The Dark Half (57 page)

“I'll just stay in the doorway,” he said with mock humility. “I'll be a good boy. I won't peek. ”

The babies were crawling busily around the living-room rug. They were cheerful, vocal, full of beans. They seemed to be delighted to be here, where they had been only once before, for a long winter weekend.

“They can't be left alone,” Liz said. “The bathroom is off the master bedroom. If they're left here, they'll get into trouble. ”

“No problem, Beth,” Stark said, and scooped them up effortlessly, one under each arm. She would have believed just this morning that if anyone but herself or Thad tried something like that, William and Wendy would have screamed their heads off. But when Stark did it, they giggled merrily, as if this were the most amusing thing under the sun. “I'll bring them into the bedroom, and I'll be watching
them
instead of you.” He turned and regarded her with an instant's coldness. “I'll keep a good eye on them, too. I wouldn't want them to come to any harm, Beth. I like them. If anything happens to them, it won't be
my
fault. ”

She went into the bathroom and he stood in the doorway, his back to her as he had promised, watching the twins. As she raised her skirt and lowered her panties and sat down, she hoped he was a man of his word. She wouldn't die if he turned around and saw her squatting on the John . . . but if he saw the sewing scissors inside her underwear, she might.

And, as usual, when she was in a hurry to go, her bladder hung on obstinately.
Come on, come on,
she thought with a mixture of fear and irritation.
What's the
matter, do you think you're going to collect interest on that stuff?

At last. Relief.

“But when they try to come out of the barn,” Stark was saying, “Machine lights the gasoline they've poured into the trench around it in the night. Won't that be great? There's a movie in it, too, Beth—the assholes who make movies
love
fires. ”

She used the toilet paper and pulled her panties up very carefully. She kept her eyes glued to Stark's back as she adjusted her clothes, praying that he would not turn around. He didn't. He was deeply absorbed in his own story.

“Westerman and Jack Rangely duck back inside, planning to use the car to drive right through the fire. But Ellington panics, and—”

He broke off suddenly, his head cocked to one side. Then he turned to her, just as she was straightening her skirt.

“Out,” he said abruptly, and all the good humor had left his voice. “Get the fuck out of there right now. ”

“What—”

He grabbed her arm with rough force and yanked her into the bedroom. He went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. “We've got company, and it's too early for Thad. ”

“I don't—”

“Car engine,” he said briefly. “Powerful motor. Could be a police interceptor. Hear it?”

Stark slammed the medicine cabinet shut and jerked open the drawer to the right of the washstand. He found a roll of Red Cross adhesive tape and popped the tin ring off the doughnut.

She heard nothing and said so.

“That's okay,” he said. “I can hear it for both of us. Hands behind you. ”

“What are you going to—”

“Shut up and put your hands behind you!”

She did, and immediately her wrists were bound. He criss-crossed the tape, back and forth, back and forth, in tight figure-eights.

“Engine just quit,” he said. “Maybe a quarter of a mile up the road. Someone trying to be cute. ”

She thought she might have heard an engine in the last moment, but it could have been nothing but suggestion. She knew she would have heard nothing at all if she had not been listening with all of her concentration. Dear God, how sharp were his ears.

“Gotta cut this tape,” he said. “Pardon me gettin personal for a second or so, Beth. Time's a little short for politeness. ”

And before she even knew he was doing it, he had reached down the front of her skirt. A moment later, he pulled the sewing scissors free. He didn't even prick her skin with the pins.

He glanced in her eyes for just a moment as he reached behind her and used the scissors to cut the tape. He seemed amused again.

“You saw them,” she said dully. “You saw the bulge after all. ”

“The scissors?” He laughed. “I saw them, but not the bulge. I saw them in your
eyes,
darlin Bethie. I saw them back in Ludlow. I knew they were there the minute you came downstairs. ”

He knelt in front of her with the tape, absurdly—and ominously—like a suitor proposing marriage. Then he looked up at her. “Don't you get ideas about kicking me or anything, Beth. I don't know for sure, but I think that's a cop. And I don't have time to play fiddlyfuck with you, much as I'd like to. So be still. ”

“The babies—”

“I'm gonna close the doors,” Stark said. “They're not tall enough to reach the knobs even when they get up on their feet. They may eat a few dust-kitties under the bed, but I think that's the worst trouble they can get into. I'll be back very shortly. ”

Now the tape was winding figure-eights around her ankles. He cut it and stood up again.

“You be good, Beth,” he said. “Don't go losing your happy thoughts. I'd make you pay for a thing like that . . . but I'd make you watch
them
pay, first. ”

Then he closed the bathroom door, the bedroom door, and was gone. He absented himself with the speed of a good magician doing a trick.

She thought of the .22 locked in the equipment shed. Were there bullets in there, too? She was pretty sure there were. Half a box of Winchester .22 Long Rifles on a high shelf.

Liz began to twist her wrists back and forth. He had interwoven the tape very cunningly, and for awhile she wasn't sure she was going to be able to even loosen it, let alone work her hands free of it.

Then she started to feel a little give, and began to work her wrists back and forth faster, panting.

William crawled over, placed his hands on her leg, and looked questioningly into her face.

“Everything's going to be fine,” she said, and smiled at him.

Will smiled back and crawled away in search of his sister. Liz tossed a sweaty lock of hair out of her eyes with a brisk shake of her head and returned to rotating her wrists back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

So far as Alan Pangborn could tell, Lake Lane was entirety deserted . . . at least, it was entirety deserted as far as he dared to drive in. That was the sixth driveway along the road. He believed he could have driven at least a little farther in safety—there was no way the sound of his car's engine could be beard at the Beaumont place from this distance, not with two hills in between—but it was better to be safe. He drove down to the A-frame cottage which belonged to the Williams family, summer residents from Lynn, Massachusetts, parked on a carpet of needles under a hoary old pine, killed the engine, and got out.

He looked up and saw the sparrows.

They were sitting on the roofpeak of the Williams house. They were sitting on the high branches of the trees that surrounded it. They perched on rocks down by the lakeshore; they jostled for place on the Williamses' dock—so many of them he couldn't see the wood. There were hundreds and hundreds of them.

And they were utterly silent, only looking at him with their tiny black eyes.

“Jesus,” he whispered.

There were crickets singing in the high grass which grew along the foundations of the Williams house, and the soft lap of the lake against the permanent part of their dock, and a plane droning its way west, toward New Hampshire. Otherwise, everything was silent. There was not even the harsh buzz of a single outboard motor on the lake.

Only those birds.

All those birds.

Alan felt a deep, glassy fright creeping along his bones. He had seen sparrows flock together in the spring or the fall, sometimes a hundred or two hundred at once, but he had never in his life seen anything like
this.

He looked back at the radio mike again, wondering if he shouldn't call in after all. This was just too weird, too out of control.

He began to walk. The sparrows did not move . . . but a fresh flock appeared and settled into the trees. They were all around him now, staring down at him like. a hard-hearted jury staring at a murderer in the dock. Except back by the road. The woods bordering Lake Lane were still clear.

He decided to go back that way.

A dismal thought, just shy of being a premonition, came to him—that this might be the biggest mistake of his professional life.

I'm just going to recon the place,
he thought.
If the birds don't fly—and they don't seem to want to—I should be okay. I can go up this driveway, cross the Lane, and work my way down to the Beaumont house trough the woods. If the Toronado's there, I'll see it. If I see it, I may see him. And if I do, at least I'll know what I'm up against. I'll know if it's Thad, or . . . someone else.

There was another thought, as well. One Alan hardly dared think, because thinking it might queer his luck. If he
did
see the owner of the black Toronado, he might get a dear shot. He might be able to take the bastard down and end it right here. If that was the way things worked out, he would take a heavy roasting from the State Police for going against their specific orders . . . but Liz and the kids would be safe, and right now that was all he cared about.

More sparrows fluttered soundlessly down. They were carpeting the asphalt surface of the Williamses. driveway from the bottom up. One landed less than five feet from Alan's boots. He made a kicking gesture at it and instantly regretted it, half-expecting to send the bird-and the whole monster flock with it—into the sky at once.

The sparrow hopped a little. That was all.

Another sparrow landed on Alan's shoulder. He couldn't believe it, but it was there. He brushed at it, and it hopped onto his hand. Its beak dipped, as if it meant to peck his palm . . . and then it stopped. Heart beating hard, Alan lowered his hand. The bird hopped off, fluttered its wings once, and landed on the driveway with its fellows. It stared up at him with its bright, senseless eyes.

Alan swallowed. There was an audible dock in his throat. “What
are
you?” he muttered. “What the fuck
are
you?”

The sparrows only stared at him. And now every pine and maple he could see on this side of Castle Lake appeared to be full. He heard a branch crack somewhere under their accumulated weight.

Their bones are hollow,
he thought.
They weigh next to nothing. How many of them must
it take to
crock
a
branch like that?

He didn't know. Didn't want to know.

Alan unmapped the strap across the butt of his .38 and walked back up the steep slant of the Williamses' driveway, away from the sparrows. By the time he reached Lake Lane, which was only a dirt track with a ribbon of grass growing up between the wheel-ruts, his face was oiled with sweat and his shirt was stuck damply to his back. He looked around. He could see the sparrows back the way he had come—they were all over the top of his car now, roosting on the hood and the trunk and the roof-flashers—but there were none up here.

It's as if,
he thought,
they don't want to get too close . . . at least not yet. It's as if this were their stagins area.

He looked both ways along the Lane from what he hoped was a place of concealment behind a tall sumac bush. Not a soul in sight—only the sparrows, and they were all back on the slope where the Williamses' A-frame stood. Not a sound except for the crickets and a couple of mosquitoes whining around his face.

Good.

Alan trotted across the road like a soldier in enemy territory, head low between his hunched shoulders, jumped the weed- and rock-choked ditch on the far side, and disappeared into the woods. Once he was in concealment, he concentrated on working his way down to the Beaumont summer house as quickly and silently as he could.

The eastern side of Castle Lake lay at the bottom of a long, steep hill. Lake Lane was halfway down this slope, and most of the houses were so far below Lake Lane that Alan could see only their roofpeaks from his position, which was about twenty yards up the hill from the road. In some cases they were hidden from his view entirely. But he could see the road, and the driveways which branched off from it, and as long as he didn't lose count, he would be okay.

When he reached the fifth turn-off beyond the Williamses', he stopped. He looked behind him to see if the sparrows were following him. The idea was bizarre but somehow inescapable. He could see no sign of them at all, and it occurred to him that perhaps his overloaded mind had imagined the whole thing.

Forget it,
he thought.
You didn't imagine it. They were
back there . . . and they're still back there.

He looked down at the Beaumonts' driveway, but could see nothing from his current position. He began to work his way down, moving slowly, crouched over. He moved quietly and was just congratulating himself on this fact when George Stark put a gun into his left ear and said, “If you move, good buddy, most of your brains are going to land on your right shoulder. ”

He turned his head slowly, slowly, slowly.