Needful Things Trivia Quiz

Answer: Baseball card

Though the town of Castle Rock, Maine, with its odd history, is already in a peculiar way, a new shop prepares to open on Main Street with the name 'Needful Things' on its awning, and the day before it does, young Brian Rusk bikes by and finds that it's already unlocked. He lets himself inside to find the proprietor, a man named Leland Gaunt, already prepared to make a sale.

It's an odd store and contains a small handful of weird trinkets, but what stands out to Brian is a baseball card-- a rare, autographed card of Sandy Koufax from 1956, and it even has his name signed as part of the autograph. Gaunt sells it to him for $0.85, all the money in Rusk's pocket, and asks him about local woman Wilma Jerzyck. He'll have another part of the payment to fulfill, but it won't be in cash.

The first person to visit on the actual opening day is Polly Chalmers, a local businesswoman who brings over a cake. She finds the store to be peculiar since none of the items have defined prices, but Gaunt admits he prefers the business of haggling and making deals with people. She heads out to end her day, intending to reunite with her boyfriend, Sheriff Alan Pangborn, who's headed back into town from Portland. All the while, she deals with her crippling arthritis pain.

The store turns out to be quite busy on its first day with a handful of locals stopping in to become prospective or official buyers. While Cyndi Rose Martin buys a Lalique vase, Nettie Cobb purchases beautiful carnival glass. Both Wilma Jerzyck and Cora Rusk arrive as well, though neither buys anything on this first peek-in.

Answer: Casino Nite

Though some of the town's curious early birds are quick to stop by Needful Things, others seem drawn to its window-front almost as though compelled. Walking home from the Mellow Tiger one night, Hugh Priest drunkenly passes by to see a fox-tail, not unlike one he had in his youth, hanging in the window. He goes in, pays what's in his pocket, dreams about getting his life back on track, and leaves with the item and an instruction to play a prank on Nettie Cobb.

At the same time, some of the early buyers start to feel a bit odd. Brian Rusk wakes up in the middle of the night feeling as though he hasn't paid off his card in full quite yet. Something is till to be done. The next day, after school, he rides as though compelled, heading to the Jerzyck house to dirty all of their hanging laundry with mud.

When Wilma Jerzyck returns home to see the aftermath, she immediately believes it to be the work of Nettie Cobb as retribution for months of complaints about her dog, Raider. Her husband is forced to (covertly) sedate her so that she forgets to take care of the issue the next morning. She still drives by to yell out her car window, which is much less severe than her initial plan, and that's enough to scare Nettie into calling in to work for Polly. She realizes she has to stay in to protect her new lampshade, at the very least.

Nettie Cobb, meanwhile, returns in the next day to purchase a carnival glass lampshade and receives a key in exchange, being instructed, down the line, to enter Danforth Keeton's home to place some items inside. Keeton, having stopped by town hall, narrowly misses Alan's long discussion with Reverend Rose about the upcoming Casino Nite event.

Myra Evans heads to Needful Things next, intent on buying a photo of Elvis before Cora Rusk can, feeling as though she receives an unnatural, sensual pleasure from the image. She ultimately resorts to begging for it, paying $140 for the framed photo. She'll need to play a joke on Mr. Beaufort, who owns the Mellow Tiger, in the coming days. After she leaves, Mr. Gaunt sends a thank you letter to Polly Chalmers and advises that he has an item on the way that may be just perfect for her.

Officer Norris Ridgewick, having a bad day, passes by the store and sees a Bazun fishing rod and reel that he feels would be perfect and, naturally, he can't pass up the opportunity to own it. Another happy customer, but it comes with a price.

Answer: Betting at the racetrack

As more items come into Needful Things via shipments that no one sees arrive, some are more affected than others. Mr. Gaunt sells more and more, and more pranks are requested and acted upon. All the while, Gaunt decides to keep Sheriff Pangborn at bay via subtle methods, and they work. Alan tries to stop by a handful of times but either finds himself pulled away or finds the store closed up.

Local selectman Danforth Keeton, meanwhile, worries over the state's upcoming plan to audit the town's books, especially since he's been taking money from the town treasury and losing it at the racetrack, supplanting his gambling losses for years. It's then, while presuming that there are people out there trying to persecute him, that he sees a copy of an old board game called Winning Ticket in the window of Needful Things. Gaunt pushes it as the horse-player's Ouija board, claiming it has the power to win every horse race if played in a certain way. Keeton buys it for $2 and the promise that they'll talk in the future to have a chat about those out to persecute him.

While Keeton heads to the track to try his hand (and succeed) at winning big, his wife, Myrtle, passes by Needful Things on her own, coming across a doll that catches her eye.

At Polly's that evening, Alan stresses himself ragged over grief for his late wife and son, both of whom died in a car crash not too long ago. Polly, similarly, worries about telling Alan the truth about her late son, Kelton, who she had after running away from home. The truth is that Kelton died in an apartment fire with his babysitter. Her past comes back to her in a melancholy recollection. After her parents died, she inevitably found her way back to Castle Rock.

Answer: An Egyptian Azka

After working up the ability to leave her house, Nettie Cobb heads to Polly's place and, removed from her carnival glass lamp (which is safely stowed away), she's finally able to help her friend with her excruciating arthritis pain. Unfortunately for both Nettie and Polly, it's the last time they'll see each other. On the way home, Nettie stops by Needful Things and Gaunt asks her to complete one last task-- leaving a number of filled-in parking tickets taped up all over the Keeton household-- before heading back to her place. She won't have much need for anything else, he remarks.

While Nettie is out of the house, Hugh Priest heads over and lets himself in, having been compelled by a dream to commit to his prank on her. Almost as though acting beside his normal impulses, and in an effort to protect his foxtail, he takes a corkscrew and kills her dog, leaving a note that implicates Wilma Jerzyck. At the same time, Brian Rusk is called on once more to play a prank on the Jerzycks, smashing out their windows and television with a cooler full of rocks, all bearing hand-written notes.

At an uncharacteristically fancy lunch, Myrtle Keeton notices that her husband has changed, not knowing that he won $18,000 at the track using Winning Ticket as a guide. While Myrtle spends the rest of the afternoon with a friend, Danforth returns home to find the tickets taped up throughout his house, immediately believing it to be the work of his 'persecutors', but pinning it on Norris Ridgewick over a perceived spat. Myrtle returns home to find him more out of sorts than ever before.

Nettie returns to her home to find the tragic scene waiting for her-- her small dog, Raider, dead in the living room. She grabs a knife and heads to the Jerzycks' house. She's met halfway by Wilma Jerzyck who, finding her own home destroyed and believing it to be Nettie's fault, grabs a knife of her own. The two of them, compelled by their anger and forces beyond their control, tip over the edge completely, and neither of them survives the violent encounter.

While two of the townspeople spat to the death, Polly Chalmers makes her return to Needful Things, where Leland Gaunt presents her with a special item to be used on a trial basis, a unique Egyptian Azka said to ward off pain, but only if she wears it around her neck and never takes it off. Polly, believing she has nothing to lose, accepts it. After all, it's just a trial run.

Answer: Ace Merrill

In the day following the Nettie Cobb/Wilma Jerzyck murder, cracks start to fissure deeper in Castle Rock. Alan determines that something is very wrong about the event as the lead-up to the two rivals fighting doesn't line up as a timeline. His deputy, Norris Ridgewick, later finds himself opening a package dropped off by Cyndi Rose Martin, another happy customer of Needful Things, to find that he's inadvertently sticking his hand into a rat trap. Ricky Bissonette, meanwhile, plays a prank early the next morning on Reverend William Rose. In exchange for dozens of lewd, illegal photographs, he leaves a message in the mail slot about the Catholics' Casino Nite. At the same time, Albert Gendron, of the Baptists, receives an alleged letter from Reverend Rose.

Danforth Keeton's paranoia continues to grow and boil over, and he realizes it's only a matter of time before he must kill his wife, then Norris Ridgewick (over the parking tickets), then himself. He receives a call from Mr. Gaunt the moment he makes this decision, and it's enough to calm him down with a sense of purpose. There's work to do in keeping Sheriff Pangborn occupied.

After Everett Frankel stops by the store and makes a purchase, he has to plant a letter in Sally Ratcliffe's borrowed car that will push her over the edge as well.

Before long, and with only a few days left to keep the ball rolling, Mr. Gaunt places a 'Help Wanted' sign into his front window, leaving it there for a very specific person. This turns out to be Ace Merrill, a former local who, after years of problems with the law, left Castle Rock to pursue drug and weapons dealing elsewhere. Serendipitously back in town to find a way out of a hole he's dug himself into with the mob, he passes Needful Things and spots a book, allegedly written by his father and titled 'Lost and Buried Treasures of New England', in the shop window. Making the sale, Gaunt uses Ace as his dedicated assistant, giving him the book and a bag of cocaine and allowing him to have brief time off to dig up his father's lost gold.

As Ace leaves Gaunt's store on his first errand, Alan spots him on his way out of town and tells him to get lost. It's a request that won't stick.

Answer: Dynamite

Brian Rusk continues to feels worse and worse, as though it was never worth stepping into Mr. Gaunt's shop and buying the card he desired. In light of his morals and the awful dreams he's been experiencing, he considers suicide. His mother, obsessed with a pair of sunglasses allegedly owned by Elvis Presley, sees no change. Polly, still in mourning over Nettie's passing, realizes that she feels better as a result of the azka, but worries about the cost. Nonetheless, if it continues to cure her, the cost is a bargain no matter what.

While Danforth Keeton nonchalantly approves a larger-than-normal order of dynamite for a local construction project, Ace Merrill arrives in Boston, finding his way to a warehouse that Gaunt's directions indicated. There, he finds three hefty crates containing blasting caps, guns, and ammo clips, and it gets him thinking that he may be in too deep. He considers fleeing to Mexico, but Gaunt's words stick in his head; he needs to see this new job through. He ultimately drives back to Castle Rock in a new provided vehicle-- Gaunt's Tucker Talisman-- and unloads the cargo with hours to spare, right into the back of Needful Things' empty stockroom. Gaunt will need him again the following night, but in the meantime, he can go hunting for his father's buried treasures. He just needs to stay out of Alan Pangborn's sight for a couple of days. After that, it won't much matter.

Meanwhile, Sally Ratcliffe finds the letter placed in her boyfriend's car and believes he's cheating on her. Since she's already under the thrall of a purchased splinter of wood allegedly from Noah's Ark, she begins to spiral. Lester Pratt, her boyfriend, heads home later to find his Mustang vandalized, a consequence of Sally having taken her rage out on the vehicle. He doesn't take this well.

Answer: San Francisco

Leland Gaunt's last days in Castle Rock begin with a number of back-to-back appointments in the shop. Lucille Dunham gets a set of black pearls in exchange for a small monetary cost and a prank on minister William Rose. Babs Miller, next, purchases a music box. Sonny Jackett grabs a set of socket wrenches for a couple pranks on Don Hemphill and Reverend Rose (and $170). Gaunt gives a gun to already off-kilter Lenore Potter, whose garden was dug up.

The state police confirm Alan's suspicions towards the Cobb/Jerzyck murder timetable; someone else killed Nettie's dog (per fingerprints at the scene), and someone else still wrote the notes on the rocks (per handwriting analysis). Fortunately, local woman Jill Mislabursk saw a boy leaving the Jerzyck house, and that's the next string for Alan to pull. He ultimately confirms that it was Brian Rusk.

Myra Evans, who bought an Elvis picture from Needful Things, is called upon to damage Henry Beaufort's Thunderbird, which she does with her husband's WWII memorabilia. Norris Ridgewick fights his urges, but still slashes Hugh Priest's tires, leaving a note blaming Henry Beaufort for the vandalism. Young Slopey Dodd is asked to place something of John LaPointe's into Coach Pratt's car.

After the Nettie and Wilma's funerals Alan worries about Polly's unexpected pain remission but drops her off at Needful Things before he goes to intercept Brian Rusk. He ultimately worries that Gaunt is pulling a con, but Polly is firm and almost staunchly argumentative in an effort to retain the azka. She ends up paying for it past the trial period, giving Gaunt a cheque for $46 and the easy task of holding a letter to Ace Merrill, a commitment she needs to follow through on later or, else, risk regaining her pain.

Polly doesn't know that, during the funerals, Eddie Warburton left an envelope in her mail slot, allegedly from the San Francisco Department of Child Welfare, and when she returns home and opens it, she believes that Alan contacted them to snoop into her sordid history. She calls him, angrily, shortly after to call off their relationship.

Alan's day gets worse and worse with that. Brian Rusk gives him cryptic information, unable to tell the truth about the situation while completely understanding his role in the events that occurred. Alan is called in for Henry Payton, but gets info about the partial fingerprints at Nettie's-- Hugh Priest killed Raider. The plot thickens, but it doesn't come into full focus quite yet. The biggest question is 'why?'

Answer: "A poison place."

This appears to be the start of something bigger as Alan realizes that Hugh Priest never showed up to work. He does notice however that the town has received its extra dynamite. Hugh has instead stolen a car and gone to Needful Things, where Mr. Gaunt gives him a gun from his recent deliver to protect his property, encouragingly.

Lester Pratt, enraged by the events that have unfolded in his life the past few days, reaches the Sheriff's office to attack John LaPointe, and Shiela Brigham is forced to knock him out with the gunstock of a shotgun, inadvertently killing him to save John's life.

Henry Beaufort, meanwhile, finds his damaged car and prepares to take out his anger on the alleged perpetrator. At the Mellow Tiger, Beaufort decides to let Pangborn take Hugh Priest in instead of throwing his life away... only for Hugh to arrive. Before Henry can call the cops, Hugh kills Billy Tupper and lets himself in, commencing a shootout that ends with both of them, inevitably, dead. The police, unfortunately, have their hands too full to help.

Alan watches as Norris Ridgewick drives up to the town hall building only to get struck by Danforth Keeton's vehicle over the earlier parking ticket issue (created by Nettie Cobb). Alan cuffs him Keeton to his own car and leaves him there for the time being, as there are bigger fish to fry in the office. No one notices that Keeton can head Gaunt's voice in his head, telling him what steps to take next.

Across town, Sean Rusk follows his brother out to the garage to find him in a dark corner with their dad's rifle. Brian, in his final moments, makes his kid brother promise not to go to Needful Things before pulling the trigger.

Leland Gaunt puts a new sign up in his window, and it's a disingenuous one: "Closed until further notice." He continues to sell out of his back alley if anyone comes by and has the urge to shop.

Danforth Keeton returns home, cuffed to the window of his car door, yells for Myrtle to help him. She's home, unfortunately, having just dropped a mysterious box off in the Catholic church on Mr. Gaunt's request (a task he also bestowed upon June Gavineaux nearby). When she helps Keeton out of his predicament, he kills her, believing her to be a persecutor nonetheless.

On the outskirts of town, Polly pays her extended price by going to the old Camber property and digging up one of Ace Merrill's treasures, leaving a letter, and burning the valuable contents. It's where Ace is headed next, as though Gaunt knew, and what he finds there is a letter addressed to him from Alan, claiming he dug up the $200,000-worth of valuables buried there. The target has been placed.

Answer: Firearms

By evening on Leland Gaunt's final day in Castle Rock, TV crews arrive in response to the increasingly odd wave of violence. Although Gaunt's shop is closed, he continues to hand out weapons to locals who feel compelled to try the alley next to the building; he has a table outside the back door where he hands out guns and other weapons to the locals.

While Alan heads to the hospital to speak to Sean Rusk about his brother's unexpected suicide, trying to connect his victims together, Polly struggles on her own, at home. Alan has to admit that Polly has changed a lot in the past days, a result of her visit to Needful Things, which Sean refers to as 'a poison place', per his brother's suggestion. It comes to Alan's mind that Mr. Gaunt has been, purposely, keeping him at a distance.

A jaded Danforth Keeton, considering suicide after killing his wife, receives one last call from Mr. Gaunt that perks him back up. He takes a waiting news van, parked near the store, and waits for directions while the locals increase their fury. As an electrical storm passes through, Ace returns to find the town swarming with police and media. He heads to Gaunt and is, immediately, led to meet with Keeton outside. Their new goal is to work together to blow Castle Rock sky-high.

At the same time, the Catholics (led by Father Brigham), and the Baptists (led by Reverend Rose), proceed with their mounting grievances, shoring up their support in an effort to go on the defensive against what they feel is a hostile, warring congregation. As Don Hemphill arrives at the Baptists' meeting, however, the boxes that were dropped off earlier, in both locations, detonate, letting off stink bombs that incapacitate many and lead others to panic, especially since the groups find themselves locked inside their buildings. The event leads to at least one death, but worse, it leads to an outright brawl between the two churches that takes place out on Castle Hill, right in the middle of the lightning storm, and everyone is willing to fight to the death.

Answer: VCR

It all comes together for Alan; everyone affected drank from the poisoned well that is Needful Things. Just as he returns to town and decides to pay a visit to Mr. Gaunt, the power goes out in Castle Rock.

Norris Ridgewick, compelled by guilt and Mr. Gaunt's influence, plans to hang himself but finally realizes, at the last moment, that he never purchased a Bazun fishing rod at all; it reveals itself to be nothing more than cheap garbage. He manages to avoid hanging himself and leaves home, vowing to kill Mr. Gaunt after stopping by the municipal building first.

Polly wakes from a dream to determine that the letter from San Francisco's Welfare Office could not be real as she never used her real name during her time there, and the received letter indicates a name they never could have known. She tears the azka off, at long last, only to watch as it cracks open and releases a horrific, spider-like creature that grows and attacks her. She manages to defeat this manifestation before rushing out to find Alan.

While Ace Merrill and Danforth Keeton start placing dynamite all through Castle Rock, Alan finally arrives at Needful Things and steps through the threshold to find the place (almost) completely empty. Waiting for him, on a countertop, is a TV, a VCR, and a note from Gaunt saying that, for a small price, he can watch the final moments of his wife and son. Though he has all reason to stay clear of Gaunt's magic, Alan realizes he has no choice but to watch the video, finding it does, in fact, show footage from within the vehicle as it crashes, finally giving him the insight he dreamed would give closure. But what he finds in the footage is that Ace Merrill was responsible for killing his family that day. In his head, he hears Gaunt tell him to head to Mechanic Falls to kill the criminal.

Outside, the Castle Stream Bridge explodes in a blast of dynamite and the churches, still fighting on the hill nearby, pause briefly in their fury only to presume one another destroted it in a tactical maneuver. Norris reaches the municipal building to find it deserted but finds Keeton and Ace instead. What results is a shootout that harms Norris, but leaves Keeton dead. Ace drives off, alone, to Needful Things while Norris pursues.

Polly arrives at the shop first, just in time to see Alan leaving, single-mindedly, as though compelled by something else. She stops him, insisting that the poison placed within him by Gaunt will consume him, begging him to find what Gaunt did wrong in providing him something needful, and to pull that thread. Ace arrives just as this happens though, and holds her at gunpoint while Alan ponders his circumstance.

The municipal building goes up during the standoff at Needful Things, and it kills nineteen locals and visiting reporters. Though it's a horrific blast, it gives enough cover to Norris who, positioning himself nearby, aims at Ace and waits for his moment. None of them, save for Alan, notices that Leland Gaunt has emerged from his shop to stand outside and watch the proceedings, positioning himself under his awning donning a black travelling coat and an old valise.

It's then that the dam breaks, and Alan realizes that in the video left for him, Annie had her seatbelt on-- an impossibility since she was found to have launched through the windshield in the crash that took her life. Taking the prank can of snakes from his car, left there by his son before his death, he launches the item at Mr. Gaunt, unleashing real and magical snakes to attack. While Polly and Ace watch the event unfold, Norris takes his aim, killing Ace with a lucky shot, and in the chaos, Alan manages to grab Gaunt's valise. Alan uses, of all things, cheap shadowplay and cheap magic tricks to keep the demon Gaunt at bay as he opens the valise, instantly stopping the rain and halting the poison-- literal and figurative-- from destroying the rest of the town and its people. Everyone still surviving wakes as though from a dream, stopping the fighting.

Alan, Polly, and Norris watch as the Tucker Talisman appears to transform into a medicine-show wagon and rides out into the darkness before they head out, bound for the hospital. Castle Rock is, effectively, destroyed.

Not long after, a storefront opens up in Junction City, Iowa as Leland Gaunt sets up his new venture: 'Answered Prayers'.