The one who’s walking his bike and looks like he’s havin the sweetest daydream any boy ever had? Keep your eye on him, friend.
I think he’s the one who’s gonna get it started.
No, I told you, I dunno what… not exactly. But watch that kid. And stick around town for a little while, would you? Things just feel wrong, and if something happens, it might be just as well if there was a witness.
I know that kid-the one who’s pushin his bike. Maybe you do, too.
His name’s Brian-something. His dad installs siding and doors over in Oxford or South Paris, I think.
Keep an eye on him, I tell you. Keep an eye on everything.
You’ve been here before, but things are about to change.
I know it.
I feel it.
There’s a storm on the way.
CHAPTER ONE
1
In a small town, the opening of a new store is big news. it wasn’t as big a deal to Brian Rusk as it was to some; his mother, for instance. He had heard her discussing it (he wasn’t supposed to call it gossiping, she had told him, because gossiping was a dirty habit and she didn’t do it) at some length on the telephone with her best friend, Myra Evans, over the last month or so.
The first workmen had arrived at the old building which had last housed Western Maine Realty and Insurance right around the time school let in again, and they had been busily at work ever since.
Not that anyone had much idea what they were up to in there; their first act had been to put in a large display window, and their second had been to soap it opaque.
Two weeks ago a sign had appeared in the doorway, hung on a string over a plastic see-through suction-cup.
OPENING SOON!
the sign read.
NEEDFUL THINGS A NEW KIND OF STORE “You won’t believe your eyes!”