Stark renews his ultimatum to Thad at the University of Maine

Stark renews his ultimatum to Thad at the University of Maine, turning a missed writing deadline into a direct confrontation between Thad Beaumont and the increasingly unstable George Stark. Thad goes to his university office intending to reach Stark by telephone, and when the call comes, he refuses to begin the demanded novel. Their exchange makes Stark’s physical deterioration harder to ignore, but his threat against Thad and others keeps the deadline deadly rather than merely professional.

The deadline and Thad’s purpose

George Stark had called on the evening of June 10 and given Thad a week to start a novel about an armored-car heist. By the morning after that week had elapsed, Thad had not begun. He understood increasingly clearly how the book might proceed, but the approaching deadline had become the force governing his choices: he left home not simply to collect university files, but because he needed to deal with Stark.

The telephone in Thad’s office in the English-Math Building offered a way to contact Stark without using a line Thad believed was tapped. It was not the only possible connection between them. Thad had already found that he could reach Stark through a more dangerous, bodily form of contact, at the cost of severe mental distress and the return of the sparrows. He increasingly understood the birds as a sign of death, though he did not know whose death they foretold. The university visit therefore takes place under two pressures at once: the overdue writing demand and the consequences of the supernatural bond.

The call in the university office

Thad waits for Stark’s call while sorting university files, but the telephone does not ring when he expects it to. He concludes that Stark will not call and suspects that Stark has another way to act. Rawlie DeLesseps arrives in the office; soon afterward, Thad picks up the telephone and greets Stark, establishing that the confrontation has begun despite the earlier silence.

Stark reminds Thad that the week has passed and accuses him of doing nothing. Thad agrees that he has not complied, then tells Stark he will not write, regardless of whether the deadline is a week, a month, or ten years. He insists that Stark is dead and should remain so. The refusal is direct: Thad does not bargain for more time or offer a partial start, but rejects the premise that Stark can dictate his work.

Stark’s deterioration and renewed threat

Thad uses the call to challenge Stark’s condition. Stark’s voice has grown hoarse and rough, and its shifting quality strengthens Thad’s suspicion that Stark is losing cohesion. Thad connects this apparent breakdown to the phrase Stark had previously written in his journal and argues that Stark wants the novel begun because he is deteriorating. The call thus becomes more than an exchange about a manuscript: Thad tries to interpret Stark’s condition and turn that interpretation into leverage.

Stark dismisses the issue as irrelevant to Thad and returns to the deadline. He demands that Thad get started by nightfall and warns that otherwise Thad will regret it, adding that he will not be the only one to suffer. The threat expands the stakes beyond the writer himself, making the refusal a risk to other people as well. Stark then ends the call abruptly. Thad replaces the receiver and turns to find his police guards, Steve Harrison and Manchester, standing nearby.

Significance and unresolved outcome

The confrontation reverses the expected purpose of Stark’s ultimatum. The deadline is meant to compel Thad’s return to writing, but Thad instead uses the call to refuse and confront Stark’s apparent decay. Yet the refusal does not end Stark’s power: the warning about nightfall and the unnamed others leaves the danger active after the telephone goes dead.

The scene also binds creative work to survival without resolving that bind. Stark demands a novel, while Thad treats writing for him as submission to a dead man who is coming apart. Their exchange ends not with agreement or a settled outcome, but with a renewed threat and Thad’s police escort present in the office. The deadline has passed; the next consequence remains uncertain.