Which was true. While George had been lost in the fuming, violent world of Alexis Machine, he had begun to heal..The sores were disappearing. The broken, decaying skin was growing pink again; the edges of
this fresh skin were reaching across the healing sores toward each other, in some cases already knitting together. Eyebrows which had disappeared into a soup of rotting flesh were reappearing. The trickles of pus which had turned the collar of Stark's shirt an ugly sodden yellow were drying. Thad reached up with his left hand and touched the sore which was beginning to erupt on his own left temple, and held the pads of his fingers in front of his eyes for a moment. They were wet. He reached up again and touched his forehead. The skin was smooth. The small white scar, souvenir of the operation which had been performed on him in the year when his real life began, was gone.
One end of the teeter-totter goes up, the other end has to come down. Just another law of nature, baby. Just another law of nature.
Was it dark outside yet? Thad supposed it must be - dark or damned near. He looked at his
watch, but there was no help there. It had stopped at quarter of five. The time didn't matter. He would have to do it soon.
Stark smashed a cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray. 'You want to go on or take a break?'
'Why don't you go on?' Thad said. 'I think you can.'
'Yeah,' Stark said. He was not looking at Thad. He had eyes only for the words, the words, the words. He ran a hand through his blonde hair, which was becoming lustrous again. 'I think I can, too. In fact, I know I can.'
He began to scribble again. He looked up briefly when Thad got out of his chair and went to the pencil-sharpener, then looked back down. Thad sharpened one of the Berols to a razor point. And as he turned back, he took the birdcall Rawlie had given him out of his pocket. He closed it in his hand and sat down again, looking at the notebook in front of him. This was it; this was the time. He knew it as well and as truly as he knew the shape of his own face under his hand. The only question left was whether or not he had the guts to try it. Part of him did not want to; a part of him still lusted after the book. But he was surprised to find that feeling was not as strong as it had been when Liz and Alan left the study, and he supposed he knew why. A separation was taking place. A kind of obscene birth. It wasn't his book anymore. Alexis Machine was with the person who had owned him from the start. Still holding the bird-call cupped tightly in his left hand, Thad bent over his own notebook. I am the bringer, he wrote.
Overhead, the restless shifting of the birds stopped.
I am the knower, he wrote.
The whole world seemed to still, to listen.
I am the owner.
He stopped and glanced at his sleeping children.
Five more words, he thought. Just five more.
And he discovered he wanted to write them more than any words he had ever written in his life. He wanted to write stories . . . but more than that, more than he wanted the lovely visions that third eye sometimes presented, he wanted to be free.
Five more words.
He raised his left hand to his mouth and gripped the bird-call in his lips like a cigar. Don't look up now, George. Don't look up, don't look out of the world you're making. Not now. Please, dear God, don't let him look out into the world of real things now..On the blank sheet in front of him he wrote the word PSYCHOPOMPS in cold capital letters. He circled it. He drew an arrow below it, and below the arrow he wrote: THE SPARROWS ARE
FLYING.
Outside, a wind began to blow - only it was no wind; it was the ruffling of millions of feathers. And it was inside Thad's head. Suddenly that third eye opened in his mind, opened wider than it ever had before, and he saw Bergenfield, New Jersey - the empty houses, the empty streets, the mild spring sky. He saw the sparrows everywhere, more than there had ever been before. The world he had grown up in had become a vast aviary. Only it wasn't Bergenfield.
It was Endsville.
Stark quit writing. His eyes widened with sudden, belated alarm. Thad drew in a deep breath and blew. The bird-call Rawlie DeLesseps had given him uttered a strange, squealing note.
'Thad? What are you doing? What are you doing?'
Stark snatched for the bird-call. Before he could touch it, there was a bang and it split open in Thad's mouth, cutting his lips. The sound woke the twins. Wendy began to cry. Outside, the rustle of the sparrows rose to a roar.
They were flying.
3
Liz had started for the stairs when she heard Wendy begin to cry. Alan stood where he was for a moment, transfixed by what he saw outside. The land, the trees, the lake, the sky - they were all blotted out. The sparrows rose in a great wavering curtain, darkening the window from top to bottom and side to side.
As the first small bodies began to thud into the reinforced glass, Alan's paralysis broke.