Needful Things (43 page)

“It's called an
azka,
or perhaps an
azakah,”
Mr. Gaunt said. “Either way, it's an amulet which is supposed to ward off pain.”

Polly tried a smile. She wanted to be polite, but
really
 . . . she had come all the way down here for
this?
The thing didn't even have any aesthetic value. It was ugly, not to put too fine a point on it.

“I really don't think . . .”

“I don't, either,” he said, “but desperate situations often call for desperate measures. I assure you it is quite genuine . . . at least in the sense that it wasn't made in Taiwan. It is an authentic Egyptian artifact—not quite a relic, but an artifact most certainly—from the period of the Later Decline. It comes with a certificate of provenance which identifies it as a tool of
benka-litis,
or white magic. I want you to take it and wear it. I suppose it sounds silly. Probably it is. But there are stranger things in heaven and earth than some of us dream of, even in our wilder moments of philosophy.”

“Do you really believe that?” Polly asked.

“Yes. I've seen things in my time that make a healing medallion or amulet look perfectly ordinary.” A fugitive gleam flickered momentarily in his hazel eyes.
“Many
such things. The world's odd corners are filled with fabulous junk, Polly. But never mind that;
you
are the issue here.

“Even the other day, when I suspect the pain was not nearly as bad as it is right now, I got a good idea of just how unpleasant your situation had become. I thought this little . . . item . . . might be worth a try. After all, what have you to lose? Nothing else you've tried has worked, has it?”

“I appreciate the thought, Mr. Gaunt, really I do, but—”

“Leland. Please.”

“Yes, all right. I appreciate the thought,
Leland,
but I'm afraid I'm not superstitious.”

She looked up and saw his bright hazel eyes were fixed upon her.

“It doesn't matter if
you
are or not, Polly . . . because this is.” He wiggled his fingers. The
azka
bobbed gently at the end of its chain.

She opened her mouth again, but this time no words
came out. She found herself remembering a day last spring. Nettie had forgotten her copy of
Inside View
when she went home. Leafing through it idly, glancing at stories about werewolf babies in Cleveland and a geological formation on the moon that looked like the face of JFK, Polly had come upon an ad for something called The Prayer Dial of the Ancients. It was supposed to cure headaches, stomach aches, and arthritis.

The ad was dominated by a black-and-white drawing. It showed a fellow with a long beard and a wizard's hat (either Nostradamus or Gandalf, Polly assumed) holding something that looked like a child's pinwheel over the body of a man in a wheelchair. The pinwheel gadget was casting a cone of radiance over the invalid, and although the ad did not come right out and say so, the implication seemed to be that the guy would be dancing up a storm at the Copa in a night or two. It was ridiculous, of course, superstitious pap for people whose minds had wavered or perhaps even broken under a steady onslaught of pain and disability, but still . . .

She had sat looking at that ad for a long time, and, ridiculous as it was, she had almost called the 800 number for phone orders given at the bottom of the page. Because sooner or later—

“Sooner or later a person in pain should explore even the more questionable paths, if it's possible those paths might lead to relief,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Isn't that so?”

“I . . . I don't . . .”

“Cold therapy . . . thermal gloves . . . even the radiation treatments . . . none of them have worked for you, have they?”

“How do you know about all that?”

“A good tradesman makes it his business to know the needs of his customers,” Mr. Gaunt said in his soft, hypnotic voice. He moved toward her, holding the silver chain out in a wide ring with the
azka
hanging at the bottom. She shrank from the long hands with their leathery nails.

“Fear not, dear lady. I'll not touch the least hair upon your head. Not if you're calm . . . and remain quite still . . .”

And Polly did become calm. She did become still. She stood with her hands (still encased in the woolly mittens) crossed
demurely in front of her, and allowed Mr. Gaunt to drop the silver chain over her head. He did it with the gentleness of a father turning down his daughter's bridal veil. She felt far away from Mr. Gaunt, from Needful Things, from Castle Rock, even from herself. She felt like a woman standing high on some dusty plain and under an endless sky, hundreds of miles from any other human being.

The
azka
dropped against the zipper of her leather car-coat with a small clink.

“Put it inside your jacket. And when you get home, put it inside your blouse, as well. It must be worn next to the skin for maximum effect.”

“I can't put it in my jacket,” Polly said in slow, dreaming tones. “The zipper . . . I can't pull down the zipper.”

“No? Try.”

So Polly stripped off one of the mittens and tried. To her great surprise, she found she was able to flex the thumb and first finger of her right hand just enough to grasp the zipper's tab and pull it down.

“There, you see?”

The little silver ball fell against the front of her blouse. It seemed very heavy to her, and the feel of it was not precisely comfortable. She wondered vaguely what was inside it, what had made that dusty slithery sound. Some sort of herb, he had said, but it hadn't sounded like leaves or even powder to Polly. It had seemed to her that something in there had shifted on its own.

Mr. Gaunt seemed to understand her discomfort. “You'll get used to it, and much sooner than you might think. Believe me, you will.”

Outside, thousands of miles away, she heard more sirens. They sounded like troubled spirits.

Mr. Gaunt turned away, and as his eyes left her face, Polly felt her concentration begin to return. She felt a little bewildered, but she also felt good. She felt as if she had just had a short but satisfying nap. Her sense of mixed discomfort and disquiet was gone.

“My hands still hurt,” she said, and this was true . . . but did they hurt as badly? It seemed to her there had been some relief, but that could be nothing more than suggestion—she had a feeling that Gaunt had imposed a
kind of hypnosis on her in his determination to make her accept the
azka.
Or it might only be the warmth of the shop after the cold outside.

“I doubt very much if the promised effect is instantaneous,” Mr. Gaunt said dryly. “Give it a chance, though—will you do that, Polly?”

She shrugged. “All right.”

After all, what
did
she have to lose? The ball was small enough so it would barely make a bulge under a blouse and a sweater. She wouldn't have to answer any questions about it if no one knew it was there, and that would be just fine with her—Rosalie Drake would be curious, and Alan, who was about as superstitious as a tree-stump, would probably find it funny. As for Nettie . . . well, Nettie would probably be awed to silence if she knew Polly was wearing an honest-to-goodness magic charm, just like the ones they sold in her beloved
Inside View.

“You shouldn't take it off, not even in the shower,” Mr. Gaunt said. “There's no need to. The ball is real silver, and won't rust.”

“But if I do?”

He coughed gently into his hand, as if embarrassed. “Well, the beneficial effect of the
azka
is cumulative. The wearer is a little better today, a little better still tomorrow, and so on. That's what I was told, at least.”

Told by whom?
she wondered.

“If the
azka
is removed, however, the wearer reverts to his or her former painful state not slowly but at once, and then has to wait for days or perhaps weeks in order to regain the lost ground once the
azka
is put back on.”

Polly laughed a little. She couldn't help it, and was relieved when Leland Gaunt joined her.

“I know how it sounds,” he said, “but I only want to help if I can. Do you believe that?”

“I do,” she said, “and I thank you.”

But as she allowed him to usher her from the shop, she found herself wondering about other things, too. There was the near trance-state she'd been in when he slipped the chain over her head, for instance. Then there was her strong dislike of being touched by him. Those things were very much at odds with the feelings of friendship, regard,
and compassion which he projected like an almost visible aura.

But
had
he mesmerized her somehow? That was a foolish idea . . . wasn't it? She tried to remember exactly what she had felt like when they were discussing the
azka,
and couldn't do it. If he had done such a thing, it had no doubt been by accident, and with her help. More likely she had just entered the dazed state which too many Percodans sometimes induced. It was the thing she disliked most about the pills. No, she guessed that was the thing she disliked second to the most. What she really hated about them was that they didn't always work the way they were supposed to anymore.

“I'd drive you home, if I drove,” Mr. Gaunt said, “but I'm afraid I never learned.”

“Perfectly all right.” Polly said. “I appreciate your kindness a great deal.”

“Thank me if it works,” he replied. “Have a lovely afternoon, Polly.”

More sirens rose in the air. They were on the east side of town, over toward Elm, Willow, Pond, and Ford streets. Polly turned in that direction. There was something about the sound of sirens, especially on such a quiet afternoon, which conjured up vaguely threatening thoughts—not quite images—of impending doom. The sound began to die out, unwinding like an invisible clockspring in the bright autumn air.

She turned back to say something about this to Mr. Gaunt, but the door was shut. The sign reading

CLOSED

hung between the drawn shade and the glass, swinging gently back and forth on its string. He had gone back inside while her back was turned, so quietly she hadn't even heard him.

Polly began to walk slowly home. Before she got to the end of Main Street another police car, this one a State Police cruiser, blasted past her.

“Danforth?”

Myrtle Keeton stepped through the front door and into the living room. She balanced the fondue pot under her left arm as she struggled to remove the key Danforth had left in the lock.

“Danforth, I'm home!”

There was no answer, and the TV wasn't on. That was strange; he had been so determined to get home in time for the kick-off. She wondered briefly if he might have gone somewhere else, up to the Garsons', perhaps, to watch it, but the garage door was down, which meant he had put the car away. And Danforth didn't walk anywhere if he could possibly avoid it. Especially not up the View, which was steep.

“Danforth? Are you here?”

Still no answer. There was an overturned chair in the dining room. Frowning, she set the fondue pot on the table and righted the chair. The first threads of worry, fine as cobweb, drifted through her mind. She walked toward the study door, which was closed. When she reached it, she tipped her head against the wood and listened. She was quite sure she could hear the soft squeak of his desk chair.

“Danforth? Are you in there?”

No answer . . . but she thought she heard a low cough. Worry became alarm. Danforth had been under a great deal of strain lately—he was the only one of the town's selectmen who worked really hard—and he weighed more than was good for him. What if he'd had a heart attack? What if he was in there lying on the floor? What if the sound she had heard was not a cough but the sound of Danforth trying to breathe?

The lovely morning and early afternoon they had spent together made such a thought seem horridly plausible: first the sweet build-up, then the crashing let-down. She reached for the knob of the study door . . . then drew her hand back and used it to pluck nervously at the loose skin under her throat instead. It had taken only a few blistering occasions to teach her that one did not disturb Danforth in his study without knocking . . . and that one
never, never,
never
entered his
sanctum sanctorum
uninvited.

Yes, but if he's had a heart attack . . . or . . . or . . .

She thought of the overturned chair and fresh alarm coursed through her.

Suppose he came home and surprised a burglar? What if the burglar conked Danforth over the head, knocked him out, and dragged him into his study?

She rapped a flurry of knuckles on the door. “Danforth? Are you all right?”

No answer. No sound in the house but the solemn tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the living room, and . . . yes, she was quite sure of it: the creak of the chair in Danforth's study.

Her hand began to creep toward the knob again.

“Danforth, are you . . .”

The tips of her fingers were actually touching the knob when his voice roared out at her, making her leap back from the door with a thin scream.

“Leave me alone! Can't you leave me alone, you stupid bitch?”

She moaned. Her heart was jackhammering wildly in her throat. It was not just surprise; it was the rage and unbridled hate in his voice. After the calm and pleasant morning they had spent, he could not have hurt her more if he had caressed her cheek with a handful of razor-blades.

“Danforth . . . I thought you were hurt . . .” Her voice was a tiny gasp she could hardly hear herself.

“Leave me alone!”
Now he was right on the other side of the door, by the sound.