The Talisman

  Jack moved sideways, his arms straight out before him and the Talisman shifting internal colors like a rainbow machine. It seemed to understand that Sloat was near, for the great grooved glass ball had begun a kind of subtonal humming that Jack felt--more than heard--as a tingle in his hands. A band of clear bright white opened in the Talisman, like a shaft of light right through its center, and Sloat jerked himself sideways and pointed the key at Jack's head.

  He wiped a smear of blood away from his lower lip. "You hurt me, you stinking little bastard," he said. "Don't think that glass ball can help you now. Its future is a little shorter than your own."

  "Then why are you afraid of it?" the boy asked, thrusting it forward again.

  Sloat dodged sideways, as if the Talisman, too, could shoot out bolts of lightning. He doesn't know what it can do, Jack realized: he doesn't really know anything about it, he just knows he wants it.

  "Drop it right now," Sloat said. "Let go of it, you little fraud. Or I'll take the top of your head off right now. Drop it."

  "You're afraid," Jack said. "Now that the Talisman is right in front of you, you're afraid to come and get it."

  "I don't have to come and get it," Sloat said. "You goddam Pretender. Drop it. Let's see you break it by yourself, Jacky."

  "Come for it, Bloat," Jack said, feeling a blast of wholly bracing anger shoot through him. Jacky. He hated hearing his mother's nickname for him in Sloat's wet mouth. "I'm not the black hotel, Bloat. I'm just a kid. Can't you take a glass ball away from a kid?" Because it was clear to him that they were in stalemate as long as Jack held the Talisman in his hands. A deep blue spark, as vibrant as one of the sparks from Anders's "demons," flared up and died in the Talisman's center. Another immediately followed. Jack could still feel that powerful humming emanating from the heart of the grooved glass ball. He had been destined to get the Talisman--he was supposed to get it. The Talisman had known of his existence since his birth, Jack now thought, and ever since had awaited him to set it free. It needed Jack Sawyer and no one else. "Come on and try for it," Jack taunted.

  Sloat pushed the key toward him, snarling. Blood drooled down his chin. For a moment Sloat appeared baffled, as frustrated and enraged as a bull in a pen, and Jack actually smiled at him. Then Jack glanced sideways to where Richard lay on the sand, and the smile disappeared from his face. Richard's face was literally covered with blood, his dark hair was matted with it.

  "You bast--" he began, but it had been a mistake to look away. A searing blast of blue and yellow light smacked into the beach directly beside him.

  He turned to Sloat, who was just firing off another lightning-bolt at his feet. Jack danced back, and the shaft of destructive light melted the sand at his feet into molten yellow liquid, which almost instantly cooled into a long straight slick of glass.

  "Your son is going to die," Jack said.

  "Your mother is going to die," Sloat snarled back at him. "Drop that damned thing before I cut your head off. Now. Let go of it."

  Jack said, "Why don't you go hump a weasel?"

  Morgan Sloat opened his mouth and screeched, revealing a row of square bloodstained teeth. "I'll hump your corpse!" The pointing key wavered toward Jack's head, wavered away. Sloat's eyes glittered, and he jerked his hand up so that the key pointed at the sky. A long skein of lightning seemed to erupt upward from Sloat's fist, widening out as it ascended. The sky blackened. Both the Talisman and Morgan Sloat's face shone in the sudden dark, Sloat's face because the Talisman shed its light upon it. Jack realized that his face, too, must be picked out by the Talisman's fierce illumination. And as soon as he brandished the glowing Talisman toward Sloat, trying God knew what--to get him to drop the key, to anger him, to rub his nose in the fact that he was powerless--Jack was made to understand that he had not yet reached the end of Morgan Sloat's capabilities. Fat snowflakes spun down out of the dark sky. Sloat disappeared behind the thickening curtain of snow; Jack heard his wet laughter.

  4

  She struggled out of her invalid's bed and crossed to the window. She looked out at the dead December beach, which was lit by a single streetlight on the boardwalk. Suddenly a gull alighted on the sill outside the window. A string of gristle hung from one side of its beak, and in that moment she thought of Sloat. The gull looked like Sloat.

  Lily first recoiled, and then came back. She felt a wholly ridiculous anger. A gull couldn't look like Sloat, and a gull couldn't invade her territory . . . it wasn't right. She tapped the cold glass. The bird fluffed its wings briefly but did not fly. And she heard a thought come from its cold mind, heard it as clearly as a radio wave:

  Jack's dying, Lily . . . Jack's dyyyyyinn . . .

  It bent its head forward. Tapped on the glass as deliberately as Poe's raven.

  Dyyyyyyinnnn . . .

  "NO!" she shrieked at it. "FUCK OFF, SLOAT!" She did not simply tap this time but slammed her fist forward, driving it through the glass. The gull fluttered backward, squawking, almost falling. Frigid air funnelled in through the hole in the window.

  Blood was dripping from Lily's hand--no; no, not just dripping. It was running. She had cut herself quite badly in two places. She picked shards of glass out of the pad on the side of her palm and then wiped her hand against the bodice of her nightdress.

  "DIDN'T EXPECT THAT, DID YOU, FUCKHEAD?" she screamed at the bird, which was circling restlessly over the gardens. She burst into tears. "Now leave him alone! Leave him alone! LEAVE MY SON ALONE!"

  She was covered all over in blood. Cold air blew in the pane she had shattered. And outside she saw the first flakes of snow come swirling down from the sky and into the white glow of that streetlight.

  5

  "Look out, Jacky."

  Soft. On the left.

  Jack pivoted that way, holding the Talisman up like a searchlight. It sent out a beam of light filled with falling snow.

  Nothing else. Darkness . . . snow . . . the sound of the ocean.

  "Wrong side, Jacky."

  He spun to the right, feet slipping in the icing of snow. Closer. He had been closer.

  Jack held up the Talisman. "Come and get it, Bloat!"

  "You haven't got a chance, Jack. I can take you anytime I want to."

  Behind him . . . and closer still. But when he raised the blazing Talisman, there was no Sloat to be seen. Snow roared into his face. He inhaled it and began to cough on the cold.

  Sloat tittered from directly in front of him.

  Jack recoiled and almost tripped over Speedy.

  "Hoo-hoo, Jacky!"

  A hand came out of the darkness on his left and tore at Jack's ear. He turned in that direction, heart pumping wildly, eyes bulging. He slipped and went to one knee.

  Richard uttered a thick, snoring moan somewhere close by.

  Overhead, a cannonade of thunder went off in the darkness Sloat had somehow brought down.

  "Throw it at me!" Sloat taunted. He danced forward out of that stormy, exposures-all-jammed-up-together dark. He was snapping the fingers of his right hand and wagging the tin key at Jack with the left. The gestures had a jerky, eccentric syncopation. To Jack, Sloat looked crazily like some old-time Latin bandleader--Xavier Cugat, perhaps. "Throw it at me, why don't you? Shooting gallery, Jack! Clay pigeon! Big old Uncle Morgan! What do you say, Jack? Have a go? Throw the ball and win a Kewpie doll!"

  And Jack discovered he had pulled the Talisman back to his right shoulder, apparently intending to do just that. He's spooking you, trying to panic you, trying to get you to cough it up, to--

  Sloat faded back into the murk. Snow flew in dust-devils.

  Jack wheeled nervously around but could see Sloat nowhere. Maybe he's taken off. Maybe--

  "Wassa matta, Jacky?"

  No, he was still here. Somewhere. On the left.

  "I laughed when your dear old daddy died, Jacky. I laughed in his face. When his motor finally quit I felt--"

  The voice warbled. Faded for a moment. Came back. On the right. Jack whirled tha
t way, not understanding what was going on, his nerves increasingly frayed.

  "--my heart flew like a bird on the wing. It flew like this, Jacky-boy."

  A rock came out of the dark--aimed not at Jack but at the glass ball. He dodged. Got a murky glimpse of Sloat. Gone again.

  A pause . . . then Sloat was back, and playing a new record.

  "Fucked your mother, Jacky," the voice teased from behind him. A fat hot hand snatched at the seat of his pants.

  Jack whirled around, this time almost stumbling over Richard. Tears--hot, painful, outraged--began to squeeze out of his eyes. He hated them, but here they were, and nothing in the world would deny them. The wind screamed like a dragon in a wind-tunnel. The magic's in you, Speedy had said, but where was the magic now? Where oh where oh where?

  "You shut up about my mom!"

  "Fucked her a lot," Sloat added with smug cheeriness.

  On the right again. A fat, dancing shape in the dark.

  "Fucked her by invitation, Jacky!"

  Behind him! Close!

  Jack spun. Held up the Talisman. It flashed a white slice of light. Sloat danced back out of it, but not before Jack had seen a grimace of pain and anger. That light had touched Sloat, had hurt him.

  Never mind what he's saying--it's all lies and you know it is. But how can he do that? He's like Edgar Bergen. No . . . he's like Indians in the dark, closing in on the wagon train. How can he do it?

  "Singed my whiskers a little that time, Jacky," Sloat said, and chuckled fruitily. He sounded a bit out of breath, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Jack was panting like a dog on a hot summer day, his eyes frantic as he searched the stormy blackness for Sloat. "But I'll not hold it against you, Jacky Now, let's see. What were we talking about? Oh yes. Your mother . . ."

  A little warble . . . a little fade . . . and then a stone came whistling out of the darkness on the right and struck Jack's temple. He whirled, but Sloat was gone again, skipping nimbly back into the snow.

  "She'd wrap those long legs around me until I howled for mercy!" Sloat declared from behind Jack and to the right "OWWWWOOOOOO!"

  Don't let him get you don't let him psych you out don't--

  But he couldn't help it. It was his mother this dirty man was talking about; his mother.

  "You stop it! You shut up!"

  Sloat was in front of him now--so close Jack should have been able to see him clearly in spite of the swirling snow, but there was only a glimmer, like a face seen underwater at night Another stone zoomed out of the dark and struck Jack in the back of the head. He staggered forward and nearly tripped over Richard again--a Richard who was rapidly disappearing under a mantle of snow.

  He saw stars . . . and understood what was happening.

  Sloat's flipping! Flipping . . . moving . . . flipping back!

  Jack turned in an unsteady circle, like a man beset with a hundred enemies instead of just one. Lightning-fire licked out of the dark in a narrow greenish-blue ray. He reached toward it with the Talisman, hoping to deflect it back at Sloat. Too late. It winked out.

  Then how come I don't see him over there? Over there in the Territories?

  The answer came to him in a dazzling flash . . . and as if in response, the Talisman flashed a gorgeous fan of white light--it cut the snowy light like the headlamp of a locomotive.

  I don't see him over there, don't respond to him over there, because I'm NOT over there! Jason's gone . . . and I'm single-natured! Sloat's flipping onto a beach where there's no one but Morgan of Orris and a dead or dying man named Parkus--Richard isn't there either, because Morgan of Orris's son, Rushton, died a long time ago and Richard's single-natured, too! When I flipped before, the Talisman was there . . . but Richard wasn't! Morgan's flipping . . . moving . . . flipping back . . . trying to freak me out. . . .

  "Hoo-hoo! Jacky-boy!"

  The left.

  "Over here!"

  The right.

  But Jack wasn't listening for the place anymore. He was looking into the Talisman, waiting for the downbeat. The most important downbeat of his life.

  From behind. This time he would come from behind.

  The Talisman flashed out, a strong lamp in the snow.

  Jack pivoted . . . and as he pivoted he flipped into the Territories, into bright sunlight. And there was Morgan of Orris, big as life and twice as ugly. For a moment he didn't realize Jack had tumbled to the trick; he was limping rapidly around to a place which would be behind Jack when he flipped back into the American Territories. There was a nasty little-boy grin on his face. His cloak popped and billowed behind him. His left boot dragged, and Jack saw the sand was covered with those dragging hashmarks all around him. Morgan had been running around him in a harrying circle, all the while goading Jack with obscene lies about his mother, throwing stones, and flipping back and forth.

  Jack shouted:

  "I SEE YOU!" at the top of his lungs.

  Morgan stared around at him in utter stunned shock, one hand curled around that silver rod.

  "SEE YOU!" Jack shouted again. "Should we go around one more time, Bloat?"

  Morgan of Orris flicked the end of the rod at him, his face altering in a second from that rubbery simple-minded expression of shock to a much more characteristic look of craft--of a clever man quickly seeing all the possibilities in a situation. His eyes narrowed. Jack almost, in that second when Morgan of Orris looked down his lethal silver rod at him and narrowed his eyes into gunsights, flipped back into the American Territories, and that would have killed him. But an instant before prudence or panic caused him in effect to jump in front of a moving truck, the same insight that had told him that Morgan was flipping between worlds saved him again--Jack had learned the ways of his adversary. He held his ground, again waiting for that almost mystical downbeat. For a fraction of a second Jack Sawyer held his breath. If Morgan had been a shade less proud of his deviousness, he might well have murdered Jack Sawyer, which he so dearly wished to do, at that moment.

  But instead, just as Jack had thought it would, Morgan's image abruptly departed the Territories. Jack inhaled. Speedy's body (Parkus's body, Jack realized) lay motionless a short distance away. The downbeat came. Jack exhaled and flipped back.

  A new streak of glass divided the sand on the Point Venuti beach, glimmeringly reflecting the sudden beam of white light which emanated from the Talisman.

  "Missed one, did you?" Morgan Sloat whispered out of the darkness. Snow pelted Jack, cold wind froze his limbs, his throat, his forehead. A car's length away, Sloat's face hung before him, the forehead drawn up into its familiar corrugations, the bloody mouth open. He was extending the key toward Jack in the storm, and a ridge of powdery snow adhered to the brown sleeve of his suit. Jack saw a black trail of blood oozing from the left nostril of the incongruously small nose. Sloat's eyes, bloodshot with pain, shone through the dark air.

  6

  Richard Sloat confusedly opened his eyes. Every part of him was cold. At first he thought, quite without emotion of any kind, that he was dead. He had fallen down somewhere, probably down those steep, tricky steps at the back of the Thayer School grandstand. Now he was cold and dead and nothing more could happen to him. He experienced a second of dizzying relief.

  His head offered him a fresh surge of pain, and he felt warm blood ooze out over his cold hand--both of these sensations evidence that, whatever he might welcome at the moment, Richard Llewellyn Sloat was not yet dead. He was only a wounded suffering creature. The whole top of his head seemed to have been sliced off. He had no proper idea of where he was. It was cold. His eyes focused long enough to report to him that he was lying down in the snow. Winter had happened. More snow dumped on him from out of the sky. Then he heard his father's voice, and everything returned to him.

  Richard kept his hand on top of his head, but very slowly tilted his chin so that he could look in the direction of his father's voice.

  Jack Sawyer was holding the Talisman--that was the next thing Richard took in. The Ta
lisman was unbroken. He felt the return of a portion of that relief he had experienced when he'd thought he was dead. Even without his glasses, Richard could see that Jack had an undefeated, unbowed look that moved him very deeply. Jack looked like . . . like a hero. That was all. He looked like a dirty, dishevelled, outrageously youthful hero, wrong for the role on almost every count, but undeniably still a hero.

  Jack was just Jack now, Richard now saw. That extraordinary extra quality, as of a movie star deigning to walk around as a shabbily dressed twelve-year-old, had gone. This made his heroism all the more impressive to Richard.

  His father smiled rapaciously. But that was not his father. His father had been hollowed out a long time ago--hollowed out by his envy of Phil Sawyer, by the greed of his ambitions.

  "We can keep on going around like this forever," Jack said. "I'm never going to give you the Talisman, and you're never going to be able to destroy it with that gadget of yours. Give up."

  The point of the key in his father's hand slowly moved across and down, and it, like his father's greedy needful face, pointed straight at him.

  "First I'll blow Richard apart," his father said. "Do you really want to see your pal Richard turned into bacon? Hmmmm? Do you? And of course I won't hesitate to do the same favor for that pest beside him."

  Jack and Sloat exchanged short glances. His father was not kidding, Richard knew. He would kill him if Jack did not surrender the Talisman. And then he would kill the old black man, Speedy.

  "Don't do it," he managed to whisper. "Stuff him, Jack. Tell him to screw himself."

  Jack almost deranged Richard by winking at him.

  "Just drop the Talisman," he heard his father say.

  Richard watched in horror as Jack tilted the palms of his hands and let the Talisman tumble out.

  7

  "Jack, no!"

  Jack didn't look around at Richard. You don't own a thing unless you can give it up, his mind hammered at him. You don't own a thing unless you can give it up, what does it profit a man, it profits him nothing, it profits him zilch, and you don't learn that in school, you learn it on the road, you learn it from Ferd Janklow, and Wolf, and Richard going head-first into the rocks like a Titan II that didn't fire off right.