The Dark Half(49)

But Miriam first. Pray God she answered the phone.

Liz came flying back into the room with her address book. Her face was almost as pale as it had been after she had finally succeeded in squeezing William and Wendy into the world. 'Here it is,'

she said. She was breathing fast, nearly panting.

This is going to be all right, he thought to say to her, but held it back. He didn't want to say anything which could so easily turn out to be a lie . . . and the sound of Miriam's scream suggested things had gone. well past the all-right stage. That for Miriam, at least, things might never return to the all-right stage.

There's a man here, there's a bad man here.

Thad thought of George Stark and shuddered a little. He was a very bad man, all right. Thad knew the truth of that better than anyone. He had, after all, built George Stark from the ground up .

. . hadn't he?

'We're okay,' he said to Liz - that much, at least, was true. So far, his mind insisted on adding in a whisper. 'Get hold of yourself if you can, babe. Hyperventilating and fainting on the floor won't help Miriam.'

She sat down, ramrod straight, staring at him while her teeth gnawed relentlessly at her lower lip. He started to punch Miriam's number. His fingers, shaking a little, stuttered on the second digit, hitting it twice. You're a great one to be telling people to get hold of themselves. He drew in another long breath, held it, hit the disconnect button on the phone, and started in again, forcing himself to slow down. He hit the last button and listened to the deliberate clicks of the connection falling into place.

Let her be all right, God, and if she's not entirely all right, if You can't manage that, at least let her be all right enough to answer the telephone. Please.

But the phone didn't ring. There was only the insistent dah-dah-dah of a busy signal. Maybe it really was busy; maybe she was calling Rick or the hospital. Or maybe the phone was off the hook.

There was another possibility, though, he thought as he pushed the disconnect button again. Maybe Stark had pulled the phone cord out of the wall. Or maybe (don't let the bad man cut me again)

he had cut it.

As he had cut Miriam.

Razor, Thad thought, and a shudder twisted up his back. That had been another of the words in the stew of them he had written that afternoon. Razor.

2.The next half-hour or so was a return to the ominous surrealism he had felt when Pangborn and the two state troopers had turned up on his doorstep to arrest him for a murder he hadn't even known about. There was no sense of personal threat - no immediate personal threat, at least - but the same feeling of walking through a dark room filled with delicate strands of cobweb which brushed across your face, first tickling and ultimately maddening, strands which did not stick but whispered away just before you could grab them.

He tried Miriam's number again, and when it was still busy, he pushed the disconnect button once more and hesitated for just a moment, torn between calling Pangborn and calling an operator in New York to check Miriam's phone. Didn't they have some means of differentiating among a line where someone was talking, one that was off the hook, and one which had been rendered inoperable in some way? He thought they did, but surely the important thing was that Miriam's communication with him had suddenly ceased, and she was no longer reachable. Still, they could find out - Liz - could find out - if they had two lines instead of just one. Why didn't they have two lines? It was stupid not to have two lines, wasn't it?

Although these thoughts went through his mind in perhaps two seconds, they seemed to take much longer, and he berated himself for playing Hamlet while Miriam Cowley might be bleeding to death in her apartment. Characters in books - at least in Stark's books - never took pauses like this, never stopped to wonder something nonsensical like why they had never had a second telephone line put in for cases where a woman in another state might be bleeding to death. People in books never had to take time out so they could move their bowels, and they never clutched up like this.

The world would be a more efficient place if everyone in it came out of a pop novel, he thought. People in pop novels always manage to keep their thoughts on track as they move smoothly from one chapter to the next.

He dialed Maine directory assistance, and when the operator asked 'What city, please?' he foundered for a moment because Castle Rock was a town, not a city but a small town, county seat or not, and then he thought: This is panic, Thad. Sheer panic. You've got to get it under control. You mustn't let Miriam die because you panicked. And he even had time, it seemed, to wonder why he couldn't let that happen and to answer the question: he was the only real character over whom he had any control at all, and panic was simply not a part of that character's image. At least as he saw it.

Down here we call that bullshit, Thad. Down here we call it fool's -

'Sir?' the operator was prodding. 'What city, please?'

Okay. Control.

He took a deep breath, got his shit together, and said, 'Castle City.' Christ. Closed his eyes. And with them still closed, said slowly and clearly: 'I'm sorry, operator. Castle Rock. I'd like the number for the sheriff's office.'

There was a lag, and then a robot voice began to recite the number. Thad realized he had no pen or pencil. The robot repeated it a second time, Thad strove mightily to remember it, and the number zipped right across his mind and into blackness again, not even leaving a faint trace behind.