14
Alan didn’t answer Ace. He spoke to Polly instead, tightening his hands on the Tastee-Munch can as he did. Ace hadn’t even noticed the can, it seemed, very likely because Alan had made absolutely no attempt to hide it.
“Annie wasn’t wearing her seatbelt that day,” Alan said to Polly.
“Did I ever tell you that?”
“I… I don’t remember, Alan.”
Behind Ace, Norris Ridgewick was pulling himself laboriously out of the cruiser’s window.
“That’s why she went through the windshield.” In just a moment I’m going to have to go for one of them, he thought. Ace or Mr.
Gaunt? Which way? Which one? “That’s what I always wondered about-why her belt wasn’t buckled. She didn’t even think about it, the habit was so deeply ingrained. But she didn’t do it that day.”
“Last chance, cop!” Ace shrieked. “I’ll take my money or this bitch!
You choose!”
Alan went on ignoring him. “But on the tape, her belt was still buckled,” Alan said, and suddenly he knew. Knowing rose in the middle of his mind like a clear silver column of flame. “It was still buckled AND YOU FUCKED UP, MR. GAUNT!”
Alan wheeled toward the tall figure standing beneath the green canopy eight feet away. He grasped the top of the Tastee-Munch can as he took a single large step toward Castle Rock’s newest entrepreneur, and before Gaunt could do anything-before his eyes could do more than begin to widen-Alan had spun the lid off Todd’s last joke, the one Annie had said to let him have because he would only be young once.
The snake sprang out, and this time it was no joke.
This time it was real.
It was only real for a few seconds, and Alan never knew if anyone else had seen it, but Gaunt did; of that he was absolutely sure. It was long-much longer than the crepe-paper snake that had flown out a week or so ago when he had removed the can’s top in the Municipal Building parking lot after his long, solitary ride back from Portland.
Its skin glowed with a shifting iridescence and its body was mottled with diamonds of red and black, like the skin of some fabulous rattler. its jaws opened as it struck the shoulder of Leland Gaunt’s broadcloth coat, and Alan squinted against the dazzling, chromic gleam of its fangs. He saw the deadly triangular head draw back, then dart down toward Gaunt’s neck. He saw Gaunt grab for it and seize it… but before he did, the snake’s fangs sank into his flesh, not once but several times. The triangular head blurred up and down like the bobbin of a sewing machine.
Gaunt screamed-although with pain, fury, or both, Alan could not tell-and dropped the valise in order to seize the snake with both hands. Alan saw his chance and leaped forward as Gaunt held the whipping snake away from him, then hurled it to the sidewalk at his booted feet. When it landed, it was again what it had been before-nothing but a cheap novelty, five feet of spring wrapped in faded green crepe-paper, the sort of trick only a kid like Todd could truly love and only a creature like Gaunt could truly appreciate.
Blood was trickling from Gaunt’s neck in tiny threads from three pairs of holes. He wiped it away absently with one of his strange, long-fingered hands as he bent to pick up his valise… and stopped suddenly. Bent over like that, long legs cocked, long arm reaching, he looked like a woodcut of Ichabod Crane. But what he was reaching for was no longer there. The hyena-hide valise with its gruesome, respiring sides now sat on the pavement between Alan’s feet.
He had taken it while Mr. Gaunt had been occupied with the snake, and he had done it with his customary speed and dexterity.
There was no doubt about Gaunt’s expression now; a thunderous combination of rage, hate, and unbelieving surprise contorted his features. His upper lip curled back like a dog’s muzzle, exposing the rows of jostling teeth. Now all of those teeth came to points, as if filed for the occasion.
He held his splayed hands out and hissed: “Give it to me-it’s mine!”
Alan didn’t know that Leland Gaunt had assured dozens of Castle Rock residents, from Hugh Priest to Slopey Dodd, that he hadn’t the slightest interest in human souls-poor, wrinkled, diminished things that they were. If he had known, Alan would have laughed and pointed out that lies were Mr. Gaunt’s chief stock in trade. Oh, he knew what was in the bag, all right-what was in there, screaming like powerlines in a high wind and breathing like a frightened old man on his deathbed.
He knew very well.
Mr. Gaunt’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a macabre grin.
His horrible hands stretched out farther toward Alan.
“I’m warning you, Sheriff-don’t fuck with me. I’m not a man you want to fuck with. That hag is mine, I say!”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Gaunt. I have an idea that what’s in there is stolen property. I think you’d better-” Ace had been staring at Gaunt’s subtle but steady transformation from businessman to monster, his mouth agape. The arm around Polly’s throat had relaxed a little, and she saw her chance. She twisted her head and buried her teeth up to the gumline in Ace Merrill’s wrist. Ace shoved her away without thinking, and Polly went sprawling into the street. Ace levelled the gun at her.
“Bitch!” he cried.
15
“There,” Norris Ridgewick murmured gratefully.
He had rested the barrel of his service revolver along one of the flasher-bars. Now he held his breath, caught his lower lip in his teeth, and squeezed the trigger. Ace Merrill was suddenly hurled over the woman in the street-it was Polly Chalmers, and Norris had time to think he should have known-with the back of his head spreading and flying outward in clumps and clots.
Suddenly Norris felt very faint.
But he also felt very, very blessed.
16
Alan took no notice of Ace Merrill’s end.
Neither did Leland Gaunt.
They faced each other, Gaunt on the sidewalk, Alan standing by his station wagon in the street with the horrible, breathing valise between his feet.
Gaunt took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Something passed over his face-a kind of shimmer. When he opened his eyes again, a semblance of the Leland Gaunt who had fooled so many people in The Rock was back-charming, urbane Mr. Gaunt. He glanced down at the paper snake lying on the sidewalk, grimaced with distaste, and kicked it into the gutter. Then he looked back at Alan and held out one hand.
“Please, Sheriff-let’s not argue. The hour is late and I’m tired.
You want me out of your town, and I want to go. I will go… as soon as you give me what’s mine. And it is mine, I assure you.”
“Assure and be damned. I don’t believe you, my friend.”
Gaunt stared at Alan with impatience and anger. “That bag and its contents belong to me! Don’t you believe in free trade, Sheriff Pangborn? What are you, some sort of Communist? I dickered for each and every one of the things in that valise! I got them fair and square. If it’s a reward you want, an emolument, a commission, a finder’s fee, a dip out of the old gravy-boat, whatever you want to call it, that I can understand and that I will gladly pay. But you must see that this is a business matter, not a legal m-”
“You cheated!”
Polly screamed. “You cheated and you lied and you cozened!”
Gaunt shot her a pained glance, then looked back at Alan. “I didn’t, you know. I dealt as I always do. I show people what I have to sell… and let them make up their own minds. So… if you please…”
“I think I’ll keep it,” Alan said evenly. A small smile, as thin and sharp as a rind of November ice, touched his mouth. “Let’s just call it evidence, okay?”
“I’m afraid you can’t do that, Sheriff.” Gaunt stepped off the sidewalk and into the street. Small red pits of light glowed in his eyes. “You can die, but you can’t keep my property. Not if I mean to take it. And I do.” He began to walk toward Alan, the red pinpricks in his eyes deepening. He left a boot-track in an oatmealcolored lump of Ace’s brains as he came.
Alan felt his belly try to fold in on itself, but he didn’t move.
Instead, prompted by some instinct he made no effort to understand, he put his hands together in front of the station wagon’s left headlight. He crossed them, made a bird-shape, and began to bend his wrists rapidly back and forth.
The sparrows are flying again, Mr. Gaunt, he thought.
A large projected shadow-bird-more hawk than sparrow and unsettlingly realistic for an insubstantial shade-suddenly flapped across the false front of Needful Things. Gaunt saw it from the corner of his eye, whirled toward it, gasped, and retreated again.
“Get out of town, my friend,” Alan said. He rearranged his hands and now a large shadow-dog-perhaps a Saint Bernardslouched across the front of You Sew and Sew in the spotlight thrown by the station wagon’s headlights. And somewhere nearperhaps coincidentally, perhaps not-a dog began to bark. A large one, by the sound.
Gaunt turned in that direction. He was looking slightly harried now, and definitely off-balance.
“You’re lucky I’m cutting you loose,” Alan went on. “But what would I charge you with, come to that? The theft of souls may be covered in the legal code Brigham and Rose deal with, but I don’t think I’d find it in mine. Still, I’d advise you to go while you still can.”
“Give me my bag!”
