before coming to rest like a wheezy piece of machinery.
Yes. You can write your name. And you can deny the sparrows. Very good. But why do you want to go back to writing? Why is it so important? Important enough to kill people?
the pencil wrote.
"What do you mean?" Thad muttered, but he felt a wild hope explode in his head. Could it possibly be that simple? He supposed that it could be, especially for a writer who had no business existing in the first place. Christ, there were enough real writers who couldn't exist unless they were writing, or felt they couldn't . . . and in the case of men like Ernest Hemingway, it really came down to the same thing, didn't it?
The pencil trembled, then drew a long, scrawling line below the last message. It looked weirdly like the voice-print.
"Come on, " Thad whispered. "What the hell do you mean?"
the pencil wrote. The letters were stilted, reluctant. The pencil jerked and wavered between his fingers, which were wax-white. If I exert much more pressure, Thad thought, it's just gonna snap off.
Suddenly his arm flew up. At the same time his numb hand flicked the pencil with the agility of a stage-magician manipulating a card, and instead of holding it between his fingers most of the way down its barrel, he was gripping the pencil in his fist like a dagger.
He brought it down--Stark brought it down--and suddenly the pencil was buried in the web of flesh between the thumb and first finger of his left hand. The graphite tip, somewhat dulled by the writing Stark had done with it, passed almost all the way through it. The pencil snapped. A bright puddle of blood filled the depression the pencil's barrel had dragged into his flesh, and suddenly the force which had gripped him was gone. Red pain raved up from his hand, which lay on his desk with the pencil jutting out of it.
Thad threw his head back and clamped his teeth shut against the agonized howl which fought to escape his throat.
3
There was a small bathroom off the study, and when Thad felt able to walk, he took his monstrously throbbing hand there and examined the wound under the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent tube. It looked like a bullet-wound--a perfectly round hole rimmed with a flaring black smudge. The smudge looked like gunpowder, not graphite. He turned his hand over and saw a bright red dot, the size of a pinprick, on the palm side. The tip of the pencil.
That's how close it came to going all the way through, he thought.
He ran cold water over and into the wound until his hand was numb, then took the bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the cabinet. He found he could not hold the bottle in his left hand, so he pressed it against his body with his left arm in order to get the cap off. Then he poured disinfectant into the hole in his hand, watching the liquid turn white and foam, gritting his teeth against the pain.
He put the hydrogen peroxide back and then took down the few bottles of prescription medicine in the cabinet one by one, examining their labels. He had had terrible back-spasms after a fall he had taken while cross-country skiing two years ago, and good old Dr. Hume had given him a prescription for Percodan. He had taken only a few of them; he had found the pills fucked up his sleep-cycle and made it hard for him to write.
He finally discovered the plastic vial hiding behind a can of Barbasol shaving cream that had to be at least a thousand years old. Thad pried the vial's cap off with his teeth and shook one of the pills out onto the side of the sink. He debated adding a second, and decided against it. They were strong.
And maybe they're spoiled. Maybe you can end this wild night of fun with a good convulsion and a trip to the hospital--how about that?
But he decided to take the chance. There really wasn't even a question--the pain was immense, incredible. As for the hospital . . . he looked at the wound in his hand again and thought, Probably I should go and have this looked at but I'll be goddamned if I will. I've had enough people looking at me like I was crazy in the last few days to last me a lifetime.
He scooped up another four Percodans, stuffed them into his pants pocket, and returned the vial to the medicine cabinet shelf. Then he covered the wound with a Band-Aid. One of the round spots did the trick. Looking at that little circle of plastic, he thought, you'd have no idea how badly the damned thing hurts. He set a bear-trap for me. A bear-trap in his mind, and I walked right into it.
Was that really what had happened? Thad didn't know, not for sure, but he knew one thing: he did not want a repeat performance.
4
When he had himself under control again--or something approaching it--Thad returned his journal to his desk drawer, turned off the lights in the study, and went down to the second floor. He paused on the landing, listening for a moment. The twins were quiet. So was Liz.
The Percodan, apparently not too old to work, began to kick in and the pain in Thad's hand began to back off a little. If he inadvertently flexed it, the low throb there turned into a scream, but if he was careful of it, it wasn't too bad.
Oh, but it's going to hurt in the morning, buddy . . . and what are you going to tell Liz?
He didn't know, exactly. Probably the truth . . . or some of it, anyway. She had gotten very skilled, it seemed, at picking up on his lies.
The pain was better, but the after-effects of the sudden shock--all the sudden shocks--still lingered, and he thought it would be some time yet before he could sleep. He went down to the first floor and peeked out at the State Police cruiser parked in the driveway through the sheers drawn across the big living-room window. He could see the firefly flicker of two cigarettes inside.
They're sitting there just as cool as a pair of summer cucumbers, he thought. The birds didn't bother them any, so maybe there really WEREN'T any, except in my head. After all, these guys get paid to be bothered.
It was a tempting idea, but the study was on the other side of the house. Its windows could not be seen from the driveway. Neither could the carriage-house. So the cops couldn't have seen the birds, anyway. Not, at least, when they began to roost.
But what about when they all flew away? You want to tell me they didn't hear that? You saw at least a hundred of them, Thad--maybe two or three hundred.
Thad went outside. He had hardly done more than open the kitchen screen door before both Troopers were out of the car, one on each side. They were big men who moved with the silent speed of ocelots.
"Did he call again, Mr. Beaumont?" the one who had gotten out on the driver's side asked. His name was Stevens.
"No--nothing like that," Thad said. "I was writing in my study when I thought I heard a whole bunch of birds take off. It freaked me out a little. Did you guys hear that?"
Thad didn't know the name of the cop who had gotten out on the passenger side. He was young and blonde, with one of those round, guileless faces which radiate good nature. "Heard em and saw em both," he said. He pointed to the sky, where the moon, a little past the first quarter, hung above the house. "They flew right across the moon. Sparrows. Quite a flock of em. They hardly ever fly at night. "
"Where do you suppose they came from?" Thad asked.
"Well, I tell you," the Trooper with the round face said, "I don't know. I flunked Bird Surveillance. "
He laughed. The other Trooper did not. "Feeling jumpy tonight, Mr. Beaumont?" he asked.
Thad looked at him levelly. "Yes," he said. "I've been feeling jumpy every night, just lately. "
"Could we do anything for you just now, sir?"
"No," Thad said. "I think not. I was just curious about what I heard. Goodnight, you guys. "
"Night," the round-faced Trooper said.
Stevens only nodded. His eyes were bright and expressionless below the wide brim of his Trooper's Stetson.
That one thinks I'm guilty, Thad thought, going back up the walk. Of what? He doesn't know. Probably doesn't care. But he's got the face of a man who believes everyone is guilty of something. Who knows? Maybe he's even right
He closed the kitchen door and locked it behind him. He went back into the living room and
looked out again. The Trooper with the round face had retreated back into the cruiser, but Stevens was still standing on the driver's side, and for a moment Thad had the impression that Stevens was looking directly into his eyes. It couldn't be, of course; with the sheers drawn, Stevens would see only an indistinct dark shape . . . if he saw anything at all.
Still, the impression lingered.
Thad drew the drapes over the sheers and went to the liquor cabinet. He opened it and took out a bottle of Glenlivet, which had always been his favorite tipple. He looked at it for a long moment and then put it back. He wanted a drink very badly, but this would be the worst time in history to start drinking again.
He went out to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk, being very careful not to bend his left hand. The wound had a brittle, hot feel.
He came in vague, he thought, sipping the milk. It didn't last long--he sharpened up so fast it was scary--but he came in vague. I think he was asleep. He might have been dreaming of Miriam, but I don't think so. What I tapped into was too coherent to be a dream. I think it was memory. I think it was George Stark's subconscious Hall of Records, where everything is neatly written down and then filed in its own slot. I imagine thatif he tapped my subconscious--and for all I know, maybe he already has--he'd find the same sort of thing.
He sipped his milk and looked at the pantry door.
I wonder if I could tap into his WAKING thoughts . . . his conscious thoughts.
He thought the answer was yes . . . but he also thought it would render him vulnerable again. And next time it might not be a pencil in the hand. Next time it might be a letter-opener in the neck.
He can't. He needs me.
Yeah, but he's crazy. Crazy people are not always hip to their own best interests.
He looked at the pantry door and thought about how he could go in there . . . and from there outside again, on the other side of the house.
Could I make him do something? The way he made me do something?
He could not answer that one. At least not yet. And one failed experiment might kill him.
Thad finished his milk, rinsed his glass, and put it into the dish drainer. Then he went into the pantry. Here, between shelves of canned goods on the right and shelves of paper goods on the left, was a Dutch door leading out to the wide expanse of lawn which they called the back yard. He unlocked the door, pushed both halves open, and saw the picnic table and the barbecue out there, standing silent sentinel. He stepped out onto the asphalt walk which ran around this side of the house and finally joined the main walk in front.
The walk glimmered like black glass in the chancy light of the half-moon. He could see white splotches on it at irregular intervals.
Sparrow-shit, not to put too fine a point on it, he thought.
Thad walked slowly up the asphalt path until he was standing directly below his study windows. An Orinco truck came over the horizon and pelted down Route 15 toward the house, casting a momentary bright light across the lawn and the asphalt walk. In this brief light, Thad saw the corpses of two sparrows lying on the walk--tiny heaps of feathers with trifurcate feet sticking out of them. Then the truck was gone. In the moonlight, the bodies of the dead birds became irregular patches of shadow once again--no more than that.
They were real, he thought again. The sparrows were real. That blind, revolted horror returned, making him feel somehow unclean. He tried to make his hands into fists, and his left responded with a wounded bellow. What little relief he had gotten from the Percodan was already passing
They were here. They were real. How can that be?
He didn't know.
Did I call them, or did I create them out of thin air?
He didn't know that, either. But he felt sure of one thing: the sparrows which had come tonight, the real sparrows which had come just before the trance had swallowed him, were only a fraction of all possible sparrows. Perhaps only a microscopic fraction.
Never again, he thought. Please--never again.
But he suspected that what he wanted did not matter. That was the real horror; he had touched some terrible paranormal talent in himself, but he could not control it. The very idea of control in this matter was a joke.
And he believed that before this was over, they would be back.
Thad shuddered and went back to the house. He slipped into his own pantry like a burglar, then locked the door behind him and took his throbbing hand up to bed. Before he went, he swallowed another Percodan, washing it down with water from the kitchen tap.
Liz did not wake when he lay down beside her. Some time later he escaped into three hours of grainy, fitful sleep in which nightmares flew and circled around him, always just out of reach.
Nineteen
STARK MAKES A PURCHASE
1
Waking up wasn't like waking up.
When you came right down to it, he didn't think he had ever really been awake or asleep, at least in the way normal people used those words. In a way it was as if he were always asleep, and only moved from one dream to another. In that way, his life--what little of it he remembered--was like a nest of Chinese boxes that never ended, or like peering into an endless hall of mirrors.
This dream was a nightmare.
He came slowly out of sleep knowing he hadn't really been asleep at all. Somehow Thad Beaumont had managed to capture him for a little while; had managed to bend him to his will for a little while. Had he said things, revealed things, while Beaumont had been in control of him? He had a feeling he might have done . . . but he also felt quite sure Beaumont would not know how to interpret those things, or how to tell the important things he might have said from the things that didn't matter.
He also came out of sleep to pain.
He had rented a two-room "efficiency" in the East Village, just off Avenue B. When he opened his eyes he was sitting at the lopsided kitchen table with an open notebook in front of him. A rivulet of bright blood ran across the faded oilcloth which covered the table, and there was nothing very surprising about that, because there was a Bic pen sticking out of the back of his right hand.
Now the dream began to come back.
That was how he had been able to drive Beaumont out of his mind, the only way he had been able to break the bond the cowardly shit had somehow forged between them. Cowardly? Yes. But he was also sly, and it would be a bad idea to forget that. A very bad idea, indeed.
Stark could vaguely remember dreaming that Thad was with him, in his bed--they were talking together, whispering together, and at first this had seemed both pleasant and oddly comforting--like talking with your brother after lights out.
Except they were doing more than talking, weren't they?
What they had been doing was exchanging secrets . . . or, rather, Thad was asking him questions and Stark found himself answering. It was pleasant to answer, it was comforting to answer. But it was also alarming. At first his alarm was centered on the birds--why did Thad keep asking him about birds? There were no birds. Once, perhaps . . . a long, long time ago . . . but not anymore. It was just a mind-game, a puny effort to freak him out. Then, little by little, his sense of alarm became entwined with his almost exquisitely attuned survival instinct--it grew sharper and more specific as he continued trying to struggle awake. He felt as if he were being held underwater, drowned . . .
So, still in that half-waking, half-dreaming state, he had gone into the kitchen, opened the notebook, and picked up the ballpoint pen. Thad hadn't tipped to any of that; why should he have? Wasn't he also writing five hundred miles away? The pen wasn't right, of course--didn't even feel right in his hand--but it would do. For now.
Falling APART, he had watched himself write, and by then he had been very close to the magic mirror that divided sleep from wakefulness, and he struggled to impose his own thoughts upon the pen, his own will upon what would and would not appear on the blankness of the paper, but it was hard, good God, good Christ, it was so damned hard.
He had bought th
e Bic pen and half a dozen notebooks in a stationery shop right after he had arrived in New York City; had done it even before renting the wretched "efficiency." There were Berol pencils in the shop, and he had wanted to buy them, but he hadn't. Because, no matter whose mind it was that had driven the pencils, it had been Thad Beaumont's hand which held them, and he needed to know if that was a bond he could break. So he had left the pencils and had taken the pen instead.
If he could write, if he could write on his own, all would be well and he wouldn't need the wretched, whining creature up in Maine at all. But the pen had been useless to him. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how mightily he concentrated, the only thing he had been able to write was his own name. He had written it over and over again: George Stark, George Stark, George Stark, until, at the bottom of the sheet, they were not recognizable words at all but only the jittery scribbles of a pre-schooler.
Yesterday he had gone to a branch of the New York Public Library and had rented an hour's time on one of the grim gray electric IBMs in the Writing Room. The hour had seemed to last a thousand years. He sat in a carrel which was enclosed on three sides, fingers trembling on the keys, and typed his name, this time in capital letters: GEORGE STARK, GEORGE STARK, GEORGE STARK.
Break it! he had screamed at himself. Type something else, anything else, just break it!
So he had tried. He had bent over the keys, sweating, and typed: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Only when he looked up at the paper, he saw that what he had written was The george George Stark george starked over the starky stark.
He had felt an urge to rip the IBM right off its bolts and go rampaging through the room with it, swinging the typewriter like a barbarian's mace, splitting heads and breaking backs: if he could not create, let him uncreate!