The Dark Half

someone has just got to blab, they all hold their tongues.'

And went on holding them for the next ten years, while the elusive Mr Stark, a far

more prolific writer than his other half, published another three novels. None of

them ever repeated the blazing success of Machine's Way, but all of them cut a

swath up the best-seller lists.

After a long, thoughtful pause, Beaumont begins to talk about the reasons why he

finally decided to call off the profitable charade. 'You have to remember that

George Stark was only a paper man, after all. I enjoyed him for a long time . . . and

hell, the guy was making money. I called it my f — you money. Just knowing I could

quit teaching if I wanted to and go on paying off the mortgage had a tremendously

liberating effect on me.

'But I wanted to write my own books again, and Stark was running out of things

to say. It was as simple as that. I knew it, Liz knew it, my agent knew it . . . I think

that even George's editor at Darwin Press knew it. But if I'd kept the secret, the

temptation to write another George Stark novel would eventually have been too

much for me. I'm as vulnerable to the siren—song of money as anyone else. The

solution seemed to be to drive a stake through his heart once and for all.

'In other words, to go public. Which is what I did. What I'm doing right now, as a

matter of fact.'

   Thad looked up from the article with a little smile. All at once his amazement at People's staged photographs seemed itself a little sanctimonious, a little posed. Because magazine photographers weren't the only ones who sometimes arranged things so they'd have the look readers wanted and expected. He supposed most interview subjects did it, too, to a greater or lesser degree. But he guessed he might have been a little better at arranging things than some; he was, after all, a novelist . . . and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.

  Stark was running out of things to say. It was as simple as that. How direct.

  How winning.

  How utterly full of shit.

  'Honey?'

  'Hmmm?'

    She was trying to wipe Wendy clean. Wendy was not keen on the idea. She kept twisting her small face away, babbling indignantly, and Liz kept chasing it with the washcloth. Thad thought his wife would catch her eventually, although he supposed there was always a chance she would tire first. It looked like Wendy thought that was a possibility, too.

  'Were we wrong to lie about Clawson's part in all this?'

  'We didn't lie, Thad. We just kept his name out of it.'

  'And he was a nerd, right?'

  'No, dear.'

  'He wasn't?'

  'No,' Liz said serenely. She was now beginning to clean William's face. 'He was a dirty little Creepazoid.'

  Thad snorted. 'A Creepazoid?'

  'That's right. A Creepazoid.'

  'I think that's the first time I ever heard that particular term.'

  'I saw it on a videotape box last week when I was down at the corner store looking for something to rent. A horror picture called The Creepazoids. And I thought, 'Marvelous. Someone made a movie about Frederick Clawson and his family. I'll have to tell Thad.' But I forgot until just now.'

'So you're really okay on that part of it?'

    'Really very much okay,' she said. She pointed the hand holding the washcloth first at Thad and then at the open magazine on the table. 'Thad, you got your pound of flesh out of this. People got their pound of flesh out of this. And Frederick Clawson got jack shit . . . which was just what he deserved.'

  'Thanks,' he said.

  She shrugged. 'Sure. You bleed too much sometimes, Thad.'

  'Is that the trouble?'

  'Yes — all the trouble . . . William, honestly! Thad, if you'd help me just a little — '

  Thad closed the magazine and carried Will into the twins' bedroom behind Liz, who had Wendy. The chubby baby was warm and pleasantly heavy, his arms slung casually around Thad's neck as he goggled at everything with his usual interest. Liz laid Wendy down on one changing table; Thad laid Will down on the other. They swapped dry diapers for soggy ones, Liz moving a little faster than Thad.

'Well,' Thad said, 'we've been in People magazine, and that's the end of that. Right?'

  'Yes,' she said, and smiled. Something in that smile did not ring quite true to Thad, but he remembered his own weird laughing fit and decided to leave it be. Sometimes he was just not very sure about things — it was a kind of mental analogue to his physical clumsiness — and then he picked away at Liz. She rarely snapped at him about it, but sometimes he could see a tiredness creep into her eyes when he went on too long. What had she said? You bleed too much sometimes, Thad.

  He pinned Will's diapers closed, keeping a forearm on the wriggling but cheerful baby's stomach while he worked so Will wouldn't roll off the table and kill himself, as he seemed determined to do.

  'Bugguyrah!' Will cried.

  'Yeah,' Thad agreed.

  'Divvit!' Wendy yelled.

  Thad nodded. 'That makes sense, too.'

  'It's good to have him dead,' Liz said suddenly.

   Thad looked up. He considered for a moment, then nodded. There was no need to specify who he was; they both knew. 'Yeah.'

  'I didn't like him much'

  That's a hell of a thing to say about your husband, he almost replied, then didn't. It wasn't odd, because she wasn't talking about him. George Stark's methods of writing hadn't been the only essential difference between the two of them.

  'I didn't, either,' he said. 'What's for supper?'

Two

Breaking Up Housekeeping

1

That night Thad had a nightmare. He woke from it near tears and trembling like a puppy caught out in a thunderstorm. He was with George Stark in the dream, only George was a real estate agent instead of a writer, and he was always standing just behind Thad, so he was only a voice and a shadow.

2

The Darwin Press author-sheet — which Thad had