The Talisman

  No one mentioned Ferd Janklow. It was as though Ferd, with his grimaces at Sunlight Gardener's sermons and his pale Delftware hands, had never existed.

  Jack found himself barely able to restrain an impulse to stand and scream at them. Instead, he began to think as hard as he ever had in his life.

  He's not here because they killed him. They're all mad. You think madness isn't catching? Just look what happened at that nutty place down in South America--when the man in the reflector sunglasses told them to drink the purple grape drink, they said yassuh, boss, and drank it.

  Jack looked around at the dreary, indrawn, tired, blank faces--and thought how they would light, how they would kindle, if Sunlight Gardener strode in here--if he strode in here right here and now.

  They'd do it, too, if Sunlight Gardener asked them to. They'd drink it, and then they'd hold me and Wolf, and they'd pour it down our throats as well. Ferd was right--they see something on my face, or in it, something that came into me in the Territories, and maybe they do love me a little . . . I guess that's what pulled Heck Bast's bell-rope anyway. That slob isn't used to loving anything or anyone. So, yeah, maybe they do love me a little . . . but they love him a lot more. They'd do it. They're mad.

  Ferd could have told him that, and, sitting there in the common room, Jack supposed that Ferd had told him.

  He told Jack he had been committed to the Sunlight Home by his parents, born-again Christians who fell down on their knees in the living room whenever anyone on The 700 Club began to say a prayer. Neither of them had understood Ferd, who was cut from an entirely different bolt of cloth. They thought Ferd must be a child of the devil--a communistic, radical humanist changeling. When he ran away for the fourth time and was bagged by none other than Franky Williams, his parents came to the Sunlight Home--where Ferd had of course been stashed--and fell in love with Sunlight Gardener on sight. Here was the answer to all the problems their bright, troublesome, rebellious son had caused them. Sunlight Gardener would educate their son toward the Lord. Sunlight Gardener would show him the error of his ways. Sunlight Gardener would take him off their hands and get him off the streets of Anderson.

  "They saw that story about the Sunlight Home on Sunday Report," Ferd told Jack. "They sent me a postcard saying God would punish liars and false prophets in a lake of fire. I wrote them back--Rudolph in the kitchen smuggled the letter out for me. Dolph's a pretty good guy." He paused. "You know what the Ferd Janklow definition of a good guy is, Jack?"

  "No."

  "One who stays bought," Ferd said, and laughed a cynical, hurt laugh. "Two bucks buys Dolph's mailman services. So I wrote them a letter and said that if God punished liars the way they said, then I hoped Sunlight Gardener could find a set of asbestos longjohns in the other world, because he was lying about what goes on here faster than a horse can trot. Everything they had on Sunday Report--the rumors about the strait-jackets and about the Box--it was all true. Oh, they couldn't prove it. The guy's a nut, Jack, but he's a smart nut. If you ever make a mistake about that, he'll put a real hurt on you and on Phil the Fearless Wolf-Boy for good measure."

  Jack said, "Those Sunday Report guys are usually pretty good at catching people with their hands in the pork barrel. At least, that's what my mom says."

  "Oh, he was scared. He got real shrill and shrieky. Ever see Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny? He was like that for a week before they showed up. When they finally got here he was all sweetness and reason, but the week before was a living hell. Mr. Ice Cream was shitting in his pants. That was the week he kicked Benny Woodruff down the stairs from the third floor because he caught him with a Superman comic. Benny was out cold for three hours, and he couldn't quite get it straight who he was or where he was until that night."

  Ferd paused.

  "He knew they were coming. Same as he always knows when the state inspectors are going to pull a surprise inspection. He hid the strait-jackets in the attic and made believe the Box was a hay-drying shed."

  Ferd's cynical, hurt laugh again.

  "Know what my folks did, Jack? They sent Sunny Gardener a Xerox of my letter to them. 'For my own good,' my pop says in his next letter to me. And guess what? It's Ferd's turn in the Box, courtesy of my own folks!"

  The hurt laugh again.

  "Tell you one other thing. He wasn't kidding at night-chapel. The kids that talked to the Sunday Report people all disappeared--the ones he could get hold of, anyway."

  The way Ferd himself has disappeared now, Jack thought, watching Wolf brood across the room. He shivered. His hands felt very, very cold.

  Your friend Phil the Fearless Wolf-Boy.

  Was Wolf starting to look hairier again? So soon? Surely not. But that was coming of course--it was as relentless as the tides.

  And by the way, Jack, while we're just sitting around here worrying about the dangers of just sitting around here, how's your mother? How's Darling Lil, Queen of the Bs? Losing weight? Having pain? Is she finally starting to feel it eat into her with its sharp, ratty little teeth as you sit here growing roots in this weird prison? Is Morgan maybe getting ready to wind up the lightning and give the cancer a hand?

  He had been shocked at the idea of strait-jackets, and although he had seen the Box--a big ugly iron thing which sat in the Home's back yard like a weird abandoned refrigerator--he couldn't believe that Gardener actually put boys in it. Ferd had slowly convinced him, talking in a low voice as they harvested rocks in Far Field.

  "He's got a great setup here," Ferd had said. "It's a license to coin money. His religious shows play all over the midwest on the radio and over most of the country on cable TV and the indy stations. We're his captive audience. We sound great on the radio and we look great on the tube--when Roy Owdersfelt isn't milking that fucking pimple on the end of his nose, that is. He's got Casey, his pet radio and TV producer--Casey videotapes every morning-chapel and audiotapes every night-chapel. He cuts all the sound and picture together and hypes everything until Gardener looks like Billy Graham and us guys sound like the crowd in Yankee Stadium during the seventh game of the World Series. That isn't all Casey does, either. He's the house genius. You see the bug in your room? Casey set up the bugs. Everything feeds into his control room, and the only way into that control room is through Gardener's private office. The bugs are voice-actuated, so he doesn't waste any tape. Anything juicy he saves for Sunlight Gardener. I've heard Casey put a blue box on Gardener's phone so he can make long-distance phone calls free, and I know damned well he's spliced a line into the pay-TV cable that goes by out front. You like the idea of Mr. Ice Cream settling back and watching a big double feature on Cinemax after a hard day of selling Jesus to the masses? I like it. This guy is as American as spinner hubcaps, Jack, and here in Indiana they love him almost as much as they love high-school basketball."

  Ferd hawked back snot, grimaced, twisted his head, and spat into the dirt.

  "You're kidding," Jack said.

  "Ferd Janklow never kids about the Marching Morons of the Sunlight Home," Ferd said solemnly. "He's rich, he doesn't have to declare any of it to the Internal Revenue, he's got the local school board buffaloed--I mean, they're scared to death of him; there's this one woman who practically skitters every time she's out here, looks like she'd like to give him the sign against the evil eye, or something--and like I said, he always seems to know when someone from the State Education Board is going to pay us a surprise visit. We clean this place from top to bottom, Bast the Bastard takes the canvas overcoats up to the attic, and the Box gets filled with hay from the barn. And when they come, we're always in class. How many classes you been in since you landed here in Indiana's version of the Love Boat, Jack?"

  "None," Jack said.

  "None!" Ferd agreed, delighted. He laughed his cynical, hurt laugh again--that laugh said, Guess what I found out when I turned eight or so? I found out that I was getting a royal fucking from life, and that things weren't going to change in a hurry. Or maybe they were never going to change.
And although it bums me out, it also has its funny side. You know what I mean, jellybean?

  4

  Such was the run of Jack's thoughts when hard fingers suddenly grasped the back of his neck at the pressure-points below the ears and lifted him out of his chair. He was turned around into a cloud of foul breath and treated--if that was the word--to the sterile moonscape of Heck Bast's face.

  "Me and the Reverend was still in Muncie when they brought your queer troublemaker friend into the hospital," he said. His fingers pulsed and squeezed, pulsed and squeezed. The pain was excruciating. Jack moaned and Heck grinned. The grin allowed bad breath to escape his mouth in even greater quantities. "Reverend got the news on his beeper. Janklow looked like a taco that spent about forty-five minutes in a microwave oven. It's gonna be a while before they put that boy back together again."

  He's not talking to me, Jack thought. He's talking to the whole room. We're supposed to get the message that Ferd's still alive.

  "You're a stinking liar," he said. "Ferd's--"

  Heck Bast hit him. Jack went sprawling on the floor. Boys scattered away from him. From somewhere, Donny Keegan hee-hawed.

  There was a roar of rage. Jack looked up, dazed, and shook his head in an effort to clear it. Heck turned and saw Wolf standing protectively over Jack, his upper lip pulled back, the overhead lights sending weird orange glints off his round glasses.

  "So the dumbhead finally wants to dance," Heck said, beginning to grin. "Hey, all right! I love to dance. Come on, snotface. Come on over here and let's dance."

  Still growling, saliva now coating his lower lip, Wolf began to move forward. Heck moved to meet him. Chairs scraped across linoleum as people moved back hurriedly to give them room.

  "What's going on h--"

  From the door. Sonny Singer. No need to finish his question; he saw what was going on here. Smiling, he pulled the door shut and leaned against it, watching, arms crossed over his narrow chest, his dark narrow face now alight.

  Jack switched his gaze back to Wolf and Heck.

  "Wolf, be careful!" he shouted.

  "I'll be careful, Jack," Wolf said, his voice little more than a growl. "I'll--"

  "Let's dance, asshole," Heck Bast grunted, and threw a whistling, country-boy roundhouse. It hit Wolf high on the right cheekbone, driving him backward three or four steps. Donny Keegan laughed his high, whinnying laugh, which Jack now knew was as often a signal of dismay as of glee.

  The roundhouse was a good, heavy blow. Under other circumstances, the fight would probably have ended right there. Unfortunately for Hector Bast, it was also the only blow he landed.

  He advanced confidently, big fists up at chest height, and drove the roundhouse again. This time Wolf's arm moved upward and outward to meet it. Wolf caught Heck's fist.

  Heck's hand was big. Wolf's hand was bigger.

  Wolf's fist swallowed Heck's.

  Wolf's fist clenched.

  From within it came a sound like small dry sticks first cracking, then breaking.

  Heck's confident smile first curdled, then froze solid. A moment later he began to shriek.

  "Shouldn't have hurt the herd, you bastard," Wolf whispered. "Oh your Bible this and oh your Bible that--Wolf!--and all you have to do is hear six verses of The Book of Good Farming to know you never . . ."

  Crackle!

  ". . . never . . ."

  Crunch!

  "NEVER hurt the herd."

  Heck Bast fell to his knees, howling and weeping. Wolf still held Heck's fist in his own, and Heck's arm angled up. Heck looked like a Fascist giving a Heil Hitler salute on his knees. Wolf's arm was as rigid as stone, but his face showed no real effort; it was, except for the blazing eyes, almost serene.

  Blood began to drip out of Wolf's fist.

  "Wolf, stop! That's enough!"

  Jack looked around swiftly and saw that Sonny was gone, the door standing open. Almost all of the boys were on their feet now. They had drawn away from Wolf as far as the room's walls would allow, their faces awed and fearful. And still the tableau held in the center of the room: Heck Bast on his knees, arms up and out, his fist swallowed in Wolf's, blood pouring onto the floor from Wolf's fist.

  People crowded back into the doorway. Casey, Warwick, Sonny Singer, three more big guys. And Sunlight Gardener, with a small black case, like a glasses-case, in one hand.

  "That's enough, I said!" Jack took one look at the new-comers and raced toward Wolf. "Right here and now! Right here and now!"

  "All right," Wolf said quietly. He let go of Heck's hand, and Jack saw a horrible crushed thing that looked like a mangled pinwheel. Heck's fingers stuck off at jagged angles. Heck mewled and held his destroyed hand against his chest.

  "All right, Jack."

  The six of them grabbed Wolf. Wolf made a half-turn, slipped one arm free, pushed, and suddenly Warwick went rattling against the wall. Someone screamed.

  "Hold him!" Gardener yelled. "Hold him! Hold him, for Jesus' sake!" He was opening the flat black case.

  "No, Wolf!" Jack shouted. "Quit it!"

  For a moment Wolf went on struggling, and then he slumped back, allowing them to push him to the wall. To Jack they looked like Lilliputians clinging to Gulliver. Sonny looked afraid of Wolf at last.

  "Hold him," Gardener repeated, taking a glittering hypodermic out of the flat case. That mincing, almost coy smile had come onto his face. "Hold him, praise Jesus!"

  "You don't need that," Jack said.

  "Jack?" Wolf looked suddenly frightened. "Jack? Jack?"

  Gardener, headed for Wolf, pushed Jack as he went by. There was good whipcord muscle in that push. Jack went reeling into Morton, who squealed and shrank away as if Jack were contaminated. Belatedly, Wolf began to struggle again--but they were six, and that was too many. Perhaps, when the Change was on him, it wouldn't have been.

  "Jack!" he howled. "Jack! Jack!"

  "Hold him, praise God," Gardener whispered, his lips skinned back brutally from his teeth, and plunged the hypodermic into Wolf's arm.

  Wolf went rigid, threw his head back, and howled.

  Kill you, you bastard, Jack thought incoherently. Kill you, kill you, kill you.

  Wolf struggled and thrashed. Gardener stood back, watching coldly. Wolf got a knee up into Casey's expansive gut. Casey whoofed air out, staggered backward, then came back. A minute or two later, Wolf began first to flag . . . then to sag.

  Jack got to his feet, weeping with rage. He tried to plunge toward the knot of white turtlenecks holding his friend--as he watched he saw Casey swing a fist into Wolf's drooping face, and saw blood begin to pour from Wolf's nose.

  Hands held him back. He struggled, then looked around and saw the frightened faces of the boys he picked rocks with in Far Field.

  "I want him in the Box," Gardener said as Wolf's knees finally buckled. He looked slowly around at Jack. "Unless . . . perhaps you'd like to tell me where we've met before, Mr. Parker?"

  Jack stood looking down at his feet, saying nothing. His eyes stung and burned with hot, hateful tears.

  "The Box, then," Gardener said. "You may feel different when he starts to vocalize, Mr. Parker."

  Gardener strode out.

  5

  Wolf was still screaming in the Box when Jack and the other boys were marched down to morning-chapel. Sunlight Gardener's eyes seemed to dwell ironically on Jack's pale, strained face. Perhaps now, Mr. Parker?

  Wolf, it's my mother, my mother--

  Wolf was still screaming when Jack and the other boys scheduled for field-work were split into two groups and marched out to the trucks. As he passed near the Box, Jack had to suppress an urge to jam his hands over his ears. Those growls, those gibbering sobs.

  All at once Sonny Singer was at his shoulder.

  "Reverend Gardener's in his office waiting to take your confession right this minute, snotface," he said. "Told me to tell you he'll let the dummy out of the Box the minute you tell him what he wants to know." Sonny's voice was silky, hi
s face dangerous.

  Wolf, screaming and howling to be let out, pounding the home-riveted iron sides of the Box with a fury of blows.

  Ah, Wolf, she's my MOTHER--

  "I can't tell him what he wants to know," Jack said. He turned suddenly toward Sonny, turning the force of whatever had come into him in the Territories upon Sonny. Sonny took two giant steps backward, his face dismayed and sickly scared. He tripped over his own feet and stumbled into the side of one of the idling trucks. If it hadn't been there, he would have fallen down.

  "All right," Sonny said . . . the words came out in a breathy rush that was close to a whine. "All right, all right, forget it." His thin face grew arrogant again. "Reverend Gardener told me if you said no that I should tell you that your friend's screaming for you. Do you get it?"

  "I know who he's screaming for."

  "Get in the truck!" Pedersen said grimly, barely looking at them as he passed by . . . but when he passed Sonny, Pedersen grimaced as though he had smelled something rotten.

  Jack could hear Wolf screaming even after the trucks got rolling, though the mufflers on both were little more than scallops of iron lace and the engines blatted stridently. Nor did Wolf's screams fade. He had made some sort of connection with Wolf's mind now, and he could hear Wolf screaming even after the work parties had reached Far Field. The understanding that these screams were only in his mind did nothing at all to improve matters.

  Around lunchtime, Wolf fell silent, and Jack knew, suddenly and with no doubt at all, that Gardener had ordered him taken out of the Box before his screams and howls attracted the wrong sort of attention. After what had happened to Ferd, he wouldn't want any attention at all focused on the Sunlight Home.

  When the work parties returned that late afternoon, the door of the Box was standing open and the Box was empty. Upstairs in the room they shared, Wolf was lying on the lower bunk. He smiled wanly as Jack came in.

  "How's your head, Jack? Bruise looks a little better. Wolf!"

  "Wolf, are you all right?"

  "Screamed, didn't I? Couldn't help it."

  "Wolf, I'm sorry," Jack said. Wolf looked strange--too white, somehow diminished.

  He's dying, Jack thought. No, his mind corrected; Wolf had been dying ever since they had flipped into this world to escape Morgan. But now he was dying faster. Too white . . . diminished . . . but . . .