don’t understand!” Norris’s face was a twisted rag of grief and shame. “I’m the one who slashed Hugh Priest’s tires! I set him off!”

“Yes,” Polly said, “probably you did. You’ll have to live with that. Just as I’m the one who set Ace Merrill off, and I’ll have to live with that.” She pointed toward where Catholics and Baptists were straggling off in different directions, unhampered by the few dazed cops who were still standing. Some of the religious warriors were walking alone; some walked together. Father Brigham appeared to be supporting Rev. Rose, and Nan Roberts had her arm around Henry Payton’s waist. “But who set them off, Norris? And Wilma? And Nettle? And all the others? All I can say is that if you did it all yourself, you must be a real bear for work.”

Norris burst into loud, anguished sobs. “I’m just so sorry.”

“So am I,” Polly said quietly. “My heart is broken.” Alan gave Norris and Polly a brief hug, and then leaned in the passenger window of Seat’s cruiser. “How are you feeling, old buddy?”

“Pretty perky,” Seat said. He looked, in fact, absolutely agogConfused, but agog. “You folks look lots worsen I do.”

“I think we better get Norris to the hospital, Seat. If you’ve got room in there, we could all go.”

“You bet, Alan! Climb in! Which hospital?”

“Northern Cumberland,” Alan said. “There’s a little boy there I want to see. I want to make sure his father got to him.”

“Alan, did I see what I thought I saw? Did that fella’s car turn into a wagon and go flying off into the sky?”

“I don’t know, Seat,” Alan said, “and I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth: I never want to know.”

Henry Payton had just arrived, and now he touched Alan on the shoulder. His eyes were shocked and strange. He had the look of a man who will soon make some big changes in his way of living, his way of thinking, or both. “What happened, Alan?” he asked.

“What really happened in this goddam town?” It was Polly who answered. “There was a sale. The biggest going-out-of-business sale you ever saw… but in the end, some of us decided not to buy.” Alan had opened the door and helped Norris into the front seat. Now he touched Polly’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. Norris is hurting, and he’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Hey!” Henry said. “I’ve got a lot of questions, and-”

“Save them.” Alan got in back next to Polly and closed the door. “We’ll talk tomorrow, but for now I’m off-duty. In fact, I think

I’m off-duty in this town forever. Be content with this-it’s over. Whatever went on in Castle Rock is over.”

“But-” Alan leaned forward and tapped Seat on one bony shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said quietly. “And don’t spare the horses.” Seat began to drive, heading up Main Street, heading north. The cruiser turned left at the fork and began to climb Castle Hill toward Castle View. As they topped the hill, Alan and Polly turned back together to look at the town, where fire bloomed like rubles. Alan felt sadness, and loss, and a strange, cheated grief. My town, he thought. It was my town. But not anymore. Not ever again. They turned to face forward again at the same instant, and ended up looking into each other’s eyes instead.