The Dark Half

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  'Go for it, George,' he said. 'Knock the hell out of it.'

  But Stark had already bent over his notebook again, and now he was writing faster.

2

Stark wrote for almost half an hour, and at last he put the pencil down with a little gasp of satisfaction.

'It's good,' he said in a low, gloating voice. 'It's just as good as can be.'

   Thad picked up the notebook and began to read — and, unlike Stark, he read the whole thing. What he was looking for began to show up on the third page of the nine Stark had written.

  Machine heard scraping sounds and stiffened, hands tightening on the Heckler & Sparrow, and then understood what they were doing. The guests — some two hundred of them — gathered at the long tables under the huge blue-and-yellow-striped marquee were pushing their folding sparrows back along the boards which had been laid to protect the lawn from the punctuation of the women's high-heeled sparrows. The guests were giving the sparrow cake a fucking standing ovation.

  He doesn't know, Thad thought. He's writing the word sparrows over and over again and he doesn't have the slightest . . . fucking . . . idea.

    Overhead he heard them moving restlessly back and forth, and the twins had looked up several times before failing asleep, so he knew they had noticed it, too.

  Not George, though.

  For George, the sparrows did not exist.

    Thad went back to the manuscript. The word began to creep in more and more frequently, and by the last paragraph, the whole phrase had begun to show up.

  Machine found out later that the sparrows were flying and the only people on his hand-picked string that really were his sparrows were Jack Rangely and Lester Rollick. All the others, sparrows he had flown with for ten years, were all in an it. Sparrows. And they started flying even before Machine shouted into his sparrow-talkie.

'Well?' Stark asked when Thad put the manuscript down.

'What do you think?'

'I think it's fine,' Thad said. 'But you knew that, didn't you?'

'Yes . . . but I wanted to hear you say it, hoss.'

'I also think you're looking much better.'

    Which was true. While George had been lost in the fuming, violent world of Alexis Machine, he had begun to heal.

   The sores were disappearing. The broken, decaying skin was growing pink again; the edges of this fresh skin were reaching across the healing sores toward each other, in some cases already knitting together. Eyebrows which had disappeared into a soup of rotting flesh were reappearing. The trickles of pus which had turned the collar of Stark's shirt an ugly sodden yellow were drying.

    Thad reached up with his left hand and touched the sore which was beginning to erupt on his own left temple, and held the pads of his fingers in front of his eyes for a moment. They were wet. He reached up again and touched his forehead. The skin was smooth. The small white scar, souvenir of the operation which had been performed on him in the year when his real life began, was gone.

   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,