If he turned around, George Stark would do a little whittling of his own.
Empty of people the house might be, but except for the rugs (the wall-to-wall salmon-colored carpet in the living room was also gone), all the furnishings were still there. A vase of flowers stood on the little deal table at the end of the hall, where you could either go straight ahead into the living room with its high cathedral ceiling and window-wall facing the lake, or turn right into the kitchen. Thad touched the vase and it exploded into shards and a cloud of acrid-smelling ceramic powder. Stagnant water poured out, and the half-dozen garden roses which had been blooming there were dead and gray-black before they landed in the puddle of smelly water on the table. He touched the table itself. The wood gave a dry, parched crack and the table split in two, seeming to swoon rather than fall to the bare wood floor in two separate pieces.
What have you done to my house? he cried to the man behind him . . . but without turning. He didn't need to turn in order to verify the presence of the straight-razor, which, before Nonie Griffiths had used it on Machine, leaving his cheeks hanging in red and white flaps and one eye dangling from its socket, Machine himself had employed to flay open the noses of his 'business rivals.'
Nothing, Stark said, and Thad didn't have to see him in order to verify the smile he heard in the man's voice. You are doing it, old hoss.
Then they were in the kitchen.
Thad touched the stove and it split in two with a dull noise like the clanging of a great bell clotted with dirt. The heating coils popped upward and askew, funny spiral hats blown cocked in a gale. A noxious stench eddied out of the dark hole in the stove's middle, and, peering in, he saw a turkey. It was putrescent and noisome. Black fluid filled with unnameable gobbets of flesh oozed from the cavity in the bird.
Down here we call that fool's stuffing, Stark remarked from behind him.
What do you mean? Thad asked. Where do you mean, down here?
Endsville, Stark said calmly. This is the place where all rail service terminates, Thad.
He added something else, but Thad missed it. Liz's purse was on the floor, and Thad stumbled over it. When he grasped the kitchen table to keep himself from falling, the table fell into splinters and sawdust on the linoleum. A bright nail spun into one corner with a tiny metallic chattering noise.
Stop this right now! Thad cried. I want to wake up! I hate to break things!
You always were the clumsy one, old hoss, Stark said. He spoke as if Thad had had a great many siblings, all of them as graceful as gazelles.
I don't have to be, Thad informed him in an anxious voice that teetered on the edge of a whine. I don't have to be clumsy. I don't have to break things. When I'm careful, everything is fine.
Yes — too bad you stopped being careful, Stark said in that same smiling I-am-just-remarkingon-how-things-are voice. And they were in the back hall.
Here was Liz, sitting splay-legged in the corner by the door to the woodshed, one loafer off, one loafer on. A dead sparrow lay in her lap. She was wearing nylon stockings, and Thad could see a run in one of them. Her head was down, her slightly coarse honey-blonde hair obscuring her face. He didn't want to see her face. As he hadn't needed to see either the razor or Stark's razor grin to know that both were there, so he didn't need to see Liz's face to know she was not sleeping or unconscious but dead.
Turn on the lights, you'll be able to see better, Stark said in that same smiling I-am-just-passingthe-time-of-day-with-you-my-friend voice. His hand appeared over Thad's shoulder, pointing to the lights Thad himself had installed back here. They were electric, of course, but looked quite authentic: two hurricane lamps mounted on a wooden spindle and controlled by a dimmer switch on the wall.
I don't want to see!
He was trying to sound hard and sure of himself, but this was starting to get to him. He could hear a hitching, uneven quality to his voice which meant he was getting ready to blubber. And what he said seemed to make no difference anyway, because he reached for the circular rheostat on the wall. When he touched it, blue painless electric fire squirted out between his fingers, so thick it was more like jelly than light. The rheostat's round ivory—colored knob turned black, blew off the wall, and zizzed across the room like a miniature flying saucer. It broke the small window on the other side and disappeared into a day which had taken on a weird green cast of light, like weathered copper.
The electric hurricane lamps glowed supernaturally bright and the spindle began to turn, winding up the chain from which the fixture depended and sending shadows flying across the room in a lunatic carousel dance. First one and then the other of the lamp-chimneys shattered, showering Thad with glass.
Without thinking he leaped forward and grabbed his sprawled wife, wanting to get her out from under before the chain could snap and drop the heavy wooden spindle on her. This impulse was so strong it overrode everything, including his sure knowledge that it didn't matter, she was dead. Stark could have uprooted the Empire State Building and dropped it on her and it wouldn't have mattered. Not to her, anyway. Not anymore.
As he slid his arms under hers and locked his hands between her shoulder-blades, her body shifted forward and her head lolled back. The skin of her face was cracking like the surface of a Ming vase. Her glazed eyes suddenly exploded. Noxious green jelly, sickeningly warm, spurted up into his face. Her mouth gaped ajar and her teeth flew out in a white storm. He could feel their small smooth hardnesses peppering his cheeks and brow. Half-clotted blood jetted from between her pitted gums. Her tongue rolled out of her mouth and fell off, plummeting into the lap of her skirt like a bloody chunk of snake.
Thad began to shriek — in the dream and not for real, thank God, or he would have frightened Liz very badly.
I'm not done with you, cock-knocker, George Stark said softly from behind him. His voice was no longer smiling. His voice was as cold as Castle Lake in November. Remember that. You don't want to fuck with me, because when you fuck with me . . .
3
Thad woke with a jerk, his face wet, his pillow, which he had clutched convulsively against his face, also wet. The moisture might have been sweat or it might have been tears.
'. . . you're fucking with the best,' he finished into the pillow, and then lay there, knees pulled up to his chest, shuddering convulsively.
'Thad?' Liz muttered thickly from somewhere in the thickets of her own dream. 'Twins okay?'
'Okay,' he managed. 'I . . . nothing. Go back to sleep.'
'Yeah, everything's . . .' She said something else, but he caught it no more than he had caught whatever Stark had said after telling Thad that the house in Castle Rock was Endsville . . . the place where all rail service terminates.
Thad lay inside his own sweaty outline on the sheet, slowly releasing his pillow. He rubbed his face with his bare arm, and waited for the dream to let go of him, waited for the shakes to let go of him. They did, but with surprising slowness. At least he had managed not to wake Liz.