Needful Things (93 page)

A State Police car stopped at the intersection of Harrington and Castle Avenue, which, half a mile farther up, became Castle View. A Trooper got out and gaped at them. “Hey!” he shouted. “Where do you folks think you're going?”

“We're gonna kick us some Pope-sucker butt, and if you know what's good for you, you'll stay the hell out of our way!” Nan Roberts shouted back at him.

Suddenly Don Hemphill opened his mouth and began to sing in a full, rich baritone voice.

“Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war—”

Others joined in. Soon the entire congregation had taken it up and they began to move faster, not just walking now but marching to the beat. Their faces were pallid and angry and empty of all thought as they began not just to sing but to roar out the words. Rev. Rose sang along with them, although he lisped quite badly with his upper plate gone.

“Christ, the royal master, leads against the foe,

Forward into battle, see His banners go!”

Now they were almost running.

Trooper Morris stood beside the door of his car with his microphone in his hand, staring after them. Water ran from the waterproof over the brim of his Smokey Bear hat in little streamlets.

“Come back, Unit Sixteen,” Henry Payton's voice crackled.

“You better get some men up here right away!” Morris cried. His voice was both scared and excited. He had been a State Trooper for less than a year. “Something's
going down! Something bad! A crowd of about seventy people just walked past me! Ten-four!”

“Well, what were they doing?” Payton asked. “Ten-four.”

“They were singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers'! Ten-four!”

“Is that you, Morris? Ten-four.”

“Yessir! Ten-four!”

“Well, so far as I know, Trooper Morris, there is still no law against singing hymns, even in the pouring rain. I believe it to be a stupid activity but not an illegal one. Now I only want to say this once: I've got about four different messes on my hands, I don't know where the Sheriff or any of his goddam deputies are,
and I don't want to be bothered with trivialities! Do you copy this? Ten-four!”

Trooper Morris swallowed hard. “Uh, yessir, I copy, I sure do, but someone in the crowd—it was a woman, I think—said they were going to, uh, ‘kick us some Pope-sucker butt' is how I believe she put it. I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I didn't much like the sound of it.” Then Morris added timidly: “Ten-four?”

The silence was so long Morris was about to try Payton again—the electricity in the air had made long-range radio communication impossible and even in-town chatter difficult—and then Payton said in a weary, frightened voice, “Aw. Aw, Jesus. Aw, Jesus Tiddlywinks
Christ.
What's going on here?”

“Well, the lady said they were going to—”

“I heard you the first time!”
Payton yelled it so loudly that his voice distorted and broke up. “Get over to the Catholic Church! If something's happening, try to break it up but don't get hurt. I repeat,
don't get hurt.
I'll send backup as soon as I can—if I have any backup left. Do it now! Ten-four!”

“Uh, Lieutenant Payton? Where
is
the Catholic Church in this town?”

“How the fuck should I know?”
Payton screamed.
“I don't worship there! Just follow the crowd! Ten-forty out!”

Morris hung up the mike. He could no longer
see
the
crowd, but he could still hear them between the thunderclaps. He put the cruiser in gear and followed the singing.

The path which led up to the kitchen door of Myra Evans's house was lined with rocks painted in various pastel colors.

Cora Rusk picked up a blue one and bounced it in the hand which was not holding her gun, testing its weight. She tried the door. It was locked, as she had expected. She tossed the rock through the glass and used the barrel of her pistol to clear away the shards and splinters still clinging to the frame. Then she reached through, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. Her hair clung to her cheeks in wet snaggles and commas. Her dress still gaped open, and droplets of rainwater ran down the pimple-studded swells of her breasts.

Chuck Evans wasn't home, but Garfield, Chuck and Myra's Angora cat, was. He came trotting into the kitchen, miaowing, hoping for food, and Cora let him have it. The cat flew backward in a cloud of blood and fur. “Eat
that,
Garfield,” Cora remarked. She strode through the puff of gunsmoke and into the hall. She started up the stairs. She knew where she would find the slut. She would find her in bed. Cora knew that as well as she knew her own name.

“It's bedtime, all right,” she said. “You just want to believe it, Myra my dear.”

Cora was smiling.

Father Brigham and Albert Gendron led a platoon of pissed-off Catholics down Castle Avenue toward Harrington Street. Halfway there, they heard singing. The two men exchanged a glance.

“Do you think we might be able to teach em a different tune, Albert?” Father Brigham asked softly.

“I think so, Father,” Albert replied.

“Shall we teach them to sing ‘I Ran All the Way Home'?”

“A very good tune, Father. I think maybe even muck like them might be able to learn that one.”

Lightning flew across the sky. It illuminated Castle Avenue with momentary brilliance, and showed the two men a small crowd advancing up the hill toward them. Their eyes gleamed white and empty, like the eyes of statues, in the lightning-flash.

“There they are!” someone shouted, and a woman cried: “Get the dirty Mickey Finn sons of bitches!”

“Let's bag some trash,” Father John Brigham breathed happily, and charged the Baptists.

“Amen, Father,” Albert said, running at his side.

They
all
began to run then.

As Trooper Morris rounded the corner, a fresh bolt of lightning jigged across the sky, felling one of the old elms by Castle Stream. In the glare, he saw two mobs of people running toward each other. One mob was running up the hill, the other mob was running down, and both mobs were screaming for blood. Trooper Morris suddenly found himself wishing he had called in sick that afternoon.

Cora opened the door of Chuck and Myra's bedroom and saw exactly what she had expected: the bitch lying naked in a rumpled double bed which looked as if it had seen a hard tour of duty lately. One of her hands was behind her, tucked under the pillows. The other held a framed picture. The picture was between Myra's meaty thighs. She appeared to be humping it. Her eyes were half-closed in ecstasy.

“Oooh, E!” she moaned. “Ooooh, E!
OOOHH, EEEE-EEEEEEE!”

Horrified jealousy flared in Cora's heart and rose up her throat until she could taste its bitter juice in her mouth.

“Oh you shithouse mouse,” she breathed, and brought up the automatic.

At that moment Myra looked at her, and Myra was
smiling. She brought her free hand out from under her pillow. In it she held an automatic pistol of her own.

“Mr. Gaunt
said
you'd come, Cora,” she said, and fired.

Cora felt the bullet beat the air beside her cheek; heard it thud into the plaster on the left side of the door. She fired her own gun. It struck the picture between Myra's legs, shattering the glass and burying itself in Myra's upper thigh.

It also left a bullet-hole in the center of Elvis Presley's forehead.

“Look what you did!”
Myra shrieked.
“You shot The King, you stupid cunt!”

She fired three shots at Cora. Two went wild but the third hit Cora in the throat, driving her backward against the wall in a pink spray of blood. As Cora collapsed to her knees, she fired again. The bullet punched a hole in Myra's kneecap and knocked her out of bed. Then Cora fell face-forward onto the floor, the gun slipping from her hand.

I'm coming to you, Elvis,
she tried to say, but something was terribly, terribly wrong. There seemed to be only darkness, and no one in it but her.

Castle Rock's Baptists, led by the Rev. William Rose, and Castle Rock's Catholics, led by Father John Brigham, came together near the foot of Castle Hill with an almost audible crunch. There was no polite fist-fighting, no Marquis of Queensberry rules; they had come to gouge out eyes and tear off noses. Quite possibly to kill.

Albert Gendron, the huge dentist who was slow to anger but terrible once his wrath was roused, grabbed Norman Harper by the ears and jerked Norman's head forward. He brought his own head forward at the same time. Their skulls crashed together with a sound like crockery in an earthquake. Norman shuddered, then went limp. Albert threw him aside like a bag of laundry and grabbed for Bill Sayers, who sold tools at the Western Auto. Bill
dodged, then threw a punch. Albert took it squarely on the mouth, spat a tooth, grabbed Bill in a bear-hug, and squeezed until he heard a rib snap. Bill began to shriek. Albert threw him most of the way across the street, where Trooper Morris stopped just in time to avoid running him down.

The area was now a tangle of struggling, punching, gouging, yelling figures. They tripped each other, they slipped in the rain, they got up again, they hit out and were hit in return. The gaudy splashes of lightning made it seem that some weird dance was going on, one where you threw your partner into the nearest tree instead of allemanding her, or dug your knee into his crotch instead of doing a do-si-do.

Nan Roberts grabbed Betsy Vigue by the back of the dress as Betsy tore tattoos into Lucille Dunham's cheeks with her nails. Nan yanked Betsy toward her, whirled her around, and poked two of her fingers up Betsy's nose all the way to the second knuckles. Betsy uttered a nasal foghorn screech as Nan began to shake her enthusiastically back and forth by her nose.

Frieda Pulaski belted Nan with her pocket-book. Nan was driven to her knees. Her fingers came out of Betsy Vigue's nose with an audible pop. When she tried to get up, Betsy kicked her in the face and knocked her sprawling in the middle of the street. “You bidch, you wregged by dodze!” Betsy shrieked. “You wregged by
DODZE!”
She tried to stamp her foot down into Nan's belly. Nan grabbed her foot, twisted her, and dumped the once-upon-a-time Betty La-La face-first into the street. Nan crawled to her; Betsy was waiting; a moment later they were both rolling over and over in the street, biting and scratching.

“STOP!!!”

Trooper Morris bellowed, but his voice was drowned out in a volley of thunder which shook the entire street.

He pulled his gun, raised it skyward . . . but before he could fire, someone—God only knows who—shot him in the crotch with one of Leland Gaunt's special sale items. Trooper Morris flew backward against the hood of his cruiser and rolled into the street, clutching the ruins of his sexual equipment and trying to scream.

It was impossible to tell just how many of the combatants had brought weapons purchased from Mr. Gaunt that day. Not many, and some of those who
had
been armed had lost the automatics in the confusion of trying to escape the stink-bombs. But at least four more shots were fired in rapid succession, shots that were largely overlooked in the confusion of shouting voices and booming thunder.

Len Milliken saw Jake Pulaski aiming one of the guns at Nan, who had allowed Betsy to get away and was now trying to choke Meade Rossignol. Len grabbed Jake's wrist and forced it upward into the lightning-dazzled sky a second before the gun went off. Then he brought Jake's wrist down and snapped it over his knee like a stick of kindling wood. The gun clattered onto the wet street. Jake began to howl. Len stepped back and said, “That'll teach you to—” He got no further, for someone chose that moment to sink the blade of a pocket-knife into the nape of his neck, severing Len's spinal cord at the brain-stem.

Other police-cars were arriving now, their blue lights swinging crazily in the rain-swept dark. The combatants did not heed the amplified yells to cease and desist. When the Troopers attempted to break things up, they found themselves sucked into the brawl instead.

Nan Roberts saw Father Brigham, his damned black shirt split right up the back. He was holding Rev. Rose by the nape of the neck with one hand. His other hand was rolled up into a tight fist, and he was popping Rev. Rose repeatedly in the nose with it. His fist would slam home, the hand holding the nape of Rev. Rose's neck would rock backward a little, and then it would haul Rev. Rose back into position for the next blow.

Bellowing at the top of her lungs, ignoring the confused State Trooper who was telling her—almost begging her—to stop and stop
right now,
Nan slung away Meade Rossignol and launched herself at Father Brigham.

The onslaught of the storm slowed Alan down to a crawl in spite of his growing feeling that time had become vitally, bitterly important, and that if he didn't get back to Castle Rock soon, he might just as well stay away forever. Much of the information he had really needed, it seemed to him now, had been in his mind all along, locked up behind a stout door. The door had a legend printed neatly on it—but not
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
or
BOARD ROOM
or even
PRIVATE DO NOT ENTER
. The legend printed on the door in Alan's mind had been
THIS MAKES NO SENSE
. All he'd needed to unlock it was the right key . . . the key which Sean Rusk had given him. And what was behind the door?

Why, Needful Things. And its proprietor, Mr. Leland Gaunt.

Brian Rusk had bought a baseball card in Needful Things, and Brian was dead. Nettie Cobb had bought a lampshade in Needful Things, and
she
was dead, too. How many others in Castle Rock had gone to the well and bought poisoned water from the poison man? Norris had—a fishing rod. Polly had—a magic charm. Brian Rusk's mother had—a pair of cheap sunglasses that had something to do with Elvis Presley. Even Ace Merrill had—an old book. Alan was willing to bet that Hugh Priest had also made a purchase . . . and Danforth Keeton . . .