Needful Things - Stephen King [315]
How strong that feeling had been how very strong.
Alan found himself remembering something else-something his grandmother used to tell him when he was small: The devil's voice is sweet to hear.
Brian said How had Mr. Gaunt come by his knowledge? And why in God's name would he bother with a wide place in the road like Castle Rock?
- Mr. Gaunt wasn't really a man at all.
Alan suddenly leaned over and groped on the floor of the station wagon's passenger side. For a moment he thought that what he was feeling around for was gone-that it had fallen out of the car at some point during the day when the passenger door was openand then his fingers happened on the metal curve. It had rolled underneath the seat, that was all. He fumbled it out, held it up and the voice of depression, absent since he had left Sean Rusk's hospital room (or maybe it was just that things had been too busy since then for Alan to hear it), spoke up in its loud and unsettlingly merry voice.
Hi, Alan! Hello! I've been away, sorry about that, but I'm back now, okay? What you got there? Can of nuts? Nopethat's what i't looks like, but that's not what i't is, I's it? It's the last Joke Todd ever boughtat the auburn Novelty Shop, correct? A fake can of Tastee-Munch Mixed Nuts with a green snake insiderepe-paper wrapped around a spring. And when he brought it to you with his eyes glowing and a hig, goofy smile on his face, you told him to put that silly thing back, didn't you? And when his face fell, you pretended not to notice-you told him let me see. What DID you tell him?
"That the fool and his money soon parted," Alan said dully. He turned the can around and around in his hands, looking at it, remembering Todd's face. "That's what I told him."
Ohhhh, riiiiight, the voice agreed. How could I have forgotten a thing like that? You want to talk about mean-spirited? jeer, Louise!
Good thing you reminded me! Good thing you reminded us BOTH, right? Only Annie saved the day-she said to let him have it. She said let me see. What DID she say?
"She said it was sort of funny, that Todd was just like me, and that he'd only be young once." Alan's voice was hoarse and trembling.
He had begun to cry again, and why not? just why the fucking hell not?
The old pain was back, twisting itself around his aching heart like a dirty rag.
Hurts, doesn't it? the voice of depression-that guilty, self-hating voice-asked with a sympathy Alan (the rest of Alan) suspected was entirely bogus. It hurts too much, like having to live inside a country-and-western song about goodlove gone bad or goodkids gone dead. Nothing that hurts this much can do you any good. Shove it back in the glove compartment, buddy. Forget about it. Next week, when this madness is all over, you can trade the wagon with the fake can of nuts still in i't.
Why not? It's the sort of cheap practical joke that would appeal only to a child, or to a man like Gaunt. Forget it. ForgetAlan cut the voice off in mid-rant. He hadn't known he could do that until this moment, and it was good knowledge to have, knowledge that might be useful in the future if he had a future, that was. He looked more closely at the can, turning it this way and that, really looking at it for the first time, seeing it not as a sappy memento of his lost son but as an object which was as much a tool of misdirection as his hollow magic wand, his silk top-hat with the false bottom, or the Folding Flower Trick which still nestled beneath his watchband.
Magic-wasn't that what this was all about? It was mean-spirited magic, granted; magic calculated not to make people gasp and laugh but to turn them into angry charging bulls, but it was magic, just the same. And what was the basis of all magic? Misdirection. It was a five-foot-long snake hidden inside a can of nuts or, he thought, thinking of Polly, it's a disease that looks like a cure.
He opened the car door, and when he got out into the pouring rain, he was still carrying the