The Dark Half - Stephen King [15]
Down here we call that fool's stuffing, Stark remarked from behind him.
What do you mean? Thad asked. Where do you mean, down here?
Endsville, Stark said calmly. This is the place where all rail service terminates, Thad.
He added something else, but Thad missed it. Liz's purse was on the floor, and Thad stumbled over it. When he grasped the kitchen table to keep himself from falling, the table fell into splinters and sawdust on the linoleum. A bright nail spun into one corner with a tiny metallic chattering noise.
Stop this right now! Thad cried. I want to wake up! I hate to break things!
You always were the clumsy one, old hoss, Stark said. He spoke as if Thad had had a great many siblings, all of them as graceful as gazelles.
I don't have to be, Thad informed him in an anxious voice that teetered on the edge of a whine. I don't have to be clumsy. I don't have to break things. When I'm careful, everything is fine.
Yes — too bad you stopped being careful, Stark said in that same smiling I-am-just-remarkingon-how-things-are voice. And they were in the back hall.
Here was Liz, sitting splay-legged in the corner by the door to the woodshed, one loafer off, one loafer on. A dead sparrow lay in her lap. She was wearing nylon stockings, and Thad could see a run in one of them. Her head was down, her slightly coarse honey-blonde hair obscuring her face. He didn't want to see her face. As he hadn't needed to see either the razor or Stark's razor grin to know that both were there, so he didn't need to see Liz's face to know she was not sleeping or unconscious but dead.
Turn on the lights, you'll be able to see better, Stark said in that same smiling I-am-just-passingthe-time-of-day-with-you-my-friend voice. His hand appeared over Thad's shoulder, pointing to the lights Thad himself had installed back here. They were electric, of course, but looked quite authentic: two hurricane lamps mounted on a wooden spindle and controlled by a dimmer switch on the wall.
I don't want to see!
He was trying to sound hard and sure of himself, but this was starting to get to him. He could hear a hitching, uneven quality to his voice which meant he was getting ready to blubber. And what he said seemed to make no difference anyway, because he reached for the circular rheostat on the wall. When he touched it, blue painless electric fire squirted out between his fingers, so thick it was more like jelly than light. The rheostat's round ivory—colored knob turned black, blew off the wall, and zizzed across the room like a miniature flying saucer. It broke the small window on the other side and disappeared into a day which had taken on a weird green cast of light, like weathered copper.
The electric hurricane lamps glowed supernaturally bright and the spindle began to turn, winding up the chain from which the fixture depended and sending shadows flying across the room in a lunatic carousel dance. First one and then the other of the lamp-chimneys shattered, showering Thad with glass.
Without thinking he leaped forward and grabbed his sprawled wife, wanting to get her out from under before the chain could snap and drop the heavy wooden spindle on her. This impulse was so strong it overrode everything, including his sure knowledge that it didn't matter, she was dead. Stark could have uprooted the Empire State Building and dropped it on her and it wouldn't have mattered. Not to her, anyway. Not anymore.
As he slid his arms under hers and locked his hands between her shoulder-blades, her body shifted forward and her head lolled back. The skin of her face was cracking like the surface of a Ming vase. Her glazed eyes suddenly exploded. Noxious green jelly, sickeningly warm, spurted up into his face. Her mouth gaped ajar and her teeth