he Coming of the Sparrows

1

Thad avoided the turnpike on the way down (Stark had instructed Liz to use it, cutting half an hour off their time), and so he had to go through either Lewiston-Auburn or Oxford. L.A., as the natives called it, was a much bigger metropolitan area . . . but the state police barracks was in Oxford. He chose Lewiston-Auburn.

He was waiting at an Auburn traffic light and checking his rearview mirror constantly for police cars when the idea he'd first grasped clearly while talking to Rawlie at the auto junkyard struck him again. This time it was not just a tickle; it was something like a hard open-handed blow. I am the knower. I am the owner. I am the bringer.

It's magic we are dealing with here, Thad thought, and any magician worth his salt has got to have a magic wand. Everyone knows that. Luckily, I know just where such an item may be had. Where, in fact, they sell them by the dozen.

The nearest stationer's store was on Court Street, and now Thad diverted in that direction. He was sure there were Berol Black Beauty pencils at the house in Castle Rock, and he was equally sure Stark had brought his own supply, but he didn't want them. What he wanted were pencils Stark had never touched, either as a part of Thad or as a separate entity. Thad found a parking space half a block down from the stationer's, killed the engine of Rawlie's VW (it died hard, with a wheeze and several lunging chugs), and got out. It was good to get away from the ghost of Rawlie's pipe and into the fresh air for awhile. At the stationer's he bought a box of Berol Black Beauty pencils. The clerk told him to be his guest when Thad asked if he could use the pencil-sharpener on the wall. He used it to sharpen six of the Berols. These he put in his breast pocket, lining it from side to side. The leads stuck up like the warheads of small, deadly missiles. Presto and abracadabra, he thought. Let the revels commence. He walked back to Rawlie's car, got in, and just sat there for a moment, sweating in the heat and softly singing 'John Wesley Harding' under his breath. Almost all of the words had come back. It was really amazing what the human mind could do under pressure. This could be very, very dangerous, he thought. He found that he didn't care so much for himself. He had, after all, brought George Stark into the world, and he supposed that made him responsible for him. It didn't seem terribly fair; he didn't think he had created George with any evil intent. He couldn't see himself as either of those infamous doctors, Messrs Jekyll and Frankenstein, in spite of what might be happening to his wife and children. He had not set out to write a series of novels which would make a great deal of money, and he had certainly not set out to create a monster. He had only been trying to feet a way around the block that had dropped into his path. He had only wanted to find a way to write another good story, because doing that made him happy..Instead, he had caught some sort of supernatural disease. And there were diseases, lots of them,

that found homes in the bodies of people who had done nothing to deserve them - fun things like cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, Alzheimer's - but once you got one, you had to deal with it. What was the name of that old radio quiz show? Name It and Claim It?

This could be very dangerous for Liz and the kids, though, his mind insisted, reasonably enough.

Yes. Brain surgery could be dangerous, too . . . but if you had a tumor growing in there, what choice did you have?

He'll be looking. Peeking. The pencils are okay; he might even be flattered. But if he senses what you plan to do with them, or if he finds out about the bird-call . . . if he guesses about the sparrows . . . hell, if he even guesses there's something to guess . . . then you're in deep shit. But it could work, another part of his mind whispered. Goddammit, you know it could work. Yes. He did know it. And because the deepest part of his mind insisted that there was really nothing else to do or try, Thad started the VW and pointed it toward Castle Rock. Fifteen minutes later he had left Auburn behind and was out in the country again, heading west toward the Lakes Region.

2

For the last forty miles of the trip, Stark talked steadily about Steel Machine, the book on which he and Thad were going to collaborate. He helped Liz with the kids - always keeping one hand free and close enough to the gun tucked into his belt to keep her convinced - while she unlocked the summer house and let them in. She had been hoping for cars parked in at least some of the driveways leading off Lake Lane, or to hear the sounds of voices or chainsaws, but there had been only the sleepy hum of the insects and the powerful rumble of the Toronado's engine. It seemed that the son of a bitch had the luck of the devil himself. All the time they were unloading and bringing things in, Stark went on talking. He didn't even stop while he was using his straight-razor to amputate all but one of the telephone jacks. And the

book sounded good. That was the really dreadful thing. The book sounded very good indeed. It sounded as if it might be as big as Machine's Way - maybe even bigger.

'I have to go to the bathroom,' she said when the luggage was inside, interrupting him in mid-spate.

'That's fine,' he said mildly, turning to look at her. He had taken off the sunglasses once they arrived, and now she had to turn her head aside from him. That glaring, mouldering gaze was more than she could deal with. 'I'll just come along.'

'I like a little privacy when I relieve myself. Don't you?'

'It doesn't much matter to me, one way or another,' Stark said with serene cheeriness. It was a mood he had been in ever since they left the turnpike at Gates Falls - he had the unmistakable air of a man who now knows things are going to come out all right.

'But it does to me,' she said, as if speaking to a particularly obtuse child. She felt her fingers curling into claws. In her mind she was suddenly ripping those staring eyeballs out of their slack sockets . . . and when she risked a glance up at him and saw his amused face, she knew he knew what she was thinking and feeling.

'I'll just stay in the doorway,' he said with mock humility. 'I'll be a good boy. I won't peek.'.The babies were crawling busily around the living-room rug. They were cheerful, vocal, full of beans. They seemed to be delighted to be here, where they had been only once before, for a long winter weekend.

'They can't be left alone,' Liz said. 'The bathroom is off the master bedroom. If they're left here, they'll get into trouble.'

'No problem, Beth,' Stark said, and scooped them up effortlessly, one under each arm. She would have believed just this morning that if anyone but herself or Thad tried something like that '

William and Wendy would have screamed their heads off. But when Stark did it, they giggled merrily, as if this were the most amusing thing under the sun. 'I'll bring them into the bedroom, and I'll be watching them instead of you.' He turned and regarded her with an instant's coldness.

'I'll keep a good eye on them, too. I wouldn't want them to come to any harm, Beth. I like them. If anything happens to them, it won't be my fault.'

She went into the bathroom and he stood in the doorway, his back to her as he had promised, watching the twins. As she raised her skirt and lowered her panties and sat down, she hoped he was a man of his word. She wouldn't die if he turned around and saw her squatting on the john . . . but if he saw the sewing scissors inside her underwear, she might. And, as usual, when she was in a hurry to go, her bladder hung on obstinately. Come on, come on, she thought with a mixture of fear and irritation. What's the matter, do you think you're going to collect interest on that stuff?

At last. Relief.

'But when they try to come out of the barn,' Stark was saying, 'Machine lights the gasoline they've poured into the trench around it in the night. Won't that be great? There's a movie in it, too, Beth - the assholes who make movies love fires.'

She used the toilet paper and pulled her panties up very carefully. She kept her eyes glued to Stark's back as she adjusted her clothes, praying that he would not turn around. He didn't. He was deeply absorbed in his own story.

'Westerman and Jack Rangely duck back inside, planning to use the car to drive right through the fire. But Ellington panics, and - '

He broke off suddenly, his head cocked to one side. Then he turned to her, just as she was straightening her skirt.

'Out,' he said abruptly, and all the good humor had left his voice. 'Get the fuck out of there right now.'

'What - '

He grabbed her arm with rough force and yanked her into the bedroom. He went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. 'We've got company, and it's too early for Thad.'

'I don't - '

'Car engine,' he said briefly. 'Powerful motor. Could be a police interceptor. Hear it?'

Stark slammed the medicine cabinet shut and jerked open the drawer to the right of the washstand. He found a roll of Red Cross adhesive tape and popped the tin ring off the doughnut. She heard nothing and said so.

'That's okay,' he said. 'I can hear it for both of us. Hands behind you.'

'What are you going to - ?'

'Shut up and put your hands behind you!'

She did, and immediately her wrists were bound. He crisscrossed the tape, back and forth, back and forth, in tight figure-eights.

'Engine just quit,' he said. 'Maybe a quarter of a mile up the road. Someone trying to be cute.'.She thought she might have heard an engine in the last moment, but it could have been nothing but suggestion. She knew she would have heard nothing at all, if she had not been listening with all of her concentration. Dear God, how sharp were his ears?

'Gotta cut this tape,' he said. 'Pardon me gettin personal for a second or so, Beth. Time's a little short for politeness.'

And before she even knew he was doing it, he had reached down the front of her skirt. A moment later, he pulled the sewing scissors free. He didn't even prick her skin with the pins. He glanced in her eyes for just a moment as he reached behind her and used the scissors to cut the tape. He seemed amused again.

'You saw them,' she said dully. 'You saw the bulge after all.'

'The scissors?' He laughed. 'I saw them, but not the bulge. I saw them in your eyes, darlin Bethie. I saw them back in Ludlow. I knew they were there the minute you came downstairs.'

He knelt in front of her with the tape, absurdly - and ominously - like a suitor proposing marriage. Then he looked up at her. 'Don't you get ideas about kicking me or anything, Beth. I don't know for sure, but I think that's a cop. And I don't have time to play fiddlyfuck with you, much as I'd like to. So be still.'

'The babies - '

'I'm gonna close the doors,' Stark said. 'They're not tall enough to reach the knobs even when they get up on their feet. They may eat a few dust-kitties under the bed, but I think that's the worst trouble they can get into. I'll be back very shortly.'

Now the tape was winding figure-eights around her ankles. He cut it and stood up again.

'You be good, Beth,' he said. 'Don't go losing your happy thoughts. I'd make you pay for a thing like that . . . but I'd make you watch them pay, first.'

Then he closed the bathroom door, the bedroom door, and was gone. He absented himself with the speed of a good magician doing a trick.

She thought of the .22 locked in the equipment shed. Were there bullets in there, too? She was pretty sure there were. Half a box of Winchester .22 Long Rifles on a high shelf. Liz began to twist her wrists back and forth. He had interwoven the tape very cunningly, and for awhile she wasn't sure she was going to be able to even loosen it, let alone work her hands free of it.

Then she started to feel a little give, and began to work her wrists back and forth faster, panting. William crawled over, placed his hands on her leg, and looked questioningly into her face.

'Everything's going to be fine,' she said, and smiled at him. Will smiled back and crawled away in search of his sister. Liz tossed a sweaty lock of hair out of her eyes with a brisk shake of her head and returned to rotating her wrists back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

3

So far as Alan Pangborn could tell, Lake Lane was entirely deserted . . . at least, it was entirely deserted as far as he dared to drive in. That was the sixth driveway along the road. He believed he could have driven at least a little farther in safety - there was no way the sound of his car's engine could be heard at the Beaumont place from this distance, not with two hills in between - but it was better to be safe. He drove down to the A-frame cottage which belonged to the Williams.family, summer residents from Lynn, Massachusetts, parked on a carpet of needles under a hoary

old pine, killed the engine and got out.

He looked up and saw the sparrows.

They were sitting on the roofpeak of the Williams house. They were sitting on the high branches of the trees that surrounded it. They perched on rocks down by the lakeshore; they jostled for place on the Williamses' dock - so many of them he couldn't see the wood. There were hundreds and hundreds of them.

And they were utterly silent, only looking at him with their tiny black eyes.

'Jesus,' he whispered.

There were crickets singing in the high grass which grew along the foundations of the Williams house, and the soft lap of the lake against the permanent part of their dock, and a plane droning its way west, toward New Hampshire. Otherwise, everything was silent. There was not even the harsh buzz of a single outboard motor on the lake.

Only those birds.

All those birds.

Alan felt a deep, glassy fright creeping along his bones. He had seen sparrows flock together in the spring or the fall, sometimes a hundred or two hundred at once, but he had never in his life seen anything like this.

Have they come for Thad . . . or for Stark?

He looked back at the radio mike again, wondering if he shouldn't call in after all. This was just too weird, too out of control.

What if they all fly at once? If he's down there, and if he's as sharp as Thad says, he'll hear that, all right. He'll hear that just fine.

He began to walk. The sparrows did not move . . . but a fresh flock appeared and settled into the

trees. They were all around him now, staring down at him like a hard-hearted jury staring at a murderer in the dock. Except back by the road. The woods bordering Lake Lane were still clear. He decided to go back that way.

A dismal thought, just shy of being a premonition, came to him - that this might be the biggest mistake of his professional life.

I'm just going to recon the place, he thought. If the birds don't fly and they don't seem to want to

- I should he okay. I can go up this driveway, cross the Lane, and work my way down to the Beaumont house through the woods. If the Toronado's there, I'll see it. If I see it, I may see him. And if I do, at least I'll know what I'm up against. I'll know if it's Thad, or. . . someone else. There was another thought, as well. One Alan hardly dared think, because thinking it might queer his luck. If he did see the owner of the black Toronado, he might get a clear shot. He might be able to take the bastard down and end it right here. If that was the way things worked out, he would take a heavy roasting from the state police for going against their specific orders . . . but Liz and the kids would be safe, and right now that was all he cared about. More sparrows fluttered soundlessly down. They were carpeting the asphalt surface of the Williamses' driveway from the bottom up. One landed less than five feet from Alan's boots. He made a kicking gesture at it, and instantly regretted it, half-expecting to send it - and the whole monster flock with it - into the sky at once.

The sparrow hopped a little. That was all.

Another sparrow landed on Alan's shoulder. He couldn't believe it, but it was there. He brushed at it, and it hopped onto his hand. Its beak dipped, as if it meant to peck his palm . . . and then it.stopped. Heart beating hard, Alan lowered his hand. The bird hopped off, fluttered its wings once, and landed on the driveway with its fellows. It stared up at him with its bright, senseless eyes. Alan swallowed. There was an audible click in his throat. 'What are you?' he muttered. 'What the fuck are you?'

The sparrows only stared at him. And now every pine and maple he could see on this side of Castle Lake appeared to be full. He heard a branch crack somewhere under their accumulated weight.

Their bones are hollow, he thought. They weigh next to nothing. How many of them must it take to crack a branch like that?

He didn't know. Didn't want to know.

Alan unsnapped the strap across the butt of his .38 and walked back up the steep slant of the Williamses' driveway, away from the sparrows. By the time he reached Lake Lane, which was only a dirt track with a ribbon of grass growing up between the wheel-ruts, his face was oiled with sweat and his shirt was stuck damply to his back. He looked around. He could see the sparrows back the way he had come - they were all over the top of his car now, roosting on the hood and the trunk and the roof-flashers - but there were none up here. It's as if, he thought, they don't want to get too close . . . at least not yet. It's as if this were their staging area.

He looked both ways along the Lane from what he hoped was a place of concealment behind a tall sumac bush. Not a soul in sight - only the sparrows, and they were all back on the slope where the Williamses' A-frame stood. Not a sound except for the crickets and a couple of mosquitoes whining around his face.

Good.

Alan trotted across the road like a soldier in enemy territory, head low between his hunched shoulders, jumped the weed-and rock-choked ditch on the far side, and disappeared into the woods. Once he was in concealment, he concentrated on working his way down to the Beaumont summer house as quickly and silently as he could.

4

The eastern side of Castle Lake lay at the bottom of a long, steep hill. Lake Lane was halfway down this slope, and most of the houses were so far below Lake Lane that Alan could see only their roofpeaks from his position, which was about twenty yards up the hill from the road. In some cases they were hidden from his view entirely. But he could see the road, and the driveways which branched off from it, and as long as he didn't lose count, he would be okay. When he reached the fifth turn-off beyond the Williamses', he stopped. He looked behind him to see if the sparrows were following him. The idea was bizarre but somehow inescapable. He could see no sign of them at all, and it occurred to him that perhaps his overloaded mind had imagined the whole thing.

Forget it, he thought. You didn't imagine it. They were back there . . . and they're still back there.

He looked down at the Beaumonts' driveway, but could see nothing from his current position. He began to work his way down, moving slowly, crouched over. He moved quietly and was just.congratulating himself on this fact when George Stark put a gun into his left ear and said, 'If you

move, good buddy, most of your brains are going to land on your right shoulder.'

5

He turned his head slowly, slowly, slowly.

What he saw almost made him wish he had been born blind.

'I guess they'll never want me on the cover of GQ, huh?' Stark asked. He was grinning. The grin showed more of his teeth and gums (and the empty holes where other teeth had been) than even the widest grin should have done. His face was covered with sores and the skin seemed to be sloughing off the underlying tissue. But that wasn't the whole trouble - that wasn't what made Alan's belly crawl with horror and revulsion. Something seemed to be wrong with the underlying structure of the man's face. It was as if he were not simply decaying but mutating in some horrible way.

He knew who the man with the gun was, all the same.

The hair, lifeless as an old wig glued to the straw head of a scarecrow, was blonde. The shoulders were almost as broad as those of a football player with his pads on. He stood with a kind of arrogant, light-footed grace even though he was not moving, and he looked at Alan with good humor.

It was the man who couldn't exist, who never had existed. It was Mr George Stark, that high-toned son of a bitch from Oxford, Mississippi. It was all true.

'Welcome to the carnival, old hoss,' Stark said mildly. 'You move pretty good for such a big man. I almost missed you at first, and I been lookin for you. Let's go on down to the house. I want to introduce you to the little woman. And if you make a single wrong move, you'll be dead, and so will she, and so will those cute little kids. I have nothing whatever in the wide world to lose. Do you believe that?'

Stark grinned at him out of his decaying, horribly wrong face. The crickets went on singing in the grass. Out on the lake, a loon lifted its sweet, piercing cry into the air. Alan wished with all his heart that he was that bird, because when he looked into Stark's staring eyeballs he saw only one thing in them other than death . . . and that one thing was nothing at all. He realized with sudden, perfect clarity that he was never going to see his wife and sons again.

'I believe it,' he said.

'Then drop your gun in the puckies and let's go.'

Alan did as he was told. Stark followed behind him, and they descended to the road. They crossed it and then walked down the slope of the Beaumonts' driveway toward the house. It jutted out of the hillside on heavy wooden pilings, almost like a beach house in Malibu. So far as Alan could see, there were no sparrows around it. None at all. The Toronado was parked by the door, a black and gleaming tarantula in the late afternoon sun. It looked like a bullet. Alan read the bumper sticker with a mild sense of wonder. All of his emotions felt oddly muted, oddly mild, as if this were a dream from which he would soon wake up.

You don't want to think like that, he warned himself. Thinking like that will get you killed..That was almost funny, because he was a dead man already, wasn't he? There he had been, creeping up on the Beaumont driveway, meaning to sneak across the road like Tonto, take-um good look round, get-um idea how things are, Kemo Sabe . . . and Stark had simply put a pistol in his ear and told him to drop his gun and there went the ballgame. I didn't hear him; I didn't even intuit him. People think I'm quiet, but this guy made me look like I had two left feet.

'You like my wheels?' Stark asked.

'Right now I think every police officer in Maine must like your wheels,' Alan said, 'because they're all looking for them.'

Stark gave voice to a jolly laugh. 'Now why don't I believe that?' The barrel of his gun prodded Alan in the small of the back. 'Get on inside, my good old buddy. We're just waiting for Thad. When Thad gets here, I think we'll be ready ready Teddy to rock and roll.'

Alan looked around at Stark's free hand and saw an extremely odd thing: there appeared to be no lines on the palm of that hand. No lines at all.

6

'Alan!' Liz cried. 'Are you all right?'

'Well,' Alan said, 'if it's possible for a man to fee! like an utter horse's ass and still be all right, I guess I am.'

'You couldn't have been expected to believe,' Stark said mildly. He pointed to the scissors he had removed from her panties. He had put them on one of the night-tables which flanked the big double bed, out of the twins' reach. 'Cut her legs free, Officer Alan. No need to bother with her wrists; looks like she's almost got those already. Or are you Chief Alan?'

'Sheriff Alan,' he said, and thought: He knows that. He knows me - Sheriff Alan Pangborn of Castle County - because Thad knows me. But even when he's got the upper hand he doesn't give

away everything he knows. He's as sly as a weasel who's made a career out of henhouses. And for the second time a bleak certainty of his own approaching death filled him. He tried to think of the sparrows, because the sparrows were the one element of this nightmare with which he did not believe George Stark was familiar. Then he thought better of it. The man was too sharp. If he allowed himself hope, Stark would see it in his eyes . . . and wonder what it meant. Alan got the scissors and cut Liz Beaumont's legs free of the tape even as she freed one hand and began to unwrap the tape from her wrists.

'Are you going to hurt me?' she asked Stark apprehensively. She held her hands up, as if the red marks the tape had left on her wrists would somehow dissuade him from doing that.

'No,' he said, smiling a little. 'Can't blame you for doin what comes naturally, can I, darlin Beth?'

She gave him a revolted, frightened took at that and then corralled the twins. She asked Stark if she could take them out in the kitchen and give them something to eat. They had slept until Stark had parked the Clarks' stolen Volvo at the rest area, and were now lively and full of fun.

'You bet,' Stark said. He seemed to be in a cheerful, upbeat mood . . . but he was holding the gun in one hand and his eyes moved ceaselessly back and forth between Liz and Alan. 'Why don't we all go out? I want to talk to the Sheriff, here.'.They trooped out to the kitchen, and Liz began to put together a meal for the twins. Alan

watched the twins while she did it. They were cute kids - as cute as a pair of bunnies, and looking at them reminded him of a time when he and Annie had been much younger, a time when Toby, now a senior in high school, had been in diapers and Todd had still been years away. They crawled happily hither and yon, and every now and then he had to redirect one of them before he or she could pull a chair over or bump his/her head on the underside of the Formica table in the kitchen galley.

Stark talked to him while he babysat.

'You think I'm going to kill you,' he said. 'No need to deny it, Sheriff; I can see it in your eyes, and it is a look I'm familiar with. I could lie and say it's not true, but I think you'd doubt me. You have a certain amount of experience in these matters yourself, isn't that right?'

'I suppose,' Alan said. 'But something like this is a little bit . . . well, outside the normal run of police business.'

Stark threw back his head and laughed. The twins looked toward the sound, and laughed along with him. Alan glanced at Liz and saw terror and hate on her face. And there was something else there as well, wasn't there? Yes. Alan thought it was jealousy. He wondered idly if there was something else George Stark didn't know. He wondered if Stark had any idea of how dangerous this woman could be to him.

'You got that right!' Stark said, still chuckling. Then he grew serious. He leaned toward Alan, and Alan could smell the cheesy odor of his decomposing flesh. 'But it doesn't have to go that way, Sheriff. The odds are against you walking out of this affair alive, I will freely grant you that, but the possibility exists. I have something to do here. A bit of writing. Thad is going to help me

- he's going to prime the pump, you might say. I think we'll probably work through the night, he and I, but by the time the sun comes up tomorrow morning, I should pretty much have my house in order.'

'He wants Thad to teach him how to write on his own,' Liz said from the galley. 'He says they're going to collaborate on a book.'

'That's not quite right,' Stark said. He glanced at her for a moment, a ripple of annoyance passing over the previously unbroken surface of his good temper. 'And he owes me, you know. Maybe he knew how to write before I showed up, but I was the one who taught him how to write stuff people would want to read. And what good is it, writing a thing, if no one wants to read it?'

'No - you wouldn't understand that, would you?' Liz asked.

'What I want from him,' Stark told Alan, 'is a kind of transfusion. I seem to have some sort of . .

. of gland that's quit on me. Temporarily quit. I think Thad knows how to make that gland work. He ought to, because he sort of cloned mine from his own, if you see what I mean. I guess you could say he built most of my equipment.'

Oh no, my friend, Alan thought. That's not right. You might not know it, but it's not. You did it together, you two, because you were there all along. And you have been terribly persistent. Thad tried to put an end to you before he was born and couldn't quite do it. Then, eleven years later, Dr Pritchard tried his hand, and that worked, but only for awhile. Finally, Thad invited you back. He did it, but he didn't know what he was doing . . . because he didn't know about YOU. Pritchard never told him. And you came, didn't you? You are the ghost of his dead brother . . . but you're both much more and much less than that.

Alan caught Wendy, who was by the fireplace, before she could topple over backward into the woodbox..Stark looked at William and Wendy, then back at Alan. 'Thad and I come from a long history of

twins, you know. And, of course, I came into being following the deaths of the twins who would have been these two kids' older brothers or sisters. Call it some sort of transcendental balancing act, if you like.'

'I call it crazy,' Alan said.

Stark laughed. 'Actually, so do I. But it happened. The word became flesh, you might say. How it happened doesn't much matter what matters is that I'm here.'

You're wrong, Alan thought. How it happened may be all that DOES matter now. To us, if not to you . . . because it may be all that can save us.

'Once things got to a certain point, I created myself,' Stark went on. 'And it really isn't so surprising that I've been havin problems with my writing, is it? Creating one's own self . . . that takes a lot of energy. You don't think this sort of thing happens every day, do you?'

'God forbid,' Liz said.

That was either a direct hit or close to it. Stark's head whipped toward her with the speed of a striking snake, and this time the annoyance was more than just a ripple. 'I think maybe you better just shut your pie-hole, Beth,' he said softly, 'before you cause trouble for someone who can't speak for himself. Or herself.'

Liz looked down at the pot on the stove. Alan thought she had paled.

'Bring them over, Alan, would you?' she asked quietly. 'This is ready.'

She took Wendy on her lap to feed, and Alan took William. It was amazing how fast the technique came back, he thought as he fed the chubby little boy. Pop the spoon in, tilt it, then give it that quick but gentle flick up the chin to the lower lip when you take it out again, preventing as many drips and drools as possible. Will kept reaching for the spoon, apparently feeling he was quite old enough and experienced enough to drive it himself, thank you. Alan discouraged him gently, and the boy settled down to serious eating soon enough.

'The fact is, I can use you,' Stark told him. He was leaning against the kitchen counter and running the gunsight of his pistol idly up and down the front of his quilted vest. It made a harsh whispering sound. 'Did the state police call you, tell you to come down and check this place out?

That why you're here?'

Alan debated the pros and cons of lying and decided it would be safer to tell the truth, mostly because he did not doubt that this man - if he was a man - had a very efficient built-in lie detector.

'Not exactly,' he said, and told Stark about Fuzzy Martin's call. Stark was nodding before he had finished. 'I thought I saw a glint in the window of that farmhouse,' he said, and chuckled. His good humor seemed quite restored. 'Well, well! Country folks can't help bein a little nosy, can they, Sheriff Alan? They got so little to do it'd be a wonder if they weren't! So what did you do when you hung up?'

Alan told him that, too, and now he did not lie because he believed Stark knew what he had done - the simple fact that he was here alone answered most questions. Alan thought that what Stark really wanted to know was if he was stupid enough to try an untruth. When he had finished, Stark said: 'Okay, that's good. That improves your chances of livin to fight another day all to hell, Sheriff Alan. Now you listen to me, and I'll tell you exactly what we're going to do once these babies are fed up.'

7.

'You sure you know what to say?' Stark asked again. They were standing by the telephone in the front hall, the only working telephone left in the house.

'Yes.'

'And you're not going to try leaving any little secret messages for your dispatcher to pick up?'

'No.'

'That's good,' Stark said. 'That's good because this would be just an awful time to forget you're a grown-up and start playing Pirates' Cave or Robbers' Roost. Someone would surely get hurt.'

'I wish you'd stop with the threats for a little while.'

Stark's grin widened, became a thing of pestiferous splendor. He had taken William along to assure himself of Liz's continued good behavior, and he now tickled the baby under one arm. 'I can't very well do that,' he said. 'A man who goes against his nature gets constipated, Sheriff Alan.'

The phone stood on a table by a large window. As Alan picked it up, he checked the slope of the woods beyond the driveway for sparrows. There were none in sight. Not yet, anyway.

'What are you lookin for, old hoss?'

'Huh?' He glanced at Stark. Stark's eyes stared at him flatly from their decomposing sockets.

'You heard me.' Stark gestured toward the driveway and the Toronado. 'You ain't lookin out that window the way a man does just because there's a window to look out of. You're wearin the face of a man who expects to see something. I want to know what it is.'

Alan felt a cold thread of terror slip down the center of his back.

'Thad,' he heard himself say calmly. 'I'm keeping my eye out for Thad, the same as you are. He should be getting here soon.'

'That better be all of the truth, don't you think?' Stark asked him, and lifted William a little

higher. He began to run the barrel of his gun slowly up and down William's pleasantly pudgy midriff, tickling him. William giggled and patted Stark's decaying cheek gently, as if to say Stop it, you tease . . . but not just yet, because this is sort of fun.

'I understand,' Alan said, and swallowed dryly.

Stark slid the pistol's muzzle up to William's chin and wiggled the little dewlap there with it. The baby laughed.

If Liz comes around the corner and sees him doing that, she'll go mad, Alan thought calmly.

'You sure you told me everything, Sheriff Alan? Not holdin out on me, or anything?'

'No,' Alan said. Just about the sparrows in the woods around the Williams place. 'I'm not holding out.'

'Okay. I believe you. For the time being, at least. Now go on and do your business.'

Alan dialed the Castle County Sheriff 's Office. Stark leaned close - so close that his ripe aroma made Alan feel like gagging - and listened in.

Sheila Brigham answered on the first ring.

'Hi, Sheila - it's Alan. I'm down by Castle Lake. I tried to get through on the radio, but you know what transmission's like down here.'

'Nonexistent,' she said, and laughed.

Stark smiled.

8.

When they were out of sight around the corner, Liz opened the drawer under the kitchen counter and took out the biggest butcher-knife in there. She glanced toward the corner, knowing Stark could poke his head around it at any moment to check on her. But so far she was okay. She could hear them talking. Stark was saying something about the way Alan had been looking through the window.

I have to do this, she thought, and I have to do it all by myself. He's watching Alan like a cat, and even if I could say something to Thad, that would only make things worse . . . because he has access to Thad's mind.

Holding Wendy in the crook of her arm, she slipped off her shoes and walked quickly into the living room on her bare feet. There was a sofa there, arranged so one could sit on it and look out over the lake. She slid the butcher-knife under the flounce . . . but not too far under. If she sat down, it would be within reach.

And if they sat down together, she and foxy George Stark, he would be within reach, too. I might be able to get him to do that, she thought, hurrying back toward the kitchen again. Yes, I just might. He's attracted to me. And that's horrible . . . but it's not too horrible to use. She came into the kitchen, expecting to see Stark standing there, flashing his remaining teeth at her in that terrible, mouldering grin of his. But the kitchen was empty, and she could still hear Alan on the telephone in the hall. She could picture Stark standing right next to him, listening in. So that was all right. She thought: With any luck, George Stark will be dead when Thad gets here. She didn't want them to meet. She didn't understand all the reasons why she so badly wanted to keep that from happening, but she understood at least one of them: she was afraid that the collaboration might actually work, and she was even more afraid that she knew what the fruits of success would be.

In the end, only one person could lay claim to the dual natures of Thad Beaumont and George Stark. Only one physical being could survive such a primal split. If Thad could provide the jumpstart Stark needed, if Stark began to write on his own, would his wounds and sores begin to heal?

Liz thought they would. She thought Stark might even begin to take over her husband's face and form.

And afterward, how long would it be (presuming Stark left them all alive here and made good his escape) before the first sores showed up on Thad's face?

She didn't think it would be long. And she doubted very much if Stark would be interested in keeping Thad from first decaying and ultimately rotting away to nothing, all his happy thoughts gone forever.

Liz slipped her shoes back on and began to clean up the remains of the twins' early supper. You bastard, she thought, first wiping the counter and then beginning to fill the sink with hot water. YOU'RE the pen name, YOU'RE the interloper, not my husband. She squirted joy into the sink and then went to the living-room door to check on Wendy. She was crawling across the living-room floor, probably looking for her brother. Beyond the sliding glass doors, the late afternoon sun was beating a bright gold track across the blue water of Castle Lake. You don't belong here. You're an abomination, an offence to the eye and the mind. She looked at the sofa with the long, sharp knife lying beneath it, within easy reach. But I can fix that. And if God lets me have my way, I WILL fix it..9

Stark's smell was really getting to him - making him feet as if he were going to gag at any moment - but Alan tried not to let it show in his voice. 'Is Norris Ridgewick back yet, Sheila?'

Beside him, Stark had begun tickling William with the .45 again.

'Not yet, Alan. Sorry.'

'If he comes in, tell him to take the desk. Until then, Clut's got it.'

'His shift - '

'Yeah, his shift's over, I know. The town'll have to pay some overtime and Keeton will ride me about it, but what can I do? I'm stuck out here with a bad radio and a cruiser that vapor-locks every time you cross your eyes at it. I'm calling from the Beaumont place. The state police wanted me to check it out, but it's a bust.'

'That's too bad. Do you want me to pass the word to anyone? The state police?'

Alan looked at Stark, who seemed wholly absorbed in tickling the wriggling, cheerful little boy in his arms. Stark nodded absently at Alan's look.

'Yes. Call the Oxford Barracks for me. I thought I'd catch a bite at that take-out chicken place and then come back here and double-check. That's if I can get my car to start. If not, maybe I'll see what the Beaumonts have got in their pantry. Will you make a note for me, Sheila?'

He felt rather than saw Stark tighten up slightly beside him. The muzzle of the gun paused, pointing at William's navel. Alan felt slow, cold trickles of sweat running down his ribcage.

'Sure, Alan.'

'This is supposed to be a creative guy. I think he can find a better place to stash his spare key than under the doormat.'

Sheila Brigham laughed. 'I've got it.'

Beside him, the muzzle of the .45 began to move again and William began to grin again. Alan relaxed a little.

'Would it be Henry Payton I should talk to, Alan?'

'Uh-huh. Or Danny Eamons if Henry's not there.'

'Okay.'

'Thanks, Sheila. More b.s. from the state, that's all. Take care of yourself.'

'You too, Alan.'

He hung up the telephone gently and turned to Stark. 'Okay?'

'Very much okay,' Stark said. 'I particularly liked the part about the key under the doormat. It added that extra touch that means so much.'

'What a dink you are,' Alan said. Under the circumstances it wasn't a very wise thing to say, but his own anger surprised him.

Stark surprised him, too. He laughed. 'Nobody likes me very much, do they, Sheriff Alan?'

'No,' Alan said.

'Well, that's okay - I like myself enough for everybody. I'm a real New Age sort of fella that way. The important thing is that I think we're in pretty good shape here. I think all that will fly just fine.' He wrapped one hand around the telephone wire and ripped it out of the telephone jack.

'I guess it will,' Alan said, but he wondered. It was thin - a lot thinner than Stark, who perhaps believed all the cops north of Portland were a bunch of sleepy Deputy Dawg types, seemed to realize. Dan Eamons in Oxford would probably let it pass, unless someone from Orono or Augusta lit a fire under him. But Henry Payton? He was a lot less sure Henry would buy the idea that Alan.had taken a single quick, casual look for Homer Gamache's murderer before going off for a chicken basket at Cluck-Cluck Tonite. Henry might smell a rat. Watching Stark tickle the baby with the muzzle of the .45, Alan wondered if he wanted that to happen or not, and discovered he didn't know.

'Now what?' he asked Stark.

Stark drew a deep breath and looked outside at the sunlit woods with evident enjoyment: 'Let's ask Bethie if she can rustle us up a spot of grub. I'm hungry. Country living's great, isn't it, Sheriff Alan? Goddam!'

'All right,' Alan said. He started back toward the kitchen and Stark grabbed him with one hand.

'That crack about vapor-lock,' he said. 'That didn't mean anything special, did it?'

'No,' Alan said. 'It was just another case of . . . what do you call it? The extra touch that means so much. Several of our units have had carburetor troubles this last year.'

'That better be the truth,' Stark said, looking at Alan with his dead eyes. Thick pus was running down from their inner corners and down the sides of his peeling nose like gummy crocodile tears.

'It'd be a shame to have to hurt one of these kids because you had to go and get clever. Thad won't work half so good if he finds out I had to blow one of his twins away in order to keep you in line.'

He grinned and pressed the muzzle of the .45 into William's armpit. William giggled and wriggled. 'He's just as cute as a warm kitten, ain't he?'

Alan swallowed around what felt like a large dry fuzzball in his throat. 'You doing that makes me nervous as hell, fellow.'

'You go ahead and stay nervous,' Stark said, smiling at him. 'I'm just the sort of guy a man wants to stay nervous around. Let's eat, Sheriff Alan. I believe this one's gettin lonesome for his sister.'

Liz heated Stark a bowl of soup in the microwave. She offered him a frozen dinner first, but he shook his head, smiling, then reached into his mouth and plucked a tooth. It came out of the gum with rotten ease.

She turned her head aside as he dropped it into the wastebasket, her lips pressed tightly together, her face a tense mask of revulsion.

'Don't worry,' he said serenely. 'They'll be better before long. Everything's going to be better before long. Poppa's going to be here soon.'

He was still drinking the soup when Thad pulled in behind the wheel of Rawlie's VW ten minutes later..