The Dark Half (39 page)

He lowered his hand until the tip of the pencil touched the paper. That numbness flowed back over it and into it, making it feel as if it were immersed in a stream of very cold, very clear water.

Once more the hand's first act was to rise again and turn to a fresh page in the journal. It came back down, creased the turned sheet. flat . . . but this time the writing did not begin at once. Thad had time to think that the contact, whatever it was, had been broken in spite of the numbness, and then the pencil jerked in his hand as if it were a live thing itself . . . alive but badly wounded. It jerked, making a mark like a sleepy comma, jerked again, making a dash, and then wrote
before coming to rest like a wheezy piece of machinery.

the pencil wrote.

“What do you mean?” Thad muttered, but he felt a wild hope explode in his head. Could it possibly be that simple? He supposed that it
could
be, especially for a writer who had no business existing in the first place. Christ, there were enough
real
writers who couldn't exist unless they were writing, or felt they couldn't . . . and in the case of men like Ernest Hemingway, it really came down to the same thing, didn't it?

The pencil trembled, then drew a long, scrawling line below the last message. It looked weirdly like the voice-print.

“Come
on, ”
Thad whispered. “What the hell do you mean?”

the pencil wrote. The letters were stilted, reluctant. The pencil jerked and wavered between his fingers, which were wax-white.
If I exert much more pressure,
Thad thought,
it's just gonna snap off.

Suddenly his arm flew up. At the same time his numb hand flicked the pencil with the agility of a stage-magician manipulating a card, and instead of holding it between his fingers most of the way down its barrel, he was gripping the pencil in his fist like a dagger.

He brought it
down
—Stark brought it down—and suddenly the pencil was buried in the web of flesh between the thumb and first finger of his left hand. The graphite tip, somewhat dulled by the writing Stark had done with it, passed almost all the way through it. The pencil snapped. A bright puddle of blood filled the depression the pencil's barrel had dragged into his flesh, and suddenly the force which had gripped him was gone. Red pain raved up from his hand, which lay on his desk with the pencil jutting out of it.

Thad threw his head back and clamped his teeth shut against the agonized howl which fought to escape his throat.

There was a small bathroom off the study, and when Thad felt able to walk, he took his monstrously throbbing hand there and examined the wound under the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent tube. It looked like a bullet-wound—a perfectly round hole rimmed with a flaring black smudge. The smudge looked like gunpowder, not graphite. He turned his hand over and saw a bright red dot, the size of a pinprick, on the palm side. The tip of the pencil.

That's how close it came to going all the way through,
he thought.

He ran cold water over and into the wound until his hand was numb, then took the bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the cabinet. He found he could not hold the bottle in his left hand, so he pressed it against his body with his left arm in order to get the cap off. Then he poured disinfectant into the hole in his hand, watching the liquid turn white and foam, gritting his teeth against the pain.

He put the hydrogen peroxide back and then took down the few bottles of prescription medicine in the cabinet one by one, examining their labels. He had had terrible back-spasms after a fall he had taken while cross-country skiing two years ago, and good old Dr. Hume had given him a prescription for Percodan. He had taken only a few of them; he had found the pills fucked up his sleep-cycle and made it hard for him to write.

He finally discovered the plastic vial hiding behind a can of Barbasol shaving cream that had to be at least a thousand years old. Thad pried the vial's cap off with his teeth and shook one of the pills out onto the side of the sink. He debated adding a second, and decided against it. They were strong.

But he decided to take the chance. There really wasn't even a question—the pain was immense, incredible. As for the hospital . . . he looked at the wound in his hand again and thought,
Probably I should go and have this looked at but I'll be goddamned if I will. I've had enough people looking at me like I was crazy in the last few days to last me a lifetime.

He scooped up another four Percodans, stuffed them into his pants pocket, and returned the vial to the medicine cabinet shelf. Then he covered the wound with a Band-Aid. One of the round spots did the trick.
Looking at that little circle of plastic, he thought, you'd have no idea how badly the damned thing hurts. He set a bear-trap for me. A bear-trap in his mind, and I walked right into it.

Was that really what had happened? Thad didn't know, not for sure, but he knew one thing: he did not want a repeat performance.

When he had himself under control again—or something approaching it—Thad returned his journal to his desk drawer, turned off the lights in the study, and went down to the second floor. He paused on the landing, listening for a moment. The twins were quiet. So was Liz.

The Percodan, apparently not too old to work, began to kick in and the pain in Thad's hand began to back off a little. If he inadvertently flexed it, the low throb there turned into a scream, but if he was careful of it, it wasn't too bad.

Oh, but it's going to hurt in the morning, buddy
. . .
and what are you going to tell Liz?

He didn't know, exactly. Probably the truth . . . or some of it, anyway. She had gotten very skilled, it seemed, at picking up on his lies.

The pain was better, but the after-effects of the sudden shock—
all
the sudden shocks—still lingered, and he thought it would be some time yet before he could sleep. He went down to the first floor and peeked out at the State Police cruiser parked in the driveway through the sheers drawn across the big living-room window. He could see the firefly flicker of two cigarettes inside.

It was a tempting idea, but the study was on the other side of the house. Its windows could not be seen from the driveway. Neither could the carriage-house. So the cops couldn't have seen the birds, anyway. Not, at least, when they began to roost.

Thad went outside. He had hardly done more than open the kitchen screen door before both Troopers were out of the car, one on each side. They were big men who moved with the silent speed of ocelots.

“Did he call again, Mr. Beaumont?” the one who had gotten out on the driver's side asked. His name was Stevens.

“No—nothing like that,” Thad said. “I was writing in my study when I thought I heard a whole bunch of birds take off. It freaked me out a little. Did you guys hear that?”

Thad didn't know the name of the cop who had gotten out on the passenger side. He was young and blonde, with one of those round, guileless faces which radiate good nature. “Heard em and saw em both,” he said. He pointed to the sky, where the moon, a little past the first quarter, hung above the house. “They flew right across the moon. Sparrows. Quite a flock of em. They hardly ever fly at night. ”

“Where do you suppose they came from?” Thad asked.

“Well, I tell you,” the Trooper with the round face said, “I don't know. I flunked Bird Surveillance. ”

He laughed. The other Trooper did not. “Feeling jumpy tonight, Mr. Beaumont?” he asked.

Thad looked at him levelly. “Yes,” he said. “I've been feeling jumpy
every
night, just lately. ”

“Could we do anything for you just now, sir?”

“No,” Thad said. “I think not. I was just curious about what I heard. Goodnight, you guys. ”

“Night,” the round-faced Trooper said.

Stevens only nodded. His eyes were bright and expressionless below the wide brim of his Trooper's Stetson.

That one thinks I'm guilty,
Thad thought, going back up the walk.
Of what? He doesn't know. Probably doesn't care. But he's got the face of a man who believes everyone is guilty of something. Who knows? Maybe he's even right

He closed the kitchen door and locked it behind him. He went back into the living room and looked out again. The Trooper with the round face had retreated back into the cruiser, but Stevens was still standing on the driver's side, and for a moment Thad had the impression that Stevens was looking directly into his eyes. It couldn't be, of course; with the sheers drawn, Stevens would see only an indistinct dark shape . . . if he saw anything at all.

Still, the impression lingered.

Thad drew the drapes over the sheers and went to the liquor cabinet. He opened it and took out a bottle of Glenlivet, which had always been his favorite tipple. He looked at it for a long moment and then put it back. He wanted a drink very badly, but this would be the worst time in history to start drinking again.

He went out to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk, being very careful not to bend his left hand. The wound had a brittle, hot feel.