Stevens only nodded. His eyes were bright and expressionless below the wide brim of his trooper's stetson.
That one thinks I'm guilt .y, 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.
He came in vague, he thought, sipping the milk. It didn't last long - he sharpened up so fast it was scary - but he came in vague. I think he was asleep. He might have been dreaming of Miriam, but I don't think so. What I tapped into was too coherent to be a dream. I think it was memory. I think it was George Stark's subconscious Hall of Records, where everything is neatly written down and then filed in its own slot. I imagine that if he tapped my subconscious - and for all I know, maybe he already has - he'd find the same sort of thing. He sipped his milk and looked at the pantry door.
I wonder if I could tap into his WAKING thoughts . . . his conscious thoughts?
He thought the answer was yes . . . but he also thought it would render him vulnerable again. And next time it might not be a pencil in the hand. Next time it might be a letter-opener in the neck.
He can't. He needs me.
Yeah, but he's crazy. Crazy people are not always hip to their own best interests..He looked at the pantry door and thought about how he could go in there . . . and from there outside again, on the other side of the house.
Could I make him do something The way he made me do something?
He could not answer that one. At least not yet. And one failed experiment might kill him. Thad finished his milk, rinsed his glass, and put it into the dish drainer. Then he went into. the pantry. Here, between shelves of canned goods on the right and shelves of paper goods on the left, was a Dutch door leading out to the wide expanse of lawn which they called the back yard. He unlocked the door, pushed both halves open, and saw the picnic table and the barbecue out there, standing silent sentinel. He stepped out onto the asphalt walk which ran around this side of the house and finally joined the main walk in front.
The walk glimmered like black glass in the chancy light of the half-moon. He could see white splotches on it at irregular intervals.
Sparrow-shit, not to put too fine a point on it, he thought. Thad walked slowly up the asphalt path until he was standing directly below his study windows. An Orinco truck came over the horizon and pelted down Route 15 toward the house, casting a momentary bright light across the lawn and the asphalt walk. In this brief light, Thad saw the corpses of two sparrows lying on the walk - tiny heaps of feathers with trifurcate feet sticking out of them. Then the truck was gone. In the moonlight, the bodies of the dead birds became irregular patches of shadow once again - no more than that. They were real, he thought again. The sparrows were real. That blind, revolted horror returned, making him feel somehow unclean. He tried to make his hands into fists, and his left responded with a wounded bellow. What little relief he had gotten from the Percodan was already passing. They were here. They were real. How can that be?
He didn't know.
Did I call them, or did I create them out of thin air?
He didn't know that, either. But he felt sure of one thing: the sparrows which had come tonight, the real sparrows which had come just before the trance had swallowed him, were only a fraction of all possible sparrows. Perhaps only a microscopic fraction. Never again, he thought. Please - never again.