Needful Things - Stephen King [97]
Looking for Them.
He saw nothing.
After a long moment he stepped away, swabbed indifferently at the smeared glass with the sleeve of his overcoat, and left the office.
Nothing yet, anyway. That didn't mean They wouldn't come in tonight, pull out his mirror, and replace it with one-way glass.
Spying was just another tool of the trade for the Persecutors. He would have to check the mirror every day now.
"But I can," he said to the empty upstairs hallway. "I can do that. Believe me."
Eddie Warburton was mopping the lobby floor and didn't look up as Keeton stepped out onto the street.
His car was parked around back, but he didn't feel like driving.
He felt too confused to drive; he would probably put the Caddy through someone's store window if he tried. Nor was he aware, in I the depths of his confused mind, that he was walking away from his house rather than toward it. It was seven-fifteen on Saturday morning, and he was the only person out in Castle Rock's small business district.
His mind went briefly back to that first night at Lewiston Raceway. He couldn't do anything wrong, it seemed. Steve Frazier had lost thirty dollars and said he was leaving after the ninth race.
Keeton said he thought he would stay awhile longer. He barely looked at Frazier, and barely noticed when Frazier was gone. He did remember thinking it was nice not to have someone at his elbow saying Buster This and Buster That all the time. He hated the nickname, and of course Steve knew it-that was why he used it.
The next week he had come back again, alone this time, and had lost sixty dollars' worth of previous winnings. He hardly cared.
Although he thought often of those huge stacks of banded currency, it wasn't the money, not really; the money was just the symbol you took away with you, something that said you had been there, that you had been, however briefly, part of the big show. What he really cared about was the tremendous, walloping excitement that went through the crowd when the starter's bell rang, the gates opened with their heavy, crunching thud, and the announcer yelled, "Theyyy'rrre OFF!" What he cared about was the roar of the crowd as the pack rounded the third turn and went hell-for-election down the backstretch, the hysterical camp-meeting exhortations from the stands as they rounded the fourth turn and poured on the coal down the homestretch. It was alive, oh, it was so alive. It was so alive that-that it was dangerous.
Keeton decided he'd better stay away. He had the course of his life neatly planned. He intended to become Castle Rock's Head Selectman when Steve Frazier finally pulled the pin, and after six or seven years of that, he intended to stand for the State House of Representatives. After that, who knew? National office was not out of reach for a man who was ambitious, capable and sane.
That was the real trouble with the track. He hadn't recognized it at first, but he had recognized it soon enough. The track was a place where people paid their money, took a ticket and gave up their sanity for a little while. Keeton had seen too much insanity in his own family to feel comfortable with the attraction Lewiston Raceway held for him. It was a pit with greasy sides, a snare with hidden teeth, a loaded gun with the safety removed. When he went, he was unable to leave until the last race of the evening had been run. He knew. He had tried. Once he had made it almost all the way to the exit turnstiles before something in the back of his brain, something powerful, enigmatic, and reptilian, had arisen, taken control, and turned his feet around. Keeton was terrified of fully waking that reptile. Better to let it sleep.
For three years he had done just that. Then, in 1984, Steve Frazier had retired, and Keeton had been elected Head Selectman.
That was when his real troubles began.
He had gone to the track to celebrate his victory, and since he was celebrating, he decided to go whole hog. He bypassed the two- and five-dollar windows, and went straight