Ohhhh, riiiiight, the voice agreed. How could I have forgotten a thing like that? You want to talk about mean-spirited? jeer, Louise!
Good thing you reminded me! Good thing you reminded us BOTH, right? Only Annie saved the day-she said to let him have it. She said... let me see. What DID she say?
"She said it was sort of funny, that Todd was just like me, and that he'd only be young once." Alan's voice was hoarse and trembling.
He had begun to cry again, and why not? just why the f**king hell not?
The old pain was back, twisting itself around his aching heart like a dirty rag.
Hurts, doesn't it? the voice of depression-that guilty, self-hating voice-asked with a sympathy Alan (the rest of Alan) suspected was entirely bogus. It hurts too much, like having to live inside a country-and-western song about goodlove gone bad or goodkids gone dead. Nothing that hurts this much can do you any good. Shove it back in the glove compartment, buddy. Forget about it. Next week, when this madness is all over, you can trade the wagon with the fake can of nuts still in i't.
Why not? It's the sort of cheap practical joke that would appeal only to a child, or to a man like Gaunt. Forget it. ForgetAlan cut the voice off in mid-rant. He hadn't known he could do that until this moment, and it was good knowledge to have, knowledge that might be useful in the future... if he had a future, that was. He looked more closely at the can, turning it this way and that, really looking at it for the first time, seeing it not as a sappy memento of his lost son but as an object which was as much a tool of misdirection as his hollow magic wand, his silk top-hat with the false bottom, or the Folding Flower Trick which still nestled beneath his watchband.
Magic-wasn't that what this was all about? It was mean-spirited magic, granted; magic calculated not to make people gasp and laugh but to turn them into angry charging bulls, but it was magic, just the same. And what was the basis of all magic? Misdirection. It was a five-foot-long snake hidden inside a can of nuts... or, he thought, thinking of Polly, it's a disease that looks like a cure.
He opened the car door, and when he got out into the pouring rain, he was still carrying the fake can of nuts in his left hand.
Now that he had drawn back a little from the dangerous lure of sentiment, he remembered his opposition to the purchase of this thing with something like amazement. All his life he had been fascinated with magic, and of course he would have been entranced by the old snake-in-a-can-of-nuts trick as a kid. So why had he spoken to Todd in such an unfriendly way when the boy had wanted to buy it, and then pretended not to see the boy's hurt? Had it been jealousy of Todd's youth and enthusiasm? An inability to remember the wonder of simple things? What?
He didn't know. He only knew it was exactly the sort of trick a Mr. Gaunt would understand, and he wanted it with him now.
Alan bent back into the car, grabbed a flashlight from the small box of jumbled tools sitting on the rear seat, then walked past the nose of Mr. Gaunt's Tucker Talisman (still without noticing it), and passed under the deep-green awning of Needful Things.
8
Well, here I am. Here I am at last.
Alan's heart was pounding hard but steadily in his chest. In his mind, the faces of his son and his wife and Sean Rusk seemed to have combined. He glanced at the sign in the window again and then tried the door. It was locked. Overhead, the canvas awning rippled and snapped in the howling wind.
He had tucked the Tastee-Munch can into his shirt. Now he touched it with his right hand and seemed to draw some indescribable but perfectly real comfort from it.
"Okay," he muttered. "Here I come, ready or not." He reversed the flashlight and used the handle to smash a hole in the glass. He steeled himself for the wail of the burglar alarm, but it didn't come.
Either Gaunt hadn't turned it on or there was no alarm. He reached through the jagged hole and tried the inside knob. It turned, and for the first time, Alan Pangborn stepped into Needful Things.
The smell hit him first; it was deep and still and dusty. it wasn't the smell of a new shop but of a place which had been untenanted for months or even years. Holding his gun in his right hand, he shone the flashlight around with his left. it illuminated a bare floor, bare walls, and a number of glass cases. The cases were empty, the stock was gone. Everything was blanketed by a thick fall of dust, and the dust was undisturbed by any mark.
No one's been here for a long, long time.
But how could that possibly be, when he had seen people going in and out all week long?
Because he's not a man at all. Because the devil's voice is sweet to hear.
He took two more steps, using the flashlight to cover the empty room in zones, breathing the dry museum dust which hung in the air. He looked behind him and saw, in a flash of lightning, the tracks of his own feet in the dust. He shone the light back into the store, ran it from right to left along the case which had also served Mr.
Gaunt as a counter... and stopped.
A video-cassette recorder/player sat there, next to a Sony portable TV-one of the sporty models, round instead of square, with a case as red as a fire-engine. A cord was looped around the television.
And there was something on top of the VCR. In this light it looked like a book, but Alan didn't think that was what it was.
He walked over and trained his light first on the TV. It was as thickly coated with dust as the floor and the glass cases. The cord looped around it was a short length of coaxial cable with a connector at either end. Alan moved his light to the thing on top of the VCR, the thing which wasn't a book but a video cassette in an unmarked black plastic case.
A dusty white business envelope lay beside it. Written on the front of the envelope was the message
ATTENTION SHERIFF ALAN PANGBORN.
He set his gun and his flashlight down on the glass counter, took the envelope, opened it, and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside. Then he picked up the flashlight again and trained its powerful circle of light on the short typed message.
Dear Sheriff Pangborn, By now you will have discovered that I am a rather special sort of businessman-the rare sort who actually does try to stock "something for everyone." I regret that we never were able to meet face-to-face, but I hope you'll understand that such a meeting would have been very unwise-from my standpoint, at least. Ha-ha! In any event, I have left you a little something which I believe will interest you very muchThis is not a gift-I am not the Santa Claus type at all, as I think you will agree-but everyone in town has assured me that you are an honorable man, and I believe you will pay the price I require. That price includes a little service... a service which is, in your case, more good deed than prank.
I believe you will agree with me, sir.
I know you have wondered long and deeply about what happened during the last few moments of your wife and younger son's lives. I believe that all these questions will be answered shortly.
Please believe that I wish you only the best, and that I remain Your faithful and obedient servant Leland Gaunt Alan put the paper down slowly. "Bastard!" he muttered.
He shone the light around again, and saw the VCR's cord trailing down the far side of the case and ending in a plug which lay on the floor several feet from the nearest electric socket. Which was no problem, since the power was out, anyway.
But you know what? Alan thought. I don't think that matters.
I don't think it matters one little bit. I think that once I hook the appliances up and plug them in and feed that cassette to the tapeplayer, everything is going to work just fine. Because there's no way he could have caused the things he's caused, or know the things he knows... not if he's human. The devil's voice is sweet to hear, Alan, and whatever you do, you must not look at what he's left for you.
Nevertheless, he put the flashlight down again and picked up the coaxial cable. He examined it for a moment, then bent to plug it into the proper receptacle on the back of the TV. The TasteeMunch can tried to slip out of his shirt as he did so. He caught it with one of his nimble hands before it could fall to the floor, and set it on the glass case next to the VCR.
9
Norris Ridgewick was halfway to Needful Things when he suddenly decided he would be crazy-much crazier than he had been already, and that was really going some to tackle Leland Gaunt alone.
He pulled the microphone off its prongs. "Unit Two to Base," he said. "This is Norris, come back?"
He released the button. There was nothing but a horrid squeal of static. The heart of the storm was directly over The Rock now.
"Fuck it," he said, and turned toward the Municipal Building.
Alan might be there; if not, someone would tell him where Alan was. Alan would know what to do... and even if he didn't, Alan would have to hear his confession: he had slashed Hugh Priest's tires and sent the man to his death simply because he, Norris Ridgewick, had wanted to own a Bazun fishing rod like his good old dad's.
He arrived at the Municipal Building while the timer under the bridge stood at 5, and parked directly behind a bright yellow van.
A TV newsvan, from the look.
Norris got out in the pouring rain and ran into the Sheriff's Office to try to find Alan.
Polly swung the cup end of the bathroom plunger at the obscenely rearing spider, and this time it did not flinch away. Its bristly front legs clasped the shaft, and Polly's hands cried out in agony as it hauled its quivering weight onto the rubber cup. Her grip wavered, the plunger dropped, and suddenly the spider was scrabbling up the handle like a fat man on a tightrope.