The Dark Half(144)

One end of the teeter-totter goes up, the other end has to come down. Just another law of nature, baby. Just another law of nature.

Was it dark outside yet? Thad supposed it must be - dark or damned near. He looked at his

watch, but there was no help there. It had stopped at quarter of five. The time didn't matter. He would have to do it soon.

Stark smashed a cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray. 'You want to go on or take a break?'

'Why don't you go on?' Thad said. 'I think you can.'

'Yeah,' Stark said. He was not looking at Thad. He had eyes only for the words, the words, the words. He ran a hand through his blonde hair, which was becoming lustrous again. 'I think I can, too. In fact, I know I can.'

He began to scribble again. He looked up briefly when Thad got out of his chair and went to the pencil-sharpener, then looked back down. Thad sharpened one of the Berols to a razor point. And as he turned back, he took the birdcall Rawlie had given him out of his pocket. He closed it in his hand and sat down again, looking at the notebook in front of him. This was it; this was the time. He knew it as well and as truly as he knew the shape of his own face under his hand. The only question left was whether or not he had the guts to try it. Part of him did not want to; a part of him still lusted after the book. But he was surprised to find that feeling was not as strong as it had been when Liz and Alan left the study, and he supposed he knew why. A separation was taking place. A kind of obscene birth. It wasn't his book anymore. Alexis Machine was with the person who had owned him from the start. Still holding the bird-call cupped tightly in his left hand, Thad bent over his own notebook. I am the bringer, he wrote.

Overhead, the restless shifting of the birds stopped.

I am the knower, he wrote.

The whole world seemed to still, to listen.

I am the owner.

He stopped and glanced at his sleeping children.

Five more words, he thought. Just five more.

And he discovered he wanted to write them more than any words he had ever written in his life. He wanted to write stories . . . but more than that, more than he wanted the lovely visions that third eye sometimes presented, he wanted to be free.

Five more words.

He raised his left hand to his mouth and gripped the bird-call in his lips like a cigar. Don't look up now, George. Don't look up, don't look out of the world you're making. Not now. Please, dear God, don't let him look out into the world of real things now..On the blank sheet in front of him he wrote the word PSYCHOPOMPS in cold capital letters. He circled it. He drew an arrow below it, and below the arrow he wrote: THE SPARROWS ARE

FLYING.

Outside, a wind began to blow - only it was no wind; it was the ruffling of millions of feathers. And it was inside Thad's head. Suddenly that third eye opened in his mind, opened wider than it ever had before, and he saw Bergenfield, New Jersey - the empty houses, the empty streets, the mild spring sky. He saw the sparrows everywhere, more than there had ever been before. The world he had grown up in had become a vast aviary. Only it wasn't Bergenfield.

It was Endsville.

Stark quit writing. His eyes widened with sudden, belated alarm. Thad drew in a deep breath and blew. The bird-call Rawlie DeLesseps had given him uttered a strange, squealing note.

'Thad? What are you doing? What are you doing?'

Stark snatched for the bird-call. Before he could touch it, there was a bang and it split open in Thad's mouth, cutting his lips. The sound woke the twins. Wendy began to cry. Outside, the rustle of the sparrows rose to a roar.

They were flying.

3

Liz had started for the stairs when she heard Wendy begin to cry. Alan stood where he was for a moment, transfixed by what he saw outside. The land, the trees, the lake, the sky - they were all blotted out. The sparrows rose in a great wavering curtain, darkening the window from top to bottom and side to side.

As the first small bodies began to thud into the reinforced glass, Alan's paralysis broke.

'Liz!' he screamed. 'Liz, down!'

But she wasn't going to get down; her baby was crying, and that was all she could think about. Alan sprinted across the room toward her, employing that almost eerie speed which was his own secret, and tackled her just as the entire window-wall blew inward under the weight of twenty thousand sparrows. Twenty thousand more followed them, and twenty thousand more, and twenty thousand more. In a moment the living room was filled with them. They were everywhere. Alan threw himself on top of Liz and pulled her under the couch. The world was filled with the shrill cheeping of sparrows. Now they could hear the other windows breaking, all the windows.

The house rattled with the thuds of tiny suicide bombers. Alan looked out and saw a world that was nothing but brown-black movement.

Smoke-detectors began to go off as birds crashed into them. Somewhere there was a monstrous crash as the TV screen exploded. Clatters as pictures on the walls fell. A series of metallic xylophone bonks as sparrows struck the pots hanging on the wall by the stove and knocked them to the floor.

And still he could hear the babies crying and Liz screaming.

'Let me go! My babies! Let me go! I HAVE TO GET MY BABIES!

She squirmed halfway out from beneath him and her upper body was immediately covered with sparrows. They caught in her hair and fluttered madly there. She beat at them wildly. Alan.grabbed her and pulled her back. Through the eddying air of the living room he could see a vast black cord of sparrows flowing up the stairs up toward the office.