Jake Puckett’s Reviews > The Dark Half > Status Update

CONT: Standing next to you is like standing next to a cave some nightmarish creature came out of. The monster is gone now, but you still don't like to be too close to where it came from. Because there might be another. Probably not; your mind knows that, but your emo-tions—they play a different tune, don't they?

Thad nodded. "I understand."
No you don't, Alan thought. You don't understand what you are, and I doubt that you ever will. Your wife might... although I wonder if things will ever be right between the two of you after this, if she'll ever want to understand, or dare to love you again. Your kids, maybe, some-day... but not you, Thad.

And Thad suddenly understood
(I won't go back) what was happening here.
The psychopomps, of course, had come to serve as George Stark's escort. George Stark's escort back to Endsville; back to the land of the dead.

And for the second time a bleak certainty of his own approaching death filled him. He tried to think of the sparrows, because the sparrows were the one element of this nightmare with which he did not believe George Stark was familiar. Then he thought better of it. The man was too sharp. If he allowed himself hope, Stark would see it in his eyes... and wonder what it meant.

But writers INVITE ghosts, maybe; along with actors and artists, they are the only totally accepted mediums of our society. They make worlds that never were, populate them with people who never existed, and then invite us to join them in their fantasies. And we do it, don't we? Yes. We PAY to do it.

How can he be so strong? How can he be so strong when be looks like he's dying?
But the answer was obvious. He wasn't human. She didn't think he was really even alive.

"And the man I just spoke to sounds like the sort of salesman you buy something from on the phone just to make sure he'll never visit your home in person."
"It's nothing, Rawlie."
"Very well." Rawlie didn't look convinced.