Needful Things - Stephen King [305]
Rose back into position for the next blow.
Bellowing at the top of her lungs, ignoring the confused State Trooper who was telling her-almost begging her-to stop and stop right now, Nan slung away Meade Rossignol and launched herself at Father Brigham.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The onslaught of the storm slowed Alan down to a crawl in spite of his growing feeling that time had become vitally, bitterly important, and that if he didn't get back to Castle Rock soon, he might just as well stay away forever. Much of the information he had really needed, it seemed to him now, had been in his mind all along, locked up behind a stout door. The door had a legend printed neatly on it-but not OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT or BOARD ROOM or even PRIVATE DO NOT ENTER.
The legend printed on the door in Alan's mind had been THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
All he'd needed to unlock it was the right key the key which Sean Rusk had given him. And what was behind the door?
Why, Needful Things. And its proprietor, Mr. Leland Gaunt.
Brian Rusk had bought a baseball card in Needful Things, and Brian was dead. Nettle Cobb had bought a lampshade in Needful Things, and she was dead, too. How many others in Castle Rock had gone to the well and bought poisoned water from the poison man? Norris had-a fishing rod. Polly had-a magic charm. Brian Rusk's mother had-a pair of cheap sunglasses that had something to do with Elvis Presley. Even Ace Merrill had-an old book. Alan was willing to bet that Hugh Priest had also made a purchase and Danforth Keeton
How many others? How many?
He pulled up on the far side of the Tin Bridge just as a bolt of lightning stroked down from the sky and severed one of the old elms on the other side of Castle Stream. There was a huge electrical crackle and a wild streak of brilliance. Alan threw an arm across his eyes, but an afterimage was still printed on them in stark blue as the radio uttered a loud blurt of static and the elm toppled with ponderous grandeur into the stream.
He dropped his arm, then yelled as thunder bellowed directly overhead, sounding loud enough to crack the world. For a moment his dazzled eyes could make out nothing and he was afraid the tree might have fallen on the bridge, blocking his way into town. Then he saw it lying just upstream of the rusty old structure, buried in a loom of rapids. Alan put the cruiser in gear and made the crossing.
As he did, he could hear the wind, which was now blowing a gale, hooting in the struts and girders of the bridge. It was a creepy, lonely sound.
Rain pelted against the old station wagon's windshield, turning everything beyond it into a wavering hallucination. As Alan came off the bridge and onto Lower Main Street at its intersection with Watermill Lane, the rain began to come so hard that the wipers, even on fast speed, were entirely useless. He unrolled his window, stuck his head out, and drove that way. He was instantly soaked.
The area around the Municipal Building was loaded with police cars and newsvans, but it also had a weird, deserted look, as if the people who belonged to all these vehicles had suddenly been teleported to the planet Neptune by evil aliens. Alan saw a few newspeople peering out from the shelter of their vans, and one State cop ran down the alley which led to the Municipal Building's parking lot, rainwater spatting up from his shoes, but that was all.
Three blocks up, toward Castle Hill, an S.P. cruiser shot across Upper Main at high speed, heading west along Laurel Street. A moment later, another cruiser shot across Main. This one was on Birch Street and headed in the opposite direction from the first. It happened so fast-zip, zip-that it was like something you'd see in a comedy movie about bumbling police. Smokey and the Bandit, perhaps. Alan, however, saw nothing funny in it. It gave him a sense of action without purpose, a kind of panicky, helter-skelter movement. He was suddenly sure that Henry Payton had lost control of whatever was happening