He shut the drawer and looked at the jar. He had tossed it in the drawer after that first fugue, during which he had used one of the Black Beauties to write THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN on the manuscript of The Golden Dog. He had never intended to use one again . . . yet he had been fooling with one just a couple of nights ago and here they were, sitting where they had sat during the dozen or so years when Stark had lived with him, lived in him. For long periods Stark would be quiet, hardly there at all. Then an idea would strike and foxy old George would leap out of his head like a crazed jack-in-the-box. Ka-POP! Here I am, Thad! Let's go, old hoss! Saddle up!
And every day for about three months thereafter Stark would leap out promptly at ten o'clock every day, weekends included. He would pop out, seize one of the Berol pencils, and commence writing his crazed nonsense — the crazed nonsense which paid the bills Thad's own work could not pay. Then the book would be done and George would disappear again, like the crazy old man who had woven straw into gold for Rapunzel.
Thad took out one of the pencils, looked at the teeth-marks tightly tattooed on the wooden barrel, and then dropped it back into the jar. It made a tiny clink! sound.
'My dark half,' he muttered.
But was George Stark his? Had he ever been his? Except for the fugue, or trance, or whatever it had been, he had not used one of these pencils, not even to make notes, since writing The End at the bottom of the last page of the last Stark novel, Riding to Babylon.
There had been nothing to use them for, after all; they were George Stark's pencils and Stark was dead . . . or so he had assumed. He supposed he would have gotten around to throwing them out in time.
But now it seemed he had a use for them after all.
He reached toward the wide—mouthed jar, then pulled his hand back, as if from the side of a furnace which glows with its own deep and jealous heat.
Not yet.
He took the Scripto pen from his shirt pocket, opened his journal, uncapped the pen, hesitated, and then wrote.
If William cries, Wendy cries. But I've discovered the link between them is much deeper and stronger than that. Yesterday Wendy fell down the stairs and earned a bruise — a bruise that looks like a big purple mushroom. When the twins got up from their naps, William had one, too. Same location, same shape.
Thad lapsed into the self-interview style which characterized a good part of his journal. As he did so, he realized this very habit this way of finding a path to the things he really thought — suggested yet another form of duality . . . or perhaps it was only another aspect of a single split in his mind and spirit, something which was both fundamental and mysterious.
Question: If you took slides of the bruises on my children's legs, then overlaid them, would you end up with what looked like a single image?
Answer: Yes, I think you would. I think it is like the fingerprints. I think it is like the voiceprints.
Thad sat quietly for a moment, tapping the end of the pen against the journal page, considering this. Then he leaned forward again and began to write more quickly.
Question: Does William KNOW he has a bruise? Answer: No. I don't think he does.
Question: Do I know what the sparrows are, or what they mean? Answer: No.
Question: But I do know there ARE sparrows. I know that much, don't I? Whatever Alan Pangborn or anyone else may believe, I know there ARE sparrows, and I know that they are flying again, don't I?
Answer: Yes.
Now the pen was racing over the page. He had not written so quickly or unselfconsciously in months.
Question: Does Stark know there are sparrows?
Answer: No. He said he doesn't, and I believe him.
Question: Am I SURE I believe him?
He stopped again, briefly, and then wrote:
Stark knows there is SOMETHING. But William must know there is something, too — if his leg is bruised, it must hurt. But Wendy gave him the bruise when she fell downstairs. William only knows he has a hurt place.
Question: Does Stark know he has a hurt place? A vulnerable place?
Answer. Yes. I think he does.
Question: Are the birds mine?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Does that mean that when he wrote THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN on Clawson's wall and Miriam's wall, he didn't know what he was doing and didn't remember it when he was done?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Who wrote about the sparrows? Who wrote it in blood?
Answer: The one who knows. The one to whom the sparrows belong.
Question: Who is the one who knows? Who owns the sparrows?
Answer: I am the knower. I am the owner.
Question: Was I there? Was I there when he murdered them?
He paused again, briefly. Yes, he wrote, and then: No. Both. I didn't have a fugue when Stark killed either Homer Gamache or Clawson, at least not that I remember. I think that what I know . . . what I SEE . . . may be growing.
Question: Does he see you?
Answer: I don't know. But . . .
'He must,' Thad muttered.
He wrote: He must know me. He must see me. If he really DID write the novels, he has known me for a long time. And his own knowing, his own seeing, is also growing. All that traceback and recording equipment didn't faze foxy old George a bit, did it? No — of course not. Because foxy old George knew it would be there. You don't spend almost ten years writing crime fiction without finding out about stuff like that. That's one reason it didn't faze him. But the other one's even better, isn't it? When he wanted to talk to me, talk to me privately, he knew exactly where I'd be and how to get hold of me, didn't he?
Yes. Stark had called the house when he wanted to be overheard, and he had called Dave's Market when he didn't. Why had he wanted to be overheard in the first case? Because he had a message to send to the police he knew would be listening — that he wasn't George Stark and knew he wasn't . . . and that he was done killing, he wasn't coming after Thad and Thad's family. And there was another reason, too. He wanted Thad to see the voice-prints he knew they would make. He knew the police wouldn't believe their evidence, no matter how incontrovertible it seemed . . . but Thad would.