Needful Things - Stephen King [309]
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?"
4
"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, hut 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 letterPurported letter, Purported Xerox-had been sent to "Ms. Patricia Chalmers."
"No,"