The Dark Half - Stephen King [209]
Thad nodded. 'I understand.'
No you don't, Alan thought. You don't understand what you are, and I doubt that you ever will. Your wife might . . . although I wonder if things will ever be right between the two of you after this, if she'll ever want to understand, or dare to love you again. Your kids, maybe, someday. . . but not you, Thad. Standing next to you is like standing next to a cave some nightmarish creature came out of. The monster is gone now, but you still don't like to be too close to where it came from. Because there might be another. Probably not; your mind knows that, but your emotions — they play a different tune, don't they? Oh boy. And even if the cave is empty forever, there are the dreams. And the memories. There's Homer Gamache, for instance, beaten to death with his own prosthetic arm. Because of you, Thad. All because of you.
That wasn't fair, and part of Alan knew it. Thad hadn't asked to be a twin; he hadn't destroyed his twin brother in the womb out of malice (We are not talking about Cain rising up and slaying Abel with a rock, Dr Pritchard had said); he had not known what sort of monster was waiting when he began writing as George Stark.
Still, they had been twins.
And he could not forget the way Stark and Thad had laughed together.
That crazy, loony laughter and the look in their eyes.
He wondered if Liz would be able to forget.
A little breeze gusted and blew the nasty smell of LP gas toward him.
'Let's burn it,' he said abruptly. 'Let's burn it all. I don't care who thinks what later on. There's hardly any wind; the fire trucks will get here before it spreads much in any direction. If it takes some of the woods around this place, so much the better.'
'I'll do it,' Thad said. 'You go on up with Liz. Help with the twi — '
'We'll do it together,' Alan said. 'Give me your socks.'
'What?'
'You heard me — I want your socks.'
Alan opened the door of the Toronado and looked inside. Yes a standard shift, as he'd thought. A macho man like George Stark would never be satisfied with an automatic; that was for married Walter Mitty types like Thad Beaumont.
Leaving the door open, he stood on one foot and took off his right shoe and sock. Thad watched him and began to do the same. Alan put his shoe back on and repeated the process with his left foot. He had no intention of putting his bare feet down in that mass of dead birds, even for a moment.
When he was done, he knotted the two cotton socks together. Then he took Thad's and added them to his own. He walked around to the passenger-side rear, dead sparrows crunching under his shoes like newspaper, and opened the Toronado's fuel port. He spun off the gas cap and stuck the makeshift fuse into the throat of the tank. When he pulled it out again, it was soaked. He reversed it, sticking in the dry end, leaving the wet end hanging against the guano-splattered flank of the car. Then he turned to Thad, who had followed him. Alan fumbled in the pocket of his uniform shirt and brought out a book of paper matches. It was the sort of matchbook they give you at newsstands with your cigarettes. He didn't know where he had gotten this one, but there was a stamp-collecting ad on the cover.
The stamp shown was a picture of a bird.
'Light the socks when the car starts to roll,' Alan said. 'Not a moment before, do you understand?'
'Yes.'
'It'll go with a bang. The house will catch. Then the LP tanks around back. When the fire inspectors get here, it's going to look like your friend lost control and hit the house and the car exploded. At least that's what I hope.'
'Okay.'
Alan walked back around the car.
'What's going on down there?' Liz called nervously. 'The babies are getting cold!'
'Just another minute!' Thad called back.
Alan reached into the Toronado's unpleasantly smelly interior and popped the emergency brake. 'Wait until it's rolling,' he called back over his shoulder.
'Yes.'
Alan depressed the clutch with his foot and put the Hurst