The Dark Half (45 page)

Thad felt his heartbeat jog. “What do you mean?”

Rawlie led Thad back inside the office and picked up Barringer's
Folklore of America.
“Sparrows, loons, and especially whippoorwills are psychopomps,” he said, not without some triumph in his voice. “I
knew
there was something about whippoorwills. ”

“Psychopomps?” Thad said doubtfully.

“From the Greek,” Rawlie said, “meaning those who conduct. In this case, those who conduct human souls back and forth between the land of the living and the land of the dead. According to Barringer, loons and whippoorwills are outriders of the living; they are said to gather near the place where a death is about to occur. They are not birds of ill omen. Their job is to guide newly dead souls to their proper place in the afterlife. ”

He looked at Thad levelly.

“Gatherings of sparrows are rather more ominous, at least according to Barringer. Sparrows are said to be the outriders of the deceased. ”

“Which means—”

“Which means their job is to guide lost souls back into the land of the living. They are, in other words, the harbingers of the living dead. ”

Rawlie took his pipe from his mouth and looked at Thad solemnly.

“I don't know what your situation is, Thaddeus, but I suggest caution. Extreme caution. You look like a man who is in a lot of trouble. If there's anything I can do, please tell me. ”

“I appreciate that, Rawlie. You've done as much as I could hope for just by keeping quiet. ”

“In that, at least, you and my students seem to be in perfect agreement.” But the mild eyes looking at Thad over the pipe were concerned. “You'll take care of yourself?”

“I will. ”

“And if those men are following you around to help you in that endeavor, Thaddeus, it might be wise to take them into your confidence. ”

It would be wonderful if he could, but his confidence in them wasn't the issue. If he really
did
open his mouth, they would have precious little confidence in
him.
And even if he
did
trust Harrison and Manchester enough to talk to them, he would not dare say anything until that wormy, crawling feeling inside his skin went away. Because George Stark was watching him. And he was over the deadline.

“Thanks, Rawlie. ”

Rawlie nodded, told him again to take care of himself, and then sat down behind his desk

Thad walked back to his own office.

He paused in the act of putting back the last of the files he'd pulled by mistake and looked at his beige IBM Selectric. Just lately he seemed almost hypnotically aware of all writing instruments, great and small. He had wondered on more than one occasion over the last week if there were a different version of Thad Beaumont inside each one, like evil genies lurking inside a bunch of bottles.

But these days one would more properly use a Ouija board than an electric typewriter to get in touch with the late great Mrs. Fenton, who had made coffee so strong it could almost walk and talk, and why had he said that, anyway? Mrs. Fenton had been the furthest thing from his mind.

Thad dropped the last of the non-writing Honors files into the file-cabinet, closed the drawer, and looked at his left hand. Underneath the bandage, the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger had suddenly begun to burn and itch. He rubbed his hand against the leg of his pants, but that only seemed to make the itch worse. And now it was throbbing as well. That sensation of deep, baking heat intensified.

He looked out his office window.

Across Bennett Boulevard, the telephone wires were lined with sparrows. More sparrows stood on the roof of the infirmary, and as he watched, a fresh batch landed on one of the tennis courts.

They all seemed to be looking at him.

Now a flock of sparrows whirled down like a cyclone of burned leaves and landed on the roof of Bennett Hall.

“No,” Thad whispered in a shaky voice. His back was hard with gooseflesh. His hand itched and burned.

The typewriter.

He could get rid of the sparrows and the burning, maddening itch in his hand only by using the typewriter.

The instinct to sit down in front of it was too strong to deny. Doing it seemed horribly natural, somehow, like wanting to stick your hand in cold water after you had burned it.

That itchy, wormy feeling under his skin was getting steadily stronger. It radiated out from the hole in his hand in waves. His eyeballs seemed to be pulsing in perfect sync with that feeling. And in the eye of his mind, the vision of the sparrows intensified. It was the Ridgeway section of Bergenfield; Ridgeway under a mild white spring sky; it was 1960; the whole world was dead except for these terrible, common birds, these psychopomps, and as he watched, they all took wing. The sky went dark with their great, wheeling mass. The sparrows were flying again.

Outside Thad's window, the sparrows on the wires, the infirmary, and Bennett Hall flew upward together in a whir of wings. A few early students paused in their walk across the quad to watch the flock bank left across the sky and disappear into the west.

Thad did not see this. He saw nothing but the neighborhood of his childhood somehow transformed into the weird dead country of a dream. He sat down in front of the typewriter, sinking deeper into the twilit world of his trance as he did so. Yet one thought held firm. Foxy George could make him sit down and twiddle the keys of the IBM, yes, but he wouldn't write the book, no matter what . . . and if he held to that, foxy old George would either fall apart or simply whiff out of existence, like a candle-flame. He knew that. He
felt
it.

His hand seemed to be
whamming
in and out now, and he felt that, if he could see it, it would look like the paw of a cartoon character—Wile E. Coyote, perhaps—otter it had been hit with a sledgehammer. It wasn't pain, exactly; it was more like the I'm-going-to-go-crazy-soon feeling you get when the middle of your back, the one place you can never quite reach, starts to itch. Not a surface itch, but that nerve-deep, throbbing itch that makes you damp your teeth together.

But even that seemed distant, unimportant.

He sat down at the typewriter.

The moment he turned the machine on, the itch went away . . . and the vision of the sparrows went with it.

Yet the trance held, and at the center of it was some harsh imperative; there was something which needed to be written, and he could feel his whole body yelling at him to get to it, do it, get it done. In its own way, it was much worse than either the vision of the sparrows or the itch in his hand. This itch seemed to be emanating from a place deep in his mind.

He rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter, then just sat there for a moment, feeling distant and lost. Then he laid his fingers in the touch-typist's “home” position on the middle row of keys, although he had given up touch-typing years ago.

They trembled there for a moment, and then all but the index fingers withdrew. Apparently when Stark did type, he did it the same way Thad himself did—hunt and peck. He would, of course; the typewriter was not his instrument of choice.

There was a distant tug of pain when he moved the fingers of his left hand, but that was all. His index fingers typed slowly, but it still didn't take long for the message to form itself on the white sheet. It was chillingly brief. The Letter Gothic type-ball whirled and produced six words in capitals:

The world suddenly swam back into sharp focus. He had never felt such dismay, such horror, in his whole life. God, of course—it was so right, so clear.

He started to get up, with no idea of where he meant to go. He was not even aware that he was doing it until his hand flared with pain, like a smouldering torch which is swung hard through the air to produce a bright bloom of fire. His lips peeled back from his teeth and he made a low groaning noise. He dropped back into the chair in front of the IBM, and before he knew what was happening, his hands had groped their way back to the keys and were slamming at them again.

Five words this time:

He stared at the words dully. As soon as he typed the final E, everything cut off suddenly—it was as if he were a lamp and someone had pulled his plug. No more pain in his hand. No more itch. No more wormy, watched feeling under his skin.

The birds were gone. That dim, entranced feeling was gone. And Stark was gone, too.

Except he wasn't really gone at all, was be? No. Stark was keeping house while Thad was gone. They had left two Maine State Troopers watching the place, but that didn't matter. He had been a fool, an incredible fool, to think a couple of cops could make a difference. A squad of Delta Force Green Berets wouldn't have made a difference. George Stark wasn't a man; he was something like a Nazi Tiger tank which just happened to look human.

“How's it going?” Harrison asked from behind him.

Thad jumped as if someone had poked a pin into the back of his neck . . . and that made him think of Frederick Clawson, Frederick Clawson who had butted in where he had no business . . . and had committed suicide by telling what he knew.

glared up at him from the sheet of paper in the typewriter.

He reached out, tore the sheet from the roller, and crumpled it up. He did this without looking around to see how dose Harrison was—that would have been a bad mistake. He tried to look casual. He didn't feel casual; he felt insane. He waited for Harrison to ask him what he had written, and why he was in such a hurry to get it out of the typewriter. When Harrison didn't say anything, Thad did.

“I think I'm done. Hell with the note. I'll have these files back before Mrs. Fenton knows they're gone, anyway.” That much, at least, was true . . . unless Althea happened to be looking down from heaven. He got up, praying his legs wouldn't betray him and spill him back into his chair. He was relieved to see Harrison was standing in the doorway, not looking at him at all. A moment ago Thad would have sworn the man was breathing down the back of his neck, but Harrison was eating a cookie and peering past Thad at the few students who were idling across the quad.

“Boy, this place sure is dead,” the cop said.

“Why don't we go?” he asked Harrison.

“Sounds good to me. ”

Thad started for the door. Harrison looked at him, bemused. “Jeepers-creepers,” he said. “Maybe there's something to that absent-minded-professor stuff after all.”

Thad blinked at him nervously, then looked down and saw he was still holding the crumpled ball of paper in one hand. He tossed it toward the wastebasket, but his unsteady hand betrayed him. It struck the rim and bounced off. Before he could bend over and grab it, Harrison had moved past him. He picked up the ball of paper and tossed it casually from one hand to the other. “You gonna walk out without the files you came for?” he asked. He pointed at the creative writing Honors files, which were sitting beside the typewriter with a red rubber band around them. Then he went back to tossing the ball of paper with Stark's last two messages on it from one hand to the other, right-left, left-right, back and forth, follow the bouncing ball. Thad could see a snatch of letters on one of the crimps: ELL ANYBODY AND THEY DI.

“Oh. Those. Thanks. ”

Thad picked the files up, then almost dropped them. Now Harrison would uncrumple the ball of paper in his hand. He would do that, and although Stark wasn't watching him right now—Thad was pretty sure he wasn't, anyway—he would be checking back in soon. When he did, he would know. And when he knew, he would do something unspeakable to Liz and the twins.

“Don't mention it.” Harrison tossed the crumpled ball of paper toward the wastebasket. It rolled almost all the way around the rim and then went in. “Two points,” he said, and stepped out into the hall so Thad could close the door.

He went downstairs with his police escort trailing behind him. Rawlie DeLesseps popped out of his office and told him to have a good summer, if he didn't see Thad again. Thad wished him the same in a voice which, to his own ears, at least, sounded normal enough. He felt as if he were on autopilot. The feeling lasted until he got to the Suburban. As be tossed the files in on the passenger side, his eye was caught by the pay telephone on the other side of the parking lot.

“I'm going to call my wife,” he told Harrison. “See if she wants anything at the store. ”

“Should have done it upstairs,” Manchester said. “Would have saved yourself a quarter. ”

“I forgot,” Thad said. “Maybe there
is
something to that absent-minded-professor stuff. ”

The two cops exchanged an amused glance and got into their Plymouth, where they could run the air conditioning and watch him through the windshield.

Thad felt as if all his insides had turned to jumbled glass. He fished a quarter out of his pocket and dropped it into the slot. His hand was shaking and he got the second number wrong. He hung up the phone, waited for his quarter to come back, and then tried again, thinking,
Christ, it's like the night Miriam died. Like that night all over again.