The Dark Half - Stephen King [34]
She could see Frederick Clawson, who had gone from Mr Bigshot to no shot at all, sitting in one of his two living-room chairs. He had been tied in. He was naked, his clothes thrown into a snarly ball under the coffee table. She saw the bloody hole at his groin. His testicles were still where they belonged; his penis had been stuffed into his mouth. There was plenty of room, because the murderer had also cut out Mr Bigshot's tongue. It was tacked to the wall. The pushpin had been driven into its pink meat so deeply that she could only see a grinning crescent of bright yellow which was the pushpin's top, and her mind relentlessly photographed this, too. Blood had drizzled down the wallpaper below it, making a wavery fan-shape.
The killer had employed another pushpin, this one with a bright green head, to nail the second page of the People magazine article to the ex-bigshot's bare chest. She could not see Liz Beaumont's face — it was obscured by Clawson's blood — but she could see the woman's hand, holding out the pan of brownies for Thad's smiling inspection. She remembered that picture in particular had irked Clawson. What a put-up job! he had exclaimed. She hates to cook she said so in an interview just after Beaumont published his first novel.
Finger-written in blood above the severed tongue tacked to the wall were these five words:
THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN.
Jesus Christ, some distant part of her mind thought. It's just like a George Stark novel . . . like something Alexis Machine would do.
From behind her came a soft bumping sound.
Dodie Eberhart screamed and whirled. Machine came at her with his terrible straight-razor, its steely glitter now sleeved with Frederick Clawson's blood. His face was the twisted mask of scars which was all Nonie Griffiths had left after she carved him up at the end of Machine's Way, and —
And there was no one there at all.
The door had swung shut, that was all, the way doors sometimes do.
Is that so? the distant part of her mind asked . . . except it was closer now, raising its voice, urgent with fright. It was standing partway open with no problem at all when you came up the stairs. Not wide open, but enough so you could tell it wasn't shut.
Now her eyes went back to the beer bottles on the coffee table. One empty. One half-full, with a ring of foam still on the inside of the neck.
The killer had been behind the door when she came in. If she had turned her head she would almost surely have seen him . . . and now she would be dead, too.
And while she had been standing here, mesmerized by the colorful remains of Frederick 'Mr Bigshot' Clawson, he had simply gone out, closing the door behind him.
The strength flowed out of her legs and she slipped to her knees with a weird kind of grace, looking like a girl about to take communion. Her mind ran frantically over the same thought, like a gerbil on an exercise wheel: Oh I shouldn't have screamed, he'll come back, oh I shouldn't have screamed, he'll come back, oh I shouldn't have screamed —
And then she heard him, the measured thud of his big feet on the hall carpet. Later she became convinced that the goddam Shulmans had turned up their stereo again, and she had mistaken the steady thump of the bass for footsteps, but at that moment she was convinced it was Alexis Machine and he was returning . . . a man so dedicated and so murderous that not even death would stop him.
For the first time in her life, Dodie Eberhart fainted.
She came to less than three minutes later. Her legs would still not support her, so she crawled back down the short apartment hallway to the door with her hair hanging in her face. She thought of opening the door and looking out, but could not bring herself to do it. She turned the thumblock instead, then shot