Needful Things - Stephen King [262]
One question still nagged: If Pop really had been able to tell the difference between diamonds and dust, why had he bothered to bury the trading stamps at all?
Ace pushed this question impatiently aside and got on the road to Castle Rock.
5
Danforth Keeton arrived back home in Castle View just as Ace was leaving for the town's more rural environs. Buster was still handcuffed to the doorhandle of his Cadillac, but his mood was one of savage euphoria. He had spent the last two years fighting shadows, and the shadows had been winning. It had gotten to the point where he had begun fearing that he might be going insane which, of course, was just what They wanted him to believe.
He saw several "satellite dishes" on his drive from Main Street to his home on the View. He had noticed them before, and had wondered if they might not be a part of what was going on in this town. Now he felt sure. They weren't "satellite dishes" at all. They were mind-disrupters. They might not all be aimed at his house, but you could be sure any which weren't were aimed at the few other people like him who understood that a monstrous conspiracy was afoot.
Buster parked in his driveway and pushed the garage-door opener clipped to his sun visor. The door began to rise, but he felt a monstrous bolt of pain go through his head at the same instant.
He understood that was a part of it, too-They had replaced his real Wizard garage-door opener with something else, something that shot bad rays into his head at the same time it was opening the door.
He pulled it off the visor and threw it out the window before driving into the garage.
He turned off the ignition, opened the door, and got out. The handcuff tethered him to the door as efficiently as a choke-chain.
There were tools mounted neatly on wall-pegs, but they were well out of reach. Buster leaned back into the car and began to blow the horn.
6
Myrtle Keeton, who'd had her own errand to run that afternoon, was lying on her bed upstairs in a troubled semi-doze when the horn began to blow. She sat bolt upright, eyes bulging in terror. "I did it!" she gasped. "I did what you told me to do, now please leave me alone!"
She realized that she had been dreaming, that Mr. Gaunt was not here, and let out her breath in a long, trembling sigh.
WHONK! WHONK! WHOOOONNNNNNK!
It sounded like the Cadillac's horn. She picked up the doll which lay next to her on the bed, the beautiful doll she had gotten at Mr.
Gaunt's shop, and hugged it to her for comfort. She had done something this afternoon, something which a dim, frightened part of her believed to be a bad thing, a very bad thing, and since then the doll had become inexpressibly dear to her. Price, Mr. Gaunt might have said, always enhances value at least in the eyes of the purchaser.
WHOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNKK!
It was the Cadillac's horn. Why was Danforth sitting in the garage, blowing his horn? She supposed she had better go see.
"But he better not hurt my doll," she said in a low voice. She placed it carefully in the shadows under her side of the bed. "He just better not, because that's where I draw the line."
Myrtle was one of a great many people who had visited Needful Things that day, just another name with a check-mark beside it on Mr.
Gaunt's list. She had come, like many others, because Mr.
Gaunt had told her to come. She got the message in a way her husband would have understood completely: she heard it in her head.
Mr. Gaunt told her the time had come to finish paying for her doll if she wanted to keep it, that was. She was to take a metal box and a sealed letter to the Daughters of Isabella Hall, next to Our Lady of Serene Waters. The box had grilles set in every side but the bottom. She could hear a faint ticking noise from inside.
She had tried to look into one of the round grilles-they looked like the speakers in old-fashioned table radios-but she had been able to see only a vague cube-shaped object. And in truth, she hadn't looked very hard. It seemed better-safer-not