The Dark Half (62 page)

Thad looked at Stark. “Will it be enough?”

Stark's eyes, brilliant jewels in the ruined setting of his face were distant, bazed. His bandaged hand toyed absently with the paperweight. He put it back and smiled at Thad. “What do
you
think? You know as much about this as I do. ”

Thad considered it.
Both of us know what we're talking about, but I don't think either of us could express it in words. Writing is not what we're doing here, not really. Writing is just the ritual We're talking about passing some sort
of
baton. An exchange
of
power. Or, more properly put, a trade: Liz's and the twins' lives in exchange for. . . what? What, exactly?

But be knew, of course. It would have been strange if he had not, for he had been meditating on this very subject not so many days ago. It was his
eye
that Stark wanted—no, demanded. That odd third
eye
that, being buried in his brain, could only look inward.

He felt that crawling sensation again, and fought it off.
No fair peeking, George. You've got the firepower; all I've got is a bunch of scraggy birds. So no fair peeking.

“I think it probably will be,” he said. “We‘ll know it when it happens, won't we?”

“Yes. ”

“Like a teeter-totter, when one end of the board goes up . . . and the other end goes down. ”

“Thad, what are you hiding? What are you hiding from me?”

There was a moment of electrical silence in the room, a room which suddenly seemed far too small for the emotions careening around inside it.

“I might ask you the same question,” Thad said at last.

“No” Stark replied slowly. “All
my
cards are on the table. Tell me, Thad.” His cold, rotting hand slipped around Thad's wrist with the inexorable force of a steel manacle.
“What are you hiding?”

Thad forced himself to turn and look into Stark's eyes. That crawling sensation was everywhere now, but it was centered in the hole in his hand.

“Do you want to do this book or not?” he asked.

For the first time, Liz saw the underlying expression in Stark's face—not on it but
in
it—change. Suddenly there was uncertainty there. And fear? Maybe. Maybe not. But even if not, it was somewhere near, waiting to happen.

“I didn't come here to eat cereal with you, Thad. ”

“Then
you
figure it out,” Thad said Liz heard a gasp and realized she had made the sound herself.

Stark glanced up at her briefly, then looked back at Thad. “Don't jive me, Thad,” he said softly· “You don't want to jive me, hoss. ”

Thad laughed. It was a cold and desperate sound . . . but not entirely without humor. That was the worst part. It was not entirely without humor, and Liz heard George Stark in that laugh, just as she had seen Thad Beaumont in Stark's eyes when he was playing with the babies.

“Why not, George ? I know what
I
have to lose. That's all on the table, too. Now do you want to write or do you want to talk?”

Stark considered him for a long moment, his flat and baleful gaze painting Thad's face. Then he said, “Ah, fuck it. Let's go. ”

Thad smiled. “Why not?”

“You and the cop leave,” Stark said to Liz. “This is just the boys now. We're down to that. ”

“I'Il take the babies,” Liz heard herself say, and Stark laughed.

“That's pretty funny. Beth. Uh-uh. The babies are insurance. Like write-protect on a floppy disk, isn't that so, Thad?”

“But—” Liz began.

“It's okay,” Thad said. “They'll be fine. George can mind them while I get us started. They like him. Haven't you noticed?”

“Of
course
I've noticed,” she said in a low, hate-filled voice.

“Just remember that they're in here with us,” Stark said to Alan. “Keep it in mind, Sheriff Alan. Don't be inventive. If you try pulling something cute, it'll be just like Jonestown. They'll bring all of us out feet first. You got that?”

“Got it,” Alan said.

“And shut the door on the way out.” Stark turned to Thad. “It's time. ”

“That's right,” Thad said, and picked up a pencil. He turned to Liz and Alan, and George Stark's eyes looked out at them from Thad Beaumont's face. ”Go on. Get out. ”

Liz stopped halfway downstairs. Alan almost ran into her. She was staring across the living room and out through the window-wall.

The world was birds. The deck was buried beneath them; the slope down to the lake was black with them in the failing light; above the lake the sky was dark with them as more swarmed toward the Beaumont lake house from the west.

“Oh my God,” Liz said.

Alan grabbed her arm. “Be quiet,” he said. “Don't let him hear you. ”

“But what—”

He guided her the rest of the way downstairs, still holding firmly to her arm. When they were in the kitchen, Alan told her the rest of what Dr. Pritchard had told him earlier this afternoon, a thousand years ago.

“What does it mean?” she whispered. Her face was gray with pallor. “Alan, I'm so frightened. ”

He put his arms around her and was aware, even though he was also deeply afraid, that this was quite a lot of woman.

“I don't know,” he said, “but I know they're here because either Thad or Stark called to them. I'm pretty sure it was Thad. Because he must have seen them when he came in. He saw them, but he didn't mention them. ”

“Alan, he's not the same. ”

“I know. ”

“Part of him loves Stark. Part of him loves Stark's . . . his blackness. ”

“I know. ”

They went to the window by the telephone table in the hall and looked out. The driveway was full of sparrows, and the woods, and the small areaway around the shed where the .22 was still locked away. Rawlie's VW had disappeared beneath them.

There were no sparrows on George Stark's Toronado, however. And there was a neat circle of empty driveway around it, as if it had been quarantined.

A bird flew into the window with a soft thump. Liz uttered a tiny cry. The other birds shifted restlessly—a great wavelike movement that rolled up the hill—and then they were still again.

“Even if they
are
Thad's,” she said
,
“he may not use them on Stark. Part of Thad is crazy, Alan. Part of him has
always
been crazy. He . . . he likes it. ”

Alan said nothing, but he knew that, too. He had sensed it.

“All of this is like a terrible dream,” she said. “I wish I could wake up. I wish I could wake up and things would be the way they were. Not the way they were before Clawson; the way they were before
Stark. ”

Alan nodded.

She looked up at him. “So what do we do now?”

“We do the hard thing,” he said. “We wait. ”

The evening seemed to go on forever, the light bleeding slowly out of the sky as the sun made its exit beyond the mountains on the western side of the lake, the mountains that marched off to join the Presidential Range of New Hampshire's chimney.

Outside, the last flocks of sparrows arrived and joined the main flock. Alan and Liz could sense them on the roof overhead, a burial-mound of sparrows, but they were silent. They were waiting.

When they moved about the room their heads turned as they walked, turned like radar dishes locked in on a signal. It was the study they were listening to, and the most maddening thing was that there was no sound at all from behind the trick door which led into it. She could not even hear the babies babbling and cooing to each other. She hoped they had gone to sleep, but it was not possible to silence the voice which insisted that Stark had killed them both, and Thad, too.

Silently.

With the razor he carried.

She told herself that if something like that happened the sparrows would know, they would do something, and it helped, but only a little. The sparrows were a great mind-bitching unknown surrounding the house. God knew what they would do . . . or when.

Twilight was slowly surrendering to full dark when Alan said harshly, “They'll change places if it goes on long enough, won't they? Thad will start to get sick . . . and Stark will start to get well. ”

She was so startled she almost dropped the bitter cup of coffee she was holding.

“Yes. I think so.”

A loon called on the lake—an isolated, aching, lonely sound. Alan thought of them upstairs, the two sets of twins, one set at rest, the other engaged in some terrible struggle in the merged twilight of their single imagination.

Outside, the birds watched and waited as twilight drew down.

That teeter-totter is in motion,
Alan thought.
Thad's end is going up, Stark's end is going down.
Up there, behind that door which made two entrances when it was open, the change had begun.

It's almost the end,
Liz thought.
One way or the other.

And as if this thought had caused it to happen, she heard a wind begin to blow—a strange, whirring wind. Only, the lake was as flat as a dish.

She stood up, eyes wide, hands going to her throat. She stared out through the window-wall.
Alan
,
she tried to say, but her voice failed her. It didn't matter.

Upstairs there was a strange, weird whistling sound, like a note blown from a crooked flute. Stark cried out suddenly, sharply: “Thad? What are you doing?
What are you doing?”
There was a short banging sound, like the report of a cap pistol. A moment later Wendy began to cry.

And outside in the deepening gloom, a million sparrows went on fluttering their wings, preparing to fly.

When Liz dosed the door and left the two men alone, Thad opened his notebook and looked at the blank page for a moment. Then he picked up one of the sharpened Berol pencils.

“I am going to start with the cake,” he said to Stark.

“Yes,” Stark said. A kind of longing eagerness filled his face. “That's right. ”

Thad poised the pencil over the blank page. This was the moment that was always the best—just before the first stroke. This was surgery of a kind, and in the end the patient almost always died, but you did it anyway. You had to, because it was what you were made for. Only that.

Just remember,
he thought.
Remember what you're doing.

But a part of him—the part that really wanted to write
Steel Machine
—protested.

Thad bent forward and began to fill up the empty space.

He wrote for nearly forty minutes, picking up speed as be went along, his mind gradually filling up with the sights and sounds of the wedding party which would end with such a bang.

Finally he put the pencil down. He had written it blunt.

“Give me a cigarette,” he said.

Stark raised his eyebrows.

“Yes,” Thad said.

There was a pack of Pall Malls lying on the desk. Stark shook one out and Thad took it. The cigarette felt strange between his lips after so many years . . . too big, somehow. But it felt good. It felt
right.

Stark scratched a match and held it out to Thad, who inhaled deeply. The smoke bit his lungs in its old merciless, necessary way. He felt immediately woozy, but he didn't mind the feeling at all.

Now I need a drink, he thought. And if this ends with me still alive and standing up, that's the first thing I'm going to have
.

“I thought you quit,” Stark said.

Thad nodded. “Me too. What can I say, George? I was wrong.” He took another deep drag and feathered smoke out through his nostrils. He turned his notebook toward Stark. “Your turn,” he said.

Stark leaned over the notebook and read the last paragraph Thad had written; there was really no need to read more. They both knew how this story went.

Stark lit a Pall Mall himself, picked up one of his Berols, opened his own notebook . . . and then paused. He looked at Thad with naked honesty.

“I'm scared, hoss,” he said.

And Thad felt a great wave of sympathy for Stark—in spite of everything he knew.
Scared. Yes, of course you are,
he thought.
Only the ones just starting out—the kids—aren't scared. The years go by and the words on the page don't get any darker
. . .
but the white space sure does get whiter. Scared? You'd be crazier than you are if you weren't.