The Dark Half(90)

So, still in that half-waking, half-dreaming state, he had gone into the kitchen, opened the notebook, and picked up the ballpoint pen. Thad hadn't tipped to any of that; why should he have?.Wasn't he also writing five hundred miles away? The pen wasn't right, of course - didn't even feel right -in his hand - but it would do. For now.

Falling APART, he had watched himself write, and by then he had been very close to the magic mirror that divided sleep from wakefulness, and he struggled to impose his own thoughts upon the pen, his own will upon what would and would not appear on the blankness of the paper, but it was hard, good God, good Christ, it was so damned hard.

He had bought the Bic pen and half a dozen notebooks in a stationery shop right after he had arrived in New York City; had done it even before renting the wretched 'efficiency'. There were Berol pencils in the shop, and he had wanted to buy them, but he hadn't. Because, no matter whose mind it was that had driven the pencils, it had been Thad Beaumont's hand which held them, and he needed to know if that was a bond he could break. So he had left the pencils and had taken the pen instead.

If he could write, if he could write on his own, all would be well and he wouldn't need the wretched, whining creature up in Maine at all. But the pen had been useless to him. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how mightily he concentrated, the only thing he had been able to write was his own name. He had written it over and over again: George Stark, George Stark, George Stark, until, at the bottom of the sheet, they were not recognizable words at all but only the jittery scribbles of a pre-schooler.

Yesterday he had gone to a branch of the New York Public Library and had rented an hour's time on one of the grim gray electric IBMs in the Writing Room. The hour had seemed to last a thousand years. He sat in a carrel which was enclosed on three sides, fingers trembling on the keys, and typed his name, this time in capital letters: GEORGE STARK, GEORGE STARK, GEORGE STARK.

Break it! he had screamed at himself. Type something else, anything else, just break it!

So he had tried. He had bent over the keys, sweating, and typed: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Only when he looked up at the paper, he saw that what he had written was The george George Stark george starked over the starky stark.

He had felt an urge to rip the IBM right off its bolts and go rampaging through the room with it, swinging the typewriter like a barbarian's mace, splitting heads and breaking backs: if he could not create, let him uncreate!

Instead, he had controlled himself (with a mighty effort) and had walked out of the library, crumpling the useless sheet of paper in one strong hand as he went and dropping it into a litter basket on the sidewalk. He remembered now, with the Bic pen in his hand, the utter blind rage he

had felt at discovering that without Beaumont he couldn't write anything but his own name. And the fear.

The panic.

But he still had Beaumont, didn't he? Beaumont might think it was the other way around, but maybe . . . maybe Beaumont was in for one large f**king surprise. losing, he wrote, and Jesus, he couldn't tell Beaumont any more - what he had written already was bad enough. He made a mighty effort to seize control of his traitor hand. To wake up. necessary COHESION, his hand wrote, as if to amplify the previous thought, and suddenly Stark saw himself stabbing Beaumont with the pen. He thought: And I can do it, too. I don't think you could, Thad, because when it comes down to it, you're just a long drink of milk, aren't you?

But when it comes to the sticking point . . . I can handle it, you bastard. It's time you learned that, I think..Then, even though this was like a dream within a dream, even though he was gripped by that horrible, vertiginous feeling of being out of control, some of his savage and unquestioning selfconfidence returned and he was able to pierce the shield of sleep. In that triumphant moment of breaking the surface before Beaumont could drown him, he seized control of the pen . . . and was finally able to write with it.

For a moment - and it was only a moment - there was a sensation of two hands grasping two writing instruments. The feeling was too clear, too real, to be anything but real. there are no birds, he wrote - the first real sentence he had ever written as a physical being. It was terribly hard to write; only a creature of supernatural determination could have suffered through the effort. But once the words were out, he felt his control strengthen. The grip of that other hand weakened, and Stark laid his own grip over it, showing no mercy or hesitation. Drown for awhile, he thought. See how YOU like it.

In a rush quicker and far more satisfying than even the most powerful orgasm, he wrote: THERE ARE NO FUCKING BIRDS Oh you son of a bitch get out of my HEAD!

Then, before he could think about it - thinking might have provoked fatal hesitation - he swept the Bic pen around in a short, shallow arc. The steel tip plunged into his right hand . . . and, hundreds of miles north, he could feel Thad Beaumont sweeping a Berol Black Beauty pencil around and plunging it into his left hand.

That was when he woke up - when they both woke up - for real. 2

The pain was sizzling and enormous - but it was also liberating. Stark screamed, turning his sweaty head against his arm to muffle the sound, but it was a scream of joy and exhilaration as well as pain.

He could feel Beaumont stifling his own scream in his study up there in Maine. The awareness Beaumont had created between them did not break; it was more like a hastily tied knot which gave way under the pressure of a final tremendous yank. Stark sensed, almost saw, the probe the treacherous bastard had sent wriggling into his head while he slept, now twisting and twitching and slithering away.