The Dark Half (61 page)

“Of course I do,” Thad add. “Ike and Mike, they think alike. ”

Stark threw back his head and laughed. The twins stopped whimpering and laughed along with him. “That's good, old hoss! That is
gooood!”

“I was—or perhaps I should say we were—on a panel with Burroughs in 1981. At the New School, in New York. During the Q-and-A, some kid asked Burroughs if he believed in life after death. Burroughs said be did—he thought we were all living it. ”

“And that man's
smart
,” Stark said, smiling. “Couldn't shoot a pistol worth shit, but
smart.
Now—you see? You see how little it matters?”

But it does,
Alan thought, studying Thad carefully.
It matters a lot. Thad's face says so
. . .
and the sparrows you don't know about may so, too.

Thad's knowledge was more dangerous than even
he
knew, Alan suspected. But it might be all they had. He decided he bad been right to keep the end of Pritchard's story to himself . . . but be still felt like a man standing on the edge of a cliff and trying to juggle too many flaming torches.

“Enough chit-chat, Thad,” Start said.

He nodded. “Yes. Quite enough.” He looked at Liz and Alan. “I don't want either of you trying anything . . . well. . . out of line. I'm going to do what be wants. ”

“Thad! No! You can't do that!”

“Shhh.” He put a finger across her lips. “I can, and I will. No tricks, no special effects. Words on paper made him, and words on paper are the only things that will get rid of him.” He cocked his head at Stark. “Do you think
he knows this will work? He doesn't. He's
just hoping. ”

“That's right,” Start said. “Hope springs eternal in the human tits.” He laughed. It was a crazy, lunatic sound, and Alan understood that Stark was also juggling Naming torches on the edge of a cliff.

Sudden movement twitched in the corner of his eye. Alan turned hit head slightly and saw a sparrow land on the dock railing outside the sweep of glass that formed the living room's western wall. It was joined by a second and a third. Alan looked back at Thad and saw the writer's eyes move slightly. Had he also seen? Alan thought he had. He had been right, then. Thad knew . . . but he didn't want
Stark
to know.

“The two of us are just going to do a little writing and then say goodbye,” Thad aid. His eyes shifted to Stark's ruined face. “That is what we're going to do, isn't it, George?”

“You got it, guy. ”

“So you tell me,” Thad said to Liz. “Are you holding back? Got something in your head? Some plan?”

She stood looking desperately into her husband's eyes, unaware that between them, William and Wendy were holding hands and looking at each other delightedly, like long-lost relatives at a surprise reunion.

You
don't mean it,
do
you, Thad?
her eyes asked him.
It's a trick, isn't it? A trick to lull him, put his suspicions to sleep?

No,
Thad's gray gaze answered.
Right down the line. This is what I want.

And wasn't there something else, as well? Something so deep and hidden that perhaps she was the only one who could see it?

“There's a knife under the couch,” she said slowly, looking into his face. “I got it out of the kitchen while Alan and . . . and him . . . were in the front hall, using the telephone. ”

“Liz,
Christ
” Alan nearly screamed, making the babies jump. He was not, in fact, as upset as he hoped he sounded. He had come to understand that if this business was to end in some way that did not mean total horror for all of them, Thad would have to be the one to bring it about. He had made Stark; he would have to unmake him.

She looked around at Stark and saw that hateful grin surfacing on the remains of his face.

“I know what I'm doing,” Thad said. “Trust me, Alan. Liz, get the knife and throw it off the deck. ”

I have a part to play here,
Alan thought.
It's a bit part, but remember what the guy used to say in our college drama class—there are no small parts, only small actors.
“You think he's going to just let us
go?
” Alan asked incredulously. “That he's going to trot off over the hill with his tail bobbing behind him like Mary's little lamb? Man, you're crazy. ”

“Sure, I'm crazy,” Thad said, and laughed. It was eerily like the sound Stark had made—the laughter of a man who was dancing on the edge of oblivion. “
He
is, and he came from me, didn't he? Like some cheap demon from the brow of a third-rate Zeus. But I know how it has to be.” He turned and looked at Alan fully and gravely for this first time.
“I know how it has to be, ”
he repeated slowly and with great emphasis. “Go ahead, Liz. ”

Alan made a rude, disgusted sound and turned his back, as if to disassociate himself from all of them.

Feeling like a woman in a dream, Liz crossed the living room, knelt down, and fished the knife out from under the couch.

“Be careful of that thing,” Stark said. He sounded very alert, very serious. “Your kids would tell you the same thing if they could talk. ”

She looked around, brushed her hair out of her face, and saw he was pointing his gun at Thad and William.

“I
am
being careful!” she said in a shaky, scolding voice that was close to tears. She slid the door in the window-wall back on its track and stepped out onto the deck. There were now half a dozen sparrows perched on the rail. They moved aside in two groups of three as she approached the rail and the steep drop beyond it, but they did not fly.

Alan saw her pause for a moment, considering them, the handle of the knife pinched between her fingers and the tip of the blade pointing down at the deck like a plumb-bob. He glanced at Thad and saw Thad watching her tensely. Last of all, he glanced at Stark.

He was watching Liz carefully, but there was no look of surprise or suspicion on his face, and a sudden wild thought streaked across Alan Pangborn's mind:
He doesn't see them! doesn't remember what he wrote on the apartment walls, and he doesn't see them now! He doesn't know they're there!

Then he suddenly realized Stark was looking back at
him
, appraising him with that flat, mouldy stare.

“Why are you looking at me?” Stark asked.

“I want to make sure I remember what real ugly is,” Alan said. “I might want to tell my grandchildren someday. ”

“If you don't watch your fucking mouth, you won't have to worry about grandchildren,” Stark said. “Not a bit. You want to quit doin that starin thing, Sheriff Alan. It's just not wise. ”

Liz threw the butcher-knife over the deck rail. When she heard it land in the bushes twenty-five feet below, she
did
begin to cry.

“Let's all go upstairs,” Stark said. “That's where Thad's office is. I reckon your want your typewriter, won't you, old hoss?”

“Not for this one,” Thad said. “You know better. ”

A smile touched Stark's cracked lips. “Do I?”

Thad pointed to the pencils which lined his breast pocket. “These are what I use when I want to get back in touch with Alexis Machine and Jack Rangely.

Stark looked absurdly pleased. “Yeah, that's right, isn't it? I guess thought this time you'd want to do it different. ”

“No different, George. ”

“I brought my own” he said. “Three boxes of them. Sheriff Alan, why don't you be a good boy and trot on out to my car and get em? They're in the glove-compartment. The rest of us will babysit.” He looked at Thad, laughed his loony laugh, and shook his head. “You
dog,
you!”

“That's right, George,” Thad said. He smiled a little. “I'm a dog. So are you. And you cant teach old dogs new tricks. ”

“You're kind of up for it, ain't you, hoss? No matter what you say, part of you is just
raaarin
to go. I see it in your eyes. You
want
it. ”

“Yes,” Thad said simply, and Alan didn't think he was lying.

“Alexis Machine,” Stark said. His yellow eyes were gleaming.

“That's right,” Thad said, and now his own eyes were gleaming “ ‘Cut him while I stand here and watch. ' ”

“You got it!” Stark cried, and began to laugh. “ ‘I want to see the blood flow. Don't make me tell you twice. ' ”

Now they both began to laugh.

Liz looked from Thad to Stark and then back at her husband again and the blood fell from her cheeks because she could not tell the difference.

All at once the edge of the cliff felt closer than ever.

Alan went out to get the pencils. His head was only in the car for a moment, but it seemed much longer and he was very glad to get it out again. The car had a dark and unpleasant smell that left him feeling slightly woozy. Rooting around in Stark's Toronado was like sticking his head into an attic room where someone had spilled a bottle of chloroform.

If that's the odor of dreams,
Alan thought,
I never want to have another one.

He stood for a moment beside the black car, the boxes of Berol pencils in his hands, and looked up the driveway.

The sparrows had arrived.

The driveway was disappearing beneath a carpet of them. As he watched, more of them landed. And the woods were full of them. They only landed and sat staring at him, ghastly-silent, a massed living conundrum.

They are coming for you
,
George,
he thought, and started back toward the house. Halfway there he stopped suddenly as a nasty idea struck him.

He looked back at the birds for a long moment, but they told no secrets, and he went inside.

“Upstairs,” Stark said. “You go first, Sheriff Alan. Go to the rear of the guest bedroom. There's a glass case filled with pictures and glass paperweights and little souvenirs against the wall there. When you push against the left-hand side of the case, it rotates inward on a central spindle. Thad's study is beyond it. ”

Alan looked at Thad, who nodded.

“You know a hell of a lot about this place,” Alan said, “for a man who's never been here. ”

“But I
have
been here,” Stark said gravely. “I have been here often, in my dreams. ”

Two minutes later, all of them were gathered outside the unique door of Thad's small study. The glass case was turned inward, creating two entrances to the room separated by the thickness of the case. There were no windows in here; give me a window down here by the lake, Thad had told Liz once, and what I'll do is write two words and then stare out of the damned thing for two hours, watching the boats go by.

A lamp with a flexible goose-neck and a brilliant quartz-halogen bulb cast a circle of white light on the desk. An office chair and a folding camp chair stood behind the desk, side by side, facing the two blank notebooks which had been placed side by side in the circle of light. Resting on top of each notebook were two sharpened Berol Black Beauty pencils. The IBM electric Thad sometimes used down here had been unplugged and stuck in a corner.

Thad himself had brought in the folding chair from the hall closet, and the room now expressed a duality Liz found both startling and extremely unpleasant. It was, in a way, another version of the mirror-creature she fancied she had seen when Thad finally arrived. Here were two chairs where there had always been one; here were two little writing stations, also side by side, where there should have been only one. The writing implement which she associated with Thad's

normal self had been shunted aside, and when they sat down, Stark in Thad's office chair and Thad in the folding chair, the disorientation was complete. She felt almost sea-sick.

Each of them had a twin on his lap.

“How long do we have before someone gets suspicious and decides to check on this place?” Thad asked Alan, who was standing in the doorway with Liz. “Be honest, and be as accurate as you can. You have to believe me when I tell you this is the only chance we have. ”

“Thad,
look
at him!” Liz burst out wildly. “Can't you see what's happening to him? He doesn't just want help writing a book! He wants to steal your
life!
Don't you
see
that?”

“Shhh,” he said. “I know what he wants. I think I have since the start. This is the only way. I know what I'm doing. How long, Alan?”

Alan thought about it carefully. He had told Sheila he was going to get take-out, and he had already called in, so it would be awhile before she got nervous. Things might have happened quicker if Norris Ridgewick had been around.

“Maybe until my wife calls to ask where I am,” he said. “Maybe longer. She's been a cop's wife for a long time. She expects long hours and weird nights.” He didn't like hearing himself say this. This was not the way the game was supposed to be played; it was the exact opposite of the way the game was supposed to be played.

Thad's eyes compelled him. Stark did not seem to be listening at all; he had picked up the slate paperweight which sat atop an untidy stack of old manuscript in the corner of the desk and was playing with it.

“I think it will be at least four hours.” And then, reluctantly, he added: “Maybe all night. I left Andy Clutterbuck on the desk, and Clut isn't exactly Quiz Kids material. If someone gets his wind up, it will probably be that guy Harrison—the one you ditched—or someone I know at the State Police Barracks in Oxford. A guy named Henry Payton. ”