Needful Things Read Online Free Page A

down with a brain tumor or something like that. It might even turn out that he’s a dope addict. Miss Ratcliffe would never marry a dope addict.
    Such thoughts offered Brian a bizarre sort of comfort, but they did not change the fact that Hugh Priest had aborted the daydream just short of its apogee (kissing Miss Ratcliffe and actually touching her right breast while they were in the Tunnel of Love at the fair). It was a pretty wild idea anyway, an eleven-year-old kid taking a teacher to the County Fair. Miss Ratcliffe was pretty, but she was also old. She had told the speech kids once that she would be twenty-four in November.
    So Brian carefully re-folded his daydream along its creases, as a man will carefully fold a well-read and much-valued document, and tucked it on the shelf at the back of his mind where it belonged. He prepared to mount his bike and pedal the rest of the way home.
    But he was passing the new shop at just that moment, and the sign in the doorway caught his eye. Something about it had changed. He stopped his bike and looked at it.
    GRAND OPENING OCTOBER 9TH—BRING YOUR FRIENDS!
    at the top was gone. It had been replaced by a small square sign, red letters on a white background.
    OPEN
    it said, and
    OPEN
    was all it said. Brian stood with his bike between his legs, looking at this, and his heart began to beat a little faster.
    You’re not going in there, are you? he asked himself. I mean, even if it really is opening a day early, you’re not going in there, right?
    Why not? he answered himself.
    Well . . . because the window’s still soaped over. The shade on the door’s still drawn. You go in there, anything could happen to you. Anything.
    Sure. Like the guy who runs it is Norman Bates or something, he dresses up in his mother’s clothes and stabs his customers. Ri-iight.
    Well, forget it, the timid part of his mind said, although that part sounded as if it already knew it had lost. There’s something funny about it.
    But then Brian thought of telling his mother. Just saying nonchalantly, “By the way, Ma, you know that new store, Needful Things? Well, it opened a day early. I went in and took a look around.”
    She’d push the mute button on the remote control in a hurry then, you better believe it! She’d want to hear all about it!
    This thought was too much for Brian. He put down his bike’s kickstand and passed slowly into the shade of the awning—it felt at least ten degrees cooler beneath its canopy—and approached the door of Needful Things.
    As he put his hand on the big old-fashioned brass doorknob, it occurred to him that the sign must be a mistake.It had probably been sitting there, just inside the door, for tomorrow, and someone had put it up by accident. He couldn’t hear a single sound from behind the drawn shade; the place had a deserted feel.
    But since he had come this far, he tried the knob . . . and it turned easily under his hand. The latch clicked back and the door of Needful Things swung open.
3
    It was dim inside, but not dark. Brian could see that track lighting (a specialty of the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company) had been installed, and a few of the spots mounted on the tracks were lit. They were trained on a number of glass display cases which were arranged around the large room. The cases were, for the most part, empty. The spots highlighted the few objects which were in the cases.
    The floor, which had been bare wood when this was Western Maine Realty and Insurance, had been covered in a rich wall-to-wall carpet the color of burgundy wine. The walls had been painted eggshell white. A thin light, as white as the walls, filtered in through the soaped display window.
    Well, it’s a mistake, just the same, Brian thought. He hasn’t even got his stock in yet. Whoever put the OPEN sign in the door by mistake left the door unlocked by mistake, too. The polite thing to do in these circumstances