Needful Things

This article is about the Stephen King novel. For the movie based on this story, see Needful Things (film).

Needful Things
First edition cover
Author(s)	Stephen King
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror novel
Publisher	Viking
Publication date	October 1991
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	690
ISBN	978-0670839537
Preceded by	The Dark Half
Followed by	Gerald's Game

Needful Things is a 1991 horror novel by American author Stephen King. According to the cover, it is "The Last Castle Rock Story." However, the town later served as the setting for the short story "It Grows on You," published in King's 1993 collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes which, according to King, served as a sort of epilogue to Needful Things. It was made into a film of the same name in 1993 which was directed by Fraser C. Heston.

Plot

A new shop named "Needful Things" opens in the town of Castle Rock, Maine, sparking the curiosity of its citizens. The proprietor, Leland Gaunt, is a charming elderly gentleman who always seems to have an item in stock that is perfectly suited to any customer who comes through his door. The prices are surprisingly low, considering the merchandise - such as a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card, a carnival glass lampshade, and a fragment of wood believed to be from Noah's Ark - but he expects each customer to also play a little prank on someone else in Castle Rock. Gaunt knows about the long-standing private grudges, arguments, and feuds between the various townspeople, and the pranks are his means of forcing them to escalate until the whole town is eventually caught up in madness and violence.

Sheriff Alan Pangborn becomes wary of Gaunt as soon as the shop opens. However, his lover, Polly Chalmers, dismisses his suspicions and buys an ancient charm that relieves the arthritis pain in her hands. The tension between them grows after Nettie Cobb, Polly's housekeeper, and her enemy Wilma Jerzyck kill each other in a confrontation sparked by pranks played on them by others.

Many other rivalries begin to fester, spurred by the personal motives of the people involved (drugs, secret pedophilia, bad business dealings, religious disagreements, etc.). Gaunt eventually hires petty criminal John "Ace" Merrill as his assistant, holding out the promise of buried treasure that could relieve the debt he owes to a pair of drug dealers. Ace's first assignment is to retrieve crates of blasting caps and firearms, the latter of which Gaunt begins to sell to his customers so they can protect their property. During this errand, Ace leaves his own muscle-car--described as a "puke green Dodge Challenger"--in a garage in a desolate part of Boston, exchanging it for Leland's own vehicle -- a "one-of-a-kind" Tucker; Ace is astonished that, not only does Mr. Gaunt own a Tucker -- but that the vehicle in question, a Tucker Talisman, requires no gasoline and is invisible to police manning speed-traps. (In line with all of Gaunt's pawns receiving their most-desired objects, Ace Merrill is given access to, perhaps, the "ultimate car"; at the same time, he is repeatedly given large amounts of cocaine (his drug of choice -- and the drug which has put him in mortal danger as a dealer). Ace begins to suspect the supernatural background to his new "employer", but is quickly cowed by Gaunt, for four reasons: his desire to make something of himself, which Gaunt seems to promise; his desire for revenge towards those (including Sheriff Pangborn) whom he believes have been the cause of his sad life; his desire to acquire more of Gaunt's cocaine -- the best he's ever encountered -- and finally, ultimately, because he realizes that he's terrified of Gaunt, and has no way of interfering without courting certain death.

It is revealed that Gaunt has traveled the world for centuries, selling useless junk that appears to be whatever the customers desire most. They become so paranoid about keeping the items safe that they eagerly buy up the weapons that he inevitably offers for sale and trade away their souls. Even Ace falls under Gaunt's sway in this regard, following a map that he finds in a book to a treasure that his late uncle Reginald "Pop" Merrill (who was killed in The Sun Dog, a prequel of sorts to this novel) supposedly left behind when he died. Ace finds that there is nothing there but a boastful letter from Pangborn, claiming to have taken the money already, a sum claimed to be almost two hundred thousand dollars.

With the violence in Castle Rock rapidly escalating, Ace and the town's head selectman Danforth "Buster" Keeton (who has embezzled thousands of dollars in public funds) plant dynamite all over town, using the caps Ace brought back. Alan sets out to kill Ace, wrongly believing him to be responsible for a car accident that killed Alan's wife and son, and Polly realizes the evil of the charm she bought and destroys it. As the dynamite bombs explode and Keeton is killed, Ace takes Polly hostage and demands that Alan tell him where Pop's money is hidden, only to be shot dead by one of Alan's deputies. Alan then faces off against Gaunt -- employing a cheap expanding-flower magic trick, which becomes (under Pangborn's new-found faith, arguably) a powerful blast, which distracts Gaunt; Alan uses this brief moment to steal a valise that contains the souls of all Gaunt's customers, and manages to convince Gaunt that he's lost this battle. Gaunt departs, the Tucker transforming into a medieval peddler's wagon -- manned by a hunch-backed dwarf, and a set of horses -- leaving the survivors to pick up the pieces. Although many of the townspeople are dead, their souls have been saved; Gaunt has moved-on, defeated, perhaps, this time, but ready to play his eternal game wherever there are other "buyers" to prey upon.

The novel ends as it begins, with a first-person narrative indicating that a new and mysterious shop is about to open in a small Iowa town - an implication that Gaunt is ready to begin his business cycle all over again.

Characters in the book

Main characters

• Brian Rusk: The boy who is the first customer in the store called Needful Things. He dreams about his teacher falling in love with him. He was asked by Leland Gaunt to sell his soul for a rare signed Sandy Koufax '56 Baseball card. He later commits suicide by the end of the novel in front of his horrified younger brother, Sean.

• Leland Gaunt: Presumably a demon in human form, who has spent centuries traveling about the world and tricking people into selling their souls to him, usually in exchange for useless objects disguised as the things they want most. Castle Rock is his latest target. Gaunt seems to know the townspeople's greatest secrets, and speaks of them in a way to soothe the customers of his shop. His eyes also change color, depending on who is looking at them, as a way to entice his customers

• Sheriff Alan Pangborn: the Sheriff of Castle Rock and the main protagonist. Gaunt was wary of Pangborn from the start, knowing he would not be nearly as easy to fool as the others and that Gaunt would need a lot of help before he would be able to face Pangborn head-on. Pangborn once had a wife and son, but they both died in a mysterious, unsolved car accident.

• Patricia "Polly" Chalmers: known as the town's most eccentric woman, Polly was originally a Castle Rock native who became an "out-of-towner" after living in San Francisco for years before returning. She had left to escape the iron heel of her devout parents after getting pregnant, planning to give up the baby and start a new life in the city, but she kept the child out of love. When she returns to Castle Rock without him, gossip surrounds her but she refuses to explain herself and her life remains a mystery. She suffers from severe arthritis in her hands.

• Norris Ridgewick: one of the town's deputies and Sheriff Pangborn's closest ally. Norris was an avid fisherman who had learned the craft from his father, and had a strong liking for Bazun fishing rods. He bought one of these rods from Gaunt, thus entangling himself in the web of evil.

• John "Ace" Merrill: the town's resident "bad boy" and petty criminal. Ace was a notorious bully in high school (as detailed in 'The Body') but left the town, becoming a drug dealer, occasional cocaine user and gunrunner. After being tricked in one of his deals, Ace became heavily indebted to a pair of fellow dealers known as the Flying Corson Brothers, and only had a short time to pay them before being subjected to a horrific and painful death. In a bid of desperation, he returned to Castle Rock, finding Gaunt and swiftly becoming his faithful employee. Gaunt sells him a book which Ace believes is the key to discovering his late Uncle's presumed "buried treasure". To all others, the book is simply a copy of Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

• Danforth "Buster" Keeton: Danforth was one of the town's selectmen and thus enjoyed a position of a little authority. He was a large man with a brutal, fiery temper who constantly abused his wife, Myrtle, and hated being called "Buster" to his face. Unknown to just about everyone, he was actually deep in debt from his constant gambling at the horse tracks, which he paid for out of the town's funds. He was guilty of a long list of crimes, including theft, fraud, and embezzlement. Mentally unstable, he was paranoid and believed in "Them", the shadowy cabal of authority figures that he believed persecuted him at every turn and intended to drive him insane. Gaunt sells him a mechanical horse-racing game; to Keeton's delight, he finds that the game can be used for augury to predict the actual results of horse-races. Keeton intends to use the game to save himself by repaying the town treasury.

Film

Main article: Needful Things (film)

External links

• Needful Things at the Internet Movie Database
• Movie stills