The Dark Half(65)

being relentlessly driven into a corner, and they had no goddam right to make him feel that way. It was like being the only person at a meeting of the Flat Earth Society who believes the earth is round.

'I can't explain any of that stuff . . . yet,' he said. 'But in the meantime, maybe you'd like to tell me exactly where this guy - the real one - came from, Thad. Did you just sort of give birth to him one night? Did he pop out of a damn sparrow's egg? Did you look like him while you were writing the books that eventually appeared under his name? Exactly how did it go?'

'I don't know how he came to be,' Thad said wearily. 'Don't you think I'd tell you if I could? So far as I know, or can remember, I was me when I wrote Machine's Way and Oxford Blues and Sharkmeat Pie and Riding to Babylon. I don't have the slightest idea when he became a . . . a separate person. He seemed real to me when I was writing as him, but only in the way all the stories I write seem real to me when I'm writing them. Which is to say, I take them seriously but I don't believe them . . . except I do . . . then .

He paused and barked a bewildered little laugh.

'All the times I've talked about writing,' he said. 'Hundreds of lectures, thousands of classes, and I don't believe I ever said a single word about a fiction-writer's grasp of the twin realities that exist for him - the one in the real world and the one in the manuscript world. I don't think I ever even thought about it. And now I realize . . . well . . . I don't even seem to know how to think about it.'

'It doesn't matter,' Liz said. 'He didn't have to be a separate person until Thad tried to kill him.'

Alan turned toward her. 'Well, Liz, you know Thad better than anyone else. Did he change from Dr Beaumont into Mr Stark when he was working on the crime stories? Did he slap you around?

Did he threaten people with a straight-razor at parties?'

'Sarcasm isn't going to make this any easier to discuss,' she said, looking at him steadily. He threw up his hands in exasperation - although he wasn't sure if it was them, himself, or all three of them he was exasperated with. 'I'm not being sarcastic, I'm trying to use a little verbal shock-treatment to make you see how crazy you both sound! You are talking about a goddam pen name coming to life! If you tell the FBI even half of this stuff, they'll be looking up the State of Maine Involuntary Committal laws!'

'The answer to your question is no,' Liz said. 'He didn't beat me up or wave a straight-razor around at cocktail parties. But when he was writing as George Stark - and, in particular, when he was writing about Alexis Machine - Thad wasn't the same. When he - opened the door is maybe the best way to put it - when he did that and invited Stark in, he'd become distant. Not cold, not even cool, just distant. He was less interested in going out, in seeing people. He'd sometimes blow off faculty meetings, even student appointments . . . although that was fairly rare. He'd go to bed later at night, and sometimes he'd still be tossing and turning an hour after he did come to bed. When he fell asleep he'd twitch and mutter a lot, as if he were having bad dreams. I asked him on a few occasions if that was the case and he'd say he felt headachy and unrested, but if he'd been having bad dreams, he couldn't remember what they were.

'There was no big personality change . . . but he wasn't the same. My husband quit drinking alcohol some time ago, Alan. He doesn't go to Alcoholics Anonymous or anything, but he quit. With one exception. When one of the Stark novels was finished, he'd get drunk. Then it was as if he were blowing it all off, saying to himself, 'The son of a bitch is gone again. At least for awhile, he's gone again. George has returned to his farm in Mississippi. Hooray.''

'She's got it right,' Thad said. 'Hooray - that's just what it felt like. Let me sum up what we have if we leave the blackouts and the automatic writing out of the picture entirely. The man.you're looking for is killing people I know, people who were, with the exception of Homer Gamache, responsible for 'executing' George Stark . . . in conspiracy with me, of course. He's got my blood-type, which isn't one of the really rare ones, but is still one that only six people in every hundred have. He conforms to the description I gave you, which was a distillation of my own image of what George Stark would look like if he existed. He smokes the cigarettes I used to smoke. Last, and most interesting, he appears to have fingerprints which are identical to mine. Maybe six in every hundred have type-A blood with a negative Rh factor, but so far as we know, nobody else in this whole green world has my fingerprints. Despite all of this, you refuse to even consider my assertion that Stark is somehow alive. Now, Sheriff Alan Pangborn, you tell me: who is the one who's operating in a fog, so to speak?'

Alan felt the bedrock which he had once believed sure and solid shift a little. It really wasn't possible, was it? But . . . if he did nothing else today, he would have to speak to Thad's doctor and start chasing down the medical history. It occurred to him that it would be really wonderful to discover there hadn't been any brain tumor, that Thad had either lied about it . . . or hallucinated it.

If he could prove the man was a psycho, it would all be so much more comfortable. Maybe - Maybe shit. There was no George Stark, there never had been any George Stark. He might not be an FBI whiz-kid, but that didn't mean he was gullible enough to fall for that. They might collar the crazy bastard in New York City, going after Cowley, probably would, in fact, but if not, the psycho might decide to vacation in Maine this summer. If he did come back, Alan wanted a shot at him. He didn't think swallowing any of this Twilight Zone shit would help him if the chance came up. And he didn't want to waste any more time talking about it now.