The Dark Half

  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.

  3

  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.

  Have they come for Thad . . . or for Stark?

  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.

  What if they all fly at once? If he's down there, and if he's as sharp as Thad says, he'll hear that, all right. He'll hear that just fine.

  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 wa
s 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.

  4

  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. "

  5

  He turned his head slowly, slowly, slowly.

  What he saw almost made him wish he had been born blind.

  "I guess they'll never want me on the cover of GQ, huh?" Stark asked. He was grinning. The grin showed more of his teeth and gums (and the empty holes where other teeth had been) than even the widest grin should have done. His face was covered with sores and the skin seemed to be sloughing off the underlying tissue. But that wasn't the whole trouble--that wasn't what made Alan's belly crawl with horror and revulsion. Something seemed to be wrong with the underlying structure of the man's face. It was as if he were not simply decaying, but mutating in some horrible way.

  He knew who the man with the gun was, all the same.

  The hair, lifeless as an old wig glued to the straw bead of a scarecrow, was blonde. The shoulders were almost as broad as those of a football player with his pads on. He stood with a kind of arrogant, light-footed grace even though he was not moving, and he looked at Alan with good humor.

  It was the man who couldn't exist, who never had existed.

  It was Mr. George Stark, that high-toned son of a bitch from Oxford, Mississippi.

  It was all true.

  "Welcome to the carnival, old boss," Stark said mildly. "You move pretty good for such a big man. I almost missed you at first, and I been lookin for you. Let's go on down to the house. I want to introduce you to the little woman. And if you make a single wrong move, you'll be dead, and so will she, and so will those cute little kids. I have nothing whatever in the wide world to lose. Do you believe that?"

  Stark grinned at him out of his decaying, horribly wrong face. The crickets went on singing in the grass. Out on the lake, a loon lifted its sweet, piercing cry into the air. Alan wished with all his heart that he was that bird, because when he looked into Stark's staring eyeballs he saw only one thing in them other than death . . . and that one thing was nothing at all.

  He realized with sudden, perfect clarity that he was never going to see his wife and sons again.

  "I believe it," he said.

  "Then drop your gun in the puckies and let's go. "

  Alan did as he was told. Stark followed behind him, and they descended to the road. They crossed it and then walked down the slope of the Beaumonts' driveway toward the house. It jutted out of the hillside on heavy wooden pilings, almost like a beach house in Malibu. So far as Alan could see, there were no sparrows around it. None at all.

  The Toronado was parked by the door, a black and gleaming tarantula in the late afternoon sun. It looked like a bullet. Alan read the bumper sticker with a mild sense of wonder. All of his emotions felt oddly muted, oddly mild, as if this were a dream from which he would soon wake up.

  You don't want to think like that, he warned himself. Thinking like that will get you killed.

  That was almost funny, because he was a dead man already, wasn't he? There he had been, creeping up on the Beaumont driveway, meaning to sneak across the road like Tonto, take-um good look round, get-um idea how things are, Kemo Sabe . . . and Stark had simply put a pistol in his ear and told him to drop his gun and there went the ballgame.

  I didn't hear him; I didn't even intuit him. People think I'm quiet, but this guy made me look like I had two left feet.

  "You like my wheels?" Stark asked.

  "Right now I think every police officer in Maine must like your wheels," Alan said, "because they're all looking for them. "

  Stark gave voice to a jolly laugh. "Now why don't I believe that?" The barrel of his gun prodded Alan in the small of the back. "Get on inside, my good old buddy. We're just waiting for Thad. When Thad gets here, I think well be ready ready Teddy to rock and roll. "

  Alan looked around at Stark's free hand and saw an extremely odd thing: there appeared to be no lines on the palm of that hand. No lines at all.

  6

  "Alan!" Liz cried. "Are you all right?"

  "Well," Alan said, "if it's possible for a man to feel like an utter horse's ass and still be all right, I guess I am. "

  "You couldn't have been expected to believe," Stark said mildly. He pointed to the scissors he had removed from her panties. He had put them on one of the night-tables which flanked the big double bed, out of the twins' reach. "Cut her legs free, Officer Alan. No need to bother with her wrists; looks like she's almost got those already. Or are you Chief Alan?"

  "Sheriff Alan," he said, and thought: He knows that. He knows ME--Sheriff Alan Pangborn of Castle County--because Thad knows me. But. even when he's got the upper hand he doesn't give away everything he knows. He's as sly as a weasel who's made a career out of henhouses.

  And for the second time a bleak certainty of his own approaching death filled him. He tried to think of the sparrows, because the sparrows were the one element of this nightmare with which he did not believe George Stark was familiar. Then he thought better of it. The man was too sharp. If he allowed himself hope, Stark would see it in his eyes . . . and wonder what it meant.

  Alan got the scissors and cut Liz Beaumont's legs free of the tape even as she freed one hand and began to unwrap the tape from her wrists.

  "Are you going to hurt me?" she asked Stark apprehensively. She held her hands up, as if the red marks the tape had left on her wrists would somehow dissuade him from doing that.

  "No," he said, smiling a little. "Can't blame you for doin what comes naturally, can I, darlin Beth?"

  She gave him a revolted, frightened look at that and then corralled the twins. She asked Stark if she could take them out in the kitchen and give them something to eat. They had slept until Stark had parked the Clarks' stolen Volvo at the rest area, and were now lively and full of fun.

  "You bet," Stark said. He seemed to be in a cheerful, upb
eat mood . . . but he was holding the gun in one hand and his eyes moved ceaselessly back and forth between Liz and Alan. "Why don't we all go out? I want to talk to the Sheriff, here. "

  They trooped out to the kitchen, and Liz began to put together a meal for the twins. Alan watched the twins while she did it. They were cute kids--as cute as a pair of bunnies, and looking at them reminded him of a time when he and Annie had been much younger, a time when Toby, now a senior in high school, had been in diapers and Todd had still been years away.

  They crawled happily hither and yon, and every now and then he had to redirect one of them before he or she could pull a chair over or bump his/her head on the underside of the Formica table in the kitchen galley.

  Stark talked to him while he babysat.

  "You think I'm going to kill you," he said. "No need to deny it, Sheriff; I can see it in your eyes, and it is a look I'm familiar with. I could lie and say it's not true, but I think you'd doubt me. You have a certain amount of experience in these matters yourself, isn't that right?"

  "I suppose," Alan said. "But something like this is a little bit . . . well, outside the normal run of police business. "

  Stark threw back his head and laughed. The twins looked toward the sound, and laughed along with him. Alan glanced at Liz and saw terror and hate on her face. And there was something else there as well, wasn't there? Yes. Alan thought it was jealousy. He wondered idly if there was something else George Stark didn't know. He wondered if Stark had any idea of how dangerous this woman could be to him.

  "You got that right!" Stark said, stiff chuckling. Then he grew serious. He leaned toward Alan, and Alan could smell the cheesy odor of his decomposing flesh. "But it doesn't have to go that way, Sheriff. The odds are against you walking out of this affair alive, I will freely grant you that, but the possibility exists. I have something to do here. A bit of writing. Thad is going to help me--he's going to prime the pump, you might say. I think we'll probably work through the night, he and I, but by the time the sun comes up tomorrow morning, I should pretty much have my house in order. "

  "He wants Thad to teach him bow to write on his own," Liz said from the galley. "He says they're going to collaborate on a book. "