Needful Things (95 page)

It's all guaranteed to work. The only thing not guaranteed to work after the sale is
YOU
.
S
o step right up and buy, buy, buy.

Now she looked directly at Polly, and Polly was struck through with terror like a knife. She saw compassion in Aunt Evvie's eyes, but it was a terrible, merciless compassion.

What
is
your name, child? Seems to me I once knew.

In her dream (and in her bed) Polly began to weep.

Has someone else forgotten your name?
Aunt Evvie asked.
I wonder. Seems like they have.

Aunt Evvie, you're scaring me!

You're scaring yourself, child,
Aunt Evvie responded, looking directly at Polly for the first time.
Just remember that when you buy here, Miss Two-Names, you're also selling.

But I
need
it!
Polly cried. She began to weep harder.

My hands—!

Yes, this does it, Miss Polly Frisco,
Aunt Evvie said,
and brought out one of the bottles marked
DR. GAUNT'S ELECTRIC TONIC
. She set it on the counter, a small, squat bottle filled with something that looked like loose mud.
It can't make your pain gone, of course
—
nothing can do that—but it can effect a transferral.

What do you mean? Why are you scaring me?

It changes the location of your arthritis, Miss Two-Names—instead of your hands, the disease attacks your heart.

No!

Yes.

No! No!
NO!

Yes. Oh yes. And your soul as well. But you'll have your pride. That'll be left to you, at least. And isn't a woman entitled to her pride? When everything else is gone—heart, soul, even the man you love—you'll have that, little Miss Polly Frisco, won't you? You'll have that one coin without which your purse would be empty. Let it be your dark and bitter comfort for the rest of your life. Let it serve. It
must
serve, because if you keep on the way you're going, there surely won't be no other.

Stop, please, can't you—

“Stop,” she muttered in her sleep. “Please stop.
Please.”

She rolled over on her side. The
azka
chinked softly against its chain. Lightning lit up the sky, striking the elm by Castle Stream, toppling it into the rushing water as Alan Pangborn sat behind the wheel of his station wagon, dazzled by the flash.

The follow-shot crack of thunder woke Polly up. Her eyes flew open. Her hand went to the
azka
at once and closed protectively around it. The hand was limber; the joints moved as easily as ball bearings packed in deep clean oil.

Miss Two-Names . . . little Miss Polly Frisco.

“What . . . ?” Her voice was thick, but her mind already felt clear and alert, as if she hadn't been asleep at all but in a daze of thought so deep it was nearly a trance.
Something was looming in her mind, something the size of a whale. Outside, lightning flashed and flickered across the sky like bright purple sparklers.

Has someone else forgotten your name?
 . . .
Seems like they have.

She reached for the night-table and switched on the lamp. Lying next to the Princess phone, the phone equipped with the oversized keypads which she no longer needed, was the envelope she had found lying in the hall with the rest of the mail when she returned home this afternoon. She had re-folded the terrible letter and slid it back inside.

Somewhere in the night, between the racketing bursts of thunder, she thought she could hear people shouting. Polly ignored them; she was thinking about the cuckoo bird, which lays its egg in a strange nest while the owner is away. When the mother-to-be returns, does she notice that something new has been added? Of course not; she simply accepts it as her own. The way Polly had accepted this goddamned letter simply because it happened to be lying on the hall floor with two catalogues and a come-on from Western Maine Cable TV.

She had just accepted it . . . but
anyone
could drop a letter through a mail-slot, wasn't that true?

“Miss Two-Names,” she murmured in a dismayed voice. “Little Miss Polly Frisco.” And that was the thing, wasn't it? The thing her subconscious had remembered and had manufactured Aunt Evvie to tell her. She
had
been Miss Polly Frisco.

Once upon a time, she had.

She reached for the envelope.

No!
a voice told her, and that was a voice she knew very well.
Don't touch that, Polly—not if you know what's good for you!

Pain as dark and strong as day-old coffee flared deep in her hands.

It can't make your pain gone . . . but it can effect a transferral.

That whale-sized thing was coming to the surface. Mr. Gaunt's voice couldn't stop it; nothing could stop it.

YOU
can stop it, Polly,
Mr. Gaunt said.
Believe me, you
must.

Her hand drew back before it touched the letter. It returned to the
azka
and became a protective fist around it. She could feel something inside it, something which had been warmed by her heat, scurrying frantically inside the hollow silver amulet, and revulsion filled her, making her stomach feel weak and loose, her bowels rotten.

She let go and reached for the letter again.

Last warning, Polly,
the voice of Mr. Gaunt told her.

Yes,
Aunt Evvie's voice replied.
I think he means it, Trisha. He has always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves, but do you know what? I don't think he's got much use for those who decide it goeth before a fall. I think the time has come for you to decide, once and for all, what your name
really
is.

She took hold of the envelope, ignoring another warning twinge in her hands, and looked at the neatly typed address. This letter—
purported
letter,
purported
Xerox—had been sent to “Ms. Patricia Chalmers.”

“No,” she whispered. “Wrong. Wrong
name.”
Her hand closed slowly and steadily on the letter, crumpling it. A dull ache filled her fist, but Polly ignored it. Her eyes were bright, feverish. “I was always Polly in San Francisco—I was Polly to everyone,
even to Child Welfare!”

That had been part of her attempt to break clean with every aspect of the old life which she fancied had hurt her so badly, never in her darkest nights allowing herself to dream that most of the wounds had been self-inflicted. In San Francisco there had been no Trisha or Patricia; only Polly. She had filled out all three of her ADC applications that way, and had signed her name that way—as Polly Chalmers, no middle initial.

If Alan really
had
written to the Child Welfare people in San Francisco, she supposed he might have given her name as Patricia, but wouldn't any resulting records search have come up blank? Yes, of course. Not even the addresses would correlate, because the one she'd printed in the space for
ADDRESS OF LAST RESIDENCE
all those years ago had been her parents' address, and that was on the other side of town.

Suppose Alan gave them both names? Polly
and
Patricia?

Suppose he had? She knew enough about the workings of government bureaucracies to believe it didn't matter what name or names
Alan
had given them; when writing to her, the letter would have come to the name and address they had on file. Polly had a friend in Oxford whose correspondence from the University of Maine still came addressed to her maiden name, although she had been married for twenty years.

But this envelope had come addressed to
Patricia
Chalmers, not Polly Chalmers. And who in Castle Rock had called her Patricia just today?

The same person who had known that Nettie Cobb was really Netitia Cobb. Her good friend Leland Gaunt.

All of that about the names is interestin,
Aunt Evvie said suddenly,
but it ain't really the important thing. The important thing is the man
—your
man. He
is
your man, ain't he? Even now. You know he would never go behind your back like that letter said he done. Don't matter what name was on it or how convincing it might sound . . . you
know
that, don't you?

“Yes,” she whispered. “I know
him.”

Had she really believed
any
of it? Or had she put her doubts about that absurd, unbelievable letter aside because she was afraid—in terror, actually—that Alan would see the nasty truth of the
azka
and force her to make a choice between him and it?

“Oh no—that's too simple,” she whispered. “You believed it, all right. Only for half a day, but you did
believe
it. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, what have I done?”

She tossed the crumpled letter onto the floor with the revolted expression of a woman who has just realized she's holding a dead rat.

I didn't tell him what I was angry about; didn't give him a chance to explain; just . . . just
believed
it. Why? In God's name,
why?

She knew, of course. It had been the sudden, shameful fear that her lies about the cause of Kelton's death had been discovered, the misery of her years in San Francisco suspected, her culpability in the death of her baby being evaluated . . . and all this by the one man in the world whose good opinion she wanted and needed.

But that wasn't all of it. That wasn't even most of it.
Mostly it had been pride—wounded, outraged, throbbing, swollen, malignant pride. Pride, the coin without which her purse would be entirely empty. She had believed because she had been in a panic of shame, a shame which had been born of pride.

I have always
so
enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves.

A terrible wave of pain broke in her hands; Polly moaned and held them against her breasts.

Not too late, Polly,
Mr. Gaunt said softly.
Not too late, even now.

“Oh, fuck pride!”
Polly shrieked suddenly into the dark of her closed, stuffy bedroom, and ripped the
azka
from her neck. She held it high overhead in her clenched fist, the fine silver chain whipping wildly, and she felt the surface of the charm crack like the shell of an egg inside her hand.
“FUCK PRIDE!”

Pain instantly clawed its way into her hands like some small and hungry animal . . . but she knew even then that the pain was not as great as she had feared; nowhere near as great as she had feared. She knew it as surely as she knew that Alan had never written to Child Welfare in San Francisco, asking about her.

“FUCK PRIDE! FUCK IT! FUCK IT! FUCK IT
!
” she screamed, and threw the
azka
across the room.

It hit the wall, bounced to the floor, and split open. Lightning flashed, and she saw two hairy legs poke out through the crack. The crack widened, and what crawled out was a small spider. It scuttered toward the bathroom. Lightning flashed again, printing its elongated, ovate shadow on the floor like an electric tattoo.

Polly leaped from her bed and chased after it. She had to kill it, and quickly . . . because even as she watched, the spider was swelling. It had been feeding on the poison it had sucked out of her body, and now that it was free of its containment, there was no telling how big it might grow.

She slapped the bathroom light-switch, and the fluorescent over the sink flickered into life. She saw the spider scurrying toward the tub. When it went through the door, it had been no bigger than a beetle. Now it was the size of a mouse.

As she came in, it turned and scurried toward her—
that horrid clittering sound of its legs beating against the tiles—and she had time to think, It was between my breasts, it was lying
AGAINST
me, it was lying against me
ALL THE TIME—

Its body was a bristly blackish-brown. Tiny hairs stood out on its legs. Eyes as dull as fake rubies stared at her . . . and she saw that two fangs stuck out of its mouth like curved vampire teeth. They were dripping some clear liquid. Where the droplets struck the tiles, they left small, smoking craters.

Polly screamed and grabbed the bathroom plunger which stood beside the toilet. Her hands screamed back at her, but she closed them around the plunger's wooden handle just the same and struck the spider with it. It retreated, one of its legs now broken and hanging uselessly askew. Polly chased after it as it ran for the tub.

Hurt or not, it was still growing. Now it was the size of a rat. Its bulging belly had dragged against the tiles, but it went up the shower-curtain with weird agility. Its legs made a sound against the plastic like tiny spats of water. The rings jingled on the steel bar running overhead.

Polly swung the plunger like a baseball bat, the heavy rubber cup whooshing through the air, and struck the horrid thing again. The rubber cup covered a lot of area but was not, unfortunately, very effective when it connected. The shower-curtain billowed inward and the spider dropped off into the tub with a meaty plop.

In that instant the light went out.

Polly stood in the dark, the plunger in her hand, and listened to the spider scurrying. Then the lightning flashed again and she could see its humped, bristly back protruding over the lip of the tub. The thing which had come out of the thimble-sized
azka
was as big as a cat now—the thing which had been nourishing itself on her heart's blood even as it abstracted the pain from her hands.