'I'm not going to bother you anymore, Thad, but let me give you at least one chunk of advice before I go. May do you some good. Don't you get thinkin I'm George Stark. That's the mistake I made. I had to go and kill a whole bunch of people just to get my head squared around again.'
Thad listened to this, thunderstruck. There were things he should be saying, but he couldn't seem to get past this weird feeling of disconnection from his body and his amazement at the pure and perfect gall of the man.
He thought of the futile conversation with Alan Pangborn, and wondered again who he was when he made up Stark, who had started off being just another story to him. Where, exactly, was the line of belies Had he created this monster by losing that line somehow, or was there some other factor, an X-factor which he could not see but only hear in the cries of those phantom birds?
'I don't know,' Stark was saying with an easy laugh, 'maybe I actually am crazy as they said I was when I was in that place.'
Oh good, that's good, get them checking the insane asylums in the South for a tall, broadshouldered man with blonde hair. That won't divert all of them, but it will do for a start, won't it?
Thad clenched the phone tight, his head throbbing with sick fury now.
'But I'm not a bit sorry I did it, because I did love those books, Thad. When I was . . . there . . . in that loony-bin . . . I think they were the only things kept me sane. And you know something? I feel a lot better now. I know for sure who I am now, and that's something. I believe you could call what I did therapy, but I don't think there's much future in it, do you?'
'Quit lying, goddammit!' Thad shouted.
'We could discuss this,' Stark said. 'We could discuss it all the way to hell and back, but it'd take awhile. I guess they told you to keep me on the line, didn't they?'
No. They don't need you on the line. And you know that, too.
'Give my best regards to your lovely wife,' Stark said, with a touch of what almost sounded like reverence. 'Take care of your babies. And you take it easy your own self, Thad. I'm not going to bother you anymore. It's - '
'What about the birds?' Thad asked suddenly. 'Do you hear the birds, George?'
There was a sudden silence on the line. Thad seemed to feel a quality of surprise in it . . . as if, for the first time in the conversation, something had not gone according to George Stark's carefully prepared script. He did not know exactly why, but it was as if his nerve-endings possessed some arcane understanding the rest of him did not have. He felt a moment of wild triumph - the sort of triumph an amateur boxer might feel, slipping one past Mike Tyson's guard and momentarily rocking the champ back on his heels.
'George - do you hear the birds?'
The only sound in the room was the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. Liz and the FBI agents were staring at him.
'I don't know what you're talkin about, hoss,' Stark said slowly. 'Could be you - '
'No,' Thad said, and laughed wildly. His fingers continued to rub the small white scar, shaped vaguely like a question mark, on his forehead. 'No, you don't know what I'm talking about, do you? Well, you listen to me for a minute, George. I hear the birds. I don't know what they mean yet . . . but I will. And when I do . . . '
But that was where the words stopped. When he did, what would happen? He didn't know. The voice on the other end said slowly, with great deliberation and emphasis: 'Whatever you are talking about, Thad, it doesn't matter. Because this is over now.'.There was a click. Stark was gone. Thad almost felt himself being yanked back along the
telephone line from that mythical meeting-place in western Massachusetts, yanked along not at the speed of sound or light but at that of thought, and thumped rudely back into his own body, Stark naked again.
Jesus.
He dropped the phone and it hit the cradle askew. He turned around on legs which felt like stilts, not bothering to replace it properly.
Dave rushed into the room from one direction, Wes from another.
'It worked perfect!' Wes screamed. The FBI agents jumped once more. Malone made an 'Eeek!'
noise very much like the one attributed to women in comic strips who have just spotted mice. Thad tried to imagine what these two would be like in a confrontation with a gang of terrorists or shotgun-toting bank-robbers and couldn't do it. Maybe I'm just too tired, he thought. The two wiremen did a clumsy little dance, slapping each other on the back, and then raced out to the equipment van together.
'It was him,' Thad said to Liz. 'He said he wasn't, but it was him. Him.'
She came to him then and hugged him tightly and he needed that - he hadn't known how badly until she did it.
'I know,' she whispered in his ear, and he put his face into her hair and closed his eyes. 2