Talisman 01 - The Talisman

by Stephen King Peter Straub

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Hmmmm?” Startled out of his reverie, Sloat looked around. A tall blond boy, obviously an upperclassman, was standing there. He was dressed prep—an impeccable blue flannel blazer worn over an open-collared shirt and a pair of faded Levi’s.

  He brushed hair out of his eyes which had that same dazed, dreaming look. “I’m Etheridge, sir. I just wondered if I could help you. You looked . . . lost.”

  Sloat smiled. He thought of saying—but did not—No, that’s how you look, my friend. Everything was all right. The Sawyer brat was still on the loose, but Sloat knew where he was going and that meant that Jacky was on a chain. It was invisible, but it was still a chain.

  “Lost in the past, that’s all,” he said. “Old times. I’m not a stranger here, Mr. Etheridge, if that’s what you’re worried about. My son’s a student. Richard Sloat.”

  Etheridge’s eyes grew even dreamier for a moment—puzzled, lost. Then they cleared. “Sure. Richard!” he exclaimed.

  “I’ll be going up to see the headmaster in a bit. I just wanted to have a poke around first.”

  “Well, I guess that’s fine.” Etheridge looked at his watch. “I have table-duty this morning, so if you’re sure you’re okay . . .”

  “I’m sure.”

  Etheridge gave him a nod, a rather vague smile, and started off.

  Sloat watched him go, and then he surveyed the ground between Nelson House and here. Noted the broken window again. A straight shot. It was fair—more than fair—to assume that, somewhere between Nelson House and this octagonal brick building, the two boys had Migrated into the Territories. If he liked, he could follow them. Just step inside—there was no lock on the door—and disappear. Reappear wherever Orris’s body happened to be at this moment. It would be somewhere close; perhaps even, in fact, in front of the depot-keeper himself. No nonsense about Migrating to a spot which might be a hundred miles away from the point of interest in Territories geography and no way to cover the intervening distance but by wagon or, worse, what his father had called shanks’ mare.

  The boys would already have gone on, in all likelihood. Into the Blasted Lands. If so, the Blasted Lands would finish them. And Sunlight Gardener’s Twinner, Osmond, would be more than capable of squeezing out all the information that Anders knew. Osmond and his horrid son. No need to Migrate at all.

  Except maybe for a look-see. For the pleasure and refreshment of becoming Orris again, if only for a few seconds.

  And to Make Sure, of course. His entire life, from childhood onward, had been an exercise in Making Sure.

  He looked around once to assure himself that Etheridge had not lingered; then he opened the door of The Depot and went inside.

  The smell was stale, dark, and incredibly nostalgic—the smell of old makeup and canvas flats. For a moment he had the crazy idea that he had done something even more incredible than Migrating; he felt that he might have travelled back through time to those undergraduate days when he and Phil Sawyer had been theater-mad college students.

  Then his eyes adjusted to the dimness and he saw the unfamiliar, almost mawkish props—a plaster bust of Pallas for a production of The Raven, an extravagantly gilt birdcage, a bookcase full of false bindings—and remembered that he was in the Thayer School excuse for a “little theater.”

  He paused for a moment, breathing deeply of the dust; he turned his eyes up to one dusty sunray falling through a small window. The light wavered and was suddenly a deeper gold, the color of lamplight. He was in the Territories. Just like that, he was in the Territories. There was a moment of almost staggering exhilaration at the speed of the change. Usually there was a pause, a sense of sideslipping from one place to another. This caesura seemed to be in direct proportion to the distance between the physical bodies of his two selves, Sloat and Orris. Once, when he had Migrated from Japan, where he was negotiating a deal with the Shaw brothers for a terrible novel about Hollywood stars menaced by a crazed ninja, the pause had gone on so long that he had feared he might be lost forever somewhere in the empty, senseless purgatory that exists between the worlds. But this time they had been close . . . so close! It was like those few times, he thought

  (Orris thought)

  when a man and woman achieve orgasm at the exact same instant and die in sex together.

  The smell of dried paint and canvas was replaced with the light, pleasant smell of Territories burning-oil. The lamp on the table was guttering low, sending out dark membranes of smoke. To his left a table was set, the remains of a meal congealing on the rough plates. Three plates.

  Orris stepped forward, dragging his clubfoot a little as always. He tipped one of the plates up, let the guttering lamplight skate queasily across the grease. Who ate from this one? Was it Anders, or Jason, or Richard . . . the boy who would also have been Rushton if my son had lived?

  Rushton had drowned while swimming in a pond not far from the Great House. There had been a picnic. Orris and his wife had drunk a quantity of wine. The sun had been hot. The boy, little more than an infant, had been napping. Orris and his wife had made love and then they had also fallen asleep in the sweet afternoon sunshine. He had been awakened by the child’s cries. Rushton had awakened and gone down to the water. He had been able to dog-paddle a little, just enough to get well out beyond his depth before panicking. Orris had limped to the water, dived in, and swum as fast as he could out to where the boy floundered. It was his foot, his damned foot, that had hampered him and perhaps cost his son his life. When he reached the boy, he had been sinking. Orris had managed to catch him by the hair and pull him to shore . . . but by then Rushton had been blue and dead.

  Margaret had died by her own hand less than six weeks later.

  Seven months after that, Morgan Sloat’s own young son had nearly drowned in a Westwood YMCA pool during a Young Paddlers class. He had been pulled from the pool as blue and dead as Rushton . . . but the lifeguard had applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and Richard Sloat had responded.

  God pounds His nails, Orris thought, and then a deep, blurry snore snapped his head around.

  Anders, the depot-keeper, lay on a pallet in the corner with his kilt rudely pulled up to his breeks. An earthen jug of wine lay overturned nearby. Much of the wine had flowed into his hair.

  He snored again, then moaned, as if with bad dreams.

  No dream you might have could be as bad as your future now is, Orris thought grimly. He took a step closer, his cloak flapping around him. He looked down on Anders with no pity.

  Sloat was able to plan murder, but it had been Orris, time and time again, who had Migrated to carry out the act itself. It had been Orris in Sloat’s body who had attempted to smother the infant Jack Sawyer with a pillow while a wrestling announcer droned on and on in the background. Orris who had overseen the assassination of Phil Sawyer in Utah (just as he had overseen the assassination of Phil Sawyer’s counterpart, the commoner Prince Philip Sawtelle, in the Territories).

  Sloat had a taste for blood, but ultimately he was as allergic to it as Orris was to American food and American air. It was Morgan of Orris, once derided as Morgan Thudfoot, who had always done the deeds Sloat had planned.

  My son died; his still lives. Sawtelle’s son died. Sawyer’s still lives. But these things can be remedied. Will be remedied. No Talisman for you, my sweet little friends. You are bound for a radioactive version of Oatley, and you each owe the balance-scales a death. God pounds His nails.

  “And if God doesn’t, you may be sure I will,” he said aloud.

  The man on the floor moaned again, as if he had heard. Orris took another step toward him, perhaps meaning to kick him awake, and then cocked his head. In the distance he heard hoofbeats, the faint creak and jingle of harness, the hoarse cries of drovers.

  That would be Osmond, then. Good. Let Osmond take care of business here—he himself had little interest in questioning a man with a hangover when he knew well enough what the man would have to say.

&
nbsp; Orris clumped across to the door, opened it, and looked out on a gorgeous peach-colored Territories sunrise. It was from this direction—the direction of the sunrise—that the sounds of approaching riders came. He allowed himself to drink in that lovely glow for a moment and then turned toward the west again, where the sky was still the color of a fresh bruise. The land was dark . . . except for where the first sunlight bounced off a pair of bright parallel lines.

  Boys, you have gone to your deaths, Orris thought with satisfaction . . . and then a thought occurred which brought even more satisfaction: their deaths might already have happened.

  “Good,” Orris said, and closed his eyes.

  A moment later Morgan Sloat was gripping the handle of the door of Thayer School’s little theater, opening his own eyes, and planning his trip back to the west coast.

  It might be time to take a little trip down memory lane, he thought. To a town in California called Point Venuti. A trip back east first, perhaps—a visit to the Queen—and then . . .

  “The sea air,” he said to the bust of Pallas, “will do me good.”

  He ducked back inside, had another jolt from the small vial in his pocket (hardly noticing the smells of canvas and makeup now), and, thus refreshed, he started back downhill toward his car.

  FOUR

  THE TALISMAN

  34

  Anders

  1

  Jack suddenly realized that, although he was still running, he was running on thin air, like a cartoon character who has time for one surprised double-take before plunging two thousand feet straight down. But it wasn’t two thousand feet. He had time—just—to realize that the ground wasn’t there anymore, and then he dropped four or five feet, still running. He wobbled and might have remained upright, but then Richard came piling into him and they both went tumbling.

  “Look out, Jack!” Richard was screaming—he was apparently not interested in taking his own advice, because his eyes were squeezed tightly shut. “Look out for the wolf! Look out for Mr. Dufrey! Look out—”

  “Stop it, Richard!” These breathless screams frightened him more than anything else had done. Richard sounded mad, absolutely mad. “Stop it, we’re all right! They’re gone!”

  “Look out for Etheridge! Look out for the bugs! Look out, Jack!”

  “Richard, they’re gone! Look around you, for Jason’s sake!” Jack hadn’t had a chance to do this himself, but he knew they had made it—the air was still and sweet, the night perfectly silent except for a slim breeze that was blessedly warm.

  “Look out, Jack! Look out, Jack! Look out, look out—”

  Like a bad echo inside his head, he heard a memory of the dog-boys outside Nelson House chorusing Way-gup, way-gup, way-gup! Pleeze, pleeze, pleeze!

  “Look out, Jack!” Richard wailed. His face was slammed into the earth and he looked like an overenthusiastic Moslem determined to get in good with Allah. “LOOK OUT! THE WOLF! PREFECTS! THE HEADMASTER! LOOK O—”

  Panicked by the idea that Richard actually had gone crazy, Jack yanked his friend’s head up by the back of his collar and slapped his face.

  Richard’s words were cut cleanly off. He gaped at Jack, and Jack saw the shape of his own hand rising on Richard’s pale cheek, a dim red tattoo. His shame was replaced by an urgent curiosity to know just where they were. There was light; otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to see that mark.

  A partial answer to the question came from inside him—it was certain and unquestionable . . . at least, as far as it went.

  The Outposts, Jack-O. You’re in the Outposts now.

  But before he could spend any time mulling that over, he had to try to get Richard shipshape.

  “Are you all right, Richie?”

  He was looking at Jack with numb, hurt surprise. “You hit me, Jack.”

  “I slapped you. That’s what you’re supposed to do with hysterical people.”

  “I wasn’t hysterical! I’ve never been hysterical in my l—” Richard broke off and jumped to his feet, looking around wildly. “The wolf! We have to look out for the wolf, Jack! If we can get over the fence he won’t be able to get us!”

  He would have gone sprinting off into the darkness right then, making for a cyclone fence which was now in another world, if Jack hadn’t grabbed him and held him back.

  “The wolf is gone, Richard.”

  “Huh?”

  “We made it.”

  “What are you talking about—”

  “The Territories, Richard! We’re in the Territories! We flipped over!” And you almost pulled my damn arm out of its socket, you unbeliever, Jack thought, rubbing his throbbing shoulder. The next time I try to haul someone across, I’m going to find myself a real little kid, one who still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Richard said slowly. “There’s no such thing as the Territories, Jack.”

  “If there isn’t,” Jack said grimly, “then how come that great big white wolf isn’t biting your ass? Or your own damn headmaster?”

  Richard looked at Jack, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He looked around, this time with a bit more attention (at least Jack hoped so). Jack did the same, enjoying the warmth and the clarity of the air as he did so. Morgan and his crowd of snake-pit crazies might come bursting through at any second, but for now it was impossible not to luxuriate in the pure animal joy of being back here again.

  They were in a field. High, yellowish grass with bearded heads—not wheat, but something like wheat; some edible grain, anyway—stretched off into the night in every direction. The warm breeze rippled it in mysterious but rather lovely waves. To the right was a wooden building standing on a slight knoll, a lamp mounted on a pole in front of it. A yellow flame almost too bright to look at burned clearly inside the lamp’s glass globe. Jack saw that the building was octagonal. The two boys had come into the Territories on the outermost edge of the circle of light that lamp threw—and there was something on the far side of the circle, something metallic that threw back the lamplight in broken glimmers. Jack squinted at the faint, silvery glow . . . and then understood. What he felt was not so much wonder as a sense of fulfilled expection. It was as if two very large jigsaw-puzzle pieces, one in the American Territories and one over here, had just come neatly together.

  Those were railroad tracks. And although it was impossible to tell direction in the darkness, Jack thought he knew in which direction those tracks would travel:

  West.

  2

  “Come on,” Jack said.

  “I don’t want to go up there,” Richard said.

  “Why not?”

  “Too much crazy stuff going on.” Richard wet his lips. “Could be anything up there in that building. Dogs. Crazy people.” He wet his lips again. “Bugs.”

  “I told you, we’re in the Territories now. The craziness has all blown away—it’s clean here. Hell, Richard, can’t you smell it?”

  “There are no such things as Territories,” Richard said thinly.

  “Look around you.”

  “No,” Richard said. His voice was thinner than ever, the voice of an infuriatingly stubborn child.

  Jack snatched up a handful of the heavily bearded grass. “Look at this!”

  Richard turned his head.

  Jack had to actively restrain an urge to shake him.

  Instead of doing that, he tossed the grass away, counted mentally to ten, and then started up the hill. He looked down and saw that he was now wearing something like leather chaps. Richard was dressed in much the same way, and he had a red bandanna around his neck that looked like something out of a Frederic Remington painting. Jack reached up to his own neck and felt a similar bandanna. He ran his hands down along his body and discovered that Myles P. Kiger’s wonderfully warm coat was now something very like a Mexican serape. I bet I look like an advertisement for Taco Bell, he thought, and grinned.

  An expression of utter panic came over Richard’s face
when Jack started up the hill, leaving him alone at the bottom.

  “Where are you going?”

  Jack looked at Richard and came back. He put his hands on Richard’s shoulders and looked soberly into Richard’s eyes.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said. “Some of them must have seen us flip. It may be that they can’t come right after us, or it may be that they can. I don’t know. I know as much about the laws governing all of this as a kid of five knows about magnetism—and all a kid of five knows on the subject is that sometimes magnets attract and sometimes they repel. But for the time being, that’s all I have to know. We have to get out of here. End of story.”

  “I’m dreaming all this, I know I am.”

  Jack nodded toward the ramshackle wooden building. “You can come or you can stay here. If you want to stay here, I’ll come back for you after I check the place out.”

  “None of this is happening,” Richard said. His naked, glassesless eyes were wide and flat and somehow dusty. He looked for a moment up at the black Territories sky with its strange and unfamiliar sprawl of stars, shuddered, and looked away. “I have a fever. It’s the flu. There’s been a lot of flu around. This is a delirium. You’re guest-starring in my delirium, Jack.”

  “Well, I’ll send somebody around to the Delirium Actors’ Guild with my AFTRA card when I get a chance,” Jack said. “In the meantime, why don’t you just stay here, Richard? If none of this is happening, then you have nothing to worry about.”

  He started away again, thinking that it would take only a few more of these Alice-at-the-tea-party conversations with Richard to convince him that he was crazy, as well.

  He was halfway up the hill when Richard joined him.

  “I would have come back for you,” Jack said.