The Dark Half(112)

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 girt 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, closed 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 close 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 clear 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 ordinary 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.