The Dark Half

he typed the final E, everything cut off suddenly — it was as if he were a lamp and someone had pulled his plug. No more pain in his hand. No more itch. No more wormy, watched feeling under his skin.

The birds were gone. That dim, entranced feeling was gone. And Stark was gone, too.

   Except he wasn't really gone at all, was he? No. Stark was keeping house while Thad was gone. They had left two Maine state troopers watching the place, but that didn't matter. He had been a fool, an incredible fool, to think a couple of cops could make a difference. A squad of Delta Force Green Berets wouldn't have made a difference. George Stark wasn't a man; he was something like a Nazi Tiger tank which just happened to look human.

'How's it going?' Harrison asked from behind him.

    Thad jumped as if someone had poked a pin into the back of his neck . . . and that made him think of Frederick Clawson, Frederick Clawson who had butted in where he had no business . . . and had committed suicide by telling what he knew.

TELL ANYBODY AND THEY DIE

glared up at him from the sheet of paper in the typewriter.

    He reached out, tore the sheet from the roller, and crumpled it up. He did this without looking around to see how close Harrison was — that would have been a bad mistake. He tried to look casual. He didn't feel casual; he felt insane. He waited for Harrison to ask him what he had written, and why he was in such a hurry to get it out of the typewriter. When Harrison didn't say anything, Thad did.

    'I think I'm done. Hell with the note. I'll have these files back before Mrs Fenton knows they're gone, anyway.' That much, at least, was true . . . unless Althea happened to be looking down from heaven. He got up, praying his legs wouldn't betray him and spill him back into his chair. He was relieved to see Harrison was standing in the doorway, not looking at him at all. A moment ago Thad would have sworn the man was breathing down the back of his neck, but Harrison was eating a cookie and peering past Thad at the few students who were idling across the quad.

  'Boy, this place sure is dead,' the cop said.

  My family may be, too, before I get home.

  'Why don't we go?' he asked Harrison.

  'Sounds good to me.'

   Thad started for the door. Harrison looked at him, bemused. 'Jeepers-creepers,' he said. 'Maybe there's something to that absent-minded professor stuff after all.'

  Thad blinked at him nervously, then looked down and saw he was still holding the crumpled ball of paper in one hand. He tossed it toward the wastebasket, but his unsteady hand betrayed him. It struck the rim and bounced off. Before he could bend over and grab it, Harrison had moved past him. He picked up the ball of paper and tossed it casually from one hand to the other. 'You gonna walk out without the files you came for?' he asked. He pointed at the creative writing Honors files, which were sitting beside the typewriter with a red rubber band around them. Then he went back to tossing the ball of paper with Stark's last two messages on it from one hand to the other, right-left, left-right, back and forth, follow the bouncing ball. Thad could see a snatch of letters on one of the crimps: ELL ANYBODY AND THEY DI.

  'Oh. Those. Thanks.'

   Thad picked the files up, then almost dropped them. Now Harrison would uncrumple the ball of paper in his hand. He would do that, and although Stark wasn't watching him right now — Thad was pretty sure he wasn't, anyway — he would be checking back in soon. When he did, he would know. And when he knew, he would do something unspeakable to Liz and the twins.

    'Don't mention it.' Harrison tossed the crumpled ball of paper toward the wastebasket. It rolled almost all the way around the rim and then went in. 'Two points,' he said, and stepped out into the hall so Thad could close the door.

8

He went downstairs with his police escort trailing behind him. Rawlie DeLesseps popped out of his office and told him to have a good summer, if he didn't see Thad again. Thad wished him the same in a voice which, to his own ears, at least, sounded normal enough. He felt as if he were on autopilot. The feeling lasted until he got to the Suburban. As he tossed the files in on the passenger side, his eye was caught by the pay telephone on the other side of the parking lot.

  'I'm going to call my wife,' he told Harrison. 'See if she wants anything at the store.'

  'Should have done it upstairs,' Manchester said. 'Would have saved yourself a quarter.'

  'I forgot,' Thad said. 'Maybe there is something to that absent-minded professor stuff.'

    The two cops exchanged an amused glance and got into their Plymouth, where they could run the air-conditioning and watch him through the windshield.

   Thad felt as if all his insides had turned to jumbled glass. He fished a quarter out of his pocket and dropped it into the slot. His hand was shaking and he got the second number wrong. He hung up the phone, waited for his quarter to come back, and then tried again, thinking, Christ, it's like the night Miriam died. Like that night all over again.

It was the kind of deja vu he could have done without.

    The second time he got it right and stood there with the handset pressed so tightly against his ear that it hurt. He tried consciously to relax his stance. He mustn't let Harrison and Manchester know something was wrong — above all else, he must not do that. But he couldn't seem to unlock his muscles.

  Stark picked up the telephone on the first ring. 'Thad?'

  'What have you done to them?' Like spitting out dry balls of lint. And in the background he could hear both twins howling their heads off. Thad found their cries strangely comforting. They were, not the hoarse whoops that Wendy had made when she tumbled down the stairs; they were bewildered cries, angry cries, perhaps, but not hurt cries. Liz, though — where was Liz?

  'Not a thing,' Stark replied, 'as you can hear for yourself. I haven't harmed a hair of their precious little heads. Yet.'

    'Liz,' Thad said. He was suddenly overcome with lonely terror. It was like being immersed in a long cold comber of surf.

'What about her?' The teasing tone was grotesque, insupportable.

    'Put her on!' Thad barked. 'If you expect me to ever write another goddam word under your name, you put her on!' And there was a part of his mind, apparently unmoved by even such an extreme of terror and surprise as this, which cautioned: Watch your face, Thad. You're only threequarters turned away from the cops. A man doesn't scream into the telephone when he's phoning home to ask his wife if she's got enough eggs.

  'Thad! Thad, old hoss!' Stark sounded injured, but Thad knew with horrible and maddening certainty that the son of a bitch was grinning. 'You got one hell of a bad opinion of me, buddy-roo. I mean it's low, son! Cool your jets, here she is.'

  'Thad? Thad, are you there?' She sounded harried and afraid, but not panicked. Not quite.

  'Yes. Honey, are you okay? Are the kids?'

   'Yes, we're okay. We . . .' The last word trailed off a bit. Thad could hear the bastard telling her something, but not what it was. She said yes, okay, and was back on the phone. Now she sounded close to tears. 'Thad, you've got to do what he wants.'

'Yes. I know that.'

   'But he wants me to tell you that you can't do it here. The police will come here soon. He . . . Thad, he says he killed the two that were watching the house.'

Thad closed his eyes.

   'I don't know how he did it, but he says he did . . . and I . . . I believe him.' Now she was crying. Trying not to, knowing it would upset Thad and knowing if he was upset he might do something dangerous. He clutched the phone, ground it against his ear, and tried to look casual.

    Stark, murmuring in the background again. And Thad caught one of the words. Collaboration. Incredible. Fucking incredible.

   'He's going to take us away,' she said. 'He says you'll know where we're going. Remember Aunt Martha? He says you should lose the men that are with you. He says he knows you can do it, because he could. He wants you to join us by dark tonight. He says — ' She uttered a frightened sob. Another one got started, but she managed to swallow it back. 'He says you're going to collaborate with him, that with you and him both working on it, it will be the best book ever. He — '