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The town of Castle Rock just made a deal with the Devil... Now it's time to pay!

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Synopsis

In "Needful Things," Castle Rock is visited by a mysterious entrepreneur named Leland Gaunt, who promptly sets up an old curiosity shop and then systematically destroys the entire town. It would spoil the story to reveal Gaunt's precise identity, but it is not giving away too much to say that he is probably on intimate speaking terms with Gog and Magog and almost certainly knows Dr. Faust. Gaunt quietly begins to sell valuable items, such as Sandy Koufax's rookie baseball card and an amulet containing a cure for arthritis, for nominal fees, with the proviso that his customers do him small, seemingly harmless favors. A typical favor is scattering pedophilic magazines with names like Nude Cuties, Saucy Young Guys and Bobby's Farm World all over the high school basketball coach's office, right where cute young cheerleaders can see them.

Despite Gaunt's puckish sense of humor, such pranks are not well received by Castle Rockers, and before long women start turning up with axes planted in their foreheads, men get the tops of their skulls ripped off by shotgun blasts, arthritis victims find themselves locked in death struggles with huge, furry spiders trying to jam their tentacles down their throats, and cute little doggies, who never did anything to anyone, are nailed to the floor with corkscrews jammed through their tiny, woofy hearts. In this sense, "Needful Things" is a rural Gothic version of Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho": it contains the same amount of senseless sadomasochistic violence, but the lunatics smear their bloodstained hands on duds from Sears, not Saks.

By the time Gaunt's pranks have run their course, Roman Catholic priests have had their heads smashed in by Protestant waitresses, a man has beaten his wife to death with a hammer, all manner of excremental indignities have taken place, and even the sacred memory of Elvis Presley has been defiled. Yes, Mr. King's even got it in for the King. -- Joe Queenan, New York Times

Quotes from the Book

Alan felt sanity begin to fill him again. It was funny stuff, sanity. When it was taken away, you didn't know it. You didn't feel its departure. You only really knew it when it was restored, like some rare wild bird which lived and sang within you not by decree but by choice.