The Dark Half(137)

He passed the Saddlers'. The Massenburgs'. The Paynes'. Others he didn't know or couldn't remember. And then, still four hundred yards from his own house, the birds just stopped. There was a place where the whole world was sparrows; six inches farther along there were none at all. Once again it seemed that someone had drawn a ruler-straight line across the road. The birds hopped and fluttered aside, revealing wheel-paths that now opened onto the bare packed dirt of Lake Lane.

Thad drove back into the clear, stopped suddenly, opened the door, and threw up on the ground. He moaned and armed sick sweat from his forehead. Ahead he could see woods on both sides and bright blue winks of light from the lake on his left.

He looked behind and saw a black, silent, waiting world. The psychopomps, he thought. God help me if this goes wrong, if he gains control of those birds somehow. God help us all.

He slammed the door and closed his eyes.

You get hold of yourself now, Thad. You didn't go through that just to blow it now. You get hold of yourself. Forget the sparrows.

I can't forget them! a part of his mind wailed. It was horrified, offended, teetering on the brink of madness. I can't! I CAN'T!

But he could. He would.

The sparrows were waiting. He would wait, too. He would wait until the right time came. He would trust himself to know that time when he arrived. If he could not do it for himself, he would do it for Liz and the twins.

Pretend it's a story. Just a story you're writing. A story with no birds in it.

'Okay,' he muttered. 'Okay, I'll try.'

He began to drive again. At the same time, he began to sing 'John Wesley Harding' under his breath.

2

Thad killed the VW - it died with one final triumphant backfire and got out of the little car slowly. He stretched. George Stark came out the door, now holding Wendy, and stepped onto the porch, facing Thad.

Stark also stretched.

Liz, standing beside Alan, felt a scream building not in her throat but behind her forehead. She wanted more than anything else to pull her eyes away from the two men, and found she couldn't do it..Watching them was like watching a man do stretching exercises in a mirror. They looked nothing whatever alike - even subtracting Stark's accelerating decay from the picture. Thad was slim and darkish, Stark broad-shouldered and fair in spite of his tan (what little remained of it). Yet they were mirror images, just the same. The similarity was eerie precisely because there was no one thing the Protesting, horrified eye could pin it on. It was sub rosa deeply buried between the lines, but so real it shrieked: that 'trick of crossing the feet during the stretch, of spraying the fingers stiffly beside either thigh, the tight little crinkle of the eyes. They relaxed at exactly the same time.

'Hello, Thad.' Stark sounded almost shy.

'Hello, George,' Thad said flatly. 'The family?'

'Just fine, thanks. You mean to do it? Are you ready?'

'Yes.'

Behind them, back toward Route 5, a branch cracked. Stark's eyes jumped in that direction.

'What was that?'

'A tree-branch,' Thad said. 'There was a tornado down here about four years ago, George. The deadwood is still failing. You know that.'

Stark nodded. 'How are you, old hoss?'

'I'm all right.'

'You look a little peaky.' Stark's eyes darted over Thad's face; he could feel them trying to pry into the thoughts behind it.

'You don't look so hot yourself.'

Stark laughed at this, but there was no humor in the laugh. 'I guess I don't.'

'You'll let them alone?' Thad asked. 'If I do what you want, you'll really let them alone?'

'Yes.'

'Give me your word.'

'All right,' Stark said. 'You have it. The word of a Southern man, which is not a thing given lightly.' His bogus, almost burlesque, cracker accent had disappeared entirely. He spoke with a simple and horrifying dignity. The two men faced each other in the late afternoon sunlight, so bright and golden it seemed surreal.

'Okay,' Thad said after a long moment, and thought: He doesn't know. He really doesn't. The sparrows . . . they are still hidden from him. That secret is mine. 'Okay, we'll go for it.'

3

As the two men stood by the door, Liz realized she had just had the perfect opportunity to tell Alan about the knife under the couch . . . and had let it slip by. Or had she?

She turned to him, and at that moment Thad called, 'Liz?'

His voice was sharp. It held a commanding note he rarely used, and it seemed almost as if he knew what she was up to . . . and didn't want her to do it. That was impossible, of course. Wasn't it? She didn't know. She didn't know anything anymore.

She looked at him, and saw Stark hand Thad the baby. Thad held Wendy close. Wendy put her arms around her father's neck as chummily as she had put them around Stark's..Now! Liz's mind screamed at her. Tell him now! Tell him to run! Now, while we've got the twins!

But of course Stark had a gun, and she didn't think any of them were fast enough to outrun a bullet. And she knew Thad very well; she would never say it out loud, but it suddenly occurred to her that he might very well trip over his own feet.

And now Thad was very close to her, and she couldn't even kid herself that she didn't understand the message in his eyes.