He was watching Liz carefully, but there was no look of surprise or suspicion on his face, and a sudden wild thought streaked across Alan Pangborn's mind: He doesn't see them! doesn't remember what he wrote on the apartment walls, and he doesn't see them now! He doesn't know they're there!
Then he suddenly realized Stark was looking back at him, appraising him with that flat, mouldy stare.
"Why are you looking at me?" Stark asked.
"I want to make sure I remember what real ugly is," Alan said. "I might want to tell my grandchildren someday. "
"If you don't watch your fucking mouth, you won't have to worry about grandchildren," Stark said. "Not a bit. You want to quit doin that starin thing, Sheriff Alan. It's just not wise. "
Liz threw the butcher-knife over the deck rail. When she heard it land in the bushes twenty-five feet below, she did begin to cry.
4
"Let's all go upstairs," Stark said. "That's where Thad's office is. I reckon your want your typewriter, won't you, old hoss?"
"Not for this one," Thad said. "You know better. "
A smile touched Stark's cracked lips. "Do I?"
Thad pointed to the pencils which lined his breast pocket. "These are what I use when I want to get back in touch with Alexis Machine and Jack Rangely.
Stark looked absurdly pleased. "Yeah, that's right, isn't it? I guess thought this time you'd want to do it different. "
"No different, George. "
"I brought my own" he said. "Three boxes of them. Sheriff Alan, why don't you be a good boy and trot on out to my car and get em? They're in the glove-compartment. The rest of us will babysit." He looked at Thad, laughed his loony laugh, and shook his head. "You dog, you!"
"That's right, George," Thad said. He smiled a little. "I'm a dog. So are you. And you cant teach old dogs new tricks. "
"You're kind of up for it, ain't you, hoss? No matter what you say, part of you is just raaarin to go. I see it in your eyes. You want it. "
"Yes," Thad said simply, and Alan didn't think he was lying.
"Alexis Machine," Stark said. His yellow eyes were gleaming.
"That's right," Thad said, and now his own eyes were gleaming " 'Cut him while I stand here and watch. ' "
"You got it!" Stark cried, and began to laugh. " 'I want to see the blood flow. Don't make me tell you twice. ' "
Now they both began to laugh.
Liz looked from Thad to Stark and then back at her husband again and the blood fell from her cheeks because she could not tell the difference.
All at once the edge of the cliff felt closer than ever.
5
Alan went out to get the pencils. His head was only in the car for a moment, but it seemed much longer and he was very glad to get it out again. The car had a dark and unpleasant smell that left him feeling slightly woozy. Rooting around in Stark's Toronado was like sticking his head into an attic room where someone had spilled a bottle of chloroform.
If that's the odor of dreams, Alan thought, I never want to have another one.
He stood for a moment beside the black car, the boxes of Berol pencils in his hands, and looked up the driveway.
The sparrows had arrived.
The driveway was disappearing beneath a carpet of them. As he watched, more of them landed. And the woods were full of them. They only landed and sat staring at him, ghastly-silent, a massed living conundrum.
They are coming for you, George, he thought, and started back toward the house. Halfway there he stopped suddenly as a nasty idea struck him.
Or are they coming for us?
He looked back at the birds for a long moment, but they told no secrets, and he went inside.
6
"Upstairs," Stark said. "You go first, Sheriff Alan. Go to the rear of the guest bedroom. There's a glass case filled with pictures and glass paperweights and little souvenirs against the wall there. When you push against the left-hand side of the case, it rotates inward on a central spindle. Thad's study is beyond it. "
Alan looked at Thad, who nodded.
"You know a hell of a lot about this place," Alan said, "for a man who's never been here. "
"But I have been here," Stark said gravely. "I have been here often, in my dreams. "
7
Two minutes later, all of them were gathered outside the unique door of Thad's small study. The glass case was turned inward, creating two entrances to the room separated by the thickness of the case. There were no windows in here; give me a window down here by the lake, Thad had told Liz once, and what I'll do is write two words and then stare out of the damned thing for two hours, watching the boats go by.
A lamp with a flexible goose-neck and a brilliant quartz-halogen bulb cast a circle of white light on the desk. An office chair and a folding camp chair stood behind the desk, side by side, facing the two blank notebooks which had been placed side by side in the circle of light. Resting on top of each notebook were two sharpened Berol Black Beauty pencils. The IBM electric Thad sometimes used down here had been unplugged and stuck in a corner.
Thad himself had brought in the folding chair from the hall closet, and the room now expressed a duality Liz found both startling and extremely unpleasant. It was, in a way, another version of the mirror-creature she fancied she had seen when Thad finally arrived. Here were two chairs where there had always been one; here were two little writing stations, also side by side, where there should have been only one. The writing implement which she associated with Thad's
(better)
normal self had been shunted aside, and when they sat down, Stark in Thad's office chair and Thad in the folding chair, the disorientation was complete. She felt almost sea-sick.
Each of them had a twin on his lap.
"How long do we have before someone gets suspicious and decides to check on this place?" Thad asked Alan, who was standing in the doorway with Liz. "Be honest, and be as accurate as you can. You have to believe me when I tell you this is the only chance we have. "
"Thad, look at him!" Liz burst out wildly. "Can't you see what's happening to him? He doesn't just want help writing a book! He wants to steal your life! Don't you see that?"
"Shhh," he said. "I know what he wants. I think I have since the start. This is the only way. I know what I'm doing. How long, Alan?"
Alan thought about it carefully. He had told Sheila he was going to get take-out, and he had already called in, so it would be awhile before she got nervous. Things might have happened quicker if Norris Ridgewick had been around.
"Maybe until my wife calls to ask where I am," he said. "Maybe longer. She's been a cop's wife for a long time. She expects long hours and weird nights." He didn't like hearing himself say this. This was not the way the game was supposed to be played; it was the exact opposite of the way the game was supposed to be played.
Thad's eyes compelled him. Stark did not seem to be listening at all; he had picked up the slate paperweight which sat atop an untidy stack of old manuscript in the corner of the desk and was playing with it.
"I think it will be at least four hours." And then, reluctantly, he added: "Maybe all night. I left Andy Clutterbuck on the desk, and Clut isn't exactly Quiz Kids material. If someone gets his wind up, it will probably be that guy Harrison--the one you ditched--or someone I know at the State Police Barracks in Oxford. A guy named Henry Payton. "
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?
br /> 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. "
8
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. "
9
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.
Twenty - six
THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING
1
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.
STEEL MACHINE
by George Stark
Chapter I: The Wedding
Alexis Machine was rarely whimsical, and for him to have a whimsical thought in such a situation as this was something which had never happened before. Yet it occurred to him: Of all the people on earth--what? five billion of them?--I'm the only one who is currently standing inside a moving wedding cake with a Heckler & Koch .223 semiautomatic weapon in my hands.
He had never been so shut up in a place. The air had gotten bad almost at once, but he could not have drawn a deep breath in any case. The Trojan Cake's frosting was real, but beneath it was nothing but a thin layer of a gypsum product called Nartex--a kind of high-class cardboard. If he filled his chest, the bride and groom standing on top of the cake's top tier would probably topple. Surely the icing would crack and . . .