Krishna
Another classic from Stephen King, in the level of, but quite different from, Carrie or Christine.
A lot of characters in the intro itself that feels like the one in Under the Dome by the same author or A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth that you have your head spinning to keep it all straight. But it settles down after a bit.
For the intro, here is a sample :
Don Hemphil runs a grocery store and his wife Wanda. Rev Willie of Protestant Church and Father Brigham of Catholic Church don’t see eye to eye already. When Brigham calls for a little gambling to raise money for church repairs Willie aka William Rose flips his lid. Nan Roberts and Al Gendron belong to different churches and are not on speaking teams. Sheriff John Lapointe whose girlfriend Sally broke up with him. Eddie Warburton who is black and his feud with Sonny over a car repair.
Slopey Dodd a kid with a stutter. Now the story starts because as the author himself says…
Never mind all of them you should watch Brian Rusk, who heard about the opening of the new store. Cora Rusk, his mother, was discussing this with her friend Myra Evans. Cora eats all the time and watches those everlasting Soap Operas.
On a day when he is coming home, he sees that Needful Things is open and he goes in – the first person ever to go in – and meets the proprietor. When he holds a petrified wood, he gets a real feeling of a boat and an irrepressible eagerness to hold it again when it was separated and locked away. When he says he needs one particular baseball card from one particular year, Mr Gaunt goes in and finds the exact card for him. When Mr Gaunt shakes his hand, Brian recoils involuntarily.
In the meanwhile, a lady who defies custom (Polly) goes and sees Gaunt, carrying a cake. When she leaves, he watches her and decides that she will do nicely. Everyone finds that they can get what they want in the shop for a price that they can afford.
He also catches on with how Polly’s cook Netty (nervous and low self confidence) as well as her friend Rosalie hate the large lady Wilma. It has something to do with Netty’s dog which made noise when it was a pup and pissed off the neighbour Wilma, who was crotchety to begin with.
Alan Panghorn is the Police chief but is guilt ridden about the death of his wife and his son. He hates Danforth Keeton, aka Buster who disobeys him. Polly, his sweetheart, mentions the new shop and asks him to pay a visit there.
Hugh Priest is a slave to a drink and covets a fox tail on the window and he gets it – his chance to reform. But you realize that each person, Brian included, have been given a task (in addition to the payment) as the price of the item they got.
Alan has a lot of problems with Keeton and faces a near rebellion when Keeton is ticketed because he parked in a reserved slot in violation of the police station rules. He also refuses to interfere with the ‘perverted gambling’ (a game of bingo) arranged by the Protestant Church and makes Father furious.
Mary now wants the Elvis so badly but you see a hard face of Gaunt, where he drives her to desperation before he asks her to do something for him.
Myra meanwhile finds out about the dirt on the blankets put out for drying and goes completely bananas. She suspects Nettie and totally tortures her to the point of Netty going completely paranoid about that ‘crazy Polish woman’.
Meanwhile Alan is overcome by guilt about not noticing warning signs prior to his wife’s death and also for hooking up with Polly so soon after her death.
Dan Keeton is sinking in gambling debt caused by addiction and ruin is staring him in the face. Even his wife is not aware of the extent of his debt (with ‘borrowed’ money from the police department). Then Gaunt gives him a racehorse set that can predict the winner of the races.
Hugh is ‘driven’ to kill Nellie’s dog and Nellie is forced (before she discovers her dog’s plight) to post some warning signs in Keeton’s house.
Things escalate quickly.
Brian Rusk, in the meanwhile, realizes that once you have done a ‘favour’ and played a trick, there is no respite from Leyland. He throws stones with messages in Wilma’s house. Wilma gets mad at Nettie and Nettie at Wilma (for the dog’s death) and they slash at each other in open daylight on the street. But not before Nettie has plastered signs in Keeton’s house, scaring him badly. He thinks Norris has done it. Norris gets a ‘present’ of a rat trap as a warning and is sure that Keeton is behind it, even though it was a local lawyer’s wife who did it – presumably following the instructions of the now familiar puppet master.
There is a crazy scene where Wilma and Netty face off in the middle of the street with fatal consequences. There is a creepy scene where Leland gives Polly a necklace to cure her arthritis but Polly is very iffy about it. He seems to have hypnotized her into accepting it.
Alan, investigating the twin murders has the uneasy feeling that he is not seeing something.
A crooked man Ace Merrill, who is in debt to criminals and has a threat on his life, comes to town to escape from his debts and is hired as an assistant by the mysterious Mr Gaunt – who promises that he will be free of his troubles. He says something curious ‘Maybe there is really nothing in the whole shop. The things that people want or need will appear as they see it’.
Sue, the bible thumping but sexy looking teacher, is shocked to find an envelope in the car she has borrowed from Lester, her rich boyfriend. She has bought a Biblical fragment of wood that gives us exultation whenever she touches it.
Ace is asked to take his car to another city and bring back ‘merchandise’ which turns out to be guns and drugs. However, the car he is given seems to be very special. It can go fast and is invisible to the police. He is also given a map marking treasures to be dug which will take him out of his present troubles and make him rich too.
Meanwhile Allan realizes that Brian Rusk may have witnessed the vandalism that was part of the cause of the death of Nettie and Wilma.
Meanwhile the mysterious Leland Gaunt escalates his mischief. He has only three or four days to achieve total destruction of the city. He even has a pendant always hanging around the neck of Polly, so as to keep an eye on that pernicious Allan Ponghorn, who seems to be the only man Leland fears in the town.
Alan interrogates Rusk but does not get far. Meanwhile, Polly seems to be hypnotized and agrees to run one ‘errand’ from Mr Gaunt. He also sows seeds of doubt and distrust in her mind regarding Alan himself. She is furious with Alan and Alan is completely puzzled.
He finds Brian Rusk and finds him too evasive and scared. Also the police identify Hugh Priest as the one who had killed Nettie’s dog but before they can capture him, he is off on a rage to take revenge on the pastor for having vandalized his car. (Which was actually done by Brian’s mother as a trick requested by Gaunt)
Gaunt gives him an automatic gun to help him along.
A whole lot of things go wrong at once. The coach is trying to kill a deputy and is himself killed by Sheila who hit him with the barrel of the gun but too hard; Hugh is killed in the pub by the pub owner who himself is close to death before being found by a customer; and a whole pile more. Alan is completely befuddled and puts away his private sorrow with Pauline to deal with the mess with increasing incredulity.
Meanwhile, Brian blows his brains out in front of his horrified brother Sean – after making Sean promise that he will never go into the new shop. The police officer Buster Keeton, after attacking an officer, is chained to the door of the cruise car. He manages to drive it home and releases his shackles with the tools from the garage.
Alan is perplexed and, after handing the case over to the Federal authorities, goes to the hospital where Sean Rusk is recovering from the shock of seeing Brian blow himself up to get to the bottom of this.
In the meanwhile the murder and mayhem reaches its peak with Leyland helping along with trades of arms to the pissed off citizens of Castle Rock. It is amazing how each one’s precious item is really crap – the fox tail looks like an old stringy garbage to everyone except Hugh, the baseball card is of an unknown player to everyone except Brian, Brian’s mother’s ‘Glasses worn by Elvis is an old, even cracked pair of sunglasses with tapes around the broken parts – you get the idea. Ingenious twist, that.
When Brian’s mom is thwarted by the unfaithful Elvis who spurns her for Myra, and what is more, breaks the sun glasses, Brian’s mom gets mad and Leland is right there to help her with a gun to take revenge on Myra.
Meanwhile, Brian’s brother in the hospital is met surreptitiously by Alan who learns that all the trouble originated from the shop and that Mr Leland ‘is not human’ as revealed by Brian after he decided to take his own life for his little brother.
Both the Protestant and the Catholic groups are ambushed by mischief makers and in the pandemonium that ensues, lives end through stampede.
Meanwhile, things start turning around. Alan goes to see Gaunt and at the same time, Polly finally plucks up courage to see things for what they are and throws away her talisman, out of which a spider comes out and starts growing incredibly fast.
Alan is told how his wife and kid really died by Gaunt (invisible Gaunt) and gets rattled in spite of his resolve not to pay any attention. Meanwhile Penny is desperate to find him, having come to her senses and defeated a giant spider which was in miniature released from the pendant she was wearing all along.
The ending is tense, with mass destruction of what feels like the whole city. Alan is brought to his senses by Polly only to be captured as a hostage by Ace as a bargaining chip for the money ‘Alan stole’ that was rightfully his. When Norris, who is wounded by Ace steals up behind Ace now, Alan also notices Mr Gaunt preparing to leave with a ‘breathing, pulsing, bag’ as his sole luggage.
The confrontation at the end between Alan and Mr Gaunt is, of course, absolutely spellbinding. The ending and, especially, the prolog, is classic King in style.
A satisfying book to read. 8/10
– – Krishna