Talisman 01 - The Talisman

by Stephen King Peter Straub

  “I’m not sure I understand you,” Jack said, although in his heart he thought he did.

  “At land’s end,” Anders said. “At the edge of the big water, where I am bound to go.”

  In other words, it began in the same place my father came from . . . my father, and me, and Richard . . . and Morgan. Old Bloat.

  The troubles, Anders said, had come to the Outposts, and now the Wolf tribe was partly rotten—just how rotten none could say, but the liveryman told Jack he was afraid that the rot would be the end of them if it didn’t stop soon. The upheavals had come here, and now they had even reached the east, where, he had heard, the Queen lay ill and near death.

  “That’s not true, is it, my Lord?” Anders asked . . . almost begged.

  Jack looked at him. “Should I know how to answer that?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Anders said. “Are ye not her son?”

  For a moment, the entire world seemed to become very quiet. The sweet hum of the bugs outside stilled. Richard seemed to pause between heavy, sluggish breaths.

  Even his own heart seemed to pause . . . perhaps that most of all.

  Then, his voice perfectly even, he said, “Yes . . . I am her son. And it’s true . . . she’s very ill.”

  “But dying?” Anders persisted, his eyes nakedly pleading now. “Is she dying, my Lord?”

  Jack smiled a little and said: “That remains to be seen.”

  8

  Anders said that until the troubles began, Morgan of Orris had been a little-known frontier lord and no more; he had inherited his comic-opera title from a father who had been a greasy, evil-smelling buffoon. Morgan’s father had been something of a laughing-stock while alive, Anders went on, and had even been a laughing-stock in his manner of dying.

  “He was taken with the squitters after a day of drinking peach-fruit wine and died while on the trots.”

  People had been prepared to make the old man’s son a laughing-stock as well, but the laughing had stopped soon after the hangings in Orris began. And when the troubles began in the years after the death of the old King, Morgan had risen in importance as a star of evil omen rises in the sky.

  All of this meant little this far out in the Outposts—these great empty spaces, Anders said, made politics seem unimportant. Only the deadly change in the Wolf tribe made a practical difference to them, and since most of the bad Wolfs went to the Other Place, even that didn’t make much difference to them (“It fashes us little, my Lord” was what Jack’s ears insisted they had heard).

  Then, not long after the news of the Queen’s illness had reached this far west, Morgan had sent out a crew of grotesque, twisted slaves from the ore-pits back east; these slaves were tended by stolen Wolfs and other, stranger creatures. Their foreman was a terrible man who carried a whip; he had been here almost constantly when the work began, but then he had disappeared. Anders, who had spent most of those terrible weeks and months cowering in his house, which was some five miles south of here, had been delighted to see him go. He had heard rumors that Morgan had called the man with the whip back east, where affairs were reaching some great point of climax; Anders didn’t know if this was true or not, and didn’t care. He was simply glad that the man, who was sometimes accompanied by a scrawny, somehow gruesome-looking little boy, was gone.

  “His name,” Jack demanded. “What was his name?”

  “My Lord, I don’t know. The Wolfs called him He of the Lashes. The slaves just called him the devil. I’d say they were both right.”

  “Did he dress like a dandy? Velvet coats? Shoes with buckles on the tops, maybe?”

  Anders was nodding.

  “Did he wear a lot of strong perfume?”

  “Aye! Aye, he did!”

  “And the whip had little rawhide strings with metal caps on them.”

  “Aye, my Lord. An evil whip. And he was fearsome good with it, aye, he was.”

  It was Osmond. It was Sunlight Gardener. He was here, overseeing some project for Morgan . . . then the Queen got sick and Osmond was called back to the summer palace, where I first made his cheerful acquaintance.

  “His son,” Jack said. “What did his son look like?”

  “Skinny,” Anders said slowly. “One eye was afloat. That’s all I can remember. He . . . my Lord, the Whipman’s son was hard to see. The Wolfs seemed more afraid of him than of his father, although the son carried no whip. They said he was dim.”

  “Dim,” Jack mused.

  “Yes. It is their word for one who is hard to see, no matter how hard ye look for that one. Invisibility is impossible—so the Wolfs say—but one can make himself dim if only he knows the trick of it. Most Wolfs do, and this little whoreson knew it, too. So all I remember is how thin he was, and that floating eye, and that he was as ugly as black, syphilitic sin.”

  Anders paused.

  “He liked to hurt things. Little things. He used to take them under the porch and I’d hear the most awful screams. . . .” Anders shuddered. “That was one of the reasons I kept to my house, you know. I don’t like to hear wee animals in pain. Makes me feel turrible bad, it does.”

  Everything Anders said raised a hundred fresh questions in Jack’s mind. He would particularly have liked to know all that Anders knew about the Wolfs—just hearing of them woke simultaneous pleasure and a deep, dully painful longing for his Wolf in his heart.

  But time was short; this man was scheduled to drive west into the Blasted Lands in the morning, a horde of crazy scholars led by Morgan himself might burst through from what the liveryman called the Other Place at any moment, Richard might wake up and want to know who this Morgan was they were discussing, and who this dim fellow was—this dim fellow who sounded suspiciously like the fellow who had lived next door to him in Nelson House.

  “They came,” he prompted, “this crew came, and Osmond was their foreman—at least until he was called away or whenever he had to lead the devotions at night-chapel back in Indiana—”

  “My Lord?” Anders’s face was again ponderous with puzzlement.

  “They came, and they built . . . what?” He was sure he already knew the answer to this, but he wanted to hear Anders himself say it.

  “Why, the tracks,” Anders said. “The tracks going west into the Blasted Lands. The tracks I must travel myself tomorrow.” He shuddered.

  “No,” Jack said. A hot, terrible excitement exploded in his chest like a sun, and he rose to his feet. Again there was that click in his head, that terrible, persuasive feeling of great things coming together.

  Anders fell on his knees with a crash as a terrible, beautiful light filled Jack’s face. Richard stirred at the sound and sat sleepily up.

  “Not you,” Jack said. “Me. And him.” He pointed at Richard.

  “Jack?” Richard looked at him with sleepy, nearsighted confusion. “What are you talking about? And why is that man sniffing the floor?”

  “My Lord . . . yer will, of course . . . but I don’t understand. . . .”

  “Not you,” Jack said, “us. We’ll take the train for you.”

  “But my Lord, why?” Anders managed, not yet daring to look up.

  Jack Sawyer looked out into the darkness.

  “Because,” he said, “I think there’s something at the end of the tracks—at the end of the tracks or near the end—that I have to get.”

  Interlude

  Sloat in This World (IV)

  On the tenth of December, a bundled-up Morgan Sloat was sitting on the uncomfortable little wooden chair beside Lily Sawyer’s bed—he was cold, so he had his heavy cashmere coat wrapped around him and his hands thrust deep into its pockets, but he was having a much better time than his appearance suggested. Lily was dying. She was going out, away, to that place from which you never came back, not even if you were a Queen in a football field–sized bed.

  Lily’s bed was not so grand, and she did not in the least resemble a Queen. Illness had subtracted her good looks, had skinned down her face and aged her a quick
twenty years. Sloat let his eyes roam appreciatively over the prominent ridges of bone about her eyes, the tortoiselike shell of her forehead. Her ravaged body barely made a lump beneath the sheets and blankets. Sloat knew that the Alhambra had been well paid to leave Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer alone, for it was he who had paid them. They no longer bothered to send heat up to her room. She was the hotel’s only guest. Besides the desk clerk and cook, the only employees still in the Alhambra were three Portuguese maids who spent all their time cleaning the lobby—it must have been the maids who kept Lily piled high with blankets. Sloat himself had commandeered the suite across the hall, and ordered the desk clerk and the maids to keep a close eye on Lily.

  To see if she would open her eyes, he said, “You’re looking better, Lily. I really think I see signs of improvement.”

  Without moving anything but her mouth, Lily said, “I don’t know why you pretend to be human, Sloat.”

  “I’m the best friend you have,” Sloat responded.

  Now she did open her eyes, and they were not dull enough to suit him. “Get out of here,” she whispered. “You’re obscene.”

  “I’m trying to help you, and I wish you’d remember that. I have all the papers, Lily. All you have to do is sign them. Once you do, you and your son are taken care of for life.” Sloat regarded Lily with an expression of satisfied gloom. “I haven’t had much luck in locating Jack, by the way. Spoken to him lately?”

  “You know I haven’t,” she said. And did not weep, as he had hoped.

  “I really do think the boy ought to be here, don’t you?”

  “Piss up a stick,” Lily said.

  “I think I will use your bathroom, if you don’t mind,” he said, and stood up. Lily closed her eyes again, ignoring him. “I hope he’s staying out of trouble, anyhow,” Sloat said, slowly walking down the side of the bed. “Terrible things happen to boys on the road.” Lily still did not respond. “Things I hate to think about.” He reached the end of the bed and continued on to the bathroom door. Lily lay under her sheets and blankets like a crumpled piece of tissue paper. Sloat went into the bathroom.

  He rubbed his hands together, gently closed the door, and turned on both taps over the sink. From the pocket of his suitcoat he extracted a small brown two-gram vial, from his inner jacket pocket a small case containing a mirror, a razor blade, and a short brass straw. Onto the mirror he tapped about an eighth of a gram of the purest Peruvian Flake cocaine he’d been able to find. Then he chopped it ritualistically with his blade, forming it into two stubby lines. He snorted the lines through the brass straw, gasped, inhaled sharply, and held his breath for a second or two. “Aah.” His nasal passages opened up as wide as tunnels. Way back there, a drip began to deliver the goodies. Sloat ran his hands under the water, then for the sake of his nose drew a little of the moisture on his thumb and index finger up into his nostrils. He dried his hands and his face.

  That lovely train, he allowed himself to think, that lovely lovely train, I bet I’m prouder of it than I am of my own son.

  Morgan Sloat revelled in the vision of his precious train, which was the same in both worlds and the first concrete manifestation of his long-held plan to import modern technology into the Territories, arriving in Point Venuti loaded with its useful cargo. Point Venuti! Sloat smiled as the coke blasted through his brain, bringing its usual message that all would be well, all would be well. Little Jacky Sawyer would be a very lucky boy ever to leave the odd little town of Point Venuti. In fact, he’d be lucky ever to get there in the first place, considering that he’d have to make his way across the Blasted Lands. But the drug reminded Sloat that in some ways he’d prefer Jack to make it to dangerous, warped little Point Venuti, he’d even prefer Jack to survive his exposure to the black hotel, which was not merely boards and nails, bricks and stone, but was also somehow alive . . . because it was possible that he might walk out with the Talisman in his thieving little hands. And if that were to happen . . .

  Yes, if that absolutely wonderful event were to take place, all would indeed be well.

  And both Jack Sawyer and the Talisman would be broken in half.

  And he, Morgan Sloat, would finally have the canvas his talents deserved. For a second he saw himself spreading his arms over starry vastnesses, over worlds folded together like lovers on a bed, over all that the Talisman protected, and all that he had coveted so when he’d bought the Agincourt, years back. Jack could get all that for him. Sweetness. Glory.

  To celebrate this thought, Sloat brought the vial out of his pocket again and did not bother with the ritual of razor and mirror, but simply used the attached little spoon to raise the medicinal white powder to first one nostril, then the other. Sweetness, yes.

  Sniffing, he came back into the bedroom. Lily appeared slightly more animated, but his mood now was so good that even this evidence of her continuing life did not darken it. Bright and oddly hollow within their circles of bone, her eyes followed him. “Uncle Bloat has a new loathsome habit,” she said.

  “And you’re dying,” he said. “Which one would you choose?”

  “Do enough of that stuff, and you’ll be dying, too.”

  Undeterred by her hostility, Sloat returned to the rickety wooden chair. “For God’s sake, Lily, grow up,” he said. “Everybody does coke now. You’re out of touch—you’ve been out of touch for years. You wanna try some?” He lifted the vial from his pocket and swung it by the chain attached to the little spoon.

  “Get out of here.”

  Sloat waggled the vial closer to her face.

  Lily sat up in bed as smartly as a striking snake and spat in his face.

  “Bitch!” He recoiled, grabbing for his handkerchief as the wad of spittle slid down his cheek.

  “If that crap is so wonderful, why do you have to sneak into the toilet to take it? Don’t answer, just leave me alone. I don’t want to see you again, Bloat. Take your fat ass out of here.”

  “You’re going to die alone, Lily,” he said, now perversely filled with a cold, hard joy. “You’re going to die alone, and this comic little town is going to give you a pauper’s burial, and your son is going to be killed because he can’t possibly handle what’s lying in wait for him, and no one will ever hear of either one of you again.” He grinned at her. His plump hands were balled into white hairy fists. “Remember Asher Dondorf, Lily? Our client? The sidekick on that series Flanagan and Flanagan? I was reading about him in The Hollywood Reporter—some issue a few weeks ago. Shot himself in his living room, but his aim wasn’t too cool, because instead of killing himself he just blew away the roof of his mouth and put himself in a coma. Might hang on for years, I hear, just rotting away.” He leaned toward her, his forehead corrugating. “You and good old Asher have a lot in common, it seems to me.”

  She stonily looked back. Her eyes seemed to have crawled back inside her head, and at that moment she resembled some hard-bitten old frontier woman with a squirrel rifle in one hand and Scripture in the other. “My son is going to save my life,” she said. “Jack is going to save my life, and you won’t be able to stop him.”

  “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” Sloat answered. “We’ll just see about that.”

  35

  The Blasted Lands

  1

  “But will ye be safe, my Lord?” Anders asked, kneeling down before Jack with his white-and-red kilt pooled out around him like a skirt.

  “Jack?” Richard asked, his voice a whiny, irrelevant skirl of sound.

  “Would you be safe yourself?” Jack asked.

  Anders twisted his big white head sideways and squinted up at Jack as if he had just asked a riddle. He looked like a huge puzzled dog.

  “I mean, I’ll be about as safe as you would be yourself. That’s all I mean.”

  “But my Lord . . .”

  “Jack?” came Richard’s querulous voice again. “I fell asleep, and now I should be awake, but we’re still in this weird place, so I’m still dreaming . . . but I want to be awake, Jack,
I don’t want to have this dream anymore. No. I don’t want to.”

  And that’s why you busted your damn glasses, Jack said to himself. Aloud, he said, “This isn’t a dream, Richie-boy. We’re about to hit the road. We’re gonna take a train ride.”

  “Huh?” Richard said, rubbing his face and sitting up. If Anders resembled a big white dog in skirts, Richard looked like nothing so much as a newly awakened baby.

  “My Lord Jason,” Anders said. Now he seemed as if he might weep—with relief, Jack thought. “It is yer will? It is yer will to drive that devil-machine through the Blasted Lands?”

  “It sure is,” Jack said.

  “Where are we?” Richard said. “Are you sure they’re not following us?”

  Jack turned toward him. Richard was sitting up on the undulating yellow floor, blinking stupidly, terror still drifting about him like a fog. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll answer your question. We’re in a section of the Territories called Ellis-Breaks—”

  “My head hurts,” Richard said. He had closed his eyes.

  “And,” Jack went on, “we’re going to take this man’s train all the way through the Blasted Lands to the black hotel, or as close to it as we can get. That’s it, Richard. Believe it or not. And the sooner we do it, the sooner we’ll get away from whatever just might be trying to find us.”

  “Etheridge,” Richard whispered. “Mr. Dufrey.” He looked around the mellow interior of The Depot as if he expected all their pursuers to suddenly pour through the walls. “It’s a brain tumor, you know,” he said to Jack in a tone of perfect reasonableness. “That’s what it is—my headache.”