The Dark Half(108)

'Have a nice day, motherf*cker,' Stark said in a conversational voice. He bent over, tangled his hand in Eddings's hair, and jerked his head back, baring the neck for the final stroke. 4

He opened the back door of the cruiser, lifted Eddings by the neck of his uniform shirt and the bloody seat of his trousers, and tossed him in like a sack of grain. Then he did the same with Chatterton. The latter must have weighed close to two hundred and thirty pounds, with his equipment belt and the .45 on his belt thrown in, but Stark handled him as if he were a bag stuffed with feathers. He slammed the door, then shot a glance full of bright curiosity at the house. It was silent. The only sounds were the crickets in the high grass beside the driveway and the low, strawlike whack! whick! whack! of the lawnsprinklers. To this there was added the sound of an oncoming truck - an Orinco tanker. It roared by at sixty, headed north. Stark tensed and lowered himself slightly behind the side of the police cruiser when he saw the truck's big brake lights flare red for an instant. He uttered a single grunt of laughter when they went out again and the tanker disappeared over the next hill, accelerating again. The driver had glimpsed the state police cruiser parked in the Beaumont driveway, had checked his speedometer, and had thought speed-trap. The most natural thing in the world. He needn't have worried; this speed-trap was closed forever.

There was a lot of blood in the driveway, but puddled on the bright black asphalt, it could have been water . . . unless you got very close. So that was okay. And even if it wasn't, it would have to do.

Stark folded the straight-razor, held it in one sticky hand, went over to the door. He saw neither the little drift of dead sparrows lying by the stoop, nor the live ones which now lined the roofpeak of the house and sat in the apple tree by the garage, watching him silently. In a minute or two, Liz Beaumont came downstairs, still half-asleep from her midday nap, to answer the doorbell.

5.She didn't scream. The scream was there, but the stripped face looking at her when she opened the

door locked it deep inside her, froze it, denied it, cancelled it, buried it alive. Unlike Thad, she'd had no dreams of George Stark she could remember, but they might have been there all the same, deep in the fastnesses of her unconscious mind, because this glaring, grinning face seemed almost an expected thing, for all its horror.

'Hey lady, wanna buy a duck?' Stark asked through the screen. He grinned, exposing a great

many teeth. Most of them were now dead. The sunglasses turned his eyes into big black sockets. Goo dripped from his cheek and jawline and splattered on the vest he was wearing. Belatedly, she tried to close the door. Stark rammed a gloved fist through the screen and slammed it back open again. Liz stumbled away, trying to scream. She couldn't. Her throat was still locked up.

Stark came in and closed the door.

Liz watched him walk slowly toward her. He looked like a decayed scarecrow which had somehow come to life. The grin was the worst, because the left half of his upper lip appeared not just decayed or decaying, but chewed away. She could see gray-black teeth, and the sockets where, until recently, other teeth had been.

His gloved hands stretched out toward her.

'Hello, Beth,' he said through that terrible grin. 'Please excuse the intrusion, but I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop by. I'm George Stark, and I'm pleased to meet you. More pleased, I think, than you could possibly know.'

One of his fingers touched her chin . . . caressed it. The flesh beneath the black leather felt spongy, unsteady. At that moment she thought of the twins, sleeping upstairs, and her paralysis broke. She turned and fled for the kitchen. Somewhere in the roaring confusion of her mind she saw herself snatching one of the butcher-knives from the magnetized runners over the counter and plunging it deep into that obscene caricature of a face. She heard him after her, quick as the wind.

His hand brushed the back of her blouse, hunting for purchase, and slipped off. The kitchen door was the sort that swings back and forth. It was propped open with a wooden wedge. She kicked at the wedge on the run, knowing that if she missed it or only knocked it aslant, there wouldn't be a second chance. But she hit it dead-square with one slippered foot, feeling an instant of bright pain in her toes. The wedge flew across the kitchen floor, which was so brightly waxed that she could see the whole room in it, hung upside down. She felt Stark groping for her again. She reached behind her and raked the door shut. She heard the thud as it hit him. He yelled, furious and surprised but unhurt. She groped for the knives -

? and Stark grabbed her by the hair and the back of her blouse. He jerked her backward and spun her around. She heard the rough purr of parting cloth and thought incoherently: If he rapes me oh ,Jesus if he rapes me I'll go crazy - She hammered at his grotesque face with her fists, knocking the sunglasses first askew and then off. The flesh below his left eye had sagged and fallen away like a dead mouth, exposing the whole bloodshot bulge of the eyeball. And he was laughing.

He grabbed her hands and forced them down. She twisted one free, brought it up, and scratched at his face. Her fingers left deep grooves from which blood and pus began to flow sluggishly. There was little or no sense of resistance; she might as well have torn at a piece of flyblown meat. And now she was making a sound - she wanted to shriek, to articulate her horror and fear before they choked her, but the most she was able to manage was a series of hoarse, distressed barks..He snatched her free hand out of the air, brought it down, forced both hands behind her, and encircled the wrists with his own hand. It was spongy but as unyielding as a manacle. He lifted his other hand to the front of her blouse and cupped a breast. Her flesh moaned at his touch. She closed her eyes and tried to pull away.