The Dark Half

  Alan thought about it. "I like him," he said at last. "At first I didn't--I thought he was a cold fish. But I was seeing him under difficult circumstances. He's just . . . distant. Maybe it's because of what he does for a living. "

  "I liked both of his books very much," Annie said.

  He raised his eyebrows. "I didn't know you'd read him. "

  "You never asked, Alan. Then, when the story broke about the pen name, I tried one of the other ones." Her nose wrinkled in displeasure.

  "No good?"

  "Terrible. Scary. I didn't finish it. I never would have believed the same man wrote both books. "

  Guess what, babe? Alan thought. He doesn't believe it, either.

  "You ought to get back to bed," he said, "or you'll wake up with another pounder. "

  She shook her head. "I think the Headache Monster's gone again, at least for awhile." She gave him a look from beneath lowered lashes. "I'll still be awake when you come up . . . if you're not too long, that is. "

  He cupped one breast through the pink robe and kissed her parted lips. "I'll be up just as fast as I can. "

  She left, and Alan saw that more than ten minutes had passed. He called Wyoming again and got the same sleepy dispatcher.

  "Thought you'd forgot me, my friend. "

  "Not at all," Alan said.

  "Mind giving me your LAWS number, Sheriff?"

  "109-44-205-ME. "

  "I guess you're the genuine article, all right. Sorry to put you through this rigamarole so late, Sheriff Pangborn, but I guess you understand. "

  "I do. What can you tell me about Dr. Pritchard?"

  "Oh, he and his wife are in the vacation file, all right," Dispatch said. "They're in Yellowstone Park, camping, until the end of the month. "

  There, Alan thought. You see? You're down here jumping at shadows in the middle of the night. No cut throats. No writing on the wall. Just two old folks on a camping trip.

  But he was not much relieved, he found. Dr. Pritchard was going to be a hard man to get hold of, at least for the next couple of weeks.

  "If I needed to get a message to the guy, do you think I could do it?" Alan asked.

  "I'd think so," Dispatch said. "You could call Park Services at Yellowstone. They'll know where he is, or they should. It might take awhile, but they'd probably get him for you. I've met him a time or two. He seems like a nice enough old fella. "

  "Well, that's good to know," Alan said. "Thanks for your time. "

  "Don't mention it--it's what we're here for." Alan heard the faint rattle of pages, and could imagine this faceless man picking up his Penthouse again, half a continent away.

  "Goodnight," he said.

  "Goodnight, Sheriff. "

  Alan hung up and sat where he was for a moment, looking out the small den window into the darkness.

  He is out there. Somewhere. And he's still coming.

  Alan wondered again how he would feel if it were his own life--and the lives of Annie and his children--at stake. He wondered how he would feel if he knew that, and no one would believe what he knew.

  You're taking it home with you again, dear, he heard Annie say in his mind.

  And it was true. Fifteen minutes ago he had been convinced--in his nerve-endings, if not in his head--that Hugh and Helga Pritchard were lying dead in a pool of blood. It wasn't true; they were sleeping peacefully under the stars in Yellowstone National Park tonight. So much for intuition; it had a way of just fading out on you.

  This is the way Thad's going to feel when we find out what's really going on, he thought. When we find out that the explanation, as bizarre as it may turn out to be, conforms to all the natural laws.

  Did he really believe that?

  Yes, he decided--he really did. In his head, at least. His nerve-endings were not so sure.

  Alan finished his milk, turned off the desk-lamp, and went upstairs. Annie was still awake, and she was gloriously naked. She folded him into her arms, and Alan gladly allowed himself to forget everything else.

  7

  Stark called again two days later. Thad Beaumont was in Dave's Market at the time.

  Dave's was a mom-and-pop store a mile and a half down the road from the Beaumont house. It was a place to go when running to the supermarket in Brewer was just too much of a pain in the ass.

  Thad went down that Friday evening to get a six-pack of Pepsi, some chips, and some dip. One of the Troopers watching over the family rode with him. It was June 10th, six-thirty in the evening, plenty of light left in the sky. Summer, that beautiful green bitch, had ridden into Maine again.

  The cop sat in the car while Thad went in. He got his soda and was inspecting the wild array of dips (you had your basic dam, and if you didn't like that, you had your basic onion) when the telephone rang.

  He looked up at once, thinking: Oh. Okay.

  Rosalie behind the counter picked it up, said hello, listened, then held the phone out to him, as he had known she would. He was again swallowed by that dreamy feeling of presque vu.

  "Telephone, Mr. Beaumont. "

  He felt quite calm. His heart had stumbled over a beat, but only one; now it was jogging along at its usual rate. He was not sweating.

  And there were no birds.

  He felt none of the fear and fury he'd felt three days earlier. He didn't bother asking Rosalie if it was his wife, wanting him to pick up a dozen eggs or maybe a carton of o. j. while he was here. He knew who it was.

  He stood by the Megabucks computer with its bright green screen announcing there had been no winner last week and this week's lottery jackpot was four million dollars. He took the phone from Rosalie and said, "Hello, George. "

  "Hello, Thad." The soft brush-stroke of Southern accent was still there, but the overlay of country bumpkin was entirely gone--Thad only realized bow strongly yet subtly Stark had managed to convey that feeling of "Hailfahr, boys, I ain't too bright but I shore did get away with it, didn't I, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck?" when he heard its complete absence here.

  But of course now it's just the boys, Thad thought. Just a coupla white novelists standin around, talkin.

  "What do you want?"

  "You know the answer to that. There's no need for us to play games, is there? It's a little bit late for that. "

  "Maybe I just want to hear you say it out loud." That feeling was back, that weird feeling of being sucked out of his body and pulled down the telephone line to someplace precisely between the two of them.

  Rosalie had taken herself down to the far end of the counter, where she was removing packs of cigarettes from a pile of cartons and re-stocking the long cigarette dispenser. She was ostentatiously not listening to Thad's end of the conversation in a way that was almost funny. There was no one in Ludlow--this end of town, anyway--who wasn't aware that Thad was under police guard or police protection or police some-damn-thing, and he didn't have to hear the rumors to know they had already begun to fly. Those who didn't think he was about to be arrested for drug-trafficking no doubt believed it was child abuse or wife-beating. Poor old Rosalie was down there trying to be good, and Thad felt absurdly grateful. He also felt as if he were looking at her through the wrong end of a powerful telescope. He was down the telephone line, down the rabbit hole, where there was no white rabbit but only foxy old George Stark, the man who could not be there but somehow was, all the same.

  Foxy old George, and down here in Endsville all the sparrows were flying again.

  He fought the feeling, fought hard.

  "Go on, George," he said, a little surprised by the rough edge of fury in his voice. He was dazed, caught in a powerful undertow of distance and unreality . . . but God, he sounded so awake and aware! "Say it right out loud, why don't you?"

  "If you insist. "

  "I do. "

  "It's time to start a new book. A new Stark novel. "

  "I don't think so. "

  "Don't say that!" The edge in that voice was like a whiplash loaded with tiny pellets of shot. "I've been dra
wing you a picture, Thad. I've been drawing it for you. Don't make me draw it on you. "

  "You're dead, George. You just don't have the sense to lie down. "

  Rosalie's head turned a little; Thad glimpsed one wide eye before she turned hurriedly back to the cigarette racks again.

  "You just watch your mouth!" Real fury in that voice. But was there something more? Was there fear? Pain? Both? Or was he only fooling himself?

  "What's wrong, George?" he jeered suddenly. "Are you losing some of your happy thoughts?"

  There was a pause, then. That had surprised him, thrown him off-stride, at least momentarily. Thad was sure of that. But why? What had done it?

  "Listen to me, buddy-roo," Stark said at last. "I'll give you a week to get started. Don't think you can bullshit me, because you can't." Except the last word was really cain't. Yes, George was upset. It might cost Thad a great deal before this was over, but for the time being he felt only savage gladness. He had gotten through. It seemed he was not the only one that felt helpless and dreamily vulnerable during these nightmarishly intimate conversations; he had hurt Stark, and that was utterly fine.

  Thad said, "That much is true. There's no bullshit between us. Whatever else there may be, there's none of that. "

  "You got an idea," Stark said. "You had it before that damn kid even thought about blackmailing you. The one about the wedding and the armored-car score. "

  "I threw away my notes. I'm done with you. "

  "No, those were my notes you threw away, but it doesn't matter. You don't need notes. It'll be a good book. "

  "You don't understand. George Stark is dead. "

  "You're the one don't understand," Stark replied. His voice was soft, deadly, emphatic. "You got a week. And if you haven't got at least thirty pages of manuscript, I'll be coming for you, hoss. Only it won't start with you--that'd be too easy. That'd be entirely too easy. I'll take your kids first, and they will die slow. I'll see to it. I know how. They won't know what's happening, only that they're dying in agony. But you'll know, and I'll know, and your wife will know. I'll take her next . . . only before I take her, I'll take her. You know what I mean, old boss. And when they're gone, I'll do you, Thad, and you'll die like no man on earth ever died before. "

  He stopped. Thad could hear him panting harshly in his ear, like a dog on a hot day.

  "You didn't know about the birds," Thad said softly. "That much is true, isn't it?"

  "Thad, you're not making sense. If you don't start pretty soon, a lot of people are gonna get hurt. Time is runnin out. "

  "Oh, I'm paying attention," Thad said. "What I'm wondering is how you could have written what you did on Clawson's wall and then on Miriam's and not know about it. "

  "You better stop talkin trash and start makin sense, my friend," Stark said, but Thad could sense bewilderment and some rough fear just under the surface of that voice. "There wasn't anything written on their walls. "

  "Oh yes. Yes there was And do you know what, George? I think maybe the reason you don't know about that is because I wrote it. I think part of me was there. Somehow part of me was there, watching you. I think I'm the only one of us who knows about the sparrows, George. I think maybe I wrote it. You want to think about that . . . think about it hard . . . before you start pushing me. "

  "Listen to me," Stark said with gentle force. "Hear me real good. First your kids . . . then your wife . . . then you. Start another book, Thad. It's the best advice I can give you. Best advice you ever got in y'damn life. Start another book. I'm not dead. "

  A long pause. Then, softly, very deliberately:

  "And I don't want to be dead. So you go home and you sharpen y'pencils, and if you need any inspiration, think about how your little babies would look with their faces full of glass.

  "There ain't no goddam birds. Just forget about em and start writin. "

  There was a click.

  "Fuck you," Thad whispered into the dead line, and slowly hung up the phone.

  Seventeen

  WENDY TAKES A FALL

  1

  The situation would have resolved itself in some way or other no matter what happened--Thad was sure of that. George Stark wasn't simply going to go away. But Thad came to feel, and not without justification, that Wendy's tumble from the stairs two days after Stark called him at Dave's Market set just what course the situation would take for good and all.

  The most important result was that it finally showed him a course of action. He had spent those two days in a sort of breathless lull. He found it difficult to follow even the most simple-minded TV program, impossible to read, and the idea of writing seemed roughly akin to the idea of faster-than-light travel. Mostly he wandered from one room to the next, sitting for a few moments, and then moving on again. He got under Liz's feet and on her nerves. She wasn't sharp with him about it, although he guessed she had to bite her tongue on more than one occasion to keep from giving him the verbal equivalent of a paper-cut.

  Twice he set out to tell her about the second call from Stark, the one where foxy George had told him exactly what was on his mind, secure in the knowledge that the line wasn't tapped and they were speaking privately. On both occasions he had stopped, aware that he could do nothing but upset her more.

  And twice he had found himself up in his study, actually holding one of those damned Berol pencils he had promised never to use again and looking at a fresh, cellophane-wrapped pile of the notebooks Stark had used to write his novels.

  You got an idea . . . The one about the wedding and the armored-car score.

  And that was true. Thad even had a title, a good one: Steel Machine. Something else was true, too: part of him really wanted to write it. That itch was there, like that one place on your back you can't quite reach when you need to scratch.

  George would scratch it for you.

  Oh yes. George would be happy to scratch it for him. But something would happen to him, because things had changed now, hadn't they? What, exactly, would that thing be? He didn't know, perhaps couldn't know, but a frightening image kept recurring to him. It was from that charming, racist children's tale of yore, Little Black Sambo. When Black Sambo climbed the tree and the tigers couldn't get him, they became so angry that they bit each other's tails and raced faster and faster around the tree until they turned into butter. Sambo gathered the butter up in a crock and took it home to his mother.

  George the alchemist, Thad had mused, sitting in his study and tapping an unsharpened Berol Black Beauty against the edge of the desk. Straw into gold. Tigers into butter. Books into best-sellers. And Thad into . . . what?

  He didn't know. He was afraid to know. But he would be gone, Thad would be gone, he was sure of that. There might be somebody living here who looked like him, but behind that Thad Beaumont face there would be another mind. A sick, brilliant mind.

  He thought the new Thad Beaumont would be a good deal less clumsy . . . and a good deal more dangerous.

  Liz and the babies?

  Would Stark leave them alone if he did make it into the driver's seat?

  Not him.

  He had considered running, as well. Packing Liz and the twins into the Suburban and just going. But what good would that do? What good when Foxy Old George could look out through Dumb Old Thad's eyes? It wouldn't matter if they ran to the end of the earth; they would get there, look around, and see George Stark mushing after them behind a team of huskies, his straight-razor in his hand.

  He considered and, even more rapidly and decisively, dismissed the idea of calling Alan Pangborn. Alan had told them where Dr. Pritchard was, and his decision not to try to get a message through to the neurosurgeon--to wait until Pritchard and his wife returned from their camping trip--told Thad all he needed to know about what Alan believed . . . and, more important, what he did not believe. If he told Alan about the call he'd received in Dave's, Alan would think he was making it up. Even if Rosalie confirmed the fact that he had received a call from someone at the market, Alan would g
o on not believing. He and all the other police officers who had invited themselves to this particular party had a big investment in not believing.

  So the days passed slowly, and they were a kind of white time. Just after noon on the second day, Thad jotted I feel as if I'm in a mental version of the horse latitudes in his journal. It was the only entry he had made in a week, and he began to wonder if he would ever make another one. His new novel, The Golden Dog, was sitting dead in the water. That, he supposed, went almost without saying. It was very hard to make up stories when you were afraid a bad man--a very bad man--was going to show up and slaughter your whole family before starting in on you.

  The only time he could recall being at such a loss with himself had been in the weeks after he had quit drinking--after he'd pulled the plug on the booze-bath he'd wallowed in following Liz's miscarriage and before Stark appeared. Then, as now, there had been the feeling that there was a problem, but it was as unapproachable as one of those water-mirages you see at the end of a flat stretch of highway on a hot afternoon. The harder be ran toward the problem, wanting to attack it with both hands, dismantle it, destroy it, the faster it receded, until he was finally left, panting and breathless, with that bogus ripple of water still mocking him at the horizon.

  These nights he slept badly, and dreamed George Stark was showing him his own deserted house, a house where things exploded when he touched them and where, in the last room, the corpses of his wife and Frederick Clawson were waiting. At the moment he got there, all the birds would begin to fly, exploding upward from trees and telephone lines and electricity poles, thousands of them, millions of them, so many that they blotted out the sun.

  Until Wendy fell on the stairs, he felt very much like fool's stuffing himself, just waiting for the right murderous somebody to come along, tuck a napkin into his collar, pick up his fork, and begin to eat.

  2

  The twins had been crawling for some time, and for the last month or so they had been pulling themselves up to a standing position with the aid of the nearest stable (or, in some cases, unstable) object--a chair-leg was good, as was the coffee-table, but even an empty cardboard carton would serve, at least until the twin in question put too much weight on it and it crumpled inward or turned turtle. Babies are capable of getting themselves into divine messes at any age, but at the age of eight months, when crawling has served its purpose and walking has not quite been learned, they are clearly in the Golden Age of Mess-Making.