The Dark Half

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 died three years ago. It was not much of a goodbye, but it was the best they could do. Henry felt it was good enough.

  He put Evelyn's little paper ballerinas in the high grass by the ruined stoop, knowing the wind would carry them off soon enough. Then he and Mary Lou left the old place together for the last time. It wasn't good, but it was all right. Right enough. He was not a man who believed in happy endings. What little serenity he knew came chiefly from that.

— The Sudden Dancers by Thaddeus Beaumont

People's dreams — their real dreams, as opposed to those hallucinations of sleep, which come or not, just as they will — end at different times. Thad Beaumont's dream of George Stark ended at quarter past nine on the night the psychopomps carried his dark half away to whatever place it was that had been appointed to him. It ended with the black Toronado, that tarantula in which he and George had always arrived at this house in his recurrent nightmare.

    Liz and the twins were at the top of the driveway, where it merged with Lake Lane. Thad and Alan stood by George Stark's black car, which was no longer black. Now it was gray with bird droppings.

   Alan didn't want to look at the house, but he could not take his eyes from it. It was a splintered ruin. The east side — the study side — had taken the brunt of the punishment, but the entire house was a wreck. Huge holes gaped everywhere. The railing hung from the deck on the lake side like a jointed wooden ladder. There were huge drifts of dead birds in a circle around the building. They were caught in the folds of the roof; they stuffed the gutters. The moon had come up and it sent back silverish tinkles of light from sprays of broken glass. Sparks of that same elf-light dwelt deep in the glazing eyes of the dead sparrows.

  'You're sure this is okay with you?' Thad asked.

  Alan nodded.

  'I ask, because it's destroying evidence.'

  Alan laughed harshly. 'Would anyone believe what it's evidence of'?'

   'I suppose not.' He paused and then said, 'You know, there was a time when I felt that you sort of liked me. I don't feel that anymore. Not at all. I don't understand it. Do you hold me responsible for . . . all this?'

   'I don't give a fuck,' Alan said. 'It's over. That's all I give a fuck about, Mr Beaumont. Right now that's the only thing in the whole world I give a fuck about.'

He saw the hurt on Thad's tired, harrowed face and made a great effort.

   'Look, Thad. It's too much. Too much all at once. I just saw a man carried off into the sky by a bunch of sparrows. Give me a break, okay?'

  Thad nodded. 'I understand.'

  No you don't, Alan thought. You don't understand what you are, and I doubt that you ever will. Your wife might . . . although I wonder if things will ever be right between the two of you after this, if she'll ever want to understand, or dare to love you again. Your kids, maybe, someday. . . but not you, Thad. Standing next to you is like standing next to a cave some nightmarish creature came out of. The monster is gone now, but you still don't like to be too close to where it came from. Because there might be another. Probably not; your mind knows that, but your emotions — they play a different tune, don't they? Oh boy. And even if the cave is empty forever, there are the dreams. And the memories. There's Homer Gamache, for instance, beaten to death with his own prosthetic arm. Because of you, Thad. All because of you.

    That wasn't fair, and part of Alan knew it. Thad hadn't asked to be a twin; he hadn't destroyed his twin brother in the womb out of malice (We are not talking about Cain rising up and slaying Abel with a rock, Dr Pritchard had said); he had not known what sort of monster was waiting when he began writing as George Stark.

  Still, they had been twins.

  And he could not forget the way Stark and Thad had laughed together.

  That crazy, loony laughter and the look in their eyes.

  He wondered if Liz would be able to forget.

  A little breeze gusted and blew the nasty smell of LP gas toward him.

    'Let's burn it,' he said abruptly. 'Let's burn it all. I don't care who thinks what later on. There's hardly any wind; the fire trucks will get here before it spreads much in any direction. If it takes some of the woods around this place, so much the better.'

'I'll do it,' Thad said. 'You go on up with Liz. Help with the twi — '

'We'll do it together,' Alan said. 'Give me your socks.'

'What?'