Needful Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

and stone,” Mr. Gaunt said. “It’s petrified.”
    â€œPetrified,” Brian marvelled. He looked at the splinter closely, then ran one finger along its side. It was smooth and bumpy at the same time. It was somehow not an entirely pleasant feeling. “It must be old.”
    â€œOver two thousand years old,” Mr. Gaunt agreed gravely.
    â€œCripes!” Brian said. He jumped and almost dropped the splinter. He closed his hand around it in a fist to keep it from falling to the floor . . . and at once a feeling of oddness and distortion swept over him. He suddenly felt—what? Dizzy? No; not dizzy but far. As if part of him had been lifted out of his body and swept away.
    He could see Mr. Gaunt looking at him with interest and amusement, and Mr. Gaunt’s eyes suddenly seemed to grow to the size of tea-saucers. Yet this feeling of disorientation was not frightening; it was rather exciting, and certainly more pleasant than the slick feel of the wood had been to his exploring finger.
    â€œClose your eyes!” Mr. Gaunt invited. “Close your eyes, Brian, and tell me what you feel!”
    Brian closed his eyes and stood there for a moment without moving, his right arm held out, the fist at the end of it enclosing the splinter. He did not see Mr. Gaunt’s upper lip lift, doglike, over his large, crooked teeth for a moment in what might have been a grimace of pleasure or anticipation. He had a vague sensation of movement—a corkscrewing kind of movement. A sound, quick and light: thudthud . . . thudthud . . . thudthud. He knew that sound. It was—
    â€œA boat!” he cried, delighted, without opening his eyes. “I feel like I’m on a boat!”
    â€œDo you indeed,” Mr. Gaunt said, and to Brian’s ears he sounded impossibly distant.
    The sensations intensified; now he felt as if he were going up and down across long, slow waves. He could hear the distant cry of birds, and, closer, the sounds of many animals—cows lowing, roosters crowing, the low, snarlingcry of a very big cat—not a sound of rage but an expression of boredom. In that one second he could almost feel wood (the wood of which this splinter had once been a part, he was sure) under his feet, and knew that the feet themselves were not wearing Converse sneakers but some sort of sandals, and—
    Then it was going, dwindling to a tiny bright point, like the light of a TV screen when the power cuts out, and then it was gone. He opened his eyes, shaken and exhilarated.
    His hand had curled into such a tight fist around the splinter that he actually had to will his fingers to open, and the joints creaked like rusty door-hinges.
    â€œHey, boy, ” he said softly.
    â€œNeat, isn’t it?” Mr. Gaunt asked cheerily, and plucked the splinter from Brian’s palm with the absent skill of a doctor drawing a splinter from flesh. He returned it to its place and re-locked the cabinet with a flourish.
    â€œNeat,” Brian agreed in a long outrush of breath which was almost a sigh. He bent to look at the splinter. His hand still tingled a little where he had held it. Those feelings: the uptilt and downslant of the deck, the thudding of the waves on the hull, the feel of the wood under his feet . . . those things lingered with him, although he guessed (with a feeling of real sorrow) that they would pass, as dreams pass.
    â€œAre you familiar with the story of Noah and the Ark?” Mr. Gaunt inquired.
    Brian frowned. He was pretty sure it was a Bible story, but he had a tendency to zone out during Sunday sermons and Thursday night Bible classes. “Was that like a boat that went around the world in eighty days?” he asked.
    Mr. Gaunt grinned again. “Something like that, Brian. Something very like that. Well, that splinter is supposed to be from Noah’s Ark. Of course I can’t say it is from Noah’s Ark, because people