Needful Things - Stephen King [257]
That was all but that was enough.
There was something inside the small silver charm. Something that was alive. If she did not live up to her side of the bargain she had made with Leland Gaunt, it would die. She didn't know if she could stand to be tumbled back down into the horrible, grinding pain to which she had awakened on Sunday morning. If she had to face a lifetime of such pain, she thought she would kill herself.
"And it's not Alan," she whispered as she walked toward the barn with its gaping doorway and its ominous swaybacked roof. "He said he wouldn't raise a hand against him."
Why do you even care? that worrisome voice whispered.
She cared because she didn't want to hurt Alan. She was angry at him, yes-furious, in fact-but that didn't mean she had to stoop to his level, that she had to treat him as shabbily he had treated her.
But, Polly have you thought. No. No!
She was going to play a trick on Ace Merrill, and she didn't care about Ace at all-had never even met him, only knew him by reputation.
The trick was on Ace, but
But Alan, who had sent Ace Merrill away to Shawshank, came into it someplace. Her heart told her so.
And could she back out of this? Could she, even if she wanted to?
Now it was Kelton, as well. Mr. Gaunt hadn't exactly told her that the news of what had happened to her son would end up all over town unless she did what he told her to do but he had hinted as much.
She couldn't bear for that to happen.
Is a woman not entitled to her pride? When everything else is gone, is she not at least entitled to this, the coin without which her purse is entirely empty?
Yes. And yes. And yes.
Mr. Gaunt had told her she'd find the only tool she would need in the barn; now Polly began to walk slowly in that direction.
Go where ye list, but go there alive, Trisha, Aunt Evvie had told her. Don't be no ghost.
But now, stepping into the Camber barn through doors which hung gaping and frozen on their rusty tracks, she felt like a ghost.
She had never felt more like a ghost in her life. The azka moved between her breasts on its own now. Something inside. Something alive. She didn't like it, but she liked the idea of what would happen if that thing died even less.
She would do what Mr. Gaunt had told her to do, at least this once, cut all her ties with Alan Pangborn (it had been a mistake to ever begin with him, she saw that now, saw it clearly), and keep her past her own. Why not?
After all, it was such a little thing.
2
The shovel was exactly where he had told her it would be, leaning against one wall in a dusty shaft of sunlight. She took hold of its smooth, worn handle.
Suddenly she seemed to hear a low, purring growl from the deep shadows of the barn, as if the rabid Saint Bernard which had killed Big George Bannerman and caused the death of Tad Trenton were still here, back from the dead and meaner than ever.
Gooseflesh danced up her arms and Polly left the barn in a hurry.
The dooryard was not exactly cheery-not with that empty house glaring sullenly at her-but it was better than the barn.
What am I doing here? her mind asked again, woefully, and it was Aunt Evvie's voice that came back: Going ghost. That's what you're doing. You're going ghost.
Polly squeezed her eyes shut. "Stop it!" she whispered fiercely.
"Just stop it!"
That's right, Leland Gaunt said. Besides, what's the big deal?
It's only a harmless little joke. And if something serious were to come of itit won't, o f course, hut just supposing, for the sake of argument, that it did-whose fault would that be?
"Alan's," she whispered. Her eyes rolled nervously in their sockets and her hands clenched and unclenched nervously between her breasts. "If he were here to talk to if he hadn't cut himself off from me by snooping around in things that are none of his business
The little voice tried to speak up again, but Leland Gaunt cut it off before it could say a word.
Right again, Gaunt said.