The Dark Half - Stephen King [117]
Thad lapsed into the self-interview style which characterized a good part of his journal. As he did so, he realized this very habit this way of finding a path to the things he really thought — suggested yet another form of duality . . . or perhaps it was only another aspect of a single split in his mind and spirit, something which was both fundamental and mysterious.
Question: If you took slides of the bruises on my children's legs, then overlaid them, would you end up with what looked like a single image?
Answer: Yes, I think you would. I think it is like the fingerprints. I think it is like the voiceprints.
Thad sat quietly for a moment, tapping the end of the pen against the journal page, considering this. Then he leaned forward again and began to write more quickly.
Question: Does William KNOW he has a bruise? Answer: No. I don't think he does.
Question: Do I know what the sparrows are, or what they mean? Answer: No.
Question: But I do know there ARE sparrows. I know that much, don't I? Whatever Alan Pangborn or anyone else may believe, I know there ARE sparrows, and I know that they are flying again, don't I?
Answer: Yes.
Now the pen was racing over the page. He had not written so quickly or unselfconsciously in months.
Question: Does Stark know there are sparrows?
Answer: No. He said he doesn't, and I believe him.
Question: Am I SURE I believe him?
He stopped again, briefly, and then wrote:
Stark knows there is SOMETHING. But William must know there is something, too — if his leg is bruised, it must hurt. But Wendy gave him the bruise when she fell downstairs. William only knows he has a hurt place.
Question: Does Stark know he has a hurt place? A vulnerable place?
Answer. Yes. I think he does.
Question: Are the birds mine?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Does that mean that when he wrote THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN on Clawson's wall and Miriam's wall, he didn't know what he was doing and didn't remember it when he was done?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Who wrote about the sparrows? Who wrote it in blood?
Answer: The one who knows. The one to whom the sparrows belong.
Question: Who is the one who knows? Who owns the sparrows?
Answer: I am the knower. I am the owner.
Question: Was I there? Was I there when he murdered them?
He paused again, briefly. Yes, he wrote, and then: No. Both. I didn't have a fugue when Stark killed either Homer Gamache or Clawson, at least not that I remember. I think that what I know . . . what I SEE . . . may be growing.
Question: Does he see you?
Answer: I don't know. But . . .
'He must,' Thad muttered.
He wrote: He must know me. He must see me. If he really DID write the novels, he has known me for a long time. And his own knowing, his own seeing, is also growing. All that traceback and recording equipment didn't faze foxy old George a bit, did it? No — of course not. Because foxy old George knew it would be there. You don't spend almost ten years writing crime fiction without finding out about stuff like that. That's one reason it didn't faze him. But the other one's even better, isn't it? When he wanted to talk to me, talk to me privately, he knew exactly where I'd be and how to get hold of me, didn't he?
Yes. Stark had called the house when he wanted to be overheard, and he had called Dave's Market when he didn't. Why had he wanted to be overheard in the first case? Because he had a message to send to the police he knew would be listening — that he wasn't George Stark and knew he wasn't . . . and that he was done killing, he wasn't coming after Thad and Thad's family. And there was another reason, too. He wanted Thad to see the voice-prints he knew they would make. He knew the police wouldn't believe their evidence, no matter