The Dark Half(147)

The sparrows were trying to lift him up. They were trying . . . and very soon, when they had reduced his body-weight enough, they would do just that.

'Take him, then!' he screamed. 'Take him! TAKE HIM BACK TO HELL WHERE HE BELONGS!'

Stark's screams stopped as his throat disintegrated beneath a hundred hammering, dipping beaks. Sparrows clustered under his armpits and for a second his feet rose from the bloody carpet. He brought his arms - what remained of them - down into his sides in a savage gesture, crushing dozens . . . but dozens upon dozens more came to take their places. The sound of pecking and splintering wood to Thad's right suddenly grew louder, hollower. He looked in that direction and saw the wood of the study's cast wall disintegrating like tissue-paper. For an instant he saw a thousand yellow beaks burst through at once, and then he grabbed the twins and rolled over them, arching his body to protect them, moving with real grace for perhaps the only time in his life.

The wall crashed inward in a dusty cloud of splinters and sawdust. Thad closed his eyes and hugged his children close to him.

He saw no more.

11

But Alan Pangborn did, and Liz did, too.

They had pulled the afghan down to their shoulders as the cloud of birds over them and around them shredded apart. Liz began to stumble into the guest bedroom, toward the open study door, and Alan followed her.

For a moment he couldn't see into the study; it was only a cloudy brown-black blur. And then he made out a shape - a horrible, padded shape. It was Stark. He was covered with birds, eaten alive, and yet he still lived.

More birds came; more still. Alan thought their horrid shrill cheeping would drive him mad. And then he saw what they were doing.

'Alan!' Liz screamed. 'Alan, they're lifting him!'

The thing which had been -George Stark, a thing which was now only vaguely human, rose into the air on a cushion of sparrows. It moved across the office, almost fell, then rose unsteadily once more. It approached the huge, splinter-ringed hole in the east wall..More birds flew in through this hole; those which still remained in the guest-room rushed into the study.

Flesh fell from Stark's twitching skeleton in a grisly rain. The body floated through the hole with sparrows flying around it and tearing out the last of its hair.

Alan and Liz struggled over the rug of dead birds and into the study. Thad was rising slowly to his feet, a weeping twin in each arm. Liz ran to them and took them from him. Her hands flew over them, looking for wounds.

'Okay,' Thad said. 'I think they're okay.'

Alan went to the ragged hole in the study wall. He looked out and saw a scene from some malign fairy-tale. The sky was black with birds, and yet in one place it was ebony, as if a hole had been torn in the fabric of reality.

This black hole bore the unmistakable shape of a struggling man. The birds lifted it higher, higher, higher. It reached the tops of the trees and seemed to pause there. Alan thought he heard a high-pitched, inhuman scream from the center of that cloud. Then the sparrows began to move again. In a way, watching them was like watching a film run backward. Black streams of sparrows boiled from all the shattered windows in the house; they funnelled upward from the driveway, the trees, and the curved roof of Rawlie's Volkswagen. They all moved toward that central darkness.

That man-shaped patch began to move again . . . over the trees . . . into the dark sky . . . and there it was lost to view.

Liz was sitting in the corner, the twins in her lap, rocking them, comforting them - but neither of them seemed particularly upset any longer. They were looking cheerily up into her haggard, tear-stained face. Wendy patted it, as if to comfort her mother. William reached up, plucked a feather from her hair, and examined it closely.

'He's gone,' Thad said hoarsely. He had joined Alan at the hole in the study wall.

'Yes,' Alan said. He suddenly burst into tears. He had no idea that was coming; it just happened. Thad tried to put his arms around him and Alan stepped away, his boots crunching dryly in drifts of dead sparrows.

'No,' he said. 'I'll be all right.'

Thad was looking out through the ragged hole again, into the night. A sparrow came out of that dark and landed on his shoulder.

'Thank you,' Thad said to it. 'Th - '

The sparrow pecked him, suddenly and viciously, bringing blood just below his eye. Then it flew away to join its mates.

'Why?' Liz asked. She was looking at Thad in shocked wonder. 'Why did it do that?'

Thad did not respond, but he thought he knew the answer. He thought Rawlie DeLesseps would have known, too. What had just happened was magical enough . . . but it had been no fairy-tale. Perhaps the last sparrow had been moved by some force which felt Thad needed to be reminded of that. Forcibly reminded.

Be careful, Thaddeus - no man controls the agents of the afterlife. Not for long - and there is always a price.

What price will I have to pay? he wondered coldly. Then: And the bill . . . when does it come due?

But that was a question for another time, another day. And there was this - perhaps the bill had been paid..Perhaps he was finally even.

'Is he dead?' Liz was asking . . . almost begging.

'Yes,' Thad said. 'He's dead, Liz. Third time's the charm. The book is closed on George Stark. Come on, you guys - let's get out of here.

And that was what they did..EPILOGUE

Henry did not kiss Ma Lou that day, but he did not leave her without a word, either, as he could have done. He saw her, he endured her anger, and waited for it to subside into that blockaded silence he knew so well. He had come to recognize that most of these sorrows were hers, and not to be shared or even discussed. Mary Lou had always danced best when she danced alone. At last they walked through the field and looked once more at the play-house where Evelyn had