Needful Things

But the proprietor of Needful Things was silent, simply standing there, watching Hugh Priest with his black Indian eyes over the foliage of his feather-duster.

“Anyway, I want to buy it. Will you sell it to me?”

“Of course,” Leland Gaunt said for the third time.

Hugh felt relief and a sudden, sprawling happiness. He was suddenly sure everything was going to be all right-everything. This was utterly crazy; he owed money to just about everyone in Castle Rock and the surrounding three towns, he had been on the ragged edge of losing his job for the last six months, his Buick was ru

“How much?” he asked. He suddenly wondered if he would be able to afford such a fine brush, and felt a touch of panic. What if it was out of his reach? Worse, what if he scrounged up the money somehow tomorrow, or the day after that, only to find the guy had sold it?

“Well, that depends.”

“Depends? Depends on what?”

“On how much you’re willing to pay.”

Like a man in a dream, Hugh pulled his battered Lord Burton out of his back pocket.

“Put that away, Hugh.”

Did I tell him my name?

Hugh couldn’t remember, but he put the wallet away.

“Turn out your pockets. Right here, on top of this case.”

Hugh turned out his pockets. He put his pocket-knife, a roll of Certs, his Zippo lighter, and about a dollar-fifty in tobaccosprinkled change on top of the case. The coins clicked on the glass.

The man bent forward and studied the pile. “That looks about right,” he remarked, and brushed the feather-duster over the meager collection. When he removed it again, the knife, the lighter, and the Certs were still there. The coins were gone.

Hugh observed this with no surprise at all. He stood as silently as a toy with dead batteries while the tall man went to the display window and came back with the fox-brush. He laid it on top of the cabinet beside Hugh’s shrunken pile of pocket paraphernalia.

Slowly, Hugh stretched out one hand and stroked the fur. it felt cold and rich; it crackled with silky static electricity.

Stroking it was like stroking a clear autumn night.

“Nice?” the tall man asked.

“Nice,” Hugh agreed distantly, and made to pick up the foxtail.

“Don’t do that,” the tall man said sharply, and Hugh’s hand fell away at once. He looked at Gaunt with a hurt so deep it was grief.

“We’re not done dickering yet.”

“No,” Hugh agreed. I’m hypnotized, he thought. Damned if the guy hasn’t hypnotized me. But it didn’t matter. It was, in fact, sort of… nice.

He reached for his wallet again, moving as slowly as a man under water.

“Leave that alone, you ass,” Mr. Gaunt said impatiently, and laid his feather-duster aside.

Hugh’s hand dropped to his side again.

“Why is it that so many people think all the answers are in their wallets?” the man asked querulously.

“I don’t know,” Hugh said. He had never considered the idea before. “It does seem a little silly.”

“Worse,” Gaunt snapped. His voice had taken on the nagging, slightly uneven cadences of a man who is either very tired or very angry. He was tired; it had been a long, demanding day. Much had been accomplished, but the work was still just barely begun. “It’s much worse. It’s criminally stupid! Do you know something, Hugh?

The world is full of needy people who don’t understand that everything, everything, is for sale… if you’re willing to pay the price.

They give lip-service to the concept, that’s all, and pride themselves on their healthy cynicism. Well, lip-service is bushwah!

Absolute… bushwah!”

“Bushwah,” Hugh agreed mechanically.

“For the things people really need, Hugh, the wallet is no answer.

The fattest wallet in this town isn’t worth the sweat from a working man’s armpit. Absolute bushwah! And souls! If I had a nickel, Hugh, for every time I ever heard someone say I’d sell my soul for thusand-such,’ I could buy the Empire State Building!” He leaned closer and now his lips stretched back from his uneven teeth in a huge unhealthy grin. “Tell me this, Hugh: what in the name of all the beasts crawling under the earth would I want with your soul?”

“Probably nothing.” His voice seemed far away. His voice seemed to be coming from the bottom of a deep, dark cave. “I don’t think it’s in very good shape these days.”

Mr. Gaunt suddenly relaxed and straightened up. “Enough of these lies and half-truths. Hugh, do you know a woman named Nettle Cobb?”

“Crazy Nettle? Everyone in town knows Crazy Nettle. She killed her husband.”

“So they say. Now listen to me, Hugh. Listen carefully. Then you can take your fox-tail and go home.”

Hugh Priest listened carefully.

Outside it was raining harder, and the wind had begun to blow.

8

“Brian!” Miss Ratcliffe said sharply. “Why, Brian Rusk! I wouldn’t have believed it of you! Come up here! Right now!”

He was sitting in the back row of the basement room where the speech therapy classes were held, and he had done something wrong-terribly wrong, by the sound of Miss Ratcliffe’s voice-but he didn’t know what it was until he stood up. Then he saw that he was naked. A horrible wave of shame swept over him, but he felt excited, too. When he looked down at his penis and saw it starting to stiffen, he felt both alarmed and thrilled.

“Come up here, I said!”

He advanced slowly to the front of the room while the others@ally Meyers, Do

MISS Ratcliffe stood i’n front of her desk, hands on hips, eyes blazing, a gorgeous cloud of dark-auburn hair floating around her head.

“You’re a bad boy, Brian-a very bad boy.”

He nodded his head dumbly, but his penis was raising ITS head, and so it seemed there was at least one part of him that did not mind being bad at all. That in fact RELISHED being bad.

She put a piece of chalk in his hand. He felt a small holt of electricity when their hands touched. “Now,” Miss Ratcliffe said severely, “You must write I WILL FINISH PAYING FOR MY SANDY KOUFAX CARD five hundred times on the blackboard. “Yes, Miss Ratcliffe. “He began to write, standing on tiptoe to reach the top of the board, aware of warm air on his naked buttocks.

He had finished WILL FINISH PAYING when he felt Miss Ratcliffe’s smooth, soft hand encircle his stiff penis and begin to tug on it gently. For a moment he thought he would faint dead away, it felt so good.

“Keep writing, “she said grimly from behind him, “and I’ll keep on doing this.”

“M-Miss Rub-Rub-Ratcliffe, what about my t-tongue exercises?”

asked Slopey Dodd.

“Shut up or I’ll run you over in the parking lot, Slopey, “Miss

Ratcliffe said. “I’ll make you squeak, little buddy.”

She went on pulling Brian’s pudding while she spoke. He was moaning now. It was wrong, he knew that, but it felt good. It felt most sincerely awesome. It felt like what he needed. just the thing.

Then he turned around and it wasn’t Miss Ratcliffe standing at his shoulder but Wilma jerzyck with her large round pallid face and her deep brown eyes, like two raisins pounded deep into a wad of dough.

“He’ll take it back if you don’t pay,” Wilma said. “And that’s not all, little buddy. Hell-”