ver the Deadline

1

The day Thad Beaumont's week of grace ended felt more like a day in late July than one in the third week of June. Thad drove the eighteen miles to the University of Maine under a sky the color of hazy chrome, the air-conditioner in the Suburban going full blast in spite of the havoc it wreaked on the gas mileage. There was a dark brown Plymouth behind him. It never got closer than two car-lengths and never dropped back farther than five. It rarely allowed another car to come between itself and Thad's Suburban; if one did happen to ease its way into the two-car parade at an intersection or the school-zone in Veazie, the brown Plymouth passed quickly . . . and if this didn't look almost immediately feasible, one of Thad's guardians would pull the cover off the blue bubble on the dashboard. A few flashes from that would do the trick. Thad drove mostly with his right hand, using his left only when he absolutely had to. The hand was better now, but it still hurt like hell if he bent or flexed it too ruthlessly, and he found himself counting down the last few minutes of the last hour before he could swallow another Percodan. Liz hadn't wanted him to go up to the University today, and the state police assigned to the Beaumonts hadn't wanted him to, either. For the state boys, the issue was simple: they hadn't wanted to split their watch team. With Liz, things were a little more complex. What she talked about was his hand; he might open the wound trying to drive, she said. What was in her eyes was

quite different. Her eyes had been full of George Stark. Just what in the hell do you have to go up to the shop for today, anyway? she had wanted to know - and this was a question he had had to prepare himself for, because the semester was over, had been for some time now, and he wasn't teaching any summer classes. What he'd settled on, finally, were the Honors folders.

Sixty students had applied for Eh-7A, the Department's Honors course in creative writing. This was over twice the number that had applied for the previous fall semester's Honors writing course, but (elementary, my dear Watson) last fall the world - including that part of it majoring in English at the University of Maine - had not known that boring old Thad Beaumont also just happened to be funky George Stark.

So he had told Liz that be wanted to pull those files and start going through them, winnowing the sixty applicants down to fifteen students - the maximum he could take on (and probably fourteen more than he could actually teach) in a creative writing course. She had, of course, wanted to know why he couldn't put it off, at least until July, and had reminded him (also of course) that he had put it off until mid-August the year before. He had gone back to the big leap in applications, then added virtuously that he didn't want last summer's laziness to become a habit.

At last she had stopped protesting - not because his arguments had convinced her, he thought, but because she could see he meant to go, no matter what. And she knew as well as he did that they would have to start going out again, sooner or later - hiding in the house until someone.killed or collared George Stark wasn't a very palatable option. But her eyes had still been full of a dull, questioning fear.

Thad had kissed her and the twins and left quickly. She looked as if she might start crying soon, and if he was still home when she did that, he would stay home. It wasn't the Honors folders, of course.

It was the deadline.

He had awakened this morning full of his own dull fear, a feeling as unpleasant as a belly cramp. George Stark had called on the evening of June 10th and had given him a week to get going on the novel about the armored-car heist. Thad had still done nothing about starting . . . although he saw how the book could go more clearly with each passing day. He had even dreamed about it a couple of times. It made a nice break from touring his own deserted house in his sleep and having things explode when he touched them. But this morning his first thought had been, The deadline. I'm over the deadline.

That meant it was time to talk to George again, as little as he wanted to do that. It was time to find out just how angry George was. Well . . . he supposed he knew the answer to that one. But it was just possible that, if he was very angry, out-of-control angry, and if Thad could goad him until he was all the way out of control, foxy old George might just make a mistake and let something slip.

Losing cohesion.

Thad had a feeling that George had already let something slip when he allowed Thad's intruding hand to write those words in his journal. If he could only be sure of what they meant, that was. He had an idea . . . but he wasn't sure. And a mistake at this point could mean more than just his life. So he was on his way to the University, on his way to his office in the English-Math building. He was on his way there not to collect the Honors files - although he would - but because there was a telephone there, one that wasn't tapped, and because something had to be done. He was over the deadline.

Glancing down at his left hand, which rested on the steering wheel, he thought (not for the first time during this long, long week) that the telephone was not the only way to get in touch with George. He had proved that . . . but the price had been very high. It was not just the excruciating agony of plunging a sharpened pencil into the back of his hand, or the horror of watching while his out-of-control body hurt itself at the command of Stark - foxy old George, who seemed to be the ghost of a man who had never been. He had paid the real price in his mind. The real price had been the coming of the sparrows; the terror of realizing that the forces at work here were much greater and even more incomprehensible than George Stark himself. The sparrows, he had become more and more sure, meant death. But for whom?

He was terrified that he might have to risk the sparrows in order to get in touch with George Stark again.

And he could see them coming; he could see them arriving at that mystic halfway point where the two of them were linked, that place where he would eventually have to wrestle George Stark for control of the one soul they shared.

He was afraid he knew who would win in a struggle at that place. 2.Alan Pangborn sat in his office at the rear of the Castle County Sheriff 's Office, which occupied one wing of the Castle Rock Municipal Building. It had been a long, stressful week for him, too but that was nothing new. Once summer really started to roll in The Rock, it got this way. Law

enforcement from Memorial Day to Labor Day was always insane in Vacationland. There had been a gaudy four-car smashup on Route 117 five days ago, a booze-inspired wreck that had left two people dead. Two days later, Norton Briggs had hit his wife with a frying-pan, knocking her flat on the kitchen floor. Norton had hit his wife a great many licks during the turbulent twenty years of their marriage, but this time he apparently believed he had killed her. He wrote a short note, long on remorse and short on grammar, then took his own life with a .38

revolver. When his wife, no Rhodes Scholar herself, woke up and found the cooling corpse of her tormentor lying beside her, she had turned on the gas oven and stuck her head into it. The paramedics from Rescue Services in Oxford had saved her. Barely.

Two kids from New York had wandered away from their parents' cottage on Castle Lake and had gotten lost in the woods, just like Hansel and Gretel. They had been found eight hours later, scared but all right. John LaPointe, Alan's number two deputy, was not in such good shape; he was home with a raving case of poison ivy he had contracted during the search. There had been a fistfight between two summer people over the last copy of the Sunday New York Times at Nan's Luncheonette; another fist-fight in the parking-lot of the Mellow Tiger; a weekend fisherman had torn off half of his right ear while trying to make a fancy cast into the lake; three cases of shoplifting; and a small dope bust at Universe, Castle Rock's billiard parlor and video game arcade.

just your typical small-town week in June, a sort of grand opening celebration for summer. Alan had had barely enough time to drink a whole cup of coffee at one sitting. And still, he had found his mind turning to Thad and Liz Beaumont again and again . . . to them, and to the man who was haunting them. That man had also killed Homer Gamache. Alan had made several calls to the New York City cops - there was a certain Lieutenant Reardon who was probably very sick of him by now - but they had nothing new to report.

Alan had come in this afternoon to an unexpectedly peaceful office. Sheila Brigham had nothing to report from dispatch, and Norris Ridgewick was snoozing in his chair out in the bullpen area, feet cocked up on his desk. Alan should have wakened him - if Danforth Keeton, the First Selectman, came in and saw Norris cooping like that, he would have a cow - but he just didn't have the heart to do it. It had been a busy week for Norris, too. Norris had been in charge of scraping up the road-toads after the smash out on 117, and he had done a damned good job, fluttery stomach and all.

Alan now sat behind his desk, making shadow animals in a patch of sun which fell upon the wall . . . and his thoughts turned once more to Thad Beaumont. After getting Thad's blessing, Dr Hume in Orono had called Alan to tell him that Thad's neurological tests were negative. Thinking of this now, Alan's mind turned once more to Dr Hugh Pritchard, who had operated on Thad when Thaddeus Beaumont was eleven and a long way from famous. A rabbit hopped across the patch of sun on the wall. It was followed by a cat; a dog chased the cat.

Leave it alone. It's crazy.

Sure it was crazy. And sure, he could leave it alone. There would be another crisis to handle here before long; you didn't have to be psychic to know that. It was just the way things went during the summer here in The Rock. You were kept so busy that most times you couldn't think, and sometimes it was good not to think..An elephant followed the dog, swinging a shadow trunk which was actually Alan Pangborn's

left forefinger.

'Ah, fuck it,' he said, and pulled the telephone over to him. At the same time his other hand was digging his wallet out of his back pocket. He punched the button which automatically dialed the state police barracks in Oxford and asked dispatch there if Henry Payton, Oxford's O.C. and C.I.D. man, was in. It turned out he was. Alan had time to think that the state police must also be having a slow day for a change, and then Henry was on the line.

'Alan! What can I do for you?'

'I was wondering,' Alan said, 'if you'd like to call the head ranger at Yellowstone National Park for me. I could give you the number.' He looked at it with mild surprise. He had gotten it from directory assistance almost a whole week before, and written it on the back of a business card. His facile hands had dug it out of his wallet almost on their own.

'Yellowstone!' Henry sounded amused. 'Isn't that where Yogi Bear hangs out?'

'Nope,' Alan said, smiling. 'That's Jellystone. And the bear isn't suspected of anything, anyway. At least, as far as I know. I need to talk to a man who's on a camping vacation there, Henry. Well .

. . I don't know if I actually need to talk to him or not, but it would set my mind at rest. It feels like unfinished business.'

'Does it have to do with Homer Gamache?'

Alan shifted the phone to his other ear and walked the business card on which he had written

the Yellowstone head ranger's number absently across his knuckles.

'Yes,' he said, 'but if you ask me to explain, I'm going to sound like a fool.'

'Just a hunch?'

'Yes.' And he was surprised to find he did have a hunch - he just wasn't sure what it was about.

'The man I want to talk to is a retired doctor named Hugh Pritchard. He's with his wife. The head ranger probably knows where they are - I understand you have to register when you come in - and I'm guessing it's probably in a camping area with access to a telephone. They're both in their seventies. If you called the head ranger, he'd probably pass the message on to the guy.'

'In other words, you think a National Park ranger might take the Officer Commanding of a state police troop more seriously than a dipshit county sheriff.'

'You have a very diplomatic way of putting things, Henry.'

Henry Payton laughed delightedly. 'I do, don't I? Well, I'll tell you what, Alan - I don't mind doin a little business for you, as long as you don't want me to wade in any deeper, and as long as you - '

'No, this is it,' Alan said gratefully. 'This is all I want.'

'Wait a minute, I'm not done. As long as you understand I can't use our WATS line here to make the call. The captain looks at those statements, my friend. He looks very closely. And if he saw this one, I think he might want to know why I was spendin the taxpayers' money to stir your stew. You see what I'm sayin?'

Alan sighed resignedly. 'You can use my personal credit card number,' he said, 'and you can tell the head ranger to have Pritchard call collect. I'll red-line the call and pay for it out of my own pocket.'

There was a pause on the other end, and when Henry spoke again, he was more serious. 'This really means something to you, doesn't it, Alan?'

'Yes. I don't know why, but it does.'

There was a second pause. Alan could feel Henry Payton struggling not to ask questions. At last, Henry's better nature won. Or perhaps, Alan thought, it was only his more practical nature..'Okay,' he said. 'I'll make the call, and tell the head ranger that you want to talk to this Hugh

Pritchard about an ongoing murder investigation in Castle County, Maine. What's his wife's name?'

'Helga.

'Where they from?'

'Fort Laramie, Wyoming.'

'Okay, Sheriff; here comes the hard part. What's your telephone credit card number?'

Sighing, Alan gave it to him.

A minute later he had the shadow-parade marching across the patch of sunlight on the wall again.

The guy will probably never call back, he thought, and if he does, he won't be able to tell me a goddam thing I can use - how could he?

Still, Henry had been right about one thing: he had a hunch. About something. And it wasn't going away.

3

While Alan Pangborn was speaking to Henry Payton, Thad Beaumont was parking in one of the faculty slots behind the English-Math building. He got out, being careful not to bang his left hand. For a moment he just stood there, digging the day and the unaccustomed dozy peace of the campus.

The brown Plymouth pulled in next to his Suburban, and the two big men who got out dispelled any dream of peace he might have been on the verge of building.

'I'm just going up to my office for a few minutes,' Thad said. 'You could stay down here, if you wanted.' He eyed two girls strolling by, probably on their way to East Annex to sign up for summer courses. One was wearing a halter top and blue shorts, the other an almost non-existent mini with no back and a hem that was a strong man's heartbeat away from the swell of her buttocks. 'Enjoy the scenery.'

The two state cops had turned to follow the girls' progress as if their heads were mounted on invisible swivels. Now the one in charge - Ray Garrison or Roy Harriman, Thad wasn't sure which - turned back and said regretfully, 'Sure would like to, sir, but we better come up with you.'

'Really, it's just the second floor - '

'We'll wait out in the hall.'

'You guys don't know how much all of this is starting to depress me,' Thad said.

'Orders,' Garrison-or-Harriman said. It was clear that Thad's depression - or happiness, for that matter - meant less than zero to him.

'Yeah,' Thad said, giving it up. 'Orders.'

He headed for the side door. The two cops followed him at a distance of a dozen paces, looking more like cops in their street-clothes than they ever had in their uniforms, Thad suspected. After the still, humid heat, the air-conditioning struck Thad with a wallop. All at once his shirt felt as if it were freezing to his skin. The building, so full of life and racket during the September-to-May academic year, felt a little creepy on this weekend afternoon at the end of spring. It would fill up to maybe a third of its usual hustle and bustle on Monday, when the first three-week.summer session started, but for today, Thad found himself feeling a trifle relieved to have his police guard with him. He thought the second floor, where his office was, might be entirely deserted, which would at least allow him to avoid the necessity of explaining his large, watchful friends.

It turned out not to be entirely deserted, but he got off easily just the same. Rawlie DeLesseps was wandering down the hallway from the department common room toward his own office, drifting in his usual Rawlie DeLesseps way . . . which meant he looked as if he might have recently sustained a hard blow to the head which had disrupted both his memory and his motor control. He moved dreamily from one side of the corridor to the other in mild loops, peering at the cartoons, poems, and announcements tacked to the bulletin boards on the locked doors of his colleagues. He might have been on his way to his office, it looked that way, but even someone who knew him well would probably have declined to make book on it. The stem of an enormous yellow pipe was clamped between his dentures. The dentures were not quite as yellow as the pipe, but they were close. The pipe was dead, had been since late 1985, when his doctor had forbidden him to smoke it following a mild heart attack. I never liked to smoke that much anyway, Rawlie would explain in his gentle, distracted voice when someone asked him about the pipe. But without the bit in my teeth . . . gentlemen, I would not know where to go or what to do if I were lucky enough to arrive there. Most times he gave the impression of not knowing where to go or what to do anyway . . . as he did now. Some people knew Rawlie for years before discovering he was not at all the absent-minded, educated fool he seemed to be. Some never discovered it at all.

'Hello, Rawlie,' Thad said, picking through his keys.

Rawlie blinked at him, shifted his gaze to scan the two men behind Thad, dismissed them, and returned his gaze to Thad once more.

'Hello, Thaddeus,' he said. 'I didn't think you were teaching any summer courses this year.'

'I'm not.'

'Then what can have possessed you to come here, of all places, on the first bona fide dog day of summer?'

'Just picking up some Honors files,' Thad said. 'I'm not going to be here any longer than I have to, believe me.'

'What did you do to your hand? It's black and blue all the way to the wrist.'

'Well,' Thad said, looking embarrassed. The story made him sound like a drunk or an idiot, or both . . . but it still went down a lot easier than the truth would have done. Thad had been dourly amused to find that the police-accepted it as easily as Rawlie did now - there had not been a single question about how or why he had managed to slam his own hand in the door of his bedroom closet.

He bad instinctively known exactly the right story to tell - even in his agony he had known that. He was expected to do clumsy things it was part of his character. In a way, it was like telling the interviewer from People (God rest his soul) that George Stark had been created in Ludlow instead of Castle Rock, and that the reason Stark wrote in longhand was because he had never learned to type.

He hadn't even tried to lie to Liz . . . but he had insisted she keep quiet about what had really happened, and she had agreed to do so. Her only concern had been extracting a promise from him that he would not try to contact Stark again. He had given the promise willingly enough, although he knew it was one he might not be able to keep. He suspected that, on some deep level of her mind, Liz knew that, too..Rawlie was now looking at him with real interest. 'In a closet door,' he said. 'Marvelous. Were

you perhaps playing hide and seek? Or was it some strange sexual rite?'

Thad grinned. 'I gave up strange sexual rites around 1981,' he said. 'Doctor's advice. Actually, I just wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. The whole thing is sort of embarrassing.'

'I imagine so,' Rawlie said . . . and then winked. It was a very subtle wink, a bare flutter of one puffed and wrinkled old eyelid . . . but it was very definitely there. Had he thought he had fooled Rawlie? Pigs might fly.

Suddenly a new thought occurred to Thad. 'Rawlie, do you still teach that Folk Myth seminar?'

'Every fall,' Rawlie agreed. 'Don't you read your own department's catalogue, Thaddeus?

Dowsing, witches, holistic remedies, Hex Signs of the Rich and Famous. It's as popular now as ever. Why do you ask?'

There was an all-purpose answer to that question, Thad had discovered; one of the best things about being a writer was that you always had an answer to Why do you ask? 'Well, I have a story

idea,' he said. 'It's still in the exploration stage, but it's got possibilities, I think.'

What did you want to know?'

'Do sparrows have any significance in American superstition or folk myth that you know of?'

Rawlie's furrowing brow began to resemble the topography of some alien planet which was clearly inimical to human life. He gnawed on the stem of his pipe. 'Nothing occurs right off the top of my head, Thaddeus, although . . . I wonder if that's really why you're interested.'

Pigs might fly, Thad thought again. 'Well . . . maybe not, Rawlie. Maybe not. Maybe I just said that because my interest is nothing I could explain in a hurry.' His eyes flicked briefly to his watchdogs, then returned to Rawlie's face. 'I'm a bit pressed for time right now. Rawlie's lips quivered in the faintest ghost of a smile. 'I understand, I think. Sparrows . . . such common birds. Too common to have any deep superstitious connotations, I'd think. Yet . . . now that I think about it . . . there is something. Except I associate it with whippoorwills. Let me check. Will you be here awhile?'

'Not more than half an hour, I'm afraid.'

'Well, I might find something right away in Barringer's book. Folklore of America. It's really not much more than a cookbook of superstitions, but it comes in handy. And I could always call you.'

'Yes. You could always do that.'

'Lovely party you and Liz threw for Tom Carroll,' Rawlie said. 'Of course, you and Liz always throw the best parties. Your wife is much too charming to be a wife, Thaddeus. She should be your mistress.'

Thanks. I guess,'

'Gonzo Tom,' Rawlie continued fondly. 'It's hard to believe Gonzo Tom Carroll has sailed into the Gray Havens of retirement. I've been listening to him cut those trumpet-blast farts of his in the next office for better than twenty years. I suppose the next fellow will be quieter. Or at least more discreet.'

Thad laughed.

'Wilhelmina also enjoyed herself,' Rawlie said. His eyelids drooped roguishly. He knew perfectly well how Thad and Liz felt about Billie.

'That's fine,' Thad said. He found Billie Burks and the concept of enjoyment mutually exclusive

. . . but since she and Rawlie had formed part of a badly needed alibi, he supposed he should be glad she had come. 'And if anything occurs to you about that other thing . . . '.'Sparrows and their place in the Invisible World. Yes indeed.' Rawlie nodded to the two policemen behind Thad. 'Good afternoon, gentlemen.' He skirted them and continued on down to his office with a little more purpose. Not much, but a little. Thad looked after him, bemused.

'What was that?' Garrison-or-Harrirnan asked.

'DeLesseps,' Thad murmured. 'Chief grammarian and amateur folklorist.'

'Looks like the kind of guy who might need a map to find his way home,' the other cop said. Thad moved to the door of his office and unlocked it. 'He's more alert than he looks,' he said, and opened the door.

He wasn't aware that Garrison-or-Harriman was beside him, one hand inside his specially tailored Tall Fella sport-coat, until he had flicked on the overhead lights. Thad felt a moment of belated fear, but the office was empty, of course - empty and so neat, after the soft and steady fallout of an entire year's clutter, that it looked dead. For no reason that he could place, he felt a sudden and nearly sickening wave of homesickness and emptiness and loss - a mix of feelings like a deep, unexpected grief. It was like the dream. It was as if he had come here to say goodbye.

Stop being so goddam foolish, he told himself, and another part of his mind replied quietly: Over the deadline, Thad. You're over the deadline, and I think you might have made a very bad mistake in not at least trying to do what the man wants you to do. Short-term relief is better than no relief at all.

'If you want coffee, you can get a cup in the common room,' he said. 'The pot will be full, if I know Rawlie.'

'Where's that?' Garrison-or-Harriman's partner asked.

'Other side of the hall, two doors up,' Thad said, unlocking the files. He turned and gave them a grin that felt crooked on his face. 'I think you'll hear me if I scream.'

'Just make sure you do yell, if something happens,' Garrison-or-Harriman said.

'I will.'

'I could send Manchester here for the coffee,' Garrison-or-Harriman said, 'but I get the feeling that you're asking for a little privacy.'

'Well, yeah. Now that you mention it.'

'That's fine, Mr Beaumont,' he said. He looked at Thad seriously, and Thad suddenly remembered that his name was Harrison. Just like the ex-Beatle. Stupid to have forgotten it. 'You just want to remember those people in New York died from an overdose of privacy.'

Oh? I thought Phyllis Myers and Rick Cowley died in the company of the police. He thought of saying this out loud and then didn't. These men were, after all, only trying to do their duty.

'Lighten up, Trooper Harrison,' he said. 'The building's so quiet today a barefoot man would make echoes.'

'Okay. We'll be across the hall in the what-do-you-call-it.'

'Common room.'

'Right.

They left, and Thad opened the file marked HNRS APPS. In his mind's eye he kept seeing Rawlie DeLesseps dropping that quick, unobtrusive wink. And listening to that voice telling him he was over the deadline, that he had crossed to the dark side. The side where the monsters were. 4.The phone sat there and didn't ring.

Come on, he thought at it, stacking the Honors folders on the desk beside his University-supplied IBM Selectric. Come on, come on, here I am, standing right next to a phone with no bug on it, so come on, George, give me a call, give me a ring, give me the scoop. But the phone only sat there and didn't ring.

He realized he was looking into a file cabinet that wasn't just pruned but entirely empty. In his preoccupation he had pulled all the folders, not just the ones belonging to Honors students interested in taking creative writing. Even the Xeroxes of those who wanted to take Transformational Grammar, which was the Gospel according to Noam Chomsky, translated by that Dean of the Dead Pipe, Rawlie DeLesseps.

Thad went to the door and looked out. Harrison and Manchester were standing in the door of the department common room, drinking coffee. In their ham-sized fists, the mugs looked the size of demitasse cups. Thad raised his hand. Harrison raised his in return and asked him if he would be much longer.

'Five minutes,' Thad said, and both cops nodded.

He went back to his desk, separated the creative writing files from the others, and began to replace the latter in the file drawer, doing it as slowly as possible, giving the phone time to ring. But the phone just went on sitting there. He heard one ring someplace far down the corridor, the sound muffled by a closed door, somehow ghostly in the building's unaccustomed summer silence. Maybe George got the wrong number, he thought, and uttered a little laugh. The fact was, George wasn't going to call. The fact was, he, Thad, had been wrong. Apparently George had some other trick up his sleeve. Why should he be surprised? Tricks were George Stark's sp?cialit? de la maison. Still, he had been so sure, so goddamned sure -

'Thaddeus?'

He jumped, almost spilling the contents of the last half a dozen files onto the floor. When he was sure they weren't going to slip out of his grasp, he turned around. Rawlie DeLesseps was standing just outside the door. His large pipe poked in like a horizontal periscope.

'Sorry,' Thad said. 'You threw a jump into me, Rawlie. My mind was ten thousand miles away.'

'Someone calling for you on my phone,' Rawlie said amiably. 'Must have gotten the number wrong. Lucky I was in.'

Thad felt his heart begin to beat slow and hard - it was as if there were a snare-drum inside his chest, and someone had begun to whack it with a great deal of measured energy.

'Yes,' Thad said. 'That was very lucky.'

Rawlie gave him an appraising glance. The blue eyes under his puffy, slightly reddened lids were so alive and inquisitive they were almost rude, and certainly at odds with his cheerful, bumbling, absent-minded-professor manner. 'Is everything quite all right, Thaddeus?'

No, Rawlie. These days there's a mad killer out there who's partly me, a fellow who can apparently take over my body and make me do fun things like sticking pencils into myself, and I consider each day which concludes with me still sane a victory. Reality is out of joint, good buddy.

'All right? Why wouldn't everything be all right?'

'I seem to detect the faint but unmistakably ferrous odor of irony, Thad.'

'You're mistaken.'

'Am I? Then why do you look like a deer caught in a pair of headlights?'

'Rawlie - '.'And the man I just spoke to sounds like the sort of salesman you buy something from on the

phone just to make sure he'll never visit your home in person.'

'It's nothing, Rawlie.'

Very well.' Rawlie didn't look convinced.

Thad left his office and headed down the hall toward Rawlie's.

'Where are you off to?' Harrison called after him.

'Rawlie has a call for me in his office,' he explained. 'The phone numbers up here are all sequential. The guy must have gotten the numbers bolloxed.'

'And just happened to get the only other faculty member here today?' Harrison asked skeptically.

Thad shrugged and kept on walking.

Rawlie DeLesseps's office was cluttered, pleasant, and still inhabited by the smell of his pipe - two years' abstinence apparently did not make up for some thirty years of indulgence. It was dominated by a dart-board with a photograph of Ronald Reagan mounted on it. An encyclopedia-sized volume, Franklin Barringer's Folklore of America, lay open on Rawlie's desk. The telephone was off the hook, lying on a stack of blank blue-books. Looking at the handset, Thad felt the old dread fall over him in its familiar stifling folds. It was like being bundled in a blanket that badly needs to be washed. He turned his head, sure he would see all three of them - Rawlie, Harrison, and Manchester - lined up in the doorway like sparrows on a telephone wire. But the office doorway was empty, and from somewhere down the hall, he could hear the soft rasp of Rawlie's voice ' He had buttonholed Thad's guard-dogs. Thad doubted that he had done it by accident. He picked up the telephone and said, 'Hello, George.'

'You've had your week,' the voice on the other end said. It was Stark's voice, but Thad wondered if the voice-prints would match so exactly now. Stark's voice wasn't the same. It had grown hoarse and rough, like the voice of a man who had spent too much time hollering at some sporting event.

'You had your week and you haven't done doodly-squat.'

'Right you are,' Thad said. He felt very cold. He had to expend a conscious effort to keep from shivering. That cold seemed to be coming out of the telephone itself, oozing out of the holes in the earpiece like icicles. But he was also very angry. 'I'm not going to do it, George. A week, a month, ten years, it's all the same to me. Why not accept it? You're dead, and dead you will stay.'

'You're wrong, old hoss. If you want to be dead wrong, y'all just keep goin.'

'Do you know what you sound like, George?' Thad asked. 'You sound like you're falling apart. That's why you want me to start writing again, isn't it? Losing cohesion, that's what you wrote. You're biodegrading, right? It won't be long before you just crumble to bits, like the wonderful one-hoss shay.'

'None of that matters to you, Thad,' the hoarse voice replied. It went from a scabrous drone to a harsh sound like gravel falling out of the back of a dump-truck to a squeaking whisper - as if the vocal cords had given up functioning altogether for the space of a phrase or two - and then back to the drone again. 'None of what's going on with me is your concern. That's nothing but a distraction to you, buddy. You just want to get going by nightfall, or you're going to be one sorry son of a bitch. And you won't be the only one.'

'I don't - '

Click! Stark was gone. Thad looked at the telephone handset thoughtfully for a moment, then replaced it in the cradle. When he turned around, Harrison and Manchester were standing there..5

'Who was it?' Manchester asked.

'A student,' Thad said. At this point he wasn't even sure why he was lying. The only thing he was really sure of was that he had a terrible feeling in his guts. 'Just a student. As I thought.'

'How did he know you'd be in?' Harrison asked. 'And how come he called on this gentleman's phone?'

'I give up,' Thad said humbly. 'I'm a Russian deep-cover agent. It was really my contact. I'll go quietly.'

Harrison wasn't angry - or, at least, he did not appear to be angry. The look of slightly tired reproach he sent Thad's way was a good deal more effective than anger. 'Mr Beaumont, we're trying to give you and your wife a help. I know that having a couple of fellows trail after you wherever you go can get to be a pain in the ass after awhile, but we really are trying to give you a help.'

Thad felt ashamed of himself . . . but not ashamed enough to tell the truth. That bad feeling was still there, the feeling that things were going to go wrong, that maybe they already had gone wrong. And something else, as well. A light, fluttery feeling along his skin. A wormy feeling inside his skin. Pressure at his temples. It wasn't the sparrows; at least, he didn't think it was. All the same, some mental barometer he hadn't even been aware of was failing. Nor was this the first time he'd felt it. There had been a sensation similar to this, although not as strong, when he was on the way to Dave's Market eight days ago. He had felt it in his own office while he had been getting the files. A low, jittery feeling.

It's Stark. He's with you somehow, in you. He's watching. If you say the wrong thing, he'll know. And then somebody will suffer.

'I apologize,' he said. He was aware that Rawlie DeLesseps was now standing behind the two policemen, watching Thad with quiet, curious eyes. He would have to start lying now, and the lies came so naturally and smoothly to mind that, for all he knew, they might have been planted there by George Stark himself. He wasn't entirely sure Rawlie would go along, but it was a little late to worry about that. 'I'm on edge, that's all.'

'Understandable,' Harrison said. 'I just want you to realize we're not the enemy, Mr Beaumont.'

Thad said, 'The kid who phoned knew I was here because he was coming out of the bookstore

when I drove by. He wanted to know if I was teaching a summer writing course. The faculty telephone directory is divided into departments, the members of each department listed in alphabetical order. The print is very fine, as anyone who has ever tried to use it will testify.'

'It's a very naughty book that way,' Rawlie agreed around his pipe. The two policemen turned to look at him for a moment, startled. Rawlie favored them with a solemn, rather owlish nod.

'Rawlie follows me in the directory listings,' Thad said. 'We don't happen to have any faculty member whose last name begins with C this year. ' He glanced at Rawlie for a moment, but Rawlie had taken his pipe from his mouth and appeared to be inspecting its fire-blackened bowl with close attention. 'As a result,' Thad finished, 'I'm always getting his calls and he's always getting mine. I told this kid he was out of luck; I'm off until fall.'

Well, that was that. He had a feeling he might have over-explained the situation a little, but the real question was when Harrison and Manchester had gotten to the doorway of Rawlie's office and how much they had overheard. One did not ordinarily tell students applying for writing courses that they were biodegrading, and that they would soon just crumble to bits..'I wish I was off until fall,' Manchester sighed. 'Are you about done, Mr Beaumont?'

Thad breathed an interior sigh of relief and said, 'I just have to put back the files I won't be needing.'

(and a note you have to write a note to the secretary)

'And, of course, I have to write a note to Mrs Fenton,' he heard himself saying. He didn't have the slightest idea why he was saying this; he only knew he had to. 'She's the English department secretary.'

'Do we have time for another cup of coffee?' Manchester asked.

'Sure. Maybe even a couple of cookies, if the barbarian hordes left any,' he said. That feeling that things were out of joint, that things were wrong and going wronger all the time, was back and stronger than ever. Leave a note for Mrs Fenton? Jesus, that was a laugh. Rawlie must be choking on his pipe.

As Thad left Rawlie's office, Rawlie asked: 'Can I speak to you for a minute, Thaddeus?'

'Sure,' Thad said. He wanted to tell Harrison and Manchester to leave them alone, he would be right up, but recognized reluctantly - that such a remark was not exactly the sort of thing you said when you wanted to allay suspicions. And Harrison, at least, had his antennae up. Maybe not quite all the way just yet, but almost.

Silence worked better, anyway. As he turned to Rawlie, Harrison and Manchester strolled slowly up the hall. Harrison spoke briefly to his partner, then stood in the doorway of the department common room while Manchester hunted up the cookies. Harrison had them in sight, but Thad thought they were out of earshot.

'That was quite a tale, about the faculty directory,' Rawlie remarked, putting the chewed stem of his pipe back in his mouth. 'I believe you have a great deal in common with the little girl in Saki's

'The Open Window', Thaddeus - romance at short notice seems to be your specialty.'

'Rawlie, this isn't what you think it is.'

'I don't have the slightest idea what it is,' Rawlie said mildly, and while I admit to a certain amount of human curiosity, I'm not sure I really want to know.'

Thad smiled a little.

'And I did get the clear feeling that you'd forgotten Gonzo Tom Carroll on purpose. He may be retired, but last time I looked, he still came between us in the current faculty directory.'

'Rawlie, I better get going.'

'Indeed,' Rawlie said. 'You have a note to write to Mrs Fenton.'

Thad felt his cheeks grow a bit warm. Althea Fenton, the English department secretary since 1961, had died of throat cancer in April.

'The only reason I held you at all,' Rawlie went on, 'was to tell you that I may have found what you were looking for. About the sparrows.'

Thad felt his heartbeat jog. 'What do you mean?'

Rawlie led Thad back inside the office and picked up Barringer's Folklore of America.

'Sparrows, loons, and especially whippoorwills are psychopomps,' he said, not without some triumph in his voice. 'I knew there was something about whippoorwills.'

'Psychopomps?' Thad said doubtfully.

'From the Greek,' Rawlie said, 'meaning those who conduct. In this case, those who conduct human souls back and forth between the land of the living and the land of the dead. According to Barringer, loons and whippoorwills are outriders of the living; they are said to gather near the place where a death is about to occur. They are not birds of ill omen. Their job is to guide newly dead souls to their proper place in the afterlife.'.He looked at Thad levelly.

'Gatherings of sparrows are rather more ominous, at least according to Barringer. Sparrows are said to be the outriders of the deceased.'

'Which means - '

'Which means their job is to guide lost souls back into the land of the living. They are, in other

words, the harbingers of the living dead.'

Rawlie took his pipe from his mouth and looked at Thad solemnly.

'I don't know what your situation is, Thaddeus, but I suggest caution. Extreme caution. You look like a man who is in a lot of trouble. If there's anything I can do, please tell me.'

'I appreciate that, Rawlie. You've done as much as I could hope for just by keeping quiet.'

'In that, at least, you and my students seem to be in perfect agreement.' But the mild eyes looking at Thad over the pipe were concerned. 'You'll take care of yourself?'

'I will.'

'And if those men are following you around to help you in that endeavor, Thaddeus, it might be wise to take them into your confidence.'

It would be wonderful if he could, but his confidence in them wasn't the issue. If he really did open his mouth, they would have precious little confidence in him. And even if he did trust Harrison and Manchester enough to talk to them, he would not dare say anything until that wormy, crawling feeling inside his skin went away. Because George Stark was watching him. And he was over the deadline.

'Thanks, Rawlie.'

Rawlie nodded, told him again to take care of himself, and then sat down behind his desk. Thad walked back to his own office.

6

And, of course, I have to write a note to Mrs Fenton.

He paused in the act of putting back the last of the files he'd pulled by mistake and looked at his beige IBM Selectric. Just lately he seemed almost hypnotically aware of all writing instruments, great and small. He had wondered on more than one occasion over the last week if there were a different version of Thad Beaumont inside each one, like evil genies lurking inside a bunch of bottles.

I have to write a note to Mrs Fenton.

But these days one would more properly use a Ouija board than an electric typewriter to get in touch with the late great Mrs Fenton, who had made coffee so strong it could almost walk and talk, and why had he said that, anyway? Mrs Fenton had been the furthest thing from his mind. Thad dropped the last of the non-writing Honors files into the file cabinet, closed the drawer, and looked at his left hand. Underneath the bandage, the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger had suddenly begun to burn and itch. He rubbed his hand against the leg of his pants, but that only seemed to make the itch worse. And now it was throbbing as well. That sensation of deep, baking heat intensified.

He looked out his office window.

Across Bennett Boulevard, the telephone wires were lined with sparrows. More sparrows stood on the roof of the infirmary, and as he watched, a fresh batch landed on one of the tennis courts..They all seemed to be looking at him.

Psychopomps. The harbingers of the living dead.

Now a flock of sparrows whirled down like a cyclone of burned leaves and landed on the roof of Bennett Hall.

'No,' Thad whispered in a shaky voice. His back was hard with gooseflesh. His hand itched and burned.

The typewriter.

He could get rid of the sparrows and the burning, maddening itch in his hand only by using the typewriter.

The instinct to sit down in front of it was too strong to deny. Doing it seemed horribly natural, somehow, like wanting to stick your hand in cold water after you had burned it. I have to write a note to Mrs Fenton.

You just want to get going by nightfall, or you're going to be one sorry son of a bitch. And you won't be the only one.

That itchy, wormy feeling under his skin was getting steadily stronger. It radiated out from the hole in his hand in waves. His eyeballs seemed to be pulsing in perfect sync with that feeling. And in the eye of his mind, the vision of the sparrows intensified. It was the Ridgeway section of Bergenfield; Ridgeway under a mild white spring sky; it was 1960; the whole world was dead except for these terrible, common birds, these psychopomps, and as he watched, they all took wing. The sky went dark with their great, wheeling mass. The sparrows were flying again. Outside Thad's window, the sparrows on the wires, the infirmary, and Bennett Hall flew upward together in a whir of wings. A few early students paused in their walk across the quad to watch the flock bank left across the sky and disappear into the west. Thad did not see this. He saw nothing but the neighborhood of his childhood somehow transformed into the weird dead country of a dream. He sat down in front of the typewriter, sinking deeper into the twilit world of his trance as he did so. Yet one thought held firm. Foxy

George could make him sit down and twiddle the keys of the IBM, yes, but he wouldn't write the book, no matter what . . . and if he held to that, foxy old George would either fall apart or simply whiff out of existence, like a candle-flame. He knew that. He felt it. His hand seemed to be whamming in and out now, and he felt that, if he could see it, it would look like the paw of a cartoon character - Wile E. Coyote, perhaps - after it had been hit with a sledgehammer. It wasn't pain, exactly; it was more like the I'm-going-to-go-crazy-soon feeling you get when the middle of your back, the one place you can never quite reach, starts to itch. Not a surface itch, but that nerve-deep, throbbing itch that makes you clamp your teeth together. But even that seemed distant, unimportant. He sat down at the typewriter. 7

The moment he turned the machine on, the itch went away and the vision of the sparrows went with it.

Yet the trance held, and at the center of it was some harsh imperative; there was something which needed to be written, and he could feel his whole body yelling at him to get to it, do it, get it done. In its own way, it was much worse than either the vision of the sparrows or the itch in his hand. This itch seemed to be emanating from a place deep in his mind..He rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter, then just sat there for a moment, feeling distant and lost. Then he laid his fingers in the touch-typist's 'home' position on the middle row of keys, although he had given up touch-typing years ago.

They trembled there for a moment, and then all but the index fingers withdrew. Apparently when Stark did type, he did it the same way Thad himself did - hunt and peck. He would, of course; the typewriter was not his instrument of choice. There was a distant tug of pain when he moved the fingers of his left hand, but that was all. His index fingers typed slowly, but it still didn't take long for the message to form itself on the white sheet. It was chillingly brief. The Letter Gothic type-ball whirled and produced six words in capitals:

GUESS WHERE I CALLED FROM, THAD?

The world suddenly swam back into sharp focus. He had never felt such dismay, such horror, in his whole life. God, of course - it was so right, so clear. The son of a bitch called from my house! He's got Liz and the twins!

He started to get up with no idea of where he meant to go. He was not even aware that he was doing it until his hand flared with pain, like a smouldering torch which is swung hard through the air to produce a bright bloom of fire. His lips peeled back from his teeth and he made a low groaning noise. He dropped back into the chair in front of the IBM, and before he knew what was happening, his hands had groped their way back to the keys and were slamming at them again. Five words this time.

TELL ANYBODY AND THEY DIE

He stared at the words dully. As soon as 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 d?j 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

- '

Murmur, murmur, murmur.

Oh Thad wanted to hook his fingers into George Stark's evil neck and choke until his fingers popped through the skin and into the son of a bitch's throat.

'He says Alexis Machine's back from the dead and bigger than ever.' Then, shrilly: 'Please do what he says, Thad! He's got guns! And he's got a blowtorch! A little blowtorch! He says if you try anything funny - '

'Liz - '

'Please, Thad, do what he says.'

Her words faded off as Stark took the telephone away from her.

'Tell me something, Thad,' Stark said, and now there was no teasing in his voice. It was dead serious. 'Tell me something, and you want to make it believable and sincere, buddy-roo, or they'll pay for it. Do you understand me?'

'Yes.'

'You sure? Because she was telling the truth about the blowtorch.'

'Yes! Yes, goddammit!'

'What did she mean when she told you to remember Aunt Martha? Who the fuck is that? Was it some kind of code, Thad? Was she trying to put one over on me?'

Thad suddenly saw the lives of his wife and children hanging by a single thin thread. This was not metaphor; this was something he could see. The thread was ice-blue, gossamer, barely visible in the middle of all the eternity there might be. Everything now came down to just two things - what he said, and what George Stark believed.

'Is the recording equipment off the phones?'

'Of course it is!' Stark said. 'What do you take me for, Thad?'

'Did Liz know that when you put her on?'

There was a pause, and then Stark said: 'All she had to do was took. The wires are layin right on the goddam floor.'

'But did she? Did she look?'

'Stop beatin around the bush, Thad.'

'She was trying to tell me where you're going without saying the words,' Thad told him. He was striving for a patient, lecturing tone - patient, but a little patronizing. He couldn't tell if he was getting it or not, but he supposed George would let him know one way or the other, and quite soon. 'She meant the summer house. The place in Castle Rock. Martha Tellford is Liz's aunt. We don't like her. Whenever she'd call and say she was coming to visit, we'd fantasize about just running away to Castle Rock and hiding at the summer house until she died. Now I've said it, and if they've got wireless recording equipment on our phone, George, it's on your own head.'

He waited, sweating, to see if Stark would buy this . . . or if the thin thread which was the only thing between his loved ones and forever would snap.

'They don't,' Stark said at last, and his voice sounded relaxed again. Thad fought the need to lean against the side of the telephone kiosk and close his eyes in relief. If I ever see you again, Liz, he thought, I'll wring your neck for taking such a crazy chance. Except he supposed what he would really do when and if he saw her again would be to kiss her until she couldn't breathe.

'Don't hurt them,' he said into the telephone. 'Please don't hurt them. I'll do whatever you want.'

'Oh, I know it. I know you will, Thad. And we're gonna do it together. At least, to start with. You just get moving. Shake your watchdogs and get your ass down to Castle Rock. Get there as.fast as you can, but don't move so fast you attract attention. That'd be a mistake. You might think

about swapping cars, but I'm leaving the details up to you - after all, you're a creative guy. Get there before dark, if you want to find them alive. Don't fuck up. You dig me? Don't fuck up and don't try anything cute.'

'I won't.'

'That's right. You won't. What you're gonna do, hoss, is play the game. If you screw up, all you're gonna find when you get here is bodies and a tape of your wife cursing your name before she died.'

There was a click. The connection was broken.

9

As he was getting back into the Suburban, Manchester unrolled the passenger window of the Plymouth and asked if everything was okay at home. Thad could see by the man's eyes that this was more than an idle question. He had seen something on Thad's face after all. But that was okay; he thought he could deal with that. He was, after all, a creative guy, and his mind seemed to be moving with its own ghastly-silent speed now, like that Japanese bullet-train. The question presented itself again: lie or tell the truth? And as before, it was really no contest.

'Everything's fine,' he said. His tone of voice was natural and casual. 'The kids are cranky, that's all. And that makes Liz cranky.' He let his voice rise a little. 'You two guys have been acting antsy ever since we left the house. Is there something happening I should know about?'

He had enough conscience, even in this desperate situation, to feel a little twinge of guilt at that. Something was happening, all right - but he was the one who knew, and he wasn't telling.

'Nope,' Harrison said from behind the wheel, leaning forward to speak past his partner. 'We can't reach Chatterton and Eddings at the house, that's all. Might have gone inside.'

'Liz said she'd just made some fresh iced tea,' Thad said, lying giddily.

'That's it, then,' Harrison said. He smiled at Thad, who felt another, slightly stronger, throb of conscience. 'Maybe there'll be some left when we get there, huh?'

'Anything's possible.' Thad slammed the Suburban's door and poked the ignition key into its slot with a hand that seemed to have no more feeling than a block of wood. Questions whirled around in his head, doing their own complicated and not particularly lovely gavotte. Were Stark and his family off for Castle Rock yet? He hoped so - he wanted them solid-gone before the news that they had been snatched went out along the nets of police communication. If they were in Liz's car and someone spotted it, or if they were still close to or in Ludlow, there could be bad trouble. Killing trouble. It was horribly ironic that he should be hoping Stark would make a clean getaway, but that was exactly the position he was in.

And, speaking of getaways, how was he going to lose Harrison and Manchester? That was another good question. Not by outrunning them in the Suburban, that was for sure. The Plymouth they were driving looked like a dog with its dusty finish and blackwall tires, but the rough idle of its motor suggested it was all roadrunner under the hood. He supposed he could ditch them - he already had an idea of how and where it could be done - but how was he going to keep from being discovered again while he made the hundred-and-sixty-mile drive to The Rock?

He didn't have the slightest idea . . . he only knew he would have to do it somehow. Remember Aunt Martha?.He had fed Stark a line of bull about what that meant, and Stark had swallowed it. So the

bastard's access to his mind wasn't complete. Martha Tellford was Liz's aunt, all right, and they had joked, mostly in bed, about running away from her, but they had talked about running to exotic places like Aruba or Tahiti . . . because Aunt Martha knew all about the summer house in Castle Rock. She had visited them there much more frequently than she had visited them in Ludlow. And Aunt Martha Tellford's favorite place in Castle Rock was the dump. She was a cardcarrying, dues-paying member of the NRA, and what she, liked to do at the dump was shoot rats.

'If you want her to leave,' Thad could remember telling Liz once, 'you'll have to be the one to tell her.' That conversation had also taken place in bed, toward the end of Aunt Martha's interminable visit in the summer of - had it been '79 or '80? It didn't matter, he supposed. 'She's your aunt. Besides, I'm afraid that if I told her, she might use that Winchester of hers on me.'

Liz had said, 'I'm not sure that being blood kin would cut much ice, either. She gets a look in her eyes . . . ' She had mock-shivered next to him, he remembered, then giggled and poked him in the ribs. 'Go on. God hates a coward. Tell her we're conservationists, even when it comes to dump-rats. Walk right up to her, Thad, and say 'Bug out, Aunt Martha! You've shot your last rat at the dump! Pack your bags and just bug out!''

Of course, neither of them had told Aunt Martha to bug out; she had kept on with her daily expeditions to the dump, where she shot dozens of rats (and a few seagulls when the rats ran for cover, Thad suspected). Finally the blessed day came when Thad drove her to the Portland Jetport and put her on a plane back to Albany. At the gate, she had given him her oddly disconcerting man's double-pump handshake - as if she were closing a business deal instead of saying goodbye

- and told him she just might favor them with a visit the following year. 'Goddam good shooting,'

she'd said. 'Must have gotten six or seven dozen of those little germbags.'

She never had come back, although there had been one close shave (that impending visit had been averted by a merciful last-minute invitation to go to Arizona instead, where, Aunt Martha had informed them over the phone, there was still a bounty on coyotes). In the years since her last visit, 'Remember Aunt Martha' had become a code-phrase like

'Remember the Maine.' It meant one of them should get the .22 out of the storage shed and shoot some particularly boring guest, as Aunt Martha had shot the rats at the dump. Now that he thought about it, Thad believed Liz had used the phrase once during the People magazine interview-andphoto sessions. Hadn't she turned to him and murmured, 'I wonder if that Myers woman remembers Aunt Martha, Thad?'

Then she had covered her mouth and started giggling.

Pretty funny.

Except it wasn't a joke now.

And it wasn't shooting rats at the dump now.

Unless he had it all wrong, Liz had been trying to tell him to come after them and kill George Stark. And if she wanted him to do that, Liz, who cried when she heard about homeless animals being 'put to sleep' at the Derry Animal Shelter, must think there was no other solution. She must think there were only two choices now: death for Stark . . . or death for her and the twins. Harrison and Manchester were looking at him curiously, and Thad realized he had been sitting behind the wheel of the idling Suburban, lost in thought, for nearly a full minute. He raised his hand, sketched a little salute, backed out, and turned toward Maine Avenue, which would take him off-campus. He tried to start thinking about how he was going to get away from these two before they heard the news that their colleagues were dead over their police-band radio. He tried to think,.but he kept hearing Stark telling him that if he screwed up, all he would find when he got to the

summer place in Castle Rock would be their bodies and a tape of Liz cursing him before she died. And he kept seeing Martha Tellford, sighting down the barrel of her Winchester, which had been one hell of a lot bigger than the .22 he kept in the locked storage shed of the summer place, aiming at the plump rats scurrying among the piles of refuse and the low orange dump-fires. He realized suddenly that he wanted to shoot Stark, and not with a .22, either. Foxy George deserved something bigger.

A howitzer might be the right size.

The rats, leaping up against the galaxy-shine of broken bottles and crushed cans, their bodies first twisting, then splattering as the guts and fur flew. Yes, watching something like that happen to George Stark would be very fine. He was gripping the steering-wheel too hard, making his left hand ache. It actually seemed to moan deep in its bones and joints.

He relaxed - tried to, anyway - and felt in his breast pocket for the Percodan he had brought along, found it, dry-swallowed it.

He began thinking about the school-zone intersection in Veazie. The one with the four-way stop sign.

And he began to think about what Rawlie DeLesseps had said, too. Psychopomps, Rawlie had called them.

The emissaries of the living dead..