This Thursday afternoon he was out the side door almost before the sixth-period bell had stopped ringing. His packsack contained not only his books but the rain-slicker his mother had made him wear that morning, and it bulged comically on his back.
He rode away fast, his heart beating hard in his chest. He had something (a deed) to do. A little chore to get out of the way. Sort of a fun chore, actually. He now knew what it was. It had come to him clearly as he had been daydreaming his way through math class.
As Brian descended Castle Hill by way of School Street, the sun came out from behind the tattering clouds for the first time that day. He looked to his left and saw a shadow-boy on a shadowbike keeping pace with him on the wet pavement.
You'll have to go fast to keep up with me today, shadow-kid, he thought. I got places to go and things to do.
Brian pedaled through the business district without looking across Main Street at Needful Things, pausing briefly at intersections for a perfunctory glance each way before hurrying on again.
When he reached the intersection of Pond (which was his street) and Ford streets, he turned right instead of continuing up Pond Street to his house. At the intersection of Ford and Willow, he turned left.
Willow Street paralleled Pond Street; the back yards of the houses on the two streets backed up against each other, divided in most cases by board fences.
Pete and Wilma Jersyck lived on Willow Street.
Got to be a little careful here.
But he knew how to be careful; he had worked all that out in his mind on the ride from school, and it had come easily, almost as though it had also been there all along, like his knowledge of the thing he was supposed to do.
The jerzyck house was quiet and the driveway was empty, but that didn't necessarily make everything safe and okay. Brian knew that Wilma worked at least part of the time at Hemphill's Market out on Route I17, because he had seen her there, running a cashregister with the ever-present scarf tied over her head, but that didn't mean she was there now. The beat-up little Yugo she drove might be parked in the jerzyck garage, where he couldn't see.
Brian pedaled his bike up the driveway, got off, and put down the kickstand. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears and his throat now.
It sounded like the ruffle of drums. He walked to the front door, rehearsing the lines he would speak if it turned out Mrs. jerzyck was there after all.
Hi, Mrs. jerzyck, I'm Brian Rusk, from the other side of the block?
I go to the MiddleSchoolandpretty soon we're going to beselling magazine subscriptions, so the band can get new uniforms, and I've been asking people if they want magazines. So I can come back later when I've got my sales kit. We get prizes if we sell a lot.
It had sounded good when he was working it out in his head, and it still sounded good, but he felt tense all the same. He stood on the doorstep for a minute, listening for sounds inside the house-a radio, a TV tuned to one of the stories (not Santa Barbara, though; it wouldn't be Santa Barbara time for another couple of hours), maybe a vacuum. He heard nothing, but that didn't mean any more than the empty driveway.
Brian rang the doorbell. Faintly, somewhere in the depths of the house, he heard it: Bing-Bong!
He stood on the stoop, waiting, looking around occasionally to see if anyone had noticed him, but Willow Street seemed fast asleep.
And there was a hedge in front of the jerzyck house. That was good. When you were up to (a deed) something that people-your Ma and Pa, for instance-wouldn't exactly approve of, a hedge was about the best thing in the world.
It had been half a minute, and nobody was coming. So far so good... but it was also better to be safe than sorry. He rang the doorbell again, thumbing it twice this time, so the sound from the belly of the house was BingBong! BingBong!
Still nothing.
Okay, then. Everything was perfectly okay. Everything was, in fact, most sincerely awesome and utterly radical.
Sincerely awesome and utterly radical or not, Brian could not resist another look around-a rather furtive one this time-as he trundled his bike, with the kickstand still down, between the house and the garage. In this area, which the friendly folks at the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company in South Paris called a breezeway, Brian parked his bike again. Then he walked on into the back yard.
His heart was pounding harder than ever. Sometimes his voice shook when his heart was pounding hard like this. He hoped that if Mrs. jerzyck was out back, planting bulbs or something, his voice wouldn't shake when he told her about the magazine subscriptions.
If it did, she might suspect he wasn't telling the truth. And that could lead to kinds of trouble he didn't even want to think about.
He halted near the back of the house. He could see part of the jerzyck back yard, but not all of it. And suddenly this didn't seem like so much fun any more. Suddenly it seemed like a mean trickno more than that, but certainly no less. An apprehensive voice suddenly spoke up in his mind. Why not just climb back on your bike again, Brian? Go on back home. Have a glass of milk and think this over.
Yes. That seemed like a very good-a very sane-idea. He actually began to turn around... and then a picture came to him, one which was a great deal more powerful than the voice. He saw a long black car-a Cadillac or maybe a Lincoln Mark IV-pulling up in front of his house. The driver's door opened and Mr. Leland Gaunt stepped out. Only Mr. Gaunt was no longer wearing a smoking jacket like the one Sherlock Holmes wore in some of the stories.
The Mr. Gaunt who now strode across the landscape of Brian's imagination wore a formidable black suit-the suit of a funeral director-and his face was no longer friendly. His dark-blue eyes were even darker in anger, and his lips had pulled back from his crooked teeth... but not in a smile. His long, thin legs went scissoring up the walk to the Rusk front door, and the shadow-man attached to his heels looked like a hangman in a horror movie.
When he got to the door he would not pause to ring the bell, oh no. He would simply barge in. If Brian's Ma tried to get in his way he would push her aside. If Brian's Pa tried to get in his way he would knock him down. And if Brian's little brother, Sean, tried to get in his way he would heave him the length of the house, like a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary. He would stride upstairs, bellowing Brian's name, and the roses on the wallpaper would wilt when that hangman's shadow passed over them.
He'dfind me, too, Brian thought. His face as he stood by the side of the jerzyck house was a study in dismay. It wouldn't matter if I tried to hide. It wouldn't matter if I went all the way to Bombay.
He'd find me. And when he did. He tried to block the picture, to turn it off, and couldn't. He saw Mr. Gaunt's eyes growing, turning into blue chasms which went down and down into some horrid indigo eternity. He saw Mr. Gaunt's long hands, with their queerly even fingers, turning into claws as they descended upon his shoulders. He felt his skin crawl at that loathsome touch. He heard Mr. Gaunt bellowing: You have something of mine, Brian, and you haven't Paidfor it!
I'll give it back! he heard himself screaming at that twisted, burning face. Please oh please I'll give it back I'll give it back, Just don't hurt me!
Brian returned to himself, as dazed as he had been when he came out of Needful Things on Tuesday afternoon. The feeling now wasn't as pleasant as it had been then.
He didn't want to give back the Sandy Koufax card, that was the thing.
He didn't want to, because it was his.
8
Myra Evans stepped under the awning of Needful Things just as her best friend's son was finally walking into Wilma jerzyck's back yard.
Myra's glance, first behind her and then across Main Street, was even more furtive than Brian's glance across Willow Street had been.
If Cora-who really was her best friend-knew she was here, and, more important, why she was here, she would probably never speak to Myra again. Because Cora wanted the picture, too.
Never mind that, Myra thought. Two sayings occurred to her and both seemed to fit this situation. First come, first served was one.
What she doesn't know won't hurt her was the other.
All the same, Myra had donned a large pair of Foster Grant sunglasses before coming downtown. Better safe than sorry was another worthwhile piece of advice.
Now she advanced slowly on the door and studied the sign which hung there:
TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
Myra did not have an appointment. She had come down here on the spur of the moment, galvanized into action by a call from Cora not twenty minutes ago.
"I've been thinking about it all day! I've simply got to have it, Myra-I should have bought it on Wednesday, but I only had four dollars in my purse and I wasn't sure if he'd take a personal check.
You know how embarrassing it is when people won't. I've been kicking myself ever since. Why, I hardly slept a wink last night. I know you'll think it's silly, but it's true."
Myra didn't think it was silly at all, and she knew it was true, because she had hardly slept a wink last night, either. And it was wrong of Cora to assume that picture should be hers simply because she had seen it first-as if that gave her some sort of divine right, or something.
"I don't believe she saw it first, anyway," Myra said in a small, sulky voice. "I think I saw it first."
The question of who had seen that absolutely delicious picture first was really moot, anyway. What wasn't moot was how Myra felt when she thought of coming into Cora's house and seeing that picture of Elvis hung above the mantel, right between Cora's ceramic Elvis figure and Cora's porcelain Elvis beer-stein. When she thought of that, Myra's stomach rose to somewhere just under her heart and hung there, knotted like a wet rag. It was the way she'd felt during the first week of the war against Iraq.