They should have keys sticking out of their backs, Jack thought. He turned to face them, the yellowed pick held between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, as if to strum a tune. They seemed to hesitate, as if sensing his fearlessness. The hotel itself seemed to suddenly hesitate, or to open its eyes to a danger that was deeper than it had at first thought; floors groaned their boards, somewhere a series of doors clapped shut one after the other, and on the roofs, the brass ornaments ceased turning for a moment. Then the suits of armor clanked forward again. They now made a single moving wall of plate and chainmail, of greaves and helmets and sparkling gorgets. One held a spiked iron ball on a wooden haft; one a martel de fer; the one in the center held the doublepointed sword. Jack suddenly began to walk toward them. His eyes lit up; he held the guitarpick out before him. His face filled with that radiant Jasonglow. He sideslipped momentarily into the Territories and became Jason; here the sharks tooth which had been a pick seemed to be aflame. As he approached the three knights, one pulled off its helmet, revealing another of those old, pale facesthis one was thick with jowls, and the neck hung with waxy wattles that looked like melting candlewax. It heaved its helmet at him. Jason dodged it easily and slipped back into his Jackself as a helmet crashed off a panelled wall behind him. Standing in front of him was a headless suit of armor. You think that scares me? he thought contemptuously. Ive seen that trick before. It doesnt scare me, you dont scare me, and Im going to get it, thats all. This time he did not just feel the hotel listening; this time it seemed to recoil all around him, as the tissue of a digestive organ might recoil from a poisoned bit of flesh. Upstairs, in the five rooms where the five Guardian Knights had died, five windows blew out like gunshots. Jack bore down on the suits of armor. The Talisman sang out from somewhere above in its clear and sweetly triumphant voice JASON! TO ME! Come on! Jack shouted at the suits of armor, and began to laugh. He couldnt help himself. Never had laughter seemed so strong to him, so potent, so good as thisit was like water from a spring, or from some deep river. Come on, Im ready for ya! I dont know what fuckedup Round Table you guys came from, but you shoulda stayed there! You made a mistake! Laughing harder than ever but as grimly determined inside as Wotan on the Valkyries rock, Jack leaped at the headless, swaying figure in the center. You shoulda killed both of the Ellis brothers! he shouted, and as Speedys guitarpick passed into the zone of freezing air where the knights head should have been, the suit of armor fell apart. 3 In her bedroom at the Alhambra, Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer suddenly looked up from the book she had been reading. She thought she had heard someoneno, not just someone, Jack!call out from far down the deserted corridor, perhaps even from the lobby. She listened, eyes wide, lips pursed, heart hoping . . . but there was nothing. JackO was still gone, the cancer was still eating her up a bite at a time, and it was still an hour and a half before she could take another of the big brown horsepills that damped down the pain a little bit. She had begun to think more and more often of taking all the big brown horsepills at once. That would do more than damp the pain for a bit; that would finish it off forever. They say we cant cure cancer, but dont you believe that bullshit, Mr. Ctry eating about two dozen of these. What do you say? Want to go for it? What kept her from doing it was Jackshe wanted so badly to see him again that now she was imagining his voice . . . not just doing a simple albeit corny sort of thing like calling her name, either, but quoting from one of her old pictures. You are one crazy old bitch, Lily, she croaked, and lit a Herbert Tarrytoon with thin, shaking fingers. She took two puffs and then put it out. Any more than two puffs started the coughing these days, and the coughing tore her apart. One crazy old bitch. She picked up her book again but couldnt read because the tears were coursing down her face and her guts hurt, they hurt, oh they hurt, and she wanted to take all the brown pills but she wanted to see him again first, her dear son with his clear handsome forehead and his shining eyes. Come home, JackO, she thought, please come home soon or the next time I talk to you itll be by Ouija board. Please, Jack, please come home. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep. 4 The knight which had held the spikeball swayed a moment longer, displaying its vacant middle, and then it also exploded. The one remaining raised its battlehammer . . . and then simply fell apart in a heap. Jack stood amid the wreckage for a moment, still laughing, and then stopped as he looked at Speedys pick. It was a deep and ancient yellow now; the crackglaze had become a snarl of fissures. Never mind, Travellin Jack. You get on. I think there may be one more o those walkin Maxwell House cans around someplace. If so, youll take it on, wont you? If I have to, I will, Jack muttered aloud. Jack kicked aside a greave, a helmet, a breastplate. He strode down the middle of the hall, the carpet squelching under his sneakers. He reached the lobby and looked around briefly. JACK! COME TO ME! JASON! COME TO ME! the Talisman sang. Jack started up the staircase. Halfway up he looked at the landing and saw the last of the knights, standing and looking down at him. It was a gigantic figure, better than eleven feet tall; its armor and its plume were black, and a baleful red glare fell through the eyeslit in its helmet. One mailed fist gripped a huge mace. For a moment, Jack stood frozen on the staircase, and then he began to climb again. 5 They saved the worst for last, Jack thought, and as he advanced steadily upward toward the black knight he slipped through again into Jason. The knight still wore black armor, but of a different sort; its visor was tilted up to reveal a face that had been almost obliterated by old dried sores. Jason recognized them. This fellow had gotten a little too close to one of those rolling balls of fire in the Blasted Lands for his own good. Other figures were passing him on the stairs, figures he could not quite see as his fingers trailed over a wide bannister that was not mahogany from the West Indies but ironwood from the Territories. Figures in doublets, figures in blouses of silksack, women in great belling gowns with gleaming white cowls thrown back from their gorgeously dressed hair; these people were beautiful but doomedand so, perhaps, ghosts always seem to the living. Why else would even the idea of ghosts inspire such terror? JASON! TO ME! the Talisman sang, and for a moment all partitioned reality seemed to break down; he did not flip but seemed to fall through worlds like a man crashing through the rotted floors of an ancient wooden tower, one after the other. He felt no fear. The idea that he might never be able to get backthat he might just go on falling through a chain of realities forever, or become lost, as in a great woodoccurred to him, but he dismissed it out of hand. All of this was happening to Jason (and Jack) in an eyeblink; less time than it would take for his foot to go from one riser on the broad stairs to the next. He would come back; he was singlenatured, and he did not believe it was possible for such a person to become lost, because he had a place in all of these worlds. But I do not exist simultaneously in all of them, Jason. (Jack) thought. Thats the important thing, thats the difference; Im flickering through each of them, probably too fast to see, and leaving a sound like a handclap or a sonic boom behind me as the air closes on the vacancy where, for a millisecond, I took up space. In many of these worlds, the black hotel was a black ruinthese were worlds, he thought dimly, where the great evil that now impended on the tightwire drawn between California and the Territories had already happened. In one of them the sea which roared and snarled at the shore was a dead, sickly green; the sky had a similar gangrenous look. In another he saw a flying creature as big as a Conestoga wagon fold its wings and plummet earthward like a hawk. It grabbed a creature like a sheep and swooped up again, holding the bloody hindquarters in its beak. Flip . . . flip . . . flip. Worlds passed by his eyes like cards shuffled by a riverboat gambler. Here was the hotel again, and there were half a dozen different versions of the black knight above him, but the intent in each was the same, and the differences were as unimportant as the stylings of rival automobiles. Here was a black tent filled with the thick dry smell of rotting canvasit was torn in many places so that the sun shone through in dusty, conflicting rays. In this world JackJason was on some sort of rope rigging, and the black knight stood inside a wooden basket like a crows nest, and as he climbed he flipped again . . . and again . . . and again. Here the entire ocean was on fire; here the hotel was much as it was in Point Venuti, except it had been halfsunk into the ocean. For a moment he seemed to be in an elevator car, the knight standing on top of it and peering down at him through the trapdoor. Then he was on a rampway, the top of which was guarded by a huge snake, its long, muscular body armored with gleaming black scales. And when do I get to the end of everything? When do I stop crashing through floors and just smash my way into the blackness? JACK! JASON! the Talisman called, and it called in all the worlds. TO ME! And Jack came to it, and it was like coming home. 6 He was right, he saw; he had come up only a single stair. But reality had solidified again. The black knighthis black knight, Jack Sawyers black knightstood blocking the stairlanding. It raised its mace. Jack was afraid, but he kept climbing, Speedys pick held out in front of him. Im not going to mess with you, Jack said. You better get out of my The black figure swung the mace. It came down with incredible force. Jack dodged aside. The mace crashed into the stair where he had been standing and splintered the entire riser down into hollow blackness. The figure wrenched the mace free. Jack lunged up two more stairs, Speedys pick still held between his thumb and forefinger . . . and suddenly it simply disintegrated, falling in a little eggshell rain of yellowed ivory fragments. Most of these sprinkled the tops of Jacks sneakers. He stared stupidly at them. The sound of dead laughter. The mace, tiny splinters of wood and chews of old dank stairrunner still clinging to it, was upraised in the knights two armored gloves. The specters hot glare fell through the slit in its helmet. It seemed to slice blood from Jacks upturned face in a horizontal line across the bridge of his nose. That chuffing sound of laughter againnot heard with his ears, because he knew this suit of armor was as empty as the rest, nothing but a steel jacket for an undead spirit, but heard inside his head. Youve lost, boydid you really think that puny little thing could get you past me? The mace whistled down again, this time slicing on a diagonal, and Jack tore his eyes away from that red gaze just in time to duck lowhe felt the head of the mace pass through the upper layer of his long hair a second before it ripped away a fourfoot section of bannister and sent it sailing out into space. A scraping clack of metal as the knight leaned toward him, its cocked helmet somehow a hideous and sarcastic parody of solicitudethen the mace drew back and up again for another of those portentous swings. Jack, you didnt need no magic juice to git ovah, and you dont need no magic pick to pull the chain on this here coffee can, neither! The mace came blasting through the air againwheeeeossshhhh! Jack lurched backward, sucking in his stomach; the web of muscles in his shoulders screamed as they pulled around the punctures the spiked gloves had left. The mace missed the skin of his chest by less than an inch before passing beyond him and swiping through a line of thick mahogany balusters as if they had been toothpicks. Jack tottered on emptiness, feeling Buster Keatonish and absurd. He snatched at the ragged ruins of the bannister on his left and got splinters under two of his fingernails instead. The pain was so wirethin excruciating that he thought for a moment that his eyeballs would explode with it. Then he got a good hold with his right hand and was able to stabilize himself and move away from the drop. All the magics in YOU, Jack! Dont you know that by now? For a moment he only stood there, panting, and then he started up the stairs again, staring at the blank iron face above him. Better get thee gone, Sir Gawain. The knight cocked its great helmet again in that strangely delicate gesturePardon, my boy . . . can you actually be speaking to me? Then it swung the mace again. Perhaps blinded by his fear, Jack hadnt noticed until now how slow its setup for those swings was, how clearly it telegraphed the trajectory of each portentous blow. Maybe its joints were rusted, he thought. At any rate, it was easy enough for him to dive inside the circle of its swing now that his head was clear again. He stood on his toes, reached up, and seized the black helmet in both hands. The metal was sickeningly warmlike hard skin that carried a fever. Get you off the skin of this world, he said in a voice that was low and calm, almost conversational. In her name I command you. The red light in the helmet puffed out like the candle inside a carved pumpkin, and suddenly the weight of the helmetfifteen pounds at leastwas all in Jacks hands, because there was nothing else supporting it; beneath the helmet, the suit of armor had collapsed. You shoulda killed both of the Ellis brothers, Jack said, and threw the empty helmet over the landing. It hit the floor far below with a hard bang and rolled away like a toy. The hotel seemed to cringe. Jack turned toward the broad secondfloor corridor, and here, at last, was light clean, clear light, like that on the day he had seen the flying men in the sky. The hallway ended in another set of double doors and the doors were closed, but enough light came from above and below them, as well as through the vertical crack where they were latched together, to tell him that the light inside must be very bright indeed. He wanted very badly to see that light, and the source of that light; he had come far to see it, and through much bitter darkness. The doors were heavy and inlaid with delicate scrollwork. Written above them in gold leaf which had flaked a bit but which was still perfectly readable for a that an a that, were the words TERRITORIES BALLROOM. Hey, Mom, Jack Sawyer said in a soft, wondering voice as he walked into that glow. Happiness lit his heartthat feeling was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow. Hey, Mom, I think Im here, I really think Im here. Gently then, and with awe, Jack grasped a handle with each hand, and pressed them down. He opened the doors, and as he did, a widening bar of clean white light fell on his upturned, wondering face. 7 Sunlight Gardener happened to be looking back up the beach at the exact moment Jack dispatched the last of the five Guardian Knights. He heard a dull boom, as if a low charge of dynamite had gone off somewhere inside the hotel. At the same moment, bright light flashed from all of the Agincourts secondfloor windows, and all of the carved brass symbolsmoons and stars and planetoids and weird crooked arrowscame to a simultaneous stop. Gardener was decked out like some sort of goony Los Angeles SWAT squad cop. He had donned a puffy black flakvest over his white shirt and carried a radio packset on a canvas strap over one shoulder. Its thick, stubby antenna wavered back and forth as he moved. Over his other shoulder was slung a Weatherbee .360. This was a hunting rifle almost as big as an antiaircraft gun; it would have made Robert Ruark himself drool with envy. Gardener had bought it six years ago, after circumstances had dictated that he must get rid of his old hunting rifle. The Weatherbees genuine zebraskin case was in the trunk of a black Cadillac, along with his sons body. Morgan! Morgan did not turn around. He was standing behind and slightly to the left of a leaning grove of rocks that jutted out of the sand like black fangs. Twenty feet beyond this rock and only five feet above the hightide line lay Speedy Parker, aka Parkus. As Parkus, he had once ordered Morgan of Orris markedthere were livid scars down the insides of that Morgans large white thighs, the marks by which a traitor is known in the Territories. It had only been through the intercession of Queen Laura herself that those scars had not been made to run down his cheeks instead of his inner thighs, where they were almost always hidden by his clothes. Morganthis one as well as that onehad not loved the Queen any better for her intercession . . . but his hatred for Parkus, who had sniffed out that earlier plot, had grown exponentially. Now ParkusParker lay facedown on the beach, his skull covered with festering sores. Blood dribbled listlessly from his ears. Morgan wanted to believe that Parker was still alive, still suffering, but the last discernible rise and fall of his back had been just after he and Gardener arrived down here at these rocks, some five minutes ago. When Gardener called, Morgan didnt turn because he was rapt in his study of his old enemy, now fallen. Whoever had claimed revenge wasnt sweet had been so wrong. Morgan! Gardener hissed again. Morgan turned this time, frowning. Well? What? Look! The roof of the hotel! Morgan saw that all of the weathercocks and roof ornamentsbeaten brass shapes which spun at exactly the same speed whether the wind was perfectly calm or howling up a hurricanehad stopped moving. At the same instant the earth rippled briefly under their feet and then was still again. It was as if a subterranean beast of enormous size had shrugged in its hibernal sleep. Morgan would almost have believed he had imagined it if it had not been for the widening of Gardeners bloodshot eyes. Ill bet you wish you never left Indiana, Gard, Morgan thought. No earthquakes in Indiana, right? Silent light flashed in all of the Agincourts windows again. What does it mean, Morgan? Gardener asked hoarsely. His insane fury over the loss of his son had for the first time moderated into fear for himself, Morgan saw. That was a bore, but he could be whipped back into his previous frenzy again, if necessary. It was just that Morgan hated to have to waste energy on anything at this point that didnt bear directly on the problem of ridding the worldall the worldsof Jack Sawyer, who had begun as a pest and who had developed into the most monstrous problem of Sloats life. Gardeners packset squawked. Red Squad Leader Four to the Sunlight Man! Come in, Sunlight Man! Sunlight Man here, Red Squad Leader Four, Gardener snapped. Whats up? In quick succession Gardener took four gabbling, excited reports that were all exactly the same. There was no intelligence the two of them hadnt seen and felt for themselvesflashes of light, weathercocks at a standstill, something that might have been a groundtremblor or possibly an earthquake preshockbut Gardener labored with sharpeyed enthusiasm over each report just the same, asking sharp questions, snapping Over! at the end of each transmission, sometimes breaking in with Say again or Roger. Sloat thought he was acting like a bit player in a disaster movie. But if it eased him, that was fine with Sloat. It saved him from having to answer Gardeners question . . . and now that he thought about it, he supposed it was just possible that Gardener didnt want his question answered, and that was why he was going through this rigmarole with the radio. The Guardians were dead, or out of commission. That was why the weathercocks had stopped, and thats what the flashes of light meant. Jack didnt have the Talisman . . . at least, not yet. If he got that, things in Point Venuti would really shake, rattle, and roll. And Sloat now thought that Jack would get it . . . that he had always been meant to get it. This did not frighten him, however. His hand reached up and touched the key around his neck. Gardener had run out of overs and rogers and tenfours. He reshouldered the packset and looked at Morgan with wide, frightened eyes. Before he could say a word, Morgan put gentle hands on Gardeners shoulders. If he could feel love for anyone other than his poor dead son, he felt loveof a twisted variety, most certainlyfor this man. They went back a long way, both as Morgan of Orris and Osmond and as Morgan Sloat and Robert Sunlight Gardener. It had been with a rifle much like the one now slung over Gardeners shoulder that Gardener had shot Phil Sawyer in Utah. Listen, Gard, he said calmly. We are going to win. Are you sure of that? Gardener whispered. I think hes killed the Guardians, Morgan. I know that sounds crazy, but I realy think He stopped, mouth trembling infirmly, lips sheened with a thin membrane of spittle. We are going to win, Morgan repeated in that same calm voice, and he meant it. There was a sense of clear predestination in him. He had waited many years for this; his resolve had been true; it remained true now. Jack would come out with the Talisman in his arms. It was a thing of immense power . . . but it was fragile. He looked at the scoped Weatherbee, which could drop a charging rhino, and then he touched the key that brought the lightning. Were well equipped to deal with him when he comes out, Morgan said, and added, In either world. Just as long as you keep your courage, Gard. As long as you stick right by me. The trembling lips firmed a bit. Morgan, of course Ill Remember who killed your son, Morgan said softly. At the same instant that Jack Sawyer had jammed the burning coin into the forehead of a monstrosity in the Territories, Reuel Gardener, who had been afflicted with relatively harmless petit mal epileptic seizures ever since the age of six (the same age at which Osmonds son had begun to show signs of what was called Blasted Lands Sickness), apparently suffered a grand mal seizure in the back of a Wolfdriven Cadillac on I70, westbound to California from Illinois. He had died, purple and strangling, in Sunlight Gardeners arms. Gardeners eyes now began to bulge. Remember, Morgan repeated softly. Bad, Gardener whispered. All boys. Axiomatic. That boy in particular. Right! Morgan agreed. Hold that thought! We can stop him, but I want to make damn sure that he can only come out of the hotel on dry land. He led Gardener down to the rock where he had been watching Parker. Fliesbloated albino flieshad begun to light on the dead nigger, Morgan observed. That was just as fine as paint with him. If there had been a Variety magazine for flies, Morgan would gladly have bought space, advertising Parkers location. Come one, come all. They would lay their eggs in the folds of his decaying flesh, and the man who had scarred his Twinners thighs would give birth to maggots. That was fine indeed. He pointed out toward the dock. The rafts under there, he said. It looks like a horse, Christ knows why. Its in the shadows, I know. But you were always a hell of a shot. If you can pick it up, Gard, put a couple of bullets in it. Sink the fucking thing. Gardener unshouldered the rifle and peered into the scope. For a long time the muzzle of the big gun wandered minutely back and forth. I see it, Gardener whispered in a gloating voice, and triggered the gun. The echo pealed off across the water in a long curl that at last Dopplered away into nothing. The barrel of the gun rose, then came back down. Gardener fired again. And again. I got it, Gardener said, lowering the gun. Hed got his courage back; his pecker was up again. He was smiling the way he had been smiling when he had come back from that errand in Utah. Its just a dead skin on the water now. You want a look in the scope? He offered the rifle to Sloat. No, Sloat said. If you say you got it, you got it. Now he has to come out by land, and we know what direction hell be coming in. I think hell have whats been in our way for so many years. Gardener looked at him, shinyeyed. I suggest that we move up there. He pointed to the old boardwalk. It was just inside the fence where he had spent so many hours watching the hotel and thinking about what was in the ballroom. All r That was when the earth began to groan and heave under their feetthat subterranean creature had awakened; it was shaking itself and roaring. At the same instant, dazzling white light filled every window of the Agincourtthe light of a thousand suns. The windows blew out all at once. Glass flew in diamond showers. REMEMBER YOUR SON AND FOLLOW ME! Sloat roared. That sense of predestination was clear in him now, clear and undeniable. He was meant to win, after all. The two of them began to run up the heaving beach toward the boardwalk. 8 Jack moved slowly, filled with wonder, across the hardwood ballroom floor. He was looking up, his eyes sparkling. His face was bathed in a clear white radiance that was all colorssunrise colors, sunset colors, rainbow colors. The Talisman hung in the air high above him, slowly revolving. It was a crystal globe perhaps three feet in circumferencethe corona of its glow was so brilliant it was impossible to tell exactly how big it was. Gracefully curving lines seemed to groove its surface, like lines of longitude and latitude . . . and why not? Jack thought, still in a deep daze of awe and amazement. It is the worldALL worldsin microcosm. More; it is the axis of all possible worlds. Singing; turning; blazing. He stood beneath it, bathed in its warmth and clear sense of wellmeant force; he stood in a dream, feeling that force flow into him like the clear spring rain which awakens the hidden power in a billion tiny seeds. He felt a terrible joy lift through his conscious mind like a rocket, and Jack Sawyer lifted both hands over his upturned face, laughing, both in response to that joy and in imitation of its rise. Come to me, then! he shouted, and slipped (through? across?) into Jason. Come to me, then! he shouted again in the sweetly liquid and slightly slippery tongue of the Territorieshe cried it laughing, but tears coursed down his cheeks. And he understood that the quest had begun with the other boy and thus must end with him; so he let go and slipped back into Jack Sawyer. Above him, the Talisman trembled in the air, slowly turning, throwing off light and heat and a sensation of true goodness, of whiteness. Come to me! It began to descend through the air. 9 So, after many weeks, and hard adventuring, and darkness and despair; after friends found and friends lost again; after days of toil, and nights spent sleeping in damp haystacks; after facing the demons of dark places (not the least of which lived in the cleft of his own soul)after all these things, it was in this wise that the Talisman came to Jack Sawyer He watched it come down, and while there was no desire to flee, he had an overwhelming sense of worlds at risk, worlds in the balance. Was the Jasonpart of him real? Queen Lauras son had been killed; he was a ghost whose name the people of the Territories swore by. Yet Jack decided he was. Jacks quest for the Talisman, a quest that had been meant for Jason to fulfill, had made Jason live again for a little whileJack really had a Twinner, at least of a sort. If Jason was a ghost, just as the knights had been ghosts, he might well disappear when that radiant, twirling globe touched his upstretched fingers. Jack would be killing him again. Dont worry, Jack, a voice whispered. That voice was warm and clear. Down it came, a globe, a world, all worldsit was glory and warmth, it was goodness, it was the comingagain of the white. And, as has always been with the white and must always be, it was dreadfully fragile. As it came down, worlds reeled about his head. He did not seem to be crashing through layers of reality now but seeing an entire cosmos of realities, all overlapping one another, linked like a shirt of (reality) chainmail. Youre reaching up to hold a universe of worlds, a cosmos of good, Jackthis voice was his fathers. Dont drop it, son. For Jasons sake, dont drop it. Worlds upon worlds upon worlds, some gorgeous, some hellish, all of them for a moment illumined in the warm white light of this star that was a crystal globe chased with fine engraved lines. It came slowly down through the air toward Jack Sawyers trembling, outstretched fingers. Come to me! he shouted to it as it had sung to him. Come to me now! It was three feet above his hands, branding them with its soft, healing heat; now two; now one. It hesitated for a moment, rotating slowly, its axis slightly canted, and Jack could see the brilliant, shifting outlines of continents and oceans and icecaps on its surface. It hesitated . . . and then slowly slipped down into the boys reaching hands. 43 News From Everywhere 1 Lily Cavanaugh, who had fallen into a fitful doze after imagining Jacks voice somewhere below her, now sat boltupright in bed. For the first time in weeks bright color suffused her waxy yellow cheeks. Her eyes shone with a wild hope. Jason? she gasped, and then frowned; that was not her sons name. But in the dream from which she had just been startled awake she had had a son by such a name, and in that dream she had been someone else. It was the dope, of course. The dope had queered her dreams to a faretheewell. Jack? she tried again. Jack, where are you? No answer . . . but she sensed him, knew for sure that he was alive. For the first time in a long timesix months, maybeshe felt really good. JackO, she said, and grabbed her cigarettes. She looked at them for a moment and then heaved them all the way across the room, where they landed in the fireplace on top of the rest of the shit she meant to burn later in the day. I think I just quit smoking for the second and last time in my life, JackO, she said. Hang in there, kid. Your momma loves you. And she found herself for no reason grinning a large idiotic grin. 2 Donny Keegan, who had been pulling Sunlight Home kitchen duty when Wolf escaped from the box, had survived that terrible nightGeorge Irwinson, the fellow who had been pulling the duty with him, had not been so lucky. Now Donny was in a more conventional orphans home in Muncie, Indiana. Unlike some of the other boys at the Sunlight Home, Donny had been a real orphan; Gardener had needed to take a token few to satisfy the state. Now, mopping a dark upstairs hall in a dim daze, Donny looked up suddenly, his muddy eyes widening. Outside, clouds which had been spitting light snow into the usedup fields of December suddenly pulled open in the west, letting out a single broad ray of sunshine that was terrible and exalting in its isolated beauty. Youre right, I DO love him! Donny shouted triumphantly. It was Ferd Janklow that Donny was shouting to, although Donny, who had too many toys in his attic to accommodate many brains, had already forgotten his name. Hes beautiful and I DO love him! Donny honked his idiot laugh, only now even his laugh was nearly beautiful. Some of the other boys came to their doors and stared at Donny in wonder. His face was bathed in the sunlight from that one clear, ephemeral ray, and one of the other boys would whisper to a close friend that night that for a moment Donny Keegan had looked like Jesus. The moment passed; the clouds moved over that weird clear place in the sky, and by evening the snow had intensified into the first big winter storm of the season. Donny had knownfor one brief moment he had knownwhat that feeling of love and triumph actually meant. That passed quickly, the way dreams do upon waking . . .


but he never forgot the feeling itself, that almost swooning sensation of grace for once fulfilled and delivered instead of promised and then denied; that feeling of clarity and sweet, marvellous love; that feeling of ecstasy at the coming once more of the white. 3 Judge Fairchild, who had sent Jack and Wolf to the Sunlight Home, was no longer a judge of any kind, and as soon as his final appeals ran out, he would be going to jail. There no longer seemed any question that jail was where he would fetch up, and that he would do hard time there. Might never come out at all. He was an old man, and not very healthy. If they hadnt found the damned bodies . . . He had remained as cheerful as possible under the circumstances, but now, as he sat cleaning his fingernails with the long blade of his pocketknife in his study at home, a great gray wave of depression crashed over him. Suddenly he pulled the knife away from his thick nails, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, and then inserted the tip of the blade into his right nostril. He held it there for a moment and then whispered, Oh shit. Why not? He jerked his fist upward, sending the sixinch blade on a short, lethal trip, skewering first his sinuses and then his brain. 4 Smokey Updike sat in a booth at the Oatley Tap, going over invoices and totting up numbers on his Texas Instruments calculator, just as he had been doing on the day Jack had met him. Only now it was early evening and Lori was serving the evenings first customers. The jukebox was playing Id Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me (Than a Frontal Lobotomy). At one moment everything was normal. At the next Smokey sat boltupright, his little paper cap tumbling backward off his head. He clutched his white Tshirt over the left side of his chest, where a hammering bolt of pain had just struck like a silver spike. God pounds his nails, Wolf would have said. At the same instant the grill suddenly exploded into the air with a loud bang. It hit a Busch display sign and tore it from the ceiling. It landed with a crash. A rich smell of LP gas filled the area in back of the bar almost at once. Lori screamed. The jukebox speeded up 45 rpms, 78, 150, 400! The womans seriocomic lament became the speedy gabble of deranged chipmunks on a rocketsled. A moment later the top blew off the juke. Colored glass flew everywhere. Smokey looked down at his calculator and saw a single word blinking on and off in the red window TALISMANTALISMANTALISMANTALISMAN Then his eyes exploded. Lori, turn off the gas! one of the customers screamed. He got down off his stool, and turned toward Smokey. Smokey, tell her The man wailed with fright as he saw blood gushing from the holes where Smokey Updikes eyes had been. A moment later the entire Oatley Tap blew skyhigh, and before the firetrucks could arrive from Dogtown and Elmira, most of downtown was in flames. No great loss, children, can you say amen. 5 At Thayer School, where normality now reigned as it always had (with one brief interlude which those on campus remembered only as a series of vague, related dreams), the last classes of the day had just begun. What was light snow in Indiana was a cold drizzle here in Illinois. Students sat dreaming and thoughtful in their classes. Suddenly the bells in the chapel began to peal. Heads came up. Eyes widened. All over the Thayer campus, fading dreams suddenly seemed to renew themselves. 6 Etheridge had been sitting in advancedmath class and pressing his hand rhythmically up and down against a raging hardon while he stared unseeingly at the logarithms old Mr. Hunkins was piling up on the blackboard. He was thinking about the cute little townie waitress he would be boffing later on. She wore garterbelts instead of pantyhose, and was more than willing to leave her stockings on while they fucked. Now Etheridge stared around at the windows, forgetting his erection, forgetting the waitress with her long legs and smooth nylonssuddenly, for no reason at all, Sloat was on his mind. Prissy little Richard Sloat, who should have been safely classifiable as a wimp but who somehow wasnt. He thought about Sloat and wondered if he was all right. Somehow he thought that maybe Sloat, who had left school unexcused four days ago and who hadnt been heard from since, wasnt doing so good. In the headmasters office, Mr. Dufrey had been discussing the expulsion of a boy named George Hatfield for cheating with his furiousand richfather when the bells began to jingle out their unscheduled little tune. When it ended, Mr. Dufrey found himself on his hands and knees with his gray hair hanging in his eyes and his tongue lolling over his lips. Hatfield the Elder was standing by the doorcringing against it, actuallyhis eyes wide and his jaw agape, his anger forgotten in wonder and fear. Mr. Dufrey had been crawling around on his rug barking like a dog. Albert the Blob had just been getting himself a snack when the bells began to ring. He looked toward the window for a moment, frowning the way a person frowns when he is trying to remember something that is right on the tip of his tongue. He shrugged and went back to opening a bag of nacho chipshis mother had just sent him a whole case. His eyes widened. He thoughtjust for a moment, but a moment was long enoughthat the bag was full of plump, squirming white bugs. He fainted dead away. When he awoke and worked up enough courage to peer into the bag again, he saw it had been nothing but a hallucination. Of course! What else? All the same, it was a hallucination which exercised a strange power over him in the future; whenever he opened a bag of chips, or a candy bar, or a Slim Jim, or a package of Big Jerk beef jerky, he saw those bugs in his minds eye. By spring, Albert had lost thirtyfive pounds, was playing on the Thayer tennis team, and had gotten laid. Albert was delirious with ecstasy. For the first time in his life he felt that he might survive his mothers love. 7 They all looked around when the bells began to ring. Some laughed, some frowned, a few burst into tears. A pair of dogs howled from somewhere, and that was passing strange because no dogs were allowed on campus. The tune the bells rang was not in the computerized schedule of tunesthe disgruntled head custodian later verified it. A campus wag suggested in that weeks issue of the school paper that some eager beaver had programmed the tune with Christmas vacation in mind. It had been Happy Days Are Here Again. 8 Although she had believed herself far too old to catch pregnant, no blood had come to the mother of Jack Sawyers Wolf at the time of the Change some twelve months ago. Three months ago she had given birth to tripletstwo littersisters and one litterbrother. Her labor had been hard, and the foreknowledge that one of her older children was about to die had been upon her. That child, she knew, had gone into the Other Place to protect the herd, and he would die in that Other Place, and she would never see him anymore. This was very hard, and she had wept in more than the pain of her delivery. Yet now, as she slept with her new young beneath a full moon, all of them safely away from the herd for the time being, she rolled over with a smile on her face and pulled the newest litterbrother to her and began to lick him. Still sleeping himself, the Wolfling put his arms around his mothers shaggy neck and pressed his cheek against her downy breast, and now they both smiled; in her alien sleep a human thought arose God pounds his nails well and true. And the moonlight of that lovely world where all smells were good shone down on the two of them as they slept in each others arms with the littersisters nearby. 9 In the town of Goslin, Ohio (not far from Amanda, and some thirty miles south of Columbus), a man named Buddy Parkins was shovelling chickenshit in a henhouse at dusk. A cheesecloth mask was tied over his mouth and nose to keep the choking white cloud of powdered guano he was raising from getting up his nose and into his mouth. The air reeked of ammonia. The stink had given him a headache. He also had a backache, because he was tall and the henhouse wasnt. All things considered, he would have to say that this was one bitchkitty of a job. He had three sons, and every damned one of them seemed to be unavailable when the henhouse needed to be swamped out. Only thing to be said about it was that he was almost done, and The kid! Jesus Christ! That kid! He suddenly remembered the boy who had called himself Lewis Farren with total clarity and a stunned kind of love. The boy who had claimed to be going to his aunt, Helen Vaughan, in the town of Buckeye Lake; the boy who had turned to Buddy when Buddy had asked him if he was running away and had in that turning, revealed a face filled with honest goodness and an unexpected, amazing beautya beauty that had made Buddy think of rainbows glimpsed at the end of storms, and sunsets at the end of days that have groaned and sweated with work that has been well done and not scamped. He straightened up with a gasp and bonked his head on the henhouse beams hard enough to make his eyes water . . . but he was grinning crazily all the same. Oh my God, that boy is THERE, hes THERE, Buddy Parkins thought, and although he had no idea of where there was, he was suddenly overtaken by a sweet, violent feeling of absolute adventure; never, since reading Treasure Island at the age of twelve and cupping a girls breast in his hand for the first time at fourteen, had he felt so staggered, so excited, so full of warm joy. He began to laugh. He dropped his shovel, and while the hens stared at him with stupid amazement, Buddy Parkins danced a shuffling jig in the chickenshit, laughing behind his mask and snapping his fingers. Hes there! Buddy Parkins yelled to the chickens, laughing. By diddlydamn, hes there, he made it after all, hes there and hes got it! Later, he almost thoughtalmost, but never quitethat he must have somehow gotten high on the stench of the chickendust. That wasnt all, dammit, that wasnt. He had had some kind of revelation, but he could no longer remember what it had been . . . he supposed it was like that British poet some highschool English teacher had told them about the guy had taken a big dose of opium and had started to write some poems about a makebelieve Chink whorehouse while he was stoned . . . except when he came down to earth again he couldnt finish it. Like that, he thought, but somehow he knew it wasnt; and although he couldnt remember exactly what had caused the joy, he, like Donny Keegan, never forgot the way the joy had come, all deliciously unbiddenhe never forgot that sweet, violent feeling of having touched some great adventure, of having looked for a moment at some beautiful white light that was, in fact, every color of the rainbow. 10 Theres an old Bobby Darin song which goes And the ground coughs up some rootswearing denim shirts and boots,haul em away . . . haul em away. This was a song the children in the area of Cayuga, Indiana, could have related to enthusiastically, if it hadnt been popular quite a bit before their time. The Sunlight Home had been empty for only a little more than a week, and already it had gotten a reputation with the local kids as a haunted house. Considering the grisly remains the payloaders had found near the rock wall at the back of Far Field, this was not surprising. The local Realtors FOR SALE sign looked as if it had been standing on the lawn for a year instead of just nine days, and the Realtor had already dropped the price once and was thinking about doing it again. As it happened, he would not have to. As the first snow began to spit down from the leaden skies over Cayuga (and as Jack Sawyer was touching the Talisman some two thousand miles away), the LP tanks behind the kitchen exploded. A workman from Eastern Indiana Gas and Electric had come the week before and had sucked all the gas back into his truck, and he would have sworn you could have crawled right inside one of those tanks and lit up a cigarette, but they exploded anywaythey exploded at the exact moment the windows of the Oatley Tap were exploding out into the street (along with a number of patrons wearing denim shirts and boots . . . and Elmira rescue units hauled em away). The Sunlight Home burned to the ground in almost no time at all. Can you gimme hallelujah? 11 In all worlds, something shifted and settled into a slightly new position like a great beast . . . but in Point Venuti the beast was in the earth; it had been awakened and was roaring. It did not go to sleep for the next seventynine seconds, according to the Institute of Seismology at CalTech. The earthquake had begun. 44 The Earthquake 1 It was some time before Jack became aware that the Agincourt was shaking itself to pieces around him, and this was not surprising. He was transported with wonder. In one sense he was not in the Agincourt at all, not in Point Venuti, not in Mendocino County, not in California, not in the American Territories, not in those other Territories; but he was in them, and in an infinite number of other worlds as well, and all at the same time. Nor was he simply in one place in all those worlds; he was in them everywhere because he was those worlds. The Talisman, it seemed, was much more than even his father had believed. It was not just the axle of all possible worlds, but the worlds themselvesthe worlds, and the spaces between those worlds. Here was enough transcendentalism to drive even a cavedwelling Tibetan holy man insane. Jack Sawyer was everywhere; Jack Sawyer was everything. A blade of grass on a world fifty thousand worlds down the chain from earth died of thirst on an inconsequential plain somewhere in the center of a continent which roughly corresponded in position to Africa; Jack died with that blade of grass. In another world, dragons were copulating in the center of a cloud high above the planet, and the fiery breath of their ecstasy mixed with the cold air and precipitated rain and floods on the ground below. Jack was the hedragon; Jack was the shedragon; Jack was the sperm; Jack was the egg. Far out in the ether a million universes away, three specks of dust floated near one another in interstellar space. Jack was the dust, and Jack was the space between. Galaxies unreeled around his head like long spools of paper, and fate punched each in random patterns, turning them into macrocosmic playerpiano tapes which would play everything from ragtime to funeral dirges. Jacks happy teeth bit an orange Jacks unhappy flesh screamed as the teeth tore him open. He was a trillion dustkitties under a billion beds. He was a joey dreaming of its previous life in its mothers pouch as the mother bounced over a purple plain where rabbits the size of deer ran and gambolled. He was ham on a hock in Peru and eggs in a nest under one of the hens in the Ohio henhouse Buddy Parkins was cleaning. He was the powdered henshit in Buddy Parkinss nose; he was the trembling hairs that would soon cause Buddy Parkins to sneeze; he was the sneeze; he was the germs in the sneeze; he was the atoms in the germs; he was the tachyons in the atoms travelling backward through time toward the big bang at the start of creation. His heart skipped and a thousand suns flashed up in novas. He saw a googolplex of sparrows in a googolplex of worlds and marked the fall or the wellbeing of each. He died in the Gehenna of Territories orepit mines. He lived as a fluvirus in Etheridges tie. He ran in a wind over far places. He was . . . Oh he was . . . He was God. God, or something so close as to make no difference. No! Jack screamed in terror. No, I dont want to be God! Please! Please, I dont want to be God, I ONLY WANT TO SAVE MY MOTHERS LIFE! And suddenly infinitude closed up like a losing hand folding in a cardsharps grasp. It narrowed down to a beam of blinding white light, and this he followed back to the Territories Ballroom, where only seconds had passed. He still held the Talisman in his hands. 2 Outside, the ground had begun to do a carny kooch dancers bump and grind. The tide, which had been coming in, rethought itself and began to run backward, exposing sand as deeply tanned as a starlets thighs. Flopping on this uncovered sand were strange fish, some which seemed to be no more than gelatinous clots of eyes. The cliffs behind the town were nominally of sedimentary rock, but any geologist would have taken one look and told you at once that these rocks were to the sedimentary classification as the nouveau riche were to the Four Hundred. The Point Venuti Highlands were really nothing but mud with a hardon and now they cracked and split in a thousand crazy directions. For a moment they held, the new cracks opening and closing like gasping mouths, and then they began to collapse in landslides on the town. Showers of dirt came sifting down. Amid the dirt were boulders as big as Toledo tirefactories. Morgans Wolf Brigade had been decimated by Jack and Richards surprise attack on Camp Readiness. Now the number was even further reduced as many of them ran screaming and wailing in superstitious fear. Some catapulated back into their own world. Some of these got away, but most were swallowed by the upheavals that were happening there. A core of similar cataclysms ran from this place through all the worlds, as if punched through by a surveyors hollow sampling rod. One group of three Wolfs dressed in Fresno Demons motorcycle jackets gained their cara horny old Lincoln Mark IVand managed to drive a block and a half with Harry James bellowing brass out of the tapedeck before a chunk of stone fell from the sky and crushed the Connie flat. Others simply ran shrieking in the streets, their Change beginning. The woman with the chains in her nipples strolled serenely in front of one of these. She was serenely ripping her hair out in great chunks. She held one of these chunks out to the Wolf. The bloody roots wavered like the tips of seagrass as she waltzed in place on the unsteady earth. Here! she cried, smiling serenely. A bouquet! For you! The Wolf, not a bit serene, tore her head off with a single snap of his jaws and ran on, on, on. 3 Jack studied what he had captured, as breathless as a child who has a shy woodland creature come out of the grass and eat from his hand. It glowed between his palms, waxing and waning, waxing and waning. With my heartbeat, he thought. It seemed to be glass, but it had a faintly yielding feeling in his hands. He pressed and it gave a little. Color shot inward from the points of his pressure in enchanting billows inky blue from his left hand, deepest carmine from the right. He smiled . . . and then the smile faded. You may be killing a billion people doing thatfires, floods, God knows what. Remember the building that collapsed in Angola, New York, after No, Jack, the Talisman whispered, and he understood why it had yielded to the gentle pressure of his hands. It was alive; of course it was. No, Jack All will be well . . . all will be well . . . and all manner of things will be well. Only believe; be true; stand; do not falter now. Peace in himoh such deep peace. Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow, Jack thought, and wondered if he could ever bring himself to let this wondrous bauble go. 4 On the beach below the wooden walk, Gardener had fallen flat on his belly in terror. His fingers hooked into the loose sand. He was mewling. Morgan reeled toward him like a drunk and ripped the packset from Gardeners shoulder. Stay outside! he roared into it, and then realized he had forgotten to press the SEND button. He did it now. STAY OUTSIDE! IF YOU TRY TO GET OUT OF TOWN THE MOTHERFUCKING CLIFFS WILL FALL ON YOU! GET DOWN HERE! COME TO ME! THIS IS NOTHING BUT A BUNCH OF GODDAM SPECIAL EFFECTS! GET DOWN HERE! FORM A RING AROUND THE BEACH! THOSE OF YOU WHO COME WILL BE REWARDED! THOSE OF YOU WHO DONT WILL DIE IN THE PITS AND IN THE BLASTED LANDS! GET DOWN HERE! ITS OPEN! GET DOWN HERE WHERE NOTHING CAN FALL ON YOU! GET DOWN HERE, DAMMIT! He threw the packset aside. It split open. Beetles with long feelers began to squirm out by the dozens. He bent down and yanked the howling, wheyfaced Gardener up. On your feet, beautiful, he said. 5 Richard cried out in his unconsciousness as the table he was lying on bucked him off onto the floor. Jack heard the cry, and it dragged him out of his fascinated contemplation of the Talisman. He became aware that the Agincourt was groaning like a ship in a high gale. As he looked around, boards snapped up, revealing dusty beamwork beneath. The beams were sawing back and forth like shuttles in a loom. Albino bugs scuttered and squirmed away from the Talismans clear light. Im coming, Richard! he shouted, and began to work his way back across the floor. He was thrown over once and he went down holding the glowing sphere high, knowing it was vulnerableif it was hit hard enough, it would break. What then, God knew. He got to one knee, was thrown back down on his butt, and lurched to his feet again. From below, Richard screamed again. Richard! Coming! From overhead, a sound like sleighbells. He looked up and saw the chandelier penduluming back and forth, faster and faster. Its crystal pendants were making that sound. As Jack watched, the chain parted and it hit the unravelling floor like a bomb with diamonds instead of high explosive in its nose. Glass flew. He turned and exited the room in big, larruping strideshe looked like a burlesque comic doing a turn as a drunken sailor. Down the hall. He was thrown against first one wall and then the other as the floor seesawed and split open. Each time he crashed into a wall he held the Talisman out from him, his arms like tongs in which it glowed like a whitehot coal. Youll never make it down the stairs. Gotta. Gotta. He reached the landing where he had faced the black knight. The world heaved a new way; Jack staggered and saw the helmet on the floor below roll crazily away. Jack continued to look down. The stairs were moving in great tortured waves that made him feel like puking. A stairlevel snapped upward, leaving a writhing black hole. Jack! Coming, Richard! No way you can make it down those stairs. No way, baby. Gotta. Gotta. Holding the precious, fragile Talisman in his hands, Jack started down a flight of stairs that now looked like an Arabian flying carpet caught in a tornado. The stairs heaved and he was flung toward the same gap through which the black knights helmet had fallen. Jack screamed and staggered backward toward the drop, holding the Talisman against his chest with his right hand and flailing behind him with his left. Flailing at nothing. His heels hit the drop and tilted backward over oblivion. 6 Fifty seconds had passed since the earthquake began. Only fifty secondsbut earthquake survivors will tell you that objective time, clocktime, loses all meaning in an earthquake. Three days after the 64 earthquake in Los Angeles, a television news reporter asked a survivor who had been near the epicenter how long the quake had lasted. Its still going on, the survivor said calmly. Sixtytwo seconds after the quake began, almost all of the Point Venuti Highlands decided to give in to destiny and become the Point Venuti Lowlands. They fell on the town with a muddy kurrummmmp, leaving only a single jut of slightly harder rock, which pointed at the Agincourt like an accusing finger. From one of the new slumped hills a dirty smokestack pointed like a randy penis. 7 On the beach, Morgan Sloat and Sunlight Gardener stood supporting each other, appearing to hula. Gardener had unslung the Weatherbee. A few Wolfs, their eyes alternately bulging with terror and glaring with hellacious rage, had joined them. More were coming. They were all Changed or Changing. Their clothes hung from them in tatters. Morgan saw one of them dive at the ground and begin to bite at it, as if the uneasy earth were an enemy that could be killed. Morgan glanced at this madness and dismissed it. A van with the words WILD CHILD written on the sides in psychedelic lettering plowed hellforleather across Point Venuti Square, where children had once begged their parents for ice creams and pennants emblazoned with the Agincourts likeness. The van made it to the far side, jumped across the sidewalk, and then roared toward the beach, plowing through boardedup concessions as it came. One final fissure opened in the earth and the WILD CHILD that had killed Tommy Woodbine disappeared forever, nose first. A jet of flame burst up as its gastank exploded. Watching, Sloat thought dimly of his father preaching about the Pentecostal Fire. Then the earth snapped shut. Hold steady, he shouted at Gardener. I think the place is going to fall on top of him and crush him flat, but if he gets out, youre going to shoot him, earthquake or no earthquake. Will we know if IT breaks? Gardener squealed. Morgan Sloat grinned like a boar in a canebrake. Well know, he said. The sun will turn black. Seventyfour seconds. 8 Jacks left hand scrabbled a grip on the ragged remains of the bannister. The Talisman glowed fiercely against his chest, the lines of latitude and longitude which girdled it shining as brightly as the wire filaments in a lightbulb. His heels tilted and his soles began to slide. Falling! Speedy! Im going to Seventynine seconds. It stopped. Suddenly, it just stopped. Only, for Jack, as for that survivor of the 64 quake, it was still going on, at least in part of his brain. In part of his brain the earth would continue to shake like a churchpicnic JellO forever. He pulled himself back from the drop and staggered to the middle of the twisted stair. He stood, gasping, his face shiny with sweat, hugging the bright round star of the Talisman against his chest. He stood and listened to the silence. Somewhere something heavya bureau or a wardrobe, perhapswhich had been tottering on the edge of balance now fell over with an echoing crash. Jack! Please! I think Im dying! Richards groaning, helpless voice did indeed sound like that of a boy in his last extremity. Richard! Coming! He began to work his way down the stairs, which were now twisted and bent and tottery. Many of the stairlevels were gone, and he had to step over these spaces. In one place four in a row were gone and he leaped, holding the Talisman to his chest with one hand and sliding his hand along the warped bannister with the other. Things were still falling. Glass crashed and tinkled. Somewhere a toilet was flushing manically, again and again. The redwood registration desk in the lobby had split down the middle. The double doors were ajar, however, and a bright wedge of sunlight came through themthe old dank carpet seemed to sizzle and steam in protest at that light. The clouds have broken, Jack thought. Suns shining outside. And then Going out those doors, Richieboy. You and me. Big as life and twice as proud. The corridor which led past the Heron Bar and down to the dining room reminded him of sets in some of the old Twilight Zone shows, where everything was askew and out of kilter. Here the floor tilted left; here to the right; here it was like the twin humps of a camel. He negotiated the dimness with the Talisman lighting his way like the worlds biggest flashlight. He shoved into the dining room and saw Richard lying on the floor in a tangle of tablecloth. Blood was running from his nose. When he got closer he saw that some of those hard red bumps had split open and white bugs were working their way out of Richards flesh and crawling sluggishly over Richards cheeks. As he watched, one birthed itself from Richards nose. Richard screamed, a weak, bubbling, wretched scream, and clawed at it. It was the scream of someone who is dying in agony. His shirt humped and writhed with the things. Jack stumbled across the distorted floor toward him . . . and the spider swung down from the dimness, squirting its poison blindly into the air. Flushing feef! it gibbered in its whining, droning insects voice. Oh you fushing feef, put it back put it back! Without thinking, Jack raised the Talisman. It flashed clean white firerainbow fireand the spider shrivelled and turned black. In only a second it was a tiny lump of smoking coal penduluming slowly to a dead stop in the air. No time to gawp at this wonder. Richard was dying. Jack reached him, fell on his knees beside him, and stripped back the tablecloth as if it were a sheet. Finally made it, chum, he whispered, trying not to see the bugs crawling out of Richards flesh. He raised the Talisman, considered, and then placed it on Richards forehead. Richard shrieked miserably and tried to writhe away. Jack placed an arm on Richards scrawny chest and held himit wasnt hard to do. There was a stench as the bugs beneath the Talisman fried away. Now what? Theres more, but what? He looked across the room and his eye happened to fix upon the green croaker marble that he had left with Richardthe marble that was a magic mirror in that other world. As he looked, it rolled six feet of its own volition, and then stopped. It rolled, yes. It rolled because it was a marble, and it was a marbles job to roll. Marbles were round. Marbles were round and so was the Talisman. Light broke in his reeling mind. Holding Richard, Jack slowly rolled the Talisman down the length of his body. After he reached Richards chest, Richard stopped struggling. Jack thought he had probably fainted, but a quick glance showed him this wasnt so. Richard was staring at him with dawning wonder . . . . . . and the pimples on his face were gone! The hard red bumps were fading! Richard! he yelled, laughing like a crazy loon. Hey, Richard, look at this! Bwana make juju! He rolled the Talisman slowly down over Richards belly, using his palm. The Talisman glowed brightly, singing a clear, wordless harmonic of health and healing. Down over Richards crotch. Jack moved Richards thin legs together and rolled it down the groove between them to Richards ankles. The Talisman glowed bright blue . . . deep red . . . yellow . . . the green of June meadowgrass. Then it was white again. Jack, Richard whispered. Is that what we came for? Yes. Its beautiful, Richard said. He hesitated. May I hold it? Jack felt a sudden twist of Scroogemiserliness. He snatched the Talisman close to himself for a moment. No! You might break it! Besides, its mine! I crossed the country for it! I fought the knights for it! You cant have it! Mine! Mine! Mi In his hands the Talisman suddenly radiated a terrible chill, and for a momenta moment more frightening to Jack than all the earthquakes in all the worlds that ever had been or ever would beit turned a Gothic black. Its white light was extinguished. In its rich, thundery, thanatropic interior he saw the black hotel. On turrets and gambrels and gables, on the roofs of cupolas which bulged like warts stuffed with thick malignancies, the cabalistic symbols turnedwolf and crow and twisted genital star. Would you be the new Agincourt, then? the Talisman whispered. Even a boy can be a hotel . . . if he would be. His mothers voice, clear in his head If you dont want to share it, JackO, if you cant bring yourself to risk it for your friend, then you might as well stay where you are. If you cant bring yourself to share the prizerisk the prizedont even bother to come home. Kids hear that shit all their lives, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, its never quite the same, is it? If you cant share it, let me die, chum, because I dont want to live at that price. The weight of the Talisman suddenly seemed immense, the weight of dead bodies. Yet somehow Jack lifted it, and put it in Richards hands. His hands were white and skeletal . . . but Richard held it easily, and Jack realized that sensation of weight had been only his own imagination, his own twisted and sickly wanting.


As the Talisman flashed into glorious white light again, Jack felt his own interior darkness pass from him. It occurred to him dimly that you could only express your ownership of a thing in terms of how freely you could give it up . . . and then that thought passed. Richard smiled, and the smile made his face beautiful. Jack had seen Richard smile many times, but there was a peace in this smile he had never seen before; it was a peace which passed his understanding. In the Talismans white, healing light, he saw that Richards face, although still ravaged and haggard and sickly, was healing. He hugged the Talisman against his chest as if it were a baby, and smiled at Jack with shining eyes. If this is the Seabrook Island Express, he said, I may just buy a season ticket. If we ever get out of this. You feel better? Richards smile shone like the Talismans light. Worlds better, he said. Now help me up, Jack. Jack moved to take his shoulder. Richard held out the Talisman. Better take this first, he said. Im still weak, and it wants to go back with you. I feel that. Jack took it and helped Richard up. Richard put an arm around Jacks neck. You ready . . . chum? Yeah, Richard said. Ready. But I somehow think the seagoing routes out, Jack. I think I heard the deck out there collapse during the Big Rumble. Were going out the front door, Jack said. Even if God put down a gangway over the ocean from the windows back there to the beach, Id still go out the front door. We aint ditching this place, Richie. Were going out like paying guests. I feel like Ive paid plenty. What do you think? Richard held out one thin hand, palmup. Healing red blemishes still glared on it. I think we ought to go for it, he said. Gimme some skin, Jacky. Jack slapped his palm down on Richards, and then the two of them started back toward the hallway, Richard with one arm around Jacks neck. Halfway down the hall, Richard stared at the litter of dead metal. What in heck? Coffee cans, Jack said, and smiled. Maxwell House. Jack, what in the world are you t Never mind, Richard, Jack said. He was grinning, and he still felt good, but wires of tension were working into his body again just the same. The earthquake was over . . . but it wasnt over. Morgan would be waiting for them now. And Gardener. Never mind. Let it come down the way it will. They reached the lobby and Richard looked around wonderingly at the stairs, the broken registration desk, the tumbled trophies and flagstands. The stuffed head of a black bear had its nose in one of the pigeonholes of the mail depository, as if smelling something goodhoney, perhaps. Wow, Richard said. Whole place just about fell down. Jack got Richard over to the double doors, and observed Richards almost greedy appreciation of that little spray of sunlight. Are you really ready for this, Richard? Yes. Your fathers out there. No, hes not. Hes dead. All thats out there is his . . . what do you call it? His Twinner. Oh. Richard nodded. In spite of the Talismans proximity, he was beginning to look exhausted again. Yes. Theres apt to be a hell of a fight. Well, Ill do what I can. I love you, Richard. Richard smiled wanly. I love you, too, Jack. Now lets go for it before I lose my nerve. 9 Sloat really believed he had everything under controlthe situation, of course, but more important, himself. He went right on believing this until he saw his son, obviously weak, obviously sick, but still very much alive, come out of the black hotel with his arm around Jack Sawyers neck and his head leaning against Jacks shoulder. Sloat had also believed he finally had his feelings about Phil Sawyers brat under controlit was his previous rage that had caused him to miss Jack, first at the Queens pavillion, then in the midwest. Christ, he had crossed Ohio unscathedand Ohio was only an eyeblink from Orris, that other Morgans stronghold. But his fury had led to uncontrolled behavior, and so the boy had slipped through. He had suppressed his ragebut now it flared up with wicked and unbridled freedom. It was as if someone had hosed kerosene on a wellbanked fire. His son, still alive. And his beloved son, to whom he had meant to turn over the kingship of worlds and universes, was leaning on Sawyer for support. Nor was that all. Glimmering and flashing in Sawyers hands like a star which had fallen to earth was the Talisman. Even from here Sloat could feel itit was as if the planets gravitational field had suddenly gotten stronger, pulling him down, making his heart labor; as if time were speeding up, drying out his flesh, dimming his eyes. It hurts! Gardener wailed beside him. Most of the Wolfs who had stood up to the quake and rallied to Morgan were now reeling away, hands before their faces. A couple of them were vomiting helplessly. Morgan felt a moment of swooning fear . . . and then his rage, his excitement, and the lunacy that had been feeding on his increasingly grandiose dreams of overlordshipthese things burst apart the webbing of his selfcontrol. He raised his thumbs to his ears and slammed them deep inside, so deep it hurt. Then he stuck out his tongue and waggled his fingers at Mr. Jack Dirty Motherfuck and SoontobeDead Sawyer. A moment later his upper teeth descended like a dropgate and seered the tip of his wagging tongue. Sloat didnt even notice it. He seized Gardener by the flakvest. Gardeners face was moony with fear. Theyre out, hes got IT, Morgan . . . my Lord . . . we ought to run, we must run SHOOT HIM! Morgan screamed into Gardeners face. Blood from his severed tongue flew in a fine spray. SHOOT HIM, YOU ETHIOPIAN JUGFUCKER, HE KILLED YOUR BOY! SHOOT HIM AND SHOOT THE FUCKING TALISMAN! SHOOT RIGHT THROUGH HIS ARMS AND BREAK IT! Sloat now began to dance slowly up and down before Gardener, his face working horribly, his thumbs back in his ears, his fingers waggling beside his head, his amputated tongue popping in and out of his mouth like one of those New Years Eve party favors that unroll with a tooting sound. He looked like a murderous childhilarious, and at the same time awful. HE KILLED YOUR SON! AVENGE YOUR SON! SHOOT HIM! SHOOT IT! YOU SHOT HIS FATHER, NOW SHOOT HIM! Reuel, Gardener said thoughtfully. Yes. He killed Reuel. Hes the baddest bitchs bastard to ever draw a breath. All boys. Axiomatic. But he . . . he . . . He turned toward the black hotel and raised the Weatherbee to his shoulder. Jack and Richard had reached the bottom of the twisted front steps and were beginning to move down the broad walkway, which had been flat a few minutes ago and which was now crazypaved. In the Judkins scope, the two boys were as big as housetrailers. SHOOT HIM! Morgan bellowed. He ran out his bleeding tongue again and made a hideously triumphant nurseryschool sound Yaddayaddayaddayah! His feet, clad in dirty Gucci loafers, bumped up and down. One of them landed squarely on the severed tip of his tongue and tromped it deeper into the sand. SHOOT HIM! SHOOT IT! Morgan howled. The muzzle of the Weatherbee circled minutely as it had when Gardener was preparing to shoot the rubber horse. Then it settled. Jack was carrying the Talisman against his chest. The crosshairs were over its flashing, circular light. The .360 slug would pass right through it, shattering it, and the sun would turn black . . . but before it does, Gardener thought, I will see that baddest bad boys chest explode. Hes dead meat, Gardener whispered, and began to settle pressure against the Weatherbees trigger. 10 Richard raised his head with great effort and his eyes were sizzled by reflected sunlight. Two men. One with his head slightly cocked, the other seeming to dance. That flash of sunlight again, and Richard understood. He understood . . . and Jack was looking in the wrong place. Jack was looking down toward the rocks where Speedy lay. Jack look out! he screamed. Jack looked around, surprised. What It happened fast. Jack missed it almost entirely. Richard saw it and understood it, but could never quite explain what had happened to Jack. The sunlight flashed off the shooters riflescope again. The ray of reflected light this time struck the Talisman. And the Talisman reflected it back directly at the shooter. This was what Richard later told Jack, but that was like saying the Empire State Building is a few stories high. The Talisman did not just reflect the sunflash; it boosted it somehow. It sent back a thick ribbon of light like a deathray in a space movie. It was there only for a second, but it imprinted Richards retinas for almost an hour afterward, first white, then green, then blue, and finally, as it faded, the lemony yellow of sunshine. 11 Hes dead meat, Gardener whispered, and then the scope was full of living fire. Its thick glass lenses shattered. Smoking fused glass was driven backward into Gardeners right eye. The shells in the Weatherbees magazine exploded, tearing its midsection apart. One of the whickers of flying metal amputated most of Gardeners right cheek. Other hooks and twists of steel flew around Sloat in a storm, leaving him incredibly untouched. Three Wolfs had remained through everything. Now two of them took to their heels. The third lay dead on his back, glaring into the sky. The Weatherbees trigger was planted squarely between his eyes. What? Morgan bellowed. His bloody mouth hung open. What? What? Gardener looked weirdly like Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons after one of his devices from the Acme Company has misfired. He cast the gun aside, and Sloat saw that all the fingers had been torn from Gards left hand. Gardeners right hand pulled out his shirt with effeminate tweezing delicacy. There was a knifecase clipped to the inner waistband of his pantsa narrow sleeve of finegrained kid leather. From it Gardener took a piece of chromebanded ivory. He pushed a button, and a slim blade seven inches long shot out. Bad, he whispered. Bad! His voice began to rise. All boys! Bad! Its axiomatic! ITS AXIOMATIC! He began to run up the beach toward the Agincourts walk, where Jack and Richard stood. His voice continued to rise until it was a thin febrile shriek. BAD! EVIL! BAD! EEVIL! BAAAD! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Morgan stood a moment longer, then grasped the key around his neck. By grasping it, he seemed also to grasp his own panicked, flying thoughts. Hell go to the old nigger. And thats where Ill take him. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Gardener shrieked, his killer knife held out before him as he ran. Morgan turned and ran down the beach. He was vaguely aware that the Wolfs, all of them, had fled. That was all right. He would take care of Jack Sawyerand the Talismanall by himself. 45 In Which Many Things are Resolved on the Beach 1 Sunlight Gardener ran dementedly toward Jack, blood streaming down his mutilated face. He was the center of a devastated madness. Under bright blistering sunshine for the first time in what must have been decades, Point Venuti was a ruin of collapsed buildings and broken pipes and sidewalks heaved up like books tilting and leaning on a shelf. Actual books lay here and there, their ripped jackets fluttering in raw seams of earth. Behind Jack the Agincourt Hotel uttered a sound uncannily like a groan; then Jack heard the sound of a thousand boards collapsing in on themselves, of walls tipping over in a shower of snapped lath and plasterdust. The boy was faintly conscious of the beelike figure of Morgan Sloat slipping down the beach and realized with a stab of unease that his adversary was going toward Speedy Parkeror Speedys corpse. Hes got a knife, Jack, Richard whispered. Gardeners ruined hand carelessly smeared blood on his oncespotless white silk shirt. EEEEEEVIL! he screeched, his voice still faint over the constant pounding of the water on the beach and the continuing, though intermittent, noises of destruction. EEEEEEEEEEE . . . What are you going to do? Richard asked. How should I know? Jack answeredit was the best, truest answer he could give. He had no idea of how he could defeat this madman. Yet he would defeat him. He was certain of that. You shoulda killed both of the Ellis brothers, Jack said to himself. Gardener, still shrieking, came racing across the sand. He was even now a good distance away, about halfway between the end of the fence and the front of the hotel. A red mask covered half his face. His useless left hand leaked a steady spattering stream of blood onto the sandy ground. The distance between the madman and the boys seemed to halve in a second. Was Morgan Sloat on the beach by now? Jack felt an urgency like the Talismans, pushing him forward; pushing him on. Evil! Axiomatic! Evil! Gardener screamed. Flip! Richard loudly said and Jack sidestepped as he had inside the black hotel. And then found himself standing in front of Osmond in blistering Territories sunlight. Most of his certainty abruptly left him. Everything was the same but everything was different. Without looking, he knew that behind him was something much worse than the Agincourthe had never seen the exterior of the castle the hotel became in the Territories, but he suddenly knew that through the great front doors a tongue was coiling out for him . . . and that Osmond was going to drive him and Richard back toward it. Osmond wore a patch over his right eye and a stained glove on his left hand. The complicated tendrils of his whip came slithering off his shoulder. Oh, yes, he halfhissed, halfwhispered. This boy. Captain Farrens boy. Jack pulled the Talisman protectively into his belly. The intricacies of the whip slid over the ground, as responsive to Osmonds minute movements of hand and wrist as is a racehorse to the hand of the jockey. What does it profit a boy to gain a glass bauble if he loses the world? The whip seemed almost to lift itself off the ground. NOTHING! NAUGHT! Osmonds true smell, that of rot and filth and hidden corruption, boomed out, and his lean crazy face somehow rippled, as if a lightningbolt had cracked beneath it. He smiled brightly, emptily, and raised the coiling whip above his shoulder. Goatspenis, Osmond said, almost lovingly. The thongs of the whip came singing down toward Jack, who stepped backward, though not far enough, in a sudden sparkling panic. Richards hand gripped his shoulder as he flipped again, and the horrible, somehow laughing noise of the whip instantly erased itself from the air. Knife! he heard Speedy say. Fighting his instincts, Jack stepped inside the space where the whip had been, not backward as almost all of him wished to do. Richards hand fell away from the ridge of his shoulder, and Speedys voice went wailing and lost. Jack clutched the glowing Talisman into his belly with his left hand and reached up with his right. His fingers closed magically around a bony wrist. Sunlight Gardener giggled. JACK! Richard bellowed behind him. He was standing in this world again, under streaming cleansing light, and Sunlight Gardeners knife hand was straining down toward him. Gardeners ruined face hung only inches from his own. A smell as of garbage and longdead animals left on the road blanketed them. Naught, Gardener said. Can you give me hallelujah? He pushed down with the elegant lethal knife, and Jack managed to hold it back. JACK! Richard yelled again. Sunlight Gardener stared at him with a bright birdlike air. He continued to push down with his knife. Dont you know what Sunlight done? said Speedys voice. Dont you yet? Jack looked straight into Gardeners crazily dancing eye. Yes. Richard rushed in and kicked Gardener in the ankle, then clouted a weak fist into his temple. You killed my father, Jack said. Gardeners single eye sparkled back. You killed my boy, baddest bastard! Morgan Sloat told you to kill my father and you did. Gardener pushed the knife down a full two inches. A knot of yellow gristly stuff and a bubble of blood squeezed out of the hole that had been his right eye. Jack screamedwith horror, rage, and all the longhidden feelings of abandonment and helplessness which had followed his fathers death. He found that he had pushed Gardeners knife hand all the way back up. He screamed again. Gardeners fingerless left hand battered against Jacks own left arm. Jack was just managing to twist Gardeners wrist back when he felt that dripping pad of flesh insinuate itself between his chest and his arm. Richard continued to skirmish about Gardener, but Gardener was managing to get his fingerless hand very near the Talisman. Gardener tilted his face right up to Jacks. Hallelujah, he whispered. Jack twisted his entire body around, using more strength than hed known he had. He hauled down on Gardeners knife hand. The other, fingerless hand flew to the side. Jack squeezed the wrist of the knife hand. Corded tendons wriggled in his grasp. Then the knife dropped, as harmless now as the fingerless cushion of skin which struck repeatedly at Jacks ribs. Jack rolled his whole body into the offcenter Gardener and sent him lurching away. He shoved the Talisman toward Gardener. Richard squawked, What are you doing? This was right, right, right. Jack moved in toward Gardener, who was still gleaming at him, though with less assurance, and thrust the Talisman out toward him. Gardener grinned, another bubble of blood bulging fatly in the empty eyesocket, and swung wildly at the Talisman. Then he ducked for the knife. Jack rushed in and touched the Talismans grooved warm skin against Gardeners own skin. Like Reuel, like Sunlight. He jumped back. Gardener howled like a lost, wounded animal. Where the Talisman had brushed against him, the skin had blackened, then turned to a slowly sliding fluid, skimming away from the skull. Jack retreated another step. Gardener fell to his knees. All the skin on his head turned waxy. Within half a second, only a gleaming skull protruded through the collar of the ruined shirt. Thats you taken care of, Jack thought, and good riddance! 2 All right, Jack said. He felt full of crazy confidence. Lets go get him, Richie. Lets He looked at Richard and saw that his friend was on the verge of collapsing again. He stood swaying on the sand, his eyes halflidded and dopey. Maybe you better just sit this one out, on second thought, Jack said. Richard shook his head. Coming, Jack. Seabrook Island. All the way . . . to the end of the line. Im going to have to kill him, Jack said. That is, if I can. Richard shook his head with dogged, stubborn persistence. Not my father. Told you. Fathers dead. If you leave me Ill crawl. Crawl right through the muck that guy left behind, if I have to. Jack looked toward the rocks. He couldnt see Morgan, but he didnt think there was much question that Morgan was there. And if Speedy was still alive, Morgan might at this moment be taking steps to remedy that situation. Jack tried to smile but couldnt make it. Think of the germs you might pick up. He hesitated a moment longer, then held the Talisman reluctantly out to Richard. Ill carry you, but youll have to carry this. Dont drop the ball, Richard. If you drop it What was it Speedy had said? If you drop it, all be lost. I wont drop it. Jack put the Talisman into Richards hands, and again Richard seemed to improve at its touch . . . but not so much. His face was terribly wan. Washed in the Talismans bright glow, it looked like the face of a dead child caught in the glare of a police photographers flash. Its the hotel. Its poisoning him. But it wasnt the hotel; not entirely. It was Morgan. Morgan was poisoning him. Jack turned around, discovering he was loath to look away from the Talisman even for a moment. He bent his back and curved his hands into stirrups. Richard climbed on. He held to the Talisman with one hand and curled the other around Jacks neck. Jack grabbed Richards thighs. He is as light as a thistle. He has his own cancer. Hes had it all his life. Morgan Sloat is radioactive with evil and Richard is dying of the fallout. He started to jog down toward the rocks behind which Speedy lay, conscious of the light and heat of the Talisman just above him. 3 He ran around the left side of the clump of rocks with Richard on his back, still full of that crazy assurance . . . and that it was crazy was brought home to him with rude suddenness. A plumpish leg clad in light brown wool (and just below the pulledback cuff Jack caught a blurred glimpse of a perfectly proper brown nylon sock) suddenly stuck straight out from behind the last rock like a tollgate. Shit! Jacks mind screamed. He was waiting for you! You total nerd! Richard cried out. Jack tried to pull up and couldnt. Morgan tripped him up as easily as a schoolyard bully trips up a younger boy in the playyard. After Smokey Updike, and Osmond, and Gardener, and Elroy, and something that looked like a cross between an alligator and a Sherman tank, all it really took to bring him down was overweight, hypertensive Morgan Sloat crouched behind a rock, watching and waiting for an overconfident boy named Jack Sawyer to come boogying right down on top of him. Yiyyy! Richard cried as Jack stumbled forward. He was dimly aware of their combined shadow tracking out to his leftit seemed to have as many arms as a Hindu idol. He felt the psychic weight of the Talisman shift . . . and then overshift. WATCH OUT FOR IT, RICHARD! Jack screamed. Richard fell over the top of Jacks head, his eyes huge and dismayed. The cords on his neck stood out like piano wire. He held the Talisman up as he went down. His mouth was pulled down at the corners in a desperate snarl. He hit the ground facefirst like the nosecone of a defective rocket. The sand here around the place where Speedy had gone to earth was not precisely sand at all but a roughtextured scree stubbly with smaller rocks and shells. Richard came down on a rock that had been burped up by the earthquake. There was a compact thudding sound. For a moment Richard looked like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. His butt, clad in dirty polishedcotton slacks, wagged drunkenly back and forth in the air. In other circumstancescircumstances unattended by that dreadful compact thudding sound, for instanceit would have been a comic pose, worthy of a Kodachrome Rational Richard Acts Wild and Crazy at the Beach. But it wasnt funny at all. Richards hands opened slowly . . . and the Talisman rolled three feet down the gentle slope of the beach and stopped there, reflecting sky and clouds, not on its surface but in its gently lighted interior. Richard! Jack bellowed again. Morgan was somewhere behind him, but Jack had momentarily forgotten him. All his reassurance was gone; it had left him at the moment when that leg, clad in light brown wool, had stuck out in front of him like a tollgate. Fooled like a kid in a nurseryschool playyard, and Richard . . . Richard was . . . Rich Richard rolled over and Jack saw that Richards poor, tired face was covered with running blood. A flap of his scalp hung down almost to one eye in a triangular shape like a ragged sail. Jack could see hair sticking out of the underside and brushing Richards cheek like sandcolored grass . . . and where that haircovered skin had come from he could see the naked gleam of Richard Sloats skull. Did it break? Richard asked. His voice cracked toward a scream. Jack, did it break when I fell? Its okay, Richieits Richards bloodrimmed eyes bulged widely at something behind him. Jack! Jack, look o! Something that felt like a leather brickone of Morgan Sloats Gucci loaferscrashed up between Jacks legs and into his testicles. It was a deadcenter hit, and Jack crumpled forward, suddenly living with the greatest pain of his lifea physical agony greater than any he had ever imagined. He couldnt even scream. Its okay, Morgan Sloat said, but you dont look so good. Jackyboy. Not at all. And now the man slowly advancing on Jackadvancing slowly because he was savoring thiswas a man to whom Jack had never been properly introduced. He had been a white face in the window of a great black coach for a space of moments, a face with dark eyes that somehow sensed his presence; he had been a rippling, changing shape bludgeoning itself into the reality of the field where he and Wolf had been talking of such wonders as litterbrothers and the big rutmoon; he had been a shadow in Anderss eyes. But Ive never really seen Morgan of Orris until now, Jack thought. And he still was JackJack in a pair of faded, dirty cotton pants of a sort you might expect to see an Asian coolie wearing, and sandals with rawhide thongs, but not JasonJack. His crotch was a great frozen scream of pain. Ten yards away was the Talisman, throwing its effulgent glow along a beach of black sand. Richard was not there, but this fact did not impress itself on Jacks conscious mind until a bit later. Morgan was wearing a dark blue cape held at the neck with a catch of beaten silver. His pants were the same light wool as Sloats pants, only here they were bloused into black boots. This Morgan walked with a slight limp, his deformed left foot leaving a line of short hyphens in the sand. The silver catch on his cloak swung loose and low as he moved, and Jack saw that the silver thing had nothing at all to do with the cape, which was held by a simple unadorned dark cord. This was some sort of pendant. He thought for a moment that it was a tiny golfclub, the sort of thing a woman might take off her charmbracelet and wear around her neck, just for the fun of it. But as Sloat got closer, he saw it was too slimit did not end in a clubhead but came to a point. It looked like a lightningrod. No, you dont look well at all, boy, Morgan of Orris said. He stepped over to where Jack lay, moaning, holding his crotch, legs drawn up. He bent forward, hands planted just above his knees, and studied Jack as a man might study an animal his car has run over. A rather uninteresting animal like a woodchuck or a squirrel. Not a bit well. Morgan leaned even closer. Youve been quite a problem for me, Morgan of Orris said, bending lower. Youve caused a great deal of damage. But in the end I think Im dying, Jack whispered. Not yet. Oh, I know it feels like that, but believe me, youre not dying yet. In five minutes or so, youll know what dying really feels like. No . . . really . . . Im broken . . . inside, Jack moaned. Lean down . . . I want to tell . . . to ask . . . beg . . . Morgans dark eyes gleamed in his pallid face. It was the thought of Jack begging, perhaps. He leaned down until his face was almost touching Jacks. Jacks legs had drawn up in response to the pain. Now he pistoned them out and up. For a moment it felt as if a rusty blade were ripping up from his genitals and into his stomach, but the sound of his sandals striking Morgans face, splitting his lips and crunching his nose to one side, more than made up for the pain. Morgan of Orris flailed backward, roaring in pain and surprise, his cape flapping like the wings of a great bat. Jack got to his feet. For a moment he saw the black castleit was much larger than the Agincourt had been; seemed, in fact, to cover acresand then he was lunging spastically past the unconscious (or dead!) Parkus. He lunged for the Talisman, which lay peacefully glowing on the sand, and as he ran he flipped back to the American Territories. Oh you bastard! Morgan Sloat bellowed. You rotten little bastard, my face, my face, you hurt my face! There was a crackling sizzle and a smell like ozone. A brilliant bluewhite branch of lightning passed just to Jacks right, fusing sand like glass. Then he had the Talismanhad it again! The torn, throbbing ache in his crotch began to diminish at once. He turned to Morgan with the glass ball raised in his hands. Morgan Sloat was bleeding from the lip and holding one hand up to his cheekJack hoped that he had cracked a few of Sloats teeth while he was at it. In Sloats other hand, outstretched in a curious echo of Jacks own posture, was the keylike thing which had just sent a lightningbolt snapping into the sand beside Jack. 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 feltmore than heardas 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 Jacks head. He wiped a smear of blood away from his lower lip. You hurt me, you stinking little bastard, he said. Dont 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 doesnt know what it can do, Jack realized he doesnt 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 Ill take the top of your head off right now. Drop it. Youre afraid, Jack said. Now that the Talisman is right in front of you, youre afraid to come and get it. I dont have to come and get it, Sloat said. You goddam Pretender. Drop it. Lets 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 mothers nickname for him in Sloats wet mouth. Im not the black hotel, Bloat. Im just a kid. Cant 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 Anderss demons, flared up and died in the Talismans 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 Talismanhe 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. Richards 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 lightningbolt 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 dont you go hump a weasel? Morgan Sloat opened his mouth and screeched, revealing a row of square bloodstained teeth. Ill hump your corpse! The pointing key wavered toward Jacks head, wavered away. Sloats 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 Sloats fist, widening out as it ascended. The sky blackened. Both the Talisman and Morgan Sloats face shone in the sudden dark, Sloats face because the Talisman shed its light upon it. Jack realized that his face, too, must be picked out by the Talismans fierce illumination. And as soon as he brandished the glowing Talisman toward Sloat, trying God knew whatto get him to drop the key, to anger him, to rub his nose in the fact that he was powerlessJack was made to understand that he had not yet reached the end of Morgan Sloats capabilities. Fat snowflakes spun down out of the dark sky.