Chapter 18 Chapter 17 Twin Induction

one Ted is convinced that there must be a way for the car to reach the mountain.George Stark didn't go away.But Ted believes that Wendy's fall down the stairs two days after David's store received Stark's call set the course of events. The most important result is that it shows him the direction of action.In those two days, he was in a state of numbness, and found that he couldn't understand the simplest TV programs, couldn't read, and writing was even more impossible.He always walked from one room to another, sat for a while, and continued to walk aimlessly.He kept getting in Liz's way and getting on her nerves.She didn't reprimand him, although he guessed she wanted to give him a good reprimand more than once.

Twice he had almost told her about Stark's second phone call, in which, as he hadn't been tapped, crafty George had told him all that was on his mind.But both times he didn't say it because he knew it would only upset her more. Twice he found himself in the upstairs study with a Belloire pencil he had said he would never use again, looking at a stack of new, cellophane-bound notebooks that Starck used They wrote his novels. "You have an idea...an idea about marriage and armored vehicles." That is true.Ted even has a great title: Iron Marcin.One more thing is true: Deep down in his heart he wanted to write this book.He always had this desire to write, like you have an itchy spot on your back but you can't reach it if you want to scratch it.

George will tickle you. Ah, yes.George would happily tickle him.But something will happen to him, because it's not like it used to be, is it?What is going to happen?He didn't know, probably couldn't, but a horrible image kept coming to him from that fascinating racist myth of the past—"Little Negro Zangbo."The black Sambo climbed up the tree, and the tigers couldn't reach him, and they became so furious that they bit each other's tails, and ran faster and faster around the tree, until they turned into a pile of cream.Sambo poured the cream into the crock and took it home to his mother.

George the Alchemist, Tad muses, sits in his study, tapping an unsharpened Belore pencil on the edge of the table; the straw becomes gold, the tiger becomes cream, the book becomes a bestseller, and Tad becomes...  What? He didn't know, didn't dare to know, but he was going to be fucked, Ted was going to be fucked, he was sure of it.There would be another man who looked like him living here, but behind that Ted Beaumont face would be another mind, a sick, genius mind. He thought the new Ted Beaumont would be less clumsy...but more dangerous. Where's Liz and the kids? If he gave in, would Stark spare them?

He won't spare them. He also considered running away, putting Liz and the twins in the car and leaving.But what good is that?What good is that when crafty George sees through dumb Ted's eyes?It's no use running to the top of the earth.If they ran there, and looked about, they would see George Stark after them again in a husky-drawn sled, carrying a pocket razor. He considered calling Alan Pumppole, but dismissed the idea immediately.Pombo told them where Dr. Brichard was, and said he was going to ask him about the situation when the Brichards returned from camp.From Pangbol's words, Ted knew what he believed...and what he didn't.If he had told Pangbo about the call he got at David's, Pangpo might have thought he made it up.Even if Rosalie testified that he got a call from someone at the store, Pombo still wouldn't believe it, and he and all the other officers were inclined not to believe it.

So the days passed slowly, and every day was about the same.Only in the afternoon of the second day, Ted wrote in his diary: I feel that I am in a spiritual dead zone.It was the only entry he had written all week, and he was starting to wonder if he would ever write another one.His new novel, The Golden Dog, was out of order, and he took that to be self-evident.It's hard to make up stories when you're worried that a bad guy -- a very bad guy -- is going to come and kill your whole family and then kill you. This state of depression he remembered coming only in the weeks following his sobriety, before Liz's miscarriage and Stark's appearance.Then as now, it felt like there was a problem, but it was inaccessible, like a mirage.The more he tried to solve the puzzle, to attack it with both hands, to destroy it, the faster it retreated, until he was exhausted and the mirage still taunted him on the horizon.

He slept badly those nights, dreaming of George Stark showing him his own deserted home where everything he touched would explode, and in the last house his wife and Frederick Clausen's body was there.As soon as he got there, all the birds started flying, flying up from the trees and telephone wires and poles, thousands, millions, so many that they blotted out the sun. Before Wendy tumbled down the stairs, feeling like a piece of shit waiting for some murderer to come, he tucked his napkin under his collar, picked up his fork, and started eating. two The twins have been crawling for some time, and since last month they have been able to stand up with the help of a stable external object. A chair leg, coffee table, and even an empty cardboard box are enough to help them stand.Children of any age can mess around, but eight-month-olds, who can crawl but can't walk, are the worst.

Around 5:15 in the afternoon, Liz put them on the floor to play.After ten minutes of confident crawling and staggering, William stood up, holding on to the coffee table.He looked around and made several commanding gestures with his right hand that reminded Thad of old newsreel footage of Mussolini addressing his subjects from the balcony.William grabbed his mother's teacup, spilled the crumbs on himself, and fell to the floor.Luckily the tea was cold, but William clutched the cup and it touched his mouth, and the lower lip bleed a little, and he began to cry.Wendy quickly joined in. Liz picked him up and examined him, then rolled his eyes at Tad, and carried him upstairs to change. "Attention princess," she said as she left.

"I will," Ted said, but he discovered, and soon to discover, that such promises were of little use at the age when children were at their most troubled.William snatched Liz's glass right under her nose, and by the time Tad saw that Wendy was about to fall down the third flight of stairs, it was too late. He was reading a newsmagazine—not reading but browsing, pausing now and then to look at a photograph.When he was done, he went to the fireplace, ready to put it back in a large woven basket, and get another copy.Wendy was crawling on the floor, the tears on her chubby face hadn't dried yet, but she had forgotten about it.As she crawled, she made a noise that Ted suspected had something to do with the cars and trucks they'd seen on TV.He knelt down, put the magazines on top of the basket, rummaged through the others, and finally picked out a Harper's for no particular reason.He felt like a man in a dentist's office waiting to have a tooth pulled.

He turned around, and Wendy was already on the stairs.He had climbed the third flight of stairs, and was holding on to the post between the railing and the floor and stood up unsteadily.She caught him looking at her, and she swung her arms wildly, grinning.The movement made his fat body lean forward. "My God!" he whispered, and when he stood up, he saw her take a step forward and let go of the post, "Wendy, don't do that!" He jumped forward and almost caught her, but he was a clumsy man, and one of his feet caught on the leg of the chair.The chair tipped over and Ted fell to the ground.Wendy screamed and fell down.Her body turned slightly in mid-air.He knelt and waved at her, trying to catch her, but missed by two feet.Her right leg hit the first step and her head hit the carpeted living room floor with a muffled thud.

She gave a scream, which he thought was too frightening for a child to cry out in pain, and took her in his arms. Overhead, Liz called out in panic, "Ted?" He heard her footsteps running down the corridor. Wendy was trying to cry.Her first scream of pain drained all the moving air from her lungs, and she was struggling to get air for her second cry, and now it was the moment of choking.When this second cry finally comes, it will be deafening. if it issued. He held her, staring anxiously at her contorted, bloodshot face, which was almost a dark brown save for a comma-like red mark on her forehead.God, what if she passed out?What if she couldn't breathe and suffocated? "Cry out, come on!" he yelled at her.OMG, her purple face!Her protruding eyes! "cry!" "Ted!" Liz sounded terrified now, but she seemed very far away.In the seconds between Wendy's first cry and her second cry, for the first time in eight days, George Stark was completely driven out of Tad's mind.Wendy took a convulsively long breath and began to cry.Tad, trembling with relief, hugged her tightly and began patting her on the back, making hissing noises. Liz ran down the stairs, and William was caught under her ribs like a sack of grain: "What happened? Ted, is she all right?" "It's okay. She fell down the third flight of stairs, and she's fine now. She's fine since she started crying, and at first it seemed...she seemed to be choking." He smiled in shock, and handed Wendy to Liz , held William, who now wept sympathetically with his sister. "You weren't looking at her?" Liz asked reproachfully.Shaking his body back and forth, he tried his best to comfort Wendy. "Look... no. I went to get a magazine, and when I turned around she was on the stairs, just like William was doing with the teacups. They were so... restless. You think her head is all right? She hit the carpet, but it hit hard." Liz stretched out her arms, raised Wendy to her face, looked at the red mark, and kissed it lightly.Wendy's crying had already started to fade. "I think it's all right. She'll have a bump on her head for a day or two, that's all. Thank goodness we got the carpet. I don't want to blame you, Ted, I know they're hard to guard against, I just... I feel like I'm about to have my period, so it just so happened that we all got together." Wendy's crying had turned into convulsions.Correspondingly, William began to stop crying, and he stretched out a plump arm to tug on his sister's white T-shirt.She turned her head, and he cooed at her, then mumbled something.Their grunts seemed odd to Ted: like a foreign language spoken so quickly that you couldn't quite hear it, let alone understand its meaning.Wendy smiled at her brother, though her eyes were still wet and her cheeks were still wet.She grumbled back too.For a moment it seemed as if they were having a conversation in their secret world. Wendy reached out to touch William's shoulder, and they looked at each other, continuing to murmur. "Are you all right, sweetheart? It's all right, I hurt myself, William dear, but not seriously. Do you want to stay home and skip the dinner at Staley's?Dear? I don't want to, but thank you for your concern. Do you really think so, my dear Wendy? Yes, dear William, I'm not hurt, although I'm worried I've shit in the diaper. Ah, sweetheart, what a nuisance! " Ted smiled, then looked at Wendy's legs. "It's going to be swollen," he said, "in fact, it looks like it's swollen." Liz smiled at him. "It's going to be fine," she said, "and it won't be the last time." Tad leaned over and kissed the tip of Wendy's nose, thinking about how quickly these storms started—three minutes ago he was worried that she would suffocate—and how quickly they stopped. "No," he agreed, "for God's sake, it won't be the last." three At seven o'clock that night, when the twins woke up from sleep, the bruise on Wendy's leg had turned dark purple and was shaped like a weird mushroom. "Ted?" Liz called from the other changing table. "Look at this." Ted had already changed Wendy's diaper, which was damp but not wet, and threw it into the diaper pail labeled "HERS."He carried his naked daughter to his son's changing table to see what Liz wanted him to see.He looked down at William, his eyes wide. "What do you think?" she asked quietly. "Is that weird?" Ted looked down at William for a long time. "Yes," he said at last, "that's very odd." She pressed one hand on the chest of her murmuring son on the changing table, and looked at Ted attentively: "Are you all right?" "It's all right," Ted said.He was surprised to find that he sounded calm.Not in front of his eyes, but behind his eyes, there seemed to be a flash of white light, like a flash gun, and suddenly, he kind of understood the bird and what to do next.He looked down at his son and saw the bruise on his leg, exactly the same shape, color, and location as Wendy's, and it dawned on him.When William grabbed Liz's teacup and turned it upside down on himself, he fell to the floor.As far as Tad knew, William never hurt his leg.But there - on top of his right leg was an identical bruise, a mushroom-shaped bruise. "Are you all right?" Liz asked him again. "They even shared the bruises," he said, looking down at William's leg. "Ted?" "I'm all right," he said, kissing her cheek, "let's dress this spirit and that body, shall we?" Liz burst out laughing. "Ted, you're crazy," she said. He smiled at her, a strange, nonchalant smile. "Yeah," he said, "crazy like a fox." He carried Wendy back to the changing table and began wrapping her in a diaper.