Chapter 11 Chapter Ten Doubts

one They carried the sleeping twins upstairs and started putting themselves into bed.Thad stripped off to a pair of shorts and an undershirt—his pajamas—and walked into the bathroom.He was brushing his teeth when a sudden tremor hit him.He dropped his toothbrush, sprayed a mouthful of white foam, and staggered towards the toilet. He retched painfully, but nothing came out, and his stomach began to settle down again...bearable at least. He turned and Liz was standing by the door in a blue nylon pajamas that didn't reach her knees, looking at him blankly. "You've got me busy, Ted. It's not good, it's not good."

He sighed heavily, and stretched his hands out in front of him, fingers splayed, still trembling. "How long do you know?" "When the Sheriff came back tonight, you were a bit of a freak. When he asked the last question...about what was written on Clausen's wall...you had a look on your face, it was obvious, as if you had a forehead Like a neon sign." "Pangbo didn't see any neon signs." "Sergeant Pombo doesn't know you as well as I do...but if you didn't notice a little surprise at the end, it was because you didn't pay close attention. Even he could tell there was something wrong, judging by the way he looked at you." at this point."

Her mouth is drawn down slightly, a movement that accentuates the lines on her face.He had first seen them after the accident and miscarriage in Boston, and they had deepened on her face as she watched him try in vain to pump water from what seemed to be a dry well. Around that time he started drinking heavily.Liz's accident, the miscarriage, the enormous success of "Masin's Way," written under Stark's pseudonym, and the subsequent failure of "The Purple Haze," all combined to create a deeply depressive state of mind.He realizes that this is a selfish and introverted state of mind, but cannot shake it off.In the end, he downed a handful of sleeping pills with a half-bottle of wine, and it was a cold suicide attempt...but an attempt nonetheless.All of this happened in three years, and these three years seemed as long as forever.

Of course, little or nothing of this appeared in the magazine Volkswagen. Now, he saw Liz looking at him that way again, and he hated it.Anxiety is bad, mistrust is worse, and he thinks plain hate is easier to accept than this weird, prying look. "I hate you for lying to me," she said flatly. "I'm not lying, Liz! For God's sake!" "Sometimes being silent is lying." "I'll tell you," he said, "I was just trying to figure out how to tell you." Is that true?Is it true?He didn't know, but he certainly wasn't lying by keeping silent.He felt compelled to be silent, as someone who sees blood in his toilet or a lump between his buttocks has to be silent.Silence on such matters is irrational...but fear is also irrational.

There were other reasons: he was a writer, a man of imagination.He'd never met anyone—including himself—with an obvious understanding of why he or she did anything.He sometimes believed that the urge to write fiction was simply a defense against chaos or even insanity.It is a desperate effort by those who can only find order within themselves. A voice inside him whispered for the first time: Who were you when you wrote, Ted?Who were you then? He was speechless. "What's the matter?" Liz asked, her voice sharp, on the verge of anger. He raised his head from his contemplation, startled: "What did you say?"

"Have you found a way to tell me? What the hell is going on?" "Look," he said, "I don't see why you're so angry, Liz!" "Because I'm terrified!" she yelled angrily...but now he could see the tears in the corners of her eyes. "Because you hid it from the Sheriff, I thought you wouldn't hide it from me! If I hadn't seen the look on your face..." "Oh?" Now he was getting angry himself. "What expression? What did you see?" "You look guilty," she yelled, "that's the way you look when you tell people you're quit drinking when you're not. When—" She stopped abruptly.He doesn't know what she sees in his face - and doesn't want to know - but the look takes away her anger, and there's a moved look on her face, "I'm sorry, it wasn't fair for me to say that. "

"Why not?" he said blankly. "It's true." He went back to the bathroom and rinsed off the last bit of toothpaste with the mouthwash, which was alcohol-free mouthwash, like cough medicine.The substitute essence was in the kitchen cupboard, and he hadn't had a sip since writing the last Stark novel. Her hand touched his shoulder lightly: "Ted... we are angry, it only hurts us, but it doesn't help. You say there is a psychopath who thinks he is George Stark, and he has Killed two people we knew, one of whom was partially responsible for the leak of Stark's pseudonym. You should be aware that you are on that person's blacklist, and despite that, you are hiding something. That sentence What means?"

"The sparrows are flying again?" said Thad.The fluorescent light in the bathroom was very harsh, and he looked at his face in the mirror, an old face that hadn't changed, maybe a little shadow under the eyes, but it was still the same old face, he was happy, it wasn't the face of a movie star, but it was is his. "Oh, you know what that means, what does it mean?" He turned off the light in the bathroom, put his hand on her shoulder, and they went to lie on the bed. "When I was eleven," he said, "I had an operation where it removed a small tumor from the front lobe of my brain -- I think the front lobe, you know."

"Really?" She looked at him confusedly. "I told you, before the tumor was diagnosed, I had terrible headaches." "right." He started caressing her thighs casually. Her legs were long and lovely, and her pajamas were really short. "Did the voice tell you?" "Voice?" She looked confused. "I don't think I told you...but look, it doesn't seem to matter, it was a long time ago. People with brain tumors have headaches a lot, sometimes they have attacks, sometimes both, these symptoms Both have their own harbingers, which are called sensory harbingers, and the most common are smells—pencil shavings, freshly peeled onions, rotten fruit. My sensory harbingers are visual, and it's flocks of birds."

He watched her impassively, their noses almost touching, and he could feel a lock of her hair touch his forehead. "To be exact, it's a sparrow." He sat up, not wanting to see the shocked look on her face, he grabbed her hand. "bring it on." "Ted...where are you going?" "The study," he said, "I want to show you something." two A large oak tree desk dominates Ted's study.The table is neither old nor trendy, it's just a huge, perfectly functional block of wood that stands like a dinosaur under three hanging glass spheres, and the light that hits the tabletop isn't too harsh.The desktop was mostly covered, and manuscripts, piles of letters, books, and incoming proofs were strewn about.On the white wall above the table was a poster of Ted's favorite building: the Flatiron Building in New York.Its incredible wedge shape always delighted Ted.

Next to the typewriter was the manuscript of the novel he was working on, The Golden Dog, and on the typewriter was the manuscript he had typed that day, six pages in total, which was his usual amount... that is, when he was writing as himself.As Stark, he usually wrote eight pages, sometimes ten. "I was revising a manuscript before Pangbo came," he said, picking up a stack of papers from the typewriter and handing it to her, "when the sound came—the sound of a sparrow. For the second time today, only this time Louder, do you see what is written at the top of the manuscript paper?" She watched for a long time, and all he could see was her hair and the top of her head.When she looked up at him, her face was pale and her lips were drawn into a narrow gray line. "Same," she whispered, "exactly the same, oh, Tad, what the hell is going on? How—" She wobbled, and he went over and grabbed her by the shoulders, fearing she'd pass out, but his foot caught in the X-shaped leg of the office chair and nearly threw them both onto the desk. "Are you okay?" "It's all right," she whispered. "And you?" "It's nothing," he said. "I'm sorry, but I'm always clumsy. I just stand up and put on a show." "You wrote that before Pangbol came," she said.She seemed to find this incomprehensible, "Before." "right." "What on earth does that mean?" She looked at him nervously, the pupils of her eyes growing large and dark despite the bright light. "I don't know," he said, "I thought you'd guess something." She shook her head, put the manuscript back on his desk, and wiped her short pajamas with her hands, as if to wipe off some dirt.Ted believed she didn't know what he was doing, and he didn't tell her. "Now do you see why I kept it a secret?" he asked. "Got it... I think I got it." "What would he say? Our practical sheriff from the smallest town in Maine believes in computers and eyewitness evidence, and he'd rather believe that I have a twin than that someone can duplicate fingerprints if he knows about it." , what would he say?" "I...I don't know." She was trying to shake herself out of the shock, something he'd seen her do before and admired her self-control. "I don't know what he's going to say, Ted." "I don't know either. I thought the worst he'd think I had prior knowledge of the crime, and he'd be more likely to think that I came here to write this sentence after he left tonight." "Why did you do such a thing? Why?" "I think his first surmise was that I was insane," Ted said flatly. "Cops like Pangbo would rather believe insanity than accept something beyond ordinary sense. I Been trying to figure this out for myself, and if you think I shouldn't, then we can call the Fort Rock Sheriff's Office and leave a message for him." She shook her head. "I don't know. I've heard about supernatural connections on some talk shows..." "You believe those words?" “I didn’t really think about those claims before,” she said. “Now I do.” She reached for the written manuscript. "You wrote it with George's pen?" she said. "It's the closest thing to me," he said cautiously, remembering the Scrito, but pushing it out of his mind immediately, "and they weren't George's pencils, never were, they were mine. I Fucking tired of seeing him as a separate person, it doesn't make any sense anymore." "But you used one of his words today - 'Alibi for me.' I've never heard you use it outside of books before. Is that just a coincidence?" He wanted to tell her it was a coincidence, of course, but he didn't say it.It could have been a coincidence, but from what he had written on the paper, how could he be sure? "I have no idea." "Are you in a trance, Tad? Are you in a trance when you write this?" Slowly and reluctantly, he replied, "Yes, I think so." "Is that all? Anything else?" "I can't remember," he said, before adding, grudgingly, "I think I might have said something, but I really can't remember." She looked at him for a long time, then said, "Let's go to bed." "Do you think we can sleep, Liz?" She smiled sadly. three But twenty minutes later, when he was practically dozing off to sleep, Liz's voice woke him again. "You must go to the doctor," she said, "on Monday." "No headache this time," he protested, "just the sound of the birds, and the odd thing I wrote." He hesitated, then added hopefully: "You don't think it's just a coincidence ?" "I don't know what it is," said Liz, "but I must tell you, Ted, that I rarely believe in coincidences." For some reason this amused them both, and they lay on the bed hugging each other and giggling as quietly as possible so as not to wake the twins.They've made up again—the only thing Ted can be sure of now is that business as usual is over, that the storm is over, and the sad past is buried, at least for the time being. "I've got an appointment with the doctor," she said when their laughter stopped. "No," he said, "I'll do it myself." "You didn't forget on purpose, did you?" "No. The first thing I do on Monday is make a doctor's appointment, I promise you." "Okay," she sighed, "it'd be a fucking miracle if I could sleep." But five minutes later, her breathing became even and even, and within five minutes Ted was falling asleep himself. Four He had that dream again. It was the same until the end: Stark led him through the empty house, stood behind him, and when Tad insisted in a trembling voice that it was his own house, Stark told him he was wrong.You've got it all wrong, Stark said from behind his right shoulder (or left shoulder? does it matter).He told Ted again that the owner of the house was dead.The owner of this house is in that fairy-tale place where there is no railroad and everyone here calls that place Anderswell.It was all the same until they went into the back hall, where Liz was no longer alone, and with her was Frederick Clausen, naked except for a ridiculous leather jacket, He died like Liz. From behind his shoulder, Stark mused, "Right here, this is what happens to informers, they turn into trash. Now that he's been dealt with, I'm going to deal with them all, one by one. You'd better Don't let me take care of you. The sparrow is flying again, Tad—remember. The sparrow is flying." And then, just outside the house, Tad heard the sparrows: not thousands, but millions, maybe billions, as this gigantic flock flew across the sun, completely obscuring it , day turns into night. "I can't see!" he screamed, and George Stark whispered from behind him: "They're flying again, old man, don't forget, don't get in my way." He woke up, trembling and cold, and had trouble falling asleep for a long time this time.Lying in the dark, he thought about the dream and thought it was absurd—perhaps for the first time, it was absurd.He used to think of Stark and Alex Massin as two people who looked alike, both tall: broad shoulders, not grown up, but made of some hard material Yes, both of them were blond - a fact that didn't change the absurdity of the whole thing.Pseudonyms don't come alive to kill.He's going to tell Liz at breakfast, and they'll laugh about it... maybe not, given the situation, but they'll grin. I'll call it my William Wilson complex, he thought, and fell asleep again.But in the morning, the dream didn't seem worth talking about, so he didn't... But as the days went by, he couldn't help thinking about it, as if it were a black pearl.