Chapter 27 Chapter 26: The Struggle of Life and Death

one When Liz closed the door, leaving the two of them alone, Tad opened the notebook, stared at Mr. Blank for a moment, and then produced a sharpened Belore pencil. "I'm going to start with the cake," he said to Stark. "Okay," said Stark, with a look of impatience on his face, "very good." Ted put the pencil on the blank page.This is the most beautiful moment - before writing the first word.It's like a certain kind of surgery, in the end the patient always dies, but you do it anyway, you have to because you were born to do it, you have no choice. Remember, he thought.Remember what you are doing.

But the part of him that really wanted to write Iron Marcin was protesting. Ted leaned forward and began to write on a blank sheet of paper. " "Steel Massin" george stark Chapter 1 Wedding Alex Massin seldom dreamed, and in this situation he never did.But this time I thought about it this way: There are five billion people on the planet, and I am the only one standing in a mobile wedding cake, holding a .223 caliber and Koch-style semi-automatic gun in my hand. He had never been locked up in a place like this.The air was stale, but even if it wasn't stale, he couldn't take a deep breath.The icing on the cake was real, but there was nothing underneath but a thin layer of high-grade gray glue cardboard.If he had taken a deep breath, the bride and groom could have fallen off the cake, the icing would have cracked and..."

He wrote for almost forty minutes, faster and faster, gradually filling his mind with the sounds and images of the wedding banquet, and it all ended with a bang. Finally he put down the pen, and the pencil was bald. "Give me a cigarette," he said. Stark raised his eyebrows. "Yes," Ted said. There was a pack of Par Morse cigarettes on the table. Stark shook out one and Tad picked it up.Haven't smoked in years and it feels weird to have a cigarette in your mouth... a little too thick, but it feels good and right. Stark struck a match and brought it to Ted. Ted took a deep breath, his eyes relentlessly stimulating his lungs. He immediately felt dizzy, but he didn't care about it.

Now I need a drink, he thought.If I'm alive after it's over, the first thing I do is have a drink. "I thought you quit smoking," Stark said. Ted nodded. "I thought I quit, too. What can I say, George? I was wrong." He took another sharp puff, blowing the smoke through his nostrils.He turned his notebook to Stark. "Your turn," he said. Stark leaned over and read the last paragraph that Ted had written. There was no need to read more, they both knew how the story was going. "In the house, Jack Langley and Tony Weismant are in the kitchen, Rolick should be upstairs by now. All three of them carry Steyr-Ogg semi-automatic machine guns, the only good machine guns made in America .Even if some bodyguards disguised as guests are quick, the three of them can still form a strong firepower network to cover the retreat. Get me out of the cake, Marcin thought, that's what I want."

Stark lit a cigarette himself, picked up a Belore pencil, opened his own notebook... Then he stopped and looked at Tad sincerely. "I'm scared, man," he said. Ted felt a pang of sympathy for Stark—even though he knew what Stark had done in the past. "Harmful afraid, of course you are afraid," he thought, "only newborn babies are not afraid.The words on the paper don't get darker with the passage of time...but the blank spaces do get whiter.Fear?It's no wonder you're not afraid. " "I know," he said, "you know what to do—the only way is to do it."

Stark nodded, leaning over his notebook.Twice he flipped through the last paragraph Ted had written...and started writing. "Maxin...never...don't want to know..." He paused for a long time, then wrote in one breath: "What's it like to have asthma, but if anyone asks him after that..." Another pause. "He'll remember Scletti's work." He reread what he had written, then looked at Tad suspiciously. Ted nodded: "It's well written, George." He suddenly felt a tingling pain at the corner of his mouth, touched it with his fingers, and found that the flesh began to fester.He looked at Stark and saw that the same abscess at the corner of Stark's mouth had disappeared.

"It happened, it happened." "Go on, George," he said, "and do your best." But Stark was already hunched over his notebook, and now he wrote even faster. two Stark wrote for almost half an hour, finally took a breath of satisfaction, and put down his pen. "Very well," he whispered triumphantly, "couldn't have been better." Tad picked up his notebook and read it—but not like Stark, but from cover to cover.What he was looking for appeared on the ninth line of the third page written by Stark. "Ma Xin heard the scratching sound, his whole body was stiff, he grasped the Heckler sparrow gun with both hands, and understood what they were doing. More than two hundred guests gathered at the long table under the blue and yellow curtain, pushing the folded sparrow beside the wooden board. Back, the woodblocks were there to keep women's high-heeled sparrows from stepping on the lawn. Guests were standing up and cheering the hell out of sparrow cakes."

He doesn't know, Tad thought.He wrote the word "sparrow" over and over again, but... didn't know... a little. He heard the sparrow moving restlessly overhead, and the twins looked up a few times before falling asleep, so he knew they noticed the sparrow too. But George didn't know. For George, the sparrow does not exist. Tad looked down at the manuscript again.That word came up more and more, and in the last paragraph, it started to appear in whole sentences. "Marcin later found out that the sparrows were flying, and the only ones in his handpicks that really obeyed were his sparrows, Jack Langley and Rolick. All the others, the sparrows he'd been flying with for ten years, were on the sparrows. On the horses Before Shin called into his sparrow walkie-talkie, the sparrows started flying."

"How?" Stark asked as Ted put down the manuscript. "What do you think?" "I think it's fine," Ted said, "but you know that, don't you?" "Yeah...but I want to hear you say that, man." "I also think you look better." This is real.But Stark begins to heal as he immerses himself in the violent world of Alex Massin. Abscesses are disappearing.The cracked and rotting skin was pink again, and new skin had healed from the sides of the abscess toward the center, joining together in several places.The rotten eyebrows grew back.The yellow pus was no longer dripping onto Stark's shirt collar, it was starting to dry.

Tad raised his left hand, felt the abscess on his left temple, and stretched it out in front of him, all wet.He touched his forehead again, the skin was smooth, and the white scar was gone. When one end of the seesaw goes up, the other end sinks. This is the law of nature, another law. Is it dark outside?Ted thought it should be dark.He looked at his watch, but it was no use, it stopped at five-fifteen.Time was of no importance, he had to act quickly. Stark stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray: "Do you want to keep going or take a break?" "Why don't you go on with it?" Thad said. "I think you can."

"Yeah," Stark said, not looking at Tad, just at the words, smoothing his heavy, shiny blond hair with one hand, "I think I can, too. To be precise, I know I can." .” He began to scribble again.Tad leaned forward for a pencil sharpener, and Stark looked up at him, then down.Ted sharpened a pencil to razor sharpness.When he turned around, he took out the bird whistle that Luo Li had given him from his pocket, held it tightly in his hand, sat down again, and looked at the notebook in front of him. The time had come, he was sure of it, the only question was whether he would have the courage to try. He was a little reluctant in his heart, and still longed to write a book.But he was surprised to find that the desire was not as strong as it was when Liz and Pangbol left the study.He knows why.He's separated from Stark, and Stark is becoming a separate person, and it's not in his book anymore.Alex Massin is with the man who had him in the first place. Tad hunched over his notebook, clutching the bird whistle in his left hand. "I am the creator," he wrote. The whole world seemed to stand still, listening. "I am the owner." He stopped and glanced at the sleeping children. Five more words, he thought, five words only. He found that he had never been so eager to write these five words. He wants to write novels...but more than that, he doesn't just want to see the lovely sights shown by the third eye, he wants to be free. "Write five more words." He put his left hand to his mouth and gripped the bird whistle as if he were biting a cigar. "Don't look up now, George. Don't look up, don't look out of the world you're making. Don't now. Dear God, don't let him see the real world." On the white paper in front of him, he coldly wrote the words "Soul Ferryer" in capital letters, circled it, drew an arrow below it, and wrote "Sparrows Fly Up" under the arrow. Outside, the wind was blowing—but it wasn't the wind, it was the flapping of millions of feathers, and that was what Tad had in mind.Suddenly, the third eye in his head opened, wider than ever, and he saw Bergenfield, New Jersey—empty houses, empty streets, springtime and warm skies.He saw sparrows everywhere, more than before.The world he grew up in became one giant birdhouse. Only it's not Burgenfield. It's Under Dead Vail. Stark stopped writing, his eyes suddenly widened in alarm, but it was too late. Tad took a deep breath and began to blow, and Raleigh made a strange sound to his bird whistle. "Ted? What are you doing? What are you doing?" Stark reached for the bird whistle.Before he could touch it, the bird whistle broke in Tad's mouth with a bang, cutting his lips.The sound woke the twins, and Wendy began to cry. Outside, the rustle of sparrows turned to a rumble. They fly. three As soon as Wendy was crying, Liz walked towards the stairs.Pang Bo stood in place for a while, and the scene outside convinced him.The earth, woods, lake, and sky are all covered.The sparrow is like a swinging curtain, tightly covering the window. Pangbo awoke from his torpor when the first birds started hitting the tempered glass. "Liz!" he screamed, "Get down!" But she didn't want to get down, all she could think about was her baby crying. Pangbo ran across the room towards her, with incredible speed.As soon as he pushed her down, the whole floor-to-ceiling glass window exploded inward under the impact of 20,000 sparrows.Then there were twenty thousand more, and then twenty thousand more, and in a moment the living room was full of sparrows, everywhere. Pangbol lay on top of Liz and dragged her under the sofa.The world is filled with the screams of sparrows.Now, they could hear other windows breaking, all the windows.The whole house was filled with the crash of these little suicide bombers.Pang Bo looked out, only seeing the movement of a brown and black thing. The bird hit the fire alarm, sirens went off, the TV set made a terrible explosion, the paintings on the wall crashed, and the pot hanging on the wall by the lake was knocked to the ground with a loud clanging sound. He could still hear the children crying and Liz screaming. "Let go of me! My child! Let me go! I must save the child!" As soon as she exposed half of her body from him, she was immediately covered by the sparrow.They bit her hair and thrashed like crazy, and she thrashed desperately.Pang Bo grabbed her and dragged her back.Through the swirling air of the living room, he could see a dark flock of sparrows heading up the stairs—to the upstairs office. Four Stark was reaching for Tad when the first sparrows rushed through the trap door.Through the wall, Thad could hear the muffled thud of paperweights and the clang of glass shattering.The twins were wailing in an odd harmony with the frantic twittering of the sparrows. "Stop!" Stark yelled, "Stop, Tad! Whatever you're doing, stop now!" He reached for the gun, and Tad plunged the pencil into Stark's throat. Blood spurted out all at once.Stark turned to him, opened his mouth, and grabbed the pencil.The pencil bobs up and down as he swallows.He gripped the pencil tightly with one hand and pulled it out. "What are you doing?" he said hoarsely. "What's that?" Now he heard the sparrow, and he didn't understand it, but he did.His eyes turned to the closed door, and for the first time Tad saw real fear in those eyes. "I'm writing the ending, George," Ted whispered, "I'm writing the real-world ending." "Okay," said Stark, "so let's write everyone's ending." He turned to the twins, holding a bloody pencil in one hand and a pistol in the other. Fives At one end of the sofa was a folded blanket.Pang Bo reached out to take it, but felt like a dozen hot needles were pricking his hand. "Fuck!" he drew back his hand and cursed. Liz was still trying to crawl under him.The gigantic roar seemed to fill the entire universe. Pangbo could no longer hear the cry of the child...but Liz Beaumont could.She twisted and struggled, and Pang Bo grabbed her collar with his left hand, feeling that the clothes were torn. "Wait!" he yelled at her, but it was no use.The child was crying, and nothing he said could stop her.So will Anne.Pang Bo stretched out his hand again, ignoring the sparrow's pecking and biting, and grabbed the blanket violently.It fell off the couch.There was a loud bang from the master bedroom, probably a cupboard knocked over.Pangbo's confused mind tried to imagine how many sparrows it would take to knock down a cupboard, but he couldn't. How many sparrows does it take to screw a light bulb in?he asked like crazy.Three sparrows and one light bulb, 3.6 billion sparrows can overturn the house!He let out a wild laugh, and at that moment, the huge spherical lamp hanging in the center of the living room exploded like a bomb.Liz shrieked and flinched, and Pombo threw the blanket over her head and slipped in.There were also six sparrows huddling with them here, and he felt their fluffy wings beat against his cheek, and his left temple felt a pain, so he slapped it hard with the blanket.The sparrow landed on his shoulders and on the floor under the blanket. He jerked Liz past him and yelled into her ear, "Let's go! Go, Liz! Put on a blanket! If you run, I'll knock you out! Nod, if you understand!" She wants to break free.The blanket was stretched out, and the sparrows dropped down, jumped on it like they were on a trampoline, and flew up again.Pang Bo pulled her over and shook her shoulders vigorously. "Just nod if you get it, fuck it!" She nodded, her hair touching his cheek.They crawled out from under the sofa, Pang Bo hugged her shoulders tightly, afraid that she would run away.They walked slowly through the crowded room, past flocks of frantic birdsong.They looked like funny animals at a country fair—two people acting as dancing donkeys. The Beaumonts' living room, large and high-ceilinged, was stuffy now, and they walked through restless flocks of sparrows. Furniture shattered, birds banged against walls, ceilings and appliances, and the world was filled with the smell of birds and weird banging sounds. At last they reached the stairs. The blanket was covered with feathers and bird droppings. They began to climb slowly up under the blanket. At this moment, there was a gunshot from the upstairs study. Now Pangbo heard the twins again, and they were screaming. six Stark aimed the gun at William, and Ted found the paperweight that Stark had been playing with on the table.It is a heavy gray-black stone with a flat side.Stark was about to fire when Tad slammed the paperweight on the big blond man's wrist, breaking his bones and sending the barrel down.The shot rang out, deafening in the tiny house, and the bullet entered the floor an inch from William's right foot, sending splinters landing on the leg of his pale blue pajama pants.The twins start screaming.As Tad and Stark wrestled together, he saw the twins automatically hug each other, protecting each other. At this point, Stark dug the pencil into his shoulder. Ted screamed in pain and pushed Stark away.Stark tripped over the typewriter in the corner and fell backward against the wall.He tried to switch the pistol to his right hand...but the gun dropped. Now, the sound of birds banging against the door was like thunder... and the door began to open slowly.A sparrow with a broken wing got in and fell to the floor, twitching. Stark fumbled in his back pocket... and pulled out a pocket razor.He bit the blade with his teeth, his eyes gleaming madly and fiercely above the steel blade. "You wanna try a razor, buddy?" he asked, and Tad saw his face start to rot all of a sudden, as if a brick had been slammed down. "You really want it? Well, here you go." seven Liz and Pangbol climbed to the middle of the stairs and stopped.There was a wall of birds hanging in front of them, and they couldn't move forward any longer, sparrows were flying and screaming in the air.Liz yelled in fear and anger. The bird didn't attack them, just held them back, as if all the sparrows in the world had come here, to the second floor of Beaumont's house. "Get down!" Pangbol yelled at her. "Maybe we can crawl under." Kneeling, and at first able to move forward, albeit uncomfortable, they crawled over the bloody sparrow carpet piled eighteen inches thick before being blocked by the wall again.Looking from under the blanket, Pangbo saw the sparrows gathered in a ball in front of him, which was indescribable.The sparrows leaning against the stair floor were crushed to death, and tiers of living sparrows stood on top of them.Three feet up the stairs, there appeared to be some sort of death zone, with sparrows crashing, falling, flying, and struggling over a mass of their fellows with broken wings and legs.Pangbol remembered that sparrows could not hover. Above them, behind this strange living barrier, came the scream of a man. Liz grabbed him and pulled him to her side. "What are we going to do?" she screamed, "What are we going to do?" He didn't answer because there was no answer.There is nothing they can do. Eight Holding the razor in his right hand, Stark approached Tad.Tad stepped back toward the slowly swinging door, his eyes fixed on the blade, and he grabbed a pencil from the table. "That didn't work, buddy," Stark said, "it won't work now." Then his eyes moved to the door, which had been knocked wide open, and a swarm of sparrows flowed toward Stark like a river. Ke rushed. For a split second, his expression turned to fear...he got it. "NO!" he screamed, and began hacking at them with Alex Massin's razor. "No, I won't! I won't go back! You don't want me to go back!" He chopped a sparrow in half at once, and the two halves fell tossing and falling.Stark kept cutting around him. Suddenly, Ted understood what was going on here. Of course, it was the Spirit Ferryman who escorted George Stark back, escorted him back to Underswell, back to the world of the dead. Ted dropped the pencil and went back to the kids.The sky is full of sparrows.The doors are now almost fully open, and birds are flooding in. The sparrow landed on Stark's broad shoulders, on his arms, on his head.Sparrows hit his chest, first dozens, then hundreds.He writhed and fought back amidst a cloud of falling feathers and a glistening, sharp beak. The sparrow covered the razor, its sinister gleam gone, buried in its feathers. Ted looked at the children.They stopped crying and looked up at the crowded, seething air with surprise and joy on their faces.They held up their hands as if checking to see if it was raining.Their little fingers were outstretched, and the sparrow stood on them...but didn't peck them. But the sparrow was pecking Stark. Blood spurted from more than a hundred places on his face.One of his blue eyes was missing.A sparrow landed on his shirt collar and thrust its beak into Tad's penciled throat wound, three clicks, as fast as a machine gun.Stark reached out and grabbed it, crushing it like paper. Tad crouched next to the twins, and the sparrow landed on him, but didn't peck him, just stood and watched. Stark disappeared.He became a living statue of a sparrow, with blood streaming from flapping wings and feathers.Thed heard a harsh cracking sound somewhere downstairs, and the planks were collapsing. The sparrow rushed into the kitchen, he thought, and then thought of the gas pipes, but the thought was distant and trivial. Now, he began to hear the hiss of flesh being ripped from Stark's bones. "They're for you, George," he whispered. "They're for you, God bless you." Nine Pangbol felt another gap above, and looked out through the diamond-shaped hole in the blanket.Bird droppings landed on his cheeks, and he wiped them away with his hands.The stairs are still full of sparrows, but in fewer numbers.The living birds had apparently flown where they were going. "Come on," he said to Liz.They began to step forward on layers of dead birds again, and when they reached the turning platform on the second floor, they suddenly heard Ted screaming: "Take him away! Take him back to his original hell!" Birds fly like a hurricane. ten Stark was dying, trying to break free.But he had nowhere to go, no way to escape.Still, he's going to give it a try, it's his style. The flock of birds that surrounded him moved forward with him.He raised his thick arms, covered with feathers, head, and wings, and swung them against him, then raised them again, and hugged them to his chest.The birds fell to the floor, some were injured, some died.In that instant, Ted saw a vision he would never forget. The sparrows were eating George Stark alive.His eyes were gone, leaving only two large black eye sockets, his nose turned into a blood clot, his forehead and most of his hair had been torn off, revealing his mucus-covered skull, his shirt collar still hanging around his neck, But the rest are gone.White ribs protruded from his hide.The sparrows opened his stomach, and a flock of sparrows landed on his feet, looking up, fighting for a falling, bloody, broken entrails. He saw something else. Sparrow is trying to lift Stark up.They're trying... Soon, when his body is mostly eaten, they'll be able to lift him. "Take him away!" he screamed. "Take him away! Take him back to his old hell!" Stark's screaming stopped, and more than a hundred sparrows pecked at his throat.Sparrows flocked under his armpits, and his feet rose from the bloody carpet. He slammed down the tuck with his remaining arm, killing dozens...but dozens more rushed up to take their place. The pecking on Tad's right grew louder and more hollow.He looked over there and saw that the east wall of the study was cracked like gauze paper, and thousands of yellow beaks penetrated the wall at once.He grabbed the twins, lowered them under him, and arched to protect them, gracefully, perhaps for the only time in his life. The wall led inward, sending up a cloud of splintered wood and sawdust, and Tad closed his eyes and hugged the child tightly. He stopped watching. eleven But Pangbol saw it, and so did Liz. They pulled the blankets over their shoulders as the birds overhead and around them parted.Liz staggered into the guest bedroom and ran to the open study door, with Pombo on her heels. He couldn't see clearly the inside of the study for a while, but only vaguely saw a brown-black shadow.Then he recognized a hideous human figure, Stark, covered with birds, devoured alive, but alive. More birds came, and Pangpo thought the eerie noise would drive him crazy.Then he saw what they were doing. "Pangpo!" Liz screamed, "Pangbo, they're picking him up!" All that remained of the original George Stark was a human silhouette, lifted into the air by a flock of sparrows, nearly falling as he passed through the office, then rising staggeringly toward the wall on the east. The big hole flew through. More birds flew in through the holes, and those who stayed in the guest room rushed into the study. Flesh rained down from Stark's twitching frame. His body floated through the hole surrounded by sparrows, and the last hair was pulled out. Pangbo and Liz walked into the study on the dead bird.Tad stood up slowly, holding a crying child in his arms.Liz ran over, held the children, stroked them to see if they were hurt. "It's all right," Thad said, "I think they're all right." Pangbo walked to the hole in the wall of the study and looked out. He saw a scene that can only be seen in terrible myths: the sky is full of sparrows, but there is a place that is pitch black. Like a hole ripped open in reality. This black hole is a struggling human being. The birds lifted it higher and higher, and seemed to stop when it reached the top of the tree.Pangbol heard a piercing, inhuman scream from within the black cloud, and the sparrow began to move again.Watching this is like watching a movie in reverse, the flock of black birds receding from all the broken windows of the house, they fly up the driveway, the trees and the roof of the rowing car, presenting a sort of funnel shape. They all flew towards that dark center. The humanoid thing began to move again...flew through the trees...into the dark sky...disappeared. Liz sat in the corner, with the twins on her lap, rocking and coaxing them - but the children didn't seem particularly distressed, looking happily at their mother's haggard, tear-stained face.Wendy patted her mother's face, as if to comfort her mother.William reached out, plucked a feather from her hair, and looked at it carefully. "He's gone." Ted said in a hoarse voice, and walked to Pang Bo beside the hole in the study. "Yes." Pang Bo said, and burst into tears.He didn't expect to cry, it was involuntary. Tad tried to hug him, but Pombo dodged, his boots on the dry pile of dead sparrows. "It's okay," he said, "I'll be fine." Tad looked out into the night through the hole again.A sparrow flew out of the darkness and landed on his shoulder. "Thank you," Ted said to it, "thank—" The sparrow suddenly pecked him so hard that blood came out from under his eyes. Then the sparrow flew away, looking for its mates. "Why?" Liz asked, looking at Tad in surprise. "Why is it like this?" Ted didn't answer, but he knew the answer, and he thought that Luo Li would know the answer too.Everything that happened just now seemed magical...but it was not a myth.Maybe the sparrow at the end was driven by some force and felt the need to remind Tad. "Beware, Tad. No one can control the messenger of the afterlife. No one can control it for long—and there will always be a price." What price must I pay?he thought coldly.When will the debt be paid off? But that's for later.The bird pecked me, maybe the debt was paid. Maybe he ended up breaking even. "Is he dead?" Liz asked... almost begging. "Yes," said Tad, "he's dead, Liz. The book on George Stark is over. Come on, everybody, let's get out of here." They are gone. end "Henry didn't kiss Mary Roe that day, but he didn't leave her without a word, though he could. He watched her, endured her anger, and waited for it to subside. He gradually realized that , most of the sorrows are hers, no one else can share them or even discuss them. Mary Roe dances best solo. Finally, they walked across the field and looked again at the playroom where Evelyn had died three years earlier.It's not quite a farewell, but it's only so far they can go.Henry felt that was good enough. He placed some of Evelyn's little paper ballerinas in the grass by the deserted porch, knowing the wind would soon blow them away.Then he and Mary Rowe left the old place together for the last time.It's not perfect, but it's not bad, it's pretty good.He doesn't believe in happy endings, and the little peace he has comes largely from that belief. — Ted Beaumont: The Wild Dancers In contrast to hallucinations during deep sleep, people's real dreams end at different times.The dream of Ted Beaumont and George Stark ended at 9:15 that night, and the ferryman took the dark half to where he was supposed to go.The dream ended with the Toronado, the poisonous, spidery black Toronado he and George used to drive to the house in their dreams. Liz and the twins stood at the end of the driveway that intersected Lake Shore Drive, and Ted and Pangble beside George Stark's black car, which wasn't black anymore, gray with spattered bird droppings. Pangbol didn't want to look at the house, but he couldn't take his eyes off it.The house was in ruins, with the eastern study suffering the worst damage.Cracked holes are everywhere, and railings hang from the platform facing the lake like wooden ladders.There was a large circle of dead birds around the house, some caught in the roof gaps, some blocked in the gutters.The moon was born and shone on the glass, shining brightly.The same silver light shone in the eyes of the dead sparrow. "Are you really okay?" Ted asked. Pang Bo nodded. "I ask because it's evidence destruction." Pang Bo laughed hoarsely: "Who would believe such evidence?" "I don't think anyone would believe that." Ted paused, then said, "You know, I used to think you liked me a little bit, and I don't feel that way anymore, not at all. I don't know Why. Do you think I'm responsible for all of this?" "I don't care at all," said Pangbourne. "It's all over, and that's Mr. Beaumont I care about. That's the only thing I care about." Seeing the aggrieved look on Ted's weary, pained face, he added, "Look, Ted, this is shocking, I just saw a man get carried up by a flock of sparrows. Give me a break , okay?" Ted nodded: "I understand." "No, you don't understand," thought Pangbo. "You don't understand who you are, and I suspect you will never understand... I don't know if there will be harmony between your husband and wife in the future, if she wants to understand, or if she dares to love you. Maybe in the future you Your child will understand you...but you won't, Tad. Standing next to you is like standing by the opening of a hole where a demon crawled out. The demon is dead now, but people still don't want to get too close to where it came out of. 'Cause there's probably another demon. Maybe not, your intellect gets it, but your emotions don't, right, man. Even if the hole is always empty, there's still dreams, and there's memories. Like, there's also Homer Gamache, beaten to death by his own prosthetic arm. Because of you, Ted, because of you." This is not fair, Pang Bo knew in his heart.Ted didn't want to be a twin, and he killed the twin brother in the womb with no malice.When he wrote under the pseudonym George Stark, he didn't know that the devil was waiting for him. However, they are still twins. He couldn't forget Stark and Tad laughing together. That crazy laugh and crazy eyes. He wondered if Liz could ever forget. A breeze carried the pungent smell of gasoline. "Let's burn it," Pangble said suddenly. "Let's burn it all. I don't care what people think later. There's hardly any wind here, and the fire engines will be here before the fire spreads. If it burns Some trees around, that would be even better." "I'll do it," Thad said. "You go to Liz and help me—" "Let's do it together," Pangbol said. "Give me your socks." "what?" "You listen to me—I want your socks." Pangbo opened the door of the Toronado car and looked inside.Yes - a standard car transmission, a man as strong as George Stark would never use an automatic, only Ted Beaumont. He left the door open, and then he left his left leg and took off his right shoe and sock.Tad watched him and did as he did.Pang Bo put on his shoes and did the same for his left foot, he didn't want to step on the dead bird with his bare feet. When he was done, he knotted the two socks together, and then tied Ted's sock together.He walked over to the passenger seat, dead sparrows rustling at his feet like newspapers.He unscrewed the gas tank of the Toronado, unscrewed the cap, and put the sock into the tank.When he lifted it out, the sock was soaked in gasoline.He turned around again, put the dry end into the gas tank, and put the wet end over the bird droppings-spattered bodywork.Then he turned to Ted, who was following him.Pangbol fumbled in his uniform shirt pocket and took out a box of matches, the kind that comes with cigarettes. He didn't know how he got a box of matches, but there was a stamp collection on the cover of the matchbox. The picture on the stamp is a bird. "When the truck starts, turn on the socks," said Pangbo, "not a second earlier, understand?" "clear." "It's going to explode. The house is going to catch fire, then the gas tank in the back. When the fire department arrives, it looks like your friend lost control and hit the house and exploded. At least I hope so." "Ok." Pangbo walked back to the car. "What are you doing?" Liz cried uneasily. "The children are going to catch cold!" "Right away!" Ted replied. 庞波探身到托罗纳多车难闻的车里，拉紧紧急制动闸。“等到它开动。”他冲身后喊道。 "it is good." 庞波用脚踩住踏板，把变速杆换到空挡。 托罗纳多车立即开动了。 在那么一瞬间他以为泰德没点火……突然，车后一片火光。托罗纳多车慢慢滑向最后的十五英尺车道，在沥青路上颠动着，滑向后面的走廊，撞到房子的一侧，停了下来。庞波在火光中可以清楚地看到保险杠上标语的字：高贵的狗杂种。 “再不是了。”他低声说。 "What did you say?" “没什么。回去吧。车要爆炸了。” 他们撤了不到十步，托罗纳多车就变成了一团火球。火焰窜上破损的东墙，书房墙上的洞变成了一个瞪着的黑眼睛。 “快点，”庞波说，“快进我的巡逻车。现在我们已达到目的了，我们必须报警，不必要让这里的人都为此遭到火灾。” 但泰德多停留了一会儿，庞波陪着他。房子是干木构成的，很快就被火点着了。火焰从泰德书房的洞口烧进去，火眼造成的气流把纸张又吹了起来，上下起伏。在火光中，庞波能看到纸上写满了。纸卷了起来，被火点着了，烧焦变黑，像黑色的鸟一样飞上高空。 庞波认为，一旦她们到了气流之上，正常的清风会把它们吹走，一直吹到地球的末端。 好，他想，低着头，开始向车道那头的丽兹和孩子闷走去。 身后，泰德·波蒙特慢慢举起双手，捂住自己的脸。 他就这么在那里站了很久。