The Dark Half

  "You're cr--"

  "Crazy, I know. This is charmin, darlin, but we'll have to defer your opinions on my sanity until later. Too much happening right now. Listen: I have to call Thad, but not at his office. Phone there might be tapped. He doesn't think it is, but the cops might have done it without telling him. Your man is a trusting sort of fellow. I'm not. "

  "How can you--"

  Stark leaned toward her and spoke very slowly and carefully, as a teacher might speak to a slow first-grader. "I want you to stop pickin this bone with me, Beth, and answer my questions. Because if I can't get what I need out of you, maybe I can get it out of your twins. I realize they can't talk yet, but maybe I can teach them. A little incentive does wonders. "

  He was wearing a quilted vest over his shirt in spite of the heat, the kind with many zippered pockets favored by hunters and hikers. He pulled down one of the side zippers where some cylindrical object bulged the polyester quilting. He took out a small gas torch. "Even if I can't teach em to talk, I bet I could teach em to sing. I bet I could teach em to sing just like a couple of larks. You might not want to face that music, Beth. "

  She tried to take her gaze away from the torch, but it wouldn't go. Her eyes followed it heplessly as he switched it back and forth from one gloved hand to the other. Her eyes seemed nailed to the nozzle.

  "I'll tell you anything you want to know," she said, and thought: For now.

  "That's good of you," he said, and stowed the gas torch back in its pocket. The vest pulled a little to the side when he did it, and she saw the butt of a very big handgun. "Very sensible, too, Beth. Now listen. There's somebody else there today, in the English Department. I can see him as clearly as I can see you right now. Short little fella, white hair, got a pipe in his mouth almost as big as he is. What's his name?"

  "It sounds like Rawlie DeLesseps," she said drearily. She wondered how he could know Rawlie was there today . . . and decided she didn't really want to know.

  "Could it be anyone else?"

  Liz thought it over briefly and then shook her head. "It must be Rawlie. "

  "Have you got a faculty directory?"

  "There's one in the telephone table drawer. In the living room. "

  "Good." He had slipped past her almost before she realized he was moving--the oily cat-grace of this decaying piece of meat made her feel a little sick--and plucked one of the long knives from the magnetized runners. Liz stiffened. Stark glanced at her and that caught-gravel sound came from his throat again. "Don't worry, I ain't gonna cut you. You're my good little helper, aren't you? Come on. "

  The hand, strong but unpleasantly spongy, slid around her wrist again. When she tried to pull away, it only tightened. She stopped pulling at once and allowed him to lead her.

  "Good," be said.

  He took her into the living room, where she sat on the sofa and hugged her knees in front of her. Stark glanced at her, nodded to himself, and then turned his attention to the telephone. When he determined that there was no alarm wire--and that was sloppy, just sloppy--he slashed the cords the State Police had added: the one going to the traceback gadget and the one that went down to the voice-activated recorder in the basement.

  "You know how to behave, and that's very important," Stark said to the top of Liz's bent head. "Now, listen. I'm gonna find this Rawlie DeLesseps' number and have a brief little pow-wow with Thad. And while I do that, you're gonna go upstairs and pack whatever duds and other things your babies will need down at your summer place. When you're finished, roust em and bring em on down here. "

  "How did you know they were--"

  He smiled a little at her look of surprise. "Oh, I know your schedule," he said. "I know it better than you do, maybe. You get em up, Beth, and get em ready, and bring em down here. I know the layout of the house as well as I know your schedule, and if you try to get away from me, honey, I will know. There's no need to dress em; just pack what they'll need and bring em down in their didies. You can dress em later, after we're on our merry way. "

  "Castle Rock? You want to go to Castle Rock?"

  "Uh-huh. But you don't need to think about that now. All you need to think about right now is that if you're longer than ten minutes by my watch, I'll have to come upstairs to see what's keeping you." He looked at her levelly, the dark glasses creating skull-like eyesockets below his peeling, oozing brow. "And I'll come with my little blowtorch lit and ready for action. You understand?"

  "I . . . yes. "

  "Above all, Beth, you want to remember one thing. If you cooperate with me, you are going to be all right. And your children will be all right." He smiled again. "Bein a good mother like you are, I suspect that's much more important to you. I only want you to know better than to try gettin clever with me. Those two State cops are out there in the back of their bubblemobile, drawing flies, because they had the bad luck to be on the tracks when my express was comin through. There's a bunch of dead cops in New York City who had the same sort of bad luck . . . as you well know. The way to help yourself, and your kids--and Thad, too, because if he does what I want, he's gonna be fine--is to stay dumb and helpful. You understand?"

  "Yes," she said hoarsely.

  "You may get an idea. I know how that can happen when a person feels like his back's to the wall. But if you do get one, you want to shoo that idea right away. You want to remember that, although I may not look so hot, my ears are great. If you try to open a window, I'll hear it. If you try to take out a screen, I'll hear that. Bethie, I'm a man who can hear the angels singin in heaven and the devils screamin in the deepest holes of hell. You have to ask yourself if you dare take the chance. You're a smart woman. I think you'll make the right decision. Move, girl. Get goin. "

  He was looking at his watch, actually timing her. And Liz bounded for the stairs on legs which felt nerveless.

  6

  She heard him speak briefly on the telephone downstairs. There was a long pause, and then he began to speak again. His voice changed. She didn't know who he had talked to before the pause--Rawlie DeLesseps, maybe--but when he began to speak again, she was almost positive Thad was on the other end. She couldn't make out the words and didn't dare go to the extension phone, but she was still sure it was Thad. There was no time for eavesdropping, anyway. He had asked her to ask herself if she dared chance crossing him. She did not.

  She threw diapers into the diaper-bag, clothes into a suitcase. She swept the creams, baby powder, Handi-Wipes, diaper pins, and other odds and ends into a shoulder-bag.

  The conversation had ended downstairs. She was heading for the twins, about to wake them, when he called up to her.

  "Beth! It's time!"

  "I'm coming!" She lifted Wendy, who began to cry sleepily.

  "I want you down here--I'm expecting a telephone call, and you're the sound effects. "

  But she barely heard this last. Her eyes were fixed on the plastic diaper-pin caddy on top of the twins' bureau.

  Lying beside the caddy was a bright pair of sewing scissors.

  She put Wendy back in her crib, threw a glance at the door, and then hurried across to the bureau. She took the scissors and two of the diaper pins. She stuck the pins in her mouth like a woman making a dress, and unzipped her skirt. She pinned the scissors to the inside of her panties, then zipped the skirt again. There was a small bulge where the handle of the scissors and the heads of the pins were. She didn't think an ordinary man would notice, but George Stark was not an ordinary man. She left her blouse hanging out. Better.

  "Beth!" The voice was on the verge of being angry now. Worse, it was coming from halfway up the stairs and she had never even heard him, although she would have said it was impossible to use the main staircase in this old place without producing all sorts of creaks and groans.

  Just then the telephone rang.

  "You get them down here now!" he screamed up at her, and she hurried to rouse William. She had no time to be gentle, and as a result she had a baby squalling at top volume in each arm
when she came downstairs. Stark was on the telephone and she expected that he would be even more furious at the noise. On the contrary, he looked quite pleased . . . and then she realized that if he was talking to Thad, he should be pleased. He could hardly have done better if he had brought his own sound-effects record.

  The ultimate persuader, she thought, and felt a flash of powerful hate for this rotten creature who had no business existing but who refused to disappear.

  Stark was holding a pencil in one hand, tapping the eraser end gently on the edge of the telephone table, and she realized with a little shock of recognition that it was a Berol Black Beauty. One of Thad's pencils, she thought. Has he been in the study?

  No--of course he hadn't been in the study, nor was it one of Thad's pencils. They had never been Thad's pencils, not really--he just bought them sometimes. The Black Beauties belonged to Stark. He had used the pencil to write something in block letters on the back of the faculty directory. As she neared him she could read two sentences. GUESS WHERE I CALLED FROM. THAD? read the first one. The second was brutally direct: TELL ANYBODY AND THEY DIE.

  As if to confirm this, Stark said: "Not a thing, as you can hear for yourself. I haven't harmed a hair of their precious little heads. "

  He turned toward Liz and winked at her. It was somehow the most hideous thing of all--as if they were in on this together. Stark was twirling his sunglasses between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. His eyeballs glared out of his face like marbles in the face of a melting wax statue.

  "Yet," he added.

  He listened, then grinned. Even if his face had not been decomposing almost before her eyes, that grin would have struck her as teasing and vicious.

  "What about her?" Stark asked in a voice which was almost lilting, and that was when her anger got on top of her fear and she thought for the first time of Aunt Martha and the rats. She wished Aunt Martha were here now, to take care of this particular rat. She had the scissors, but that didn't mean he would give her the opening she would need to use them. But Thad . . . Thad knew about Aunt Martha. And the idea winked into her mind.

  7

  When the conversation was over and Stark had hung up, she asked him what he meant to do.

  "Move fast," he said. "It's my specialty." He held out his arms. "Give me one of the kids. Don't matter which one. "

  She shrank away from him, reflexively hugging both babies tighter to her breasts. They had quieted down, but at her convulsive hug, both began to whimper and wriggle again.

  Stark looked at her patiently. "I don't have time to argue with you, Beth. Don't make me persuade you with this." He patted the cylindrical bulge in the pocket of the hunting vest. "I'm not going to hurt your kids. In a funny sort of way, you know, I'm their daddy, too. "

  "Don't you say that!" she shrieked at him, drawing away farther still. She trembled on the edge of flight.

  "You get control of yourself, woman. "

  The words were flat, accentless, and deadly cold. They made her feel as if she had been slapped across the face with a bag of cold water.

  "Get hip, sweetheart. I have to go outside and move that cop-car into your garage. I can't have you running down the road in the other direction while I do it. If I'm holding one of your kids--as collateral, so to speak--I won't have to worry about that. I mean what I say about bearing you and them no ill will . . . and even if I did, what good would I do myself by hurting one of your kids? I need your cooperation. That's not the way to get it. Now you give one of them over right now, or I'll hurt them both--not kill them but hurt them, really hurt them--and you'll be the one to blame. "

  He held out his arms. His ruined face was stern and set. Looking at it, she saw that no argument would sway him, no plea would turn him. He would not even listen. He would just do what he had threatened.

  She walked toward him, and when he tried to take Wendy her arm tightened again, balking him for a moment. Wendy began to sob harder. Liz relaxed, letting the girl go, and began to cry again herself. She looked into his eyes. "If you hurt her, I'll kill you. "

  "I know you'd try," Stark said gravely. "I have great respect for motherhood, Beth. You think I am a monster, and maybe you're right. But real monsters are never without feelings. I think in the end it's that, and not how they look, that makes them so scary. I'm not going to hurt this little one, Beth. She's safe with me . . . as long as you cooperate. "

  Liz now held William in both arms . . . and the circle her arms made had never felt so empty to her. Never in her life had she been so convinced she had made a mistake. But what else was there to do?

  "Besides . . . look!" Stark cried, and there was something in his voice that she could not, would not credit. The tenderness she believed she heard had to be counterfeit, only more of his monstrous teasing. But he was looking down at Wendy with a profound and disturbing attention . . . and Wendy was looking up at him, rapt, no longer crying. "The little one doesn't know how I look. She's not scared of me a bit, Beth. Not a bit. "

  She watched in silent horror as he raised his right hand. He had stripped off the gloves and she could see a heavy gauze bandage across it, exactly where Thad was wearing a bandage over the back of his left hand. Stark opened his fist, dosed it, opened it again. It was clear from the tightening of his jaw that flexing his hand caused him some pain, but he did it, anyway.

  Thad does that, he does it just that way, oh my God he does it JUST THAT SAME WAY--

  Wendy now appeared to be totally calm. She gazed up into Stark's face, studying him with dose attention, her cool gray eyes on Stark's muddy blue ones. With the skin fallen away beneath them, his eyes looked as if they might fall out at any moment and dangle on his cheeks by their stalks.

  And Wendy waved back.

  Hand open; hand closed; hand open.

  A Wendy-wave.

  Liz felt movement in her arms, looked down, and saw that William was looking at George Stark with the same rapt blue-gray gaze. He was smiling.

  William's hand opened; closed; opened.

  A William-wave.

  "No," she moaned, almost too low to hear. "Oh God, no, please don't let this be happening. "

  "You see?" Stark said, looking up at her. He was grinning his frozen Sardonicus grin at her, and the most horrible thing about it was her understanding that he was trying to be gentle . . . and could not be. "You see? They like me, Beth. They like me. "

  8

  Stark carried Wendy out to the driveway after putting his dark glasses on again. Liz ran to the window and looked after them anxiously. Part of her was positive he intended to hop into the police cruiser and drive away with her baby on the seat beside him and the two dead State Troopers in the back.

  But for a moment he did nothing--simply stood there in hazy sunshine by the driver's door, head down, the baby cradled in his arms. He remained in that motionless position for some time, as if speaking seriously to Wendy, or perhaps praying. Later, when she had more information, she decided he had been trying to get in touch with Thad again, perhaps to read his thoughts and divine whether he intended to do what Stark wanted him to do or if he had plans of his own.

  After about thirty seconds of this, Stark lifted his head, shook it briskly as if to dear it, then got into the cruiser and started it up. The keys were in the ignition, she thought dully. He didn't even have to hot-wire it, or whatever they do. That man has got the luck of the devil.

  Stark drove the cruiser into the garage and cut the motor. Then she heard the car door slam and he came back out, pausing long enough to hit the button that sent the door rumbling down on its tracks.

  A few moments later he was in the house again and handing Wendy back to her.

  "You see?" he asked. "She's fine. Now tell me about the people next door. The Clarks. "

  "The Clarks?" she asked, feeling extraordinarily stupid. "Why do you want to know about them? They're in Europe this summer. "

  He smiled. It was, in a way, the most hideous thing yet, because under more ordin
ary circumstances it would have been a smile of genuine pleasure . . . and quite a winning one, she suspected. And didn't she feel just an instant of attraction? A freakish flicker? It was insane, of course, but did that mean she could deny it? Liz didn't think so, and she even understood why it might be. After all, she had married this man's closest relative.

  "Wonderful!" he said. "Couldn't be better! And do they have a car?"

  Wendy began to cry. Liz looked down and saw her daughter looking at the man with the rotten face and the bulging marble eyes, holding her small and pleasantly chubby arms out. She was not crying because she was afraid of him; she was crying because she wanted to go back to him.

  "Isn't that sweet!" Stark said. "She wants to come back to Daddy. "

  "Shut up, you monster!" she spat at him.

  Foxy George Stark threw his head back and laughed.

  9

  He gave her five minutes to pack a few more things for herself and the twins. She told him it would be impossible to get together half of what they'd need in that length of time, and he told her to do the best she could.

  "You're lucky I'm giving you any more time at all, Beth, under the circumstances--there are two dead cops in your garage and your husband knows what's going on. If you want to take the five minutes debating the point with me, that's your choice. You're already down to . . ." He glanced at his watch, then smiled at her. "Four-and-a-half. "

  So she did what she could, pausing once while tossing jars of baby food into a shopping bag to look at her children. They were sitting side by side on the floor, playing an idle sort of pat-a-cake with each other and looking at Stark. She was dreadfully afraid she knew what they were thinking about.

  Isn't that sweet.

  No. She wouldn't think about it. She wouldn't think about it but it was all she could think about: Wendy, crying and holding out her pudgy little arms. Holding them out to the murderous stranger.

  They want to go back to Daddy.

  He was standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her, smiling, and she wanted to use the scissors right then. She had never in her life wanted anything so badly. "Can't you give me a hand?" she cried angrily at him, gesturing at the two bags and the cooler she had filled.