Needful Things - Stephen King [258]
And remember this, because it is the simplest, most wonderful aspect of commerce: once an item is paid for, it belongs to you. You didn't expect such a wonderful thing to come cheap, did you? But when you finish paying, it's yours. You have clear title to the thing you have paid for. Now will you stand here listening to those oldfrightened voices all day, or will you do what you came to do?
Polly opened her eyes again. The azka hung movelessly at the end of its chain. If it had moved-and she was no longer sure it had-it had stopped now. The house was just a house, empty too long and showing the inevitable signs of neglect. The windows were not eyes, but simply holes rendered glassless by adventuresome boys with rocks. If she had heard something in the barn-and she was no longer sure she had-it had only been the sound of a board expanding in the unseasonable October heat.
Her parents were dead. Her sweet little boy was dead. And the dog which had ruled this dooryard so terribly and completely for three summer days and nights eleven years ago was dead.
There were no ghosts.
"Not even me," she said, and began to walk around the barn.
3
When you go around to the back of the barn, Mr. Gaunt had said, you'll see the remains of an old trailer. She did; a silver-sided Air-Flow, almost obscured by goldenrod and high tangles of late sunflowers.
You'll see a large flat rock at the left end of the trailer.
I She found it easily. It was as large as a garden paving stone.
Move the rock and dig. About two feet down you'llfind a Crisco can.
She tossed the rock aside and dug. Less than five minutes after she started, the shovel's blade clunked on the can. She discarded the shovel and dug into the loose earth with her fingers, breaking the light webwork of roots with her fingers. A minute later she was holdin the Crisco can. It was rusty but intact. The rotting label 9 came loose and she saw a recipe for Pineapple Surprise Cake on the back (the list of ingredients was mostly obscured by a black blotch of mold), along with a Bisquick coupon that had expired in 1969. She got her fingers under the lid of the can and pried it loose.
The whiff of air that escaped made her wince and draw her head back for a moment. That voice tried one last time to ask what she was doing here, but Polly shut it out.
She looked into the can and saw what Mr. Gaunt had told her she would see: a bundle of Gold Bond trading stamps and several fading photographs of a woman having sexual intercourse with a collie dog.
She took these things out, stuffed them into her hip pocket, I and then wiped her fingers briskly on the leg of her jeans. She would wash her hands as soon as she could, she promised herself.
Touching these things which had lain so long under the earth made her feel unclean.
From her other pocket she took a sealed business envelope.
Typed on the front in capital letters was this:
A MESSAGE FOR THE INTREPID TREASURE-HUNTER.
Polly put the envelope n the can, pressed the cover back down, and dropped it into the hole again. She used the shovel to fill in the hole, working quickly and carelessly. All she wanted right now was to get the hell out of here.
When she was done, she walked away fast. The shovel she slung into the high weeds. She had no intention of taking it back to the barn, no matter how mundane the explanation of the sound she had heard might be.
When she reached her car, she opened first the passenger door and then the glove compartment. She pawed through the litter of paper inside until she found an old book of matches. It,took her four tries to produce one small flame. The pain had almost entirely left her hands, but they were shaking so badly that she struck the first three much too hard, bending the paper heads uselessly to the side.
When the fourth flared alight, she held it between two fingers of her right hand, the flame almost invisible