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 f**k 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?'