Nobody in Point Venuti had the power to harm him, at least not until he got to the Agincourt Hotel. He was on his way, Rational Richard beside him, and all would be well. And before he had taken three more steps, his muscles singing along with the Talisman, he had a better, more accurate image of himself than of a knight going out to do battle. The image came straight from one of his mothers movies, delivered by celestial telegram. It was as if he were on a horse, a broadbrimmed hat on his head and a gun tied to his hip, riding in to clean up Deadwood Gulch. Last Train to Hangtown, he remembered Lily Cavanaugh, Clint Walker, and Will Hutchins, 1960. So be it. 2 Four or five of the Territories trees struggled out of the hard brown soil beside the first of the abandoned buildings. Maybe they had been there all along, snaking their branches over the road nearly to the white line, maybe not; Jack could not remember seeing them when he first looked down toward the concealed town. It was scarcely more conceivable, though, that he could overlook the trees than he could a pack of wild dogs. He could hear their roots rustling along the surface of the ground as he and Richard approached the warehouse. (OUR boy? OUR boy?) Lets get on the other side of the road, he said to Richard, and took his lumpy hand to lead him across. As soon as they reached the opposite side of the road, one of the Territories trees visibly stretched out, root and branch, for them. If trees had stomachs, they could have heard its stomach growl. The gnarly branch and the smooth snakelike root whipped across the yellow line, then across half the remaining distance to the boys. Jack prodded gasping Richard in the side with his elbow, then grasped his arm and pulled him along. (MY MY MY MY BOY! YESSS!!) A tearing, ripping sound suddenly filled the air, and for a moment Jack thought that Morgan of Orris was raping a passage through the worlds again, becoming Morgan Sloat . . . Morgan Sloat with a final, nottoberefused offer involving a machinegun, a blowtorch, a pair of redhot pincers . . . but instead of Richards furious father, the crown of the Territories tree struck the middle of the road, bounced once in a snapping of branches, then rolled over on its side like a dead animal. Oh my God, Richard said. It came right out of the ground after us. Which was precisely what Jack had been thinking. Kamikaze tree, he said. I think things are going to be a little wild here in Point Venuti. Because of the black hotel? Surebut also because of the Talisman. He looked down the road and saw another clump of the carnivorous trees about ten yards down the hill. The vibes or the atmosphere or whatever the dingdong you want to call it are all screwed upbecause everythings evil and good, black and white, all mixed up. Jack was keeping his eye on the clump of trees they now slowly approached as he talked, and saw the nearest tree twitch its crown toward them, as if it had heard his voice. Maybe this whole town is a big Oatley, Jack was thinking, and maybe he would come through after allbut if there was a tunnel up ahead, the last thing Jack Sawyer was going to do was enter it. He really did not want to meet the Point Venuti version of Elroy. Im afraid, Richard said behind him. Jack, what if more of those trees can jump out of the ground like that? You know, Jack said, Ive noticed that even when trees are mobile, they cant actually get very far. Even a turkey like you ought to be able to outrun a tree. He was rounding the last curve in the road, going downhill past the final warehouses. The Talisman called and called, as vocal as the giants singing harp in Jack and the Beanstalk. At last Jack came around the curve, and the rest of Point Venuti lay beneath him. His Jasonside kept him going. Point Venuti might once have been a pleasant little resort town, but those days had passed long ago. Now Point Venuti itself was the Oatley tunnel, and he would have to walk through all of it. The cracked, broken surface of the road dipped toward an area of burnedout houses surrounded by Territories treesthe workers in the empty factories and warehouses would have lived in these small frame houses. Enough was left of one or two of them to show what they had been. The twisted hulks of burned cars lay here and there about the houses, entwined with thick weeds. Through the wasted foundations of the little houses, the roots of the Territories trees slowly prowled. Blackened bricks and boards, upended and smashed bathtubs, twisted pipes littered the burnedout lots. A flash of white caught Jacks eye, but he looked away as soon as he saw that it was the white bone of a disarranged skeleton hooked beneath the tangle of roots. Once children had piloted bikes through these streets, housewives had gathered in kitchens to complain about wages and unemployment, men had waxed their cars in their drivewaysall gone, now. A tippedover swingset, powdery with rust, poked its limbs through rubble and weeds. Reddish little flares winked on and off in the murky sky. Below the twoblocksquare area of burned houses and feeding trees, a dead stoplight hung over an empty intersection. Across the intersection, the side of a charred building still showed letters reading UH OH! BETTER GET MAA over a pocked, blistered picture of the front end of a car protruding through a plateglass window. The fire had gone no farther, but Jack wished that it had. Point Venuti was a blighted town; and fire was better than rot. The building with the halfdestroyed advertisement for Maaco paint stood first in a row of shops. The Dangerous Planet Bookstore, Tea  Sympathy, Ferdys Wholefood Healthstore, Neon Village Jack could read only a few of the names of the shops, for above most of them the paint had long ago flaked and curdled off the facades. These shops appeared to be closed, as abandoned as the factories and warehouses up the hill. Even from where he stood, Jack could see that the plateglass windows had been broken so long ago they were like empty eyeglass frames, blank idiot eyes. Smears of paint decorated the fronts of the shops, red and black and yellow, oddly bright and scarlike in the dull gray air. A naked woman, so starved Jack could have counted her ribs, twisted slowly and ceremoniously as a weathervane in the littered street before the shops. Above her pale body with its drooping breasts and mop of pubic hair, her face had been painted blazing orange. Orange, too, was her hair. Jack stopped moving and watched the insane woman with the painted face and dyed hair raise her arms, twist her upper body as deliberately as one doing a Tai Chi movement, kick her left foot out over the flyblown corpse of a dog, and freeze into position like a statue. An emblem of all Point Venuti, the madwoman held her posture. Slowly the foot came down, and the skinny body revolved. Past the woman, past the row of empty shops, Main Street turned residentialat least Jack supposed that it had once been residential. Here, too, bright scars of paint defaced the buildings, tiny twostory houses once bright white, now covered with the slashes of paint and graffiti. One slogan jumped out at him YOURE DEAD NOW, scrawled up the side of an isolated peeling building that had surely once been a boarding house. The words had been there a long time. JASON, I NEED YOU, the Talisman boomed out at him in a language both above and beneath speech. I cant, Richard whispered beside him. Jack, I know I cant. After the row of peeling, hopelesslooking houses, the road dipped again, and Jack could see only the backs of a pair of black Cadillac limousines, one on either side of Main Street, parked with their noses pointed downhill, motors running. Like a trick photograph, looking impossibly large, impossibly sinister, the tophalf? third?of the black hotel reared up over the back ends of the Cadillacs and the despairing little houses. It seemed to float, cut off by the curve of the final hill. I cant go in there, Richard repeated. Im not even sure we can get past those trees, Jack said. Hold your water, Richie. Richard uttered an odd, snuffling noise which it took Jack a second to recognize as the sound of crying. He put his arm over Richards shoulder. The hotel owned the landscapethat much was obvious. The black hotel owned Point Venuti, the air above it, the ground beneath. Looking at it, Jack saw the weathervanes spin in contradictory directions, the turrets and gambrels rise like warts into the gray air. The Agincourt did look as if it were made of stonethousandyearold stone, black as tar. In one of the upper windows, a light suddenly flashedto Jack, it was as if the hotel had winked at him, secretly amused to find him at last so near. A dim figure seemed to glide away from the window a second later the reflection of a cloud swam across the glass. From somewhere inside, the Talisman trilled out its song only Jack could hear. 3 I think it grew, Richard breathed. He had forgotten to scratch since he had seen the hotel floating past the final hill. Tears ran over and through the raised red bumps on his cheeks, and Jack saw that his eyes were now completely encased by the raised rashRichard didnt have to squint to squint anymore. Its impossible, but the hotel used to be smaller, Jack. Im sure of it. Right now, nothings impossible, Jack said, almost unnecessarilythey had long ago passed into the realm of the impossible. And the Agincourt was so large, so dominating, that it was wildly out of scale with the rest of the town. The architectural extravagance of the black hotel, all the turrets and brass weathervanes attached to fluted towers, the cupolas and gambrels which should have made it a playful fantasy, instead made it menacing, nightmarish. It looked as though it belonged in some kind of antiDisneyland where Donald Duck had strangled Huey, Dewey, and Louie and Mickey shot Minnie Mouse full of heroin. Im afraid, Richard said; and JASON COME NOW, sang out the Talisman. Just stick close to me, pal, and well go through that place like grease through a goose. JASON COME NOW! The clump of Territories trees just ahead rustled as Jack stepped forward. Richard, frightened, hung backit might have been, Jack realized, that Richard was nearly blind by now, deprived of his glasses and with his eyes gradually being squeezed shut. He reached behind him and pulled Richard forward, feeling as he did so how thin Richards hand and wrist had become. Richard came stumbling along. His skinny wrist burned in Jacks hand. Whatever you do, dont slow down, Jack said. All we have to do is get by them. I cant, Richard sobbed. Do you want me to carry you? Im being serious, Richard. I mean, this could be a lot worse. I bet if we hadnt blown so many of his troops away back there, hed have guards every fifty feet. You couldnt move fast enough if you carried me. Id slow you down. What in the Sam Hill do you think youre doing now? went through Jacks mind, but he said, Stay on my far side and go like hell, Richie. When I say three. Got it? One . . . two . . . three! He jerked Richards arm and began sprinting past the trees. Richard stumbled, gasped, then managed to right himself and keep on moving without falling down. Geysers of dust appeared at the base of the trees, a commotion of shredding earth and scrambling things that looked like enormous beetles, shiny as shoe polish. A small brown bird took off out of the weeds near the clump of conspiring trees, and a limber root like an elephants trunk whipped out of the dust and snatched it from the air. Another root snaked toward Jacks left ankle, but fell short. The mouths in the coarse bark howled and screamed. (LOVERRR? LOVER BOYYY?) Jack clenched his teeth together and tried to force Richard Sloat to fly. The heads of the complicated trees had begun to sway and bow. Whole nests and families of roots were slithering toward the white line, moving as though they had independent wills. Richard faltered, then unambiguously slowed as he turned his head to look past Jack toward the reaching trees. Move! Jack yelled, and yanked at Richards arm. The red lumps felt like hot stones buried beneath the skin. He hauled away at Richard, seeing too many of the whickering roots crawl gleefully toward them across the white line. Jack put his arm around Richards waist at the same instant that a long root whistled through the air and wrapped itself around Richards arm. Jesus! Richard yelled. Jason! It got me! It got me! In horror Jack saw the tip of the root, a blind worms head, lift up and stare at him. It twitched almost lazily in the air, then wound itself once again around Richards burning arm. Other roots came sliding toward them across the road. Jack yanked Richard back as hard as he could, and gained another six inches. The root around Richards arm grew taut. Jack locked his arms around Richards waist and hauled him mercilessly backward. Richard let out an unearthly, floating scream. For a second, Jack was afraid that Richards shoulder had separated, but a voice large within him said PULL! and he dug in his heels and pulled back even harder. Then they both nearly went tumbling into a nest of crawling roots, for the single tendril around Richards arm had neatly snapped. Jack stayed on his feet only by backpedalling frantically, bending over at the waist to keep Richard, too, off the road. In this way they got past the last of the trees just as they heard the rending, snapping sounds they had heard once before. This time, Jack did not have to tell Richard to run for it. The nearest tree came roaring up out of the ground and fell with a groundshaking thud only three or four feet behind Richard. The others crashed to the surface of the road behind it, waving their roots like wild hair. You saved my life, Richard said. He was crying again, more from weakness and exhaustion and shock than from fear. From now on, my old pal, you ride piggyback, Jack said, panting, and bent down to help Richard get on his back. 4 I should have told you, Richard was whispering. His face burned against Jacks neck, his mouth against Jacks ear. I dont want you to hate me, but I wouldnt blame you if you did, really I wouldnt. I know I should have told you. He seemed to weigh no more than the husk of himself, as if nothing were left inside him. About what? Jack settled Richard squarely in the center of his back, and again had the unsettling feeling that he was carrying only an empty sack of flesh. The man who came to visit my father . . . and Camp Readiness . . . and the closet. Richards hollowseeming body trembled against his friends back. I should have told you. But I couldnt even tell myself. His breath, hot as his skin, blew agitatedly into Jacks ear. Jack thought, The Talisman is doing this to him. An instant later he corrected himself. No. The black hotel is doing this to him. The two limousines which had been parked nosedown at the brow of the next hill had disappeared sometime during the fight with the Territories trees, but the hotel endured, growing larger with every forward step Jack took. The skinny naked woman, another of the hotels victims, still performed her mad slow dance before the bleak row of shops. The little red flares danced, winked out, danced in the murky air. It was no time at all, neither morning nor afternoon nor nightit was times Blasted Lands. The Agincourt Hotel did seem made of stone, though Jack knew it was notthe wood seemed to have calcified and thickened, to have blackened of itself, from the inside out. The brass weathervanes, wolf and crow and snake and circular cryptic designs Jack did not recognize, swung about to contradictory winds. Several of the windows flashed a warning at Jack; but that might have been merely a reflection of one of the red flares. He still could not see the bottom of the hill and the Agincourts ground floor, and would not be able to see them until he had gone past the bookstore, tea shop, and other stores that had escaped the fire. Where was Morgan Sloat? Where, for that matter, was the whole godforsaken reception committee? Jack tightened his grip on Richards sticklike legs, hearing the Talisman call him again, and felt a tougher, stronger being rear up within him. Dont hate me because I couldnt . . . Richard said, his voice trailing off at the end. JASON, COME NOW COME NOW! Jack gripped Richards thin legs and walked down past the burnedover area where so many houses had once stood. The Territories trees which used these wasted blocks as their own private lunch counter whispered and stirred, but they were too far away to trouble Jack. The woman in the midst of the empty littered street slowly swivelled around as she became aware of the boys progress down the hill. She was in the midst of a complex exercise, but all suggestion of Tai Chi Chuan left her when she dropped her arms and one outstretched leg and stood stockstill beside a dead dog, watching burdened Jack come down the hill toward her. For a moment she seemed to be a mirage, too hallucinatory to be real, this starved woman with her stickout hair and face the same brilliant orange; then she awkwardly bolted across the street and into one of the shops without a name. Jack grinned, without knowing he was going to do itthe sense of triumph and of something he could only describe as armored virtue took him so much by surprise. Can you really make it there? Richard gasped, and Jack said, Right now I can do anything. He could have carried Richard all the way back to Illinois if the great singing object imprisoned in the hotel had ordered him to do it. Again Jack felt that sense of coming resolution, and thought, Its so dark here because all those worlds are crowded together, jammed up like a triple exposure on film. 5 He sensed the people of Point Venuti before he saw them. They would not attack himJack had known that with absolute certainty ever since the madwoman had fled into one of the shops. They were watching him. From beneath porches, through lattices, from the backs of empty rooms, they peered out at him, whether with fear, rage, or frustration he could not tell. Richard had fallen asleep or passed out on his back, and was breathing in heated harsh little puffs. Jack skirted the body of the dog and glanced sideways into the hole where the window of the Dangerous Planet Bookstore should have been. At first he saw only the messy macaroni of used hypodermic needles which covered the floor, atop and beside the splayed books spread here and there. On the walls, the tall shelves stood empty as yawns. Then a convulsive movement in the dim back of the store caught his eye, and two pale figures coalesced out of the gloom. Both had beards and long naked bodies in which the tendons stood out like cords. The whites of four mad eyes flashed at him. One of the naked men had only one hand and was grinning. His erection waved before him, a thick pale club. He couldnt have seen that, he told himself. Where was the mans other hand? He glanced back. Now he saw only a tangle of skinny white limbs. Jack did not look into the windows of any of the other shops, but eyes tracked him as he passed. Soon he was walking past the tiny twostory houses. YOURE DEAD NOW splayed itself on a side wall. He would not look in the windows, he promised himself, he could not. Orange faces topped with orange hair wagged through a downstairs window. Baby, a woman whispered from the next house. Sweet baby Jason. This time he did look. Youre dead now. She stood just on the other side of a broken little window, twiddling the chains that had been inserted in her nipples, smiling at him lopsidedly. Jack stared at her vacant eyes, and the woman dropped her hands and hesitantly backed away from the window. The length of chain drooped between her breasts. Eyes watched Jack from the backs of dark rooms, between lattices, from crawl spaces beneath porches. The hotel loomed before him, but no longer straight ahead. The road must have delicately angled, for now the Agincourt stood decidedly off to his left. And did it, in fact, actually loom as commandingly as it had? His Jasonside, or Jason himself, blazed up within Jack, and saw that the black hotel, though still very large, was nothing like mountainous. COME I NEED YOU NOW, sang out the Talisman. YOU ARE RIGHT IT IS NOT AS GREAT AS IT WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE. At the top of the last hill he stopped and looked down. There they were, all right, all of them. And there was the black hotel, all of it. Main Street descended to the beach, which was white sand interrupted by big outcroppings of rocks like jagged discolored teeth. The Agincourt reared up a short distance off to his left, flanked on the ocean side by a massive stone breakwater running far out into the water. Before it, stretching out in a line, a dozen long black limousines, some dusty, others as polished as mirrors, sat, their motors running. Streamers of white exhaust, lowflying clouds whiter than the air, drifted out from many of the cars. Men in FBIagent black suits patrolled along the fence, holding their hands up to their eyes. When Jack saw two red flashes of light stab out before one of the mens faces, he reflexively dodged sideways around the side of the little houses, moving before he was actually conscious that the men carried binoculars. For a second or two, he must have looked like a beacon, standing upright at the brow of a hill. Knowing that a momentary carelessness had nearly led to his capture, Jack breathed hard for a moment and rested his shoulder against the peeling gray shingles of the house. Jack hitched Richard up to a more comfortable position on his back. Anyhow, now he knew that he would somehow have to approach the black hotel from its sea side, which meant getting across the beach unseen. When he straightened up again, he peeked around the side of the house and looked downhill. Morgan Sloats reduced army sat in its limousines or, random as ants, milled before the high black fence. For a crazy moment Jack recalled with total precision his first sight of the Queens summer palace. Then, too, he had stood above a scene crowded with people moving back and forth with apparent randomness. What was it like there, now? On that daywhich seemed to have taken place in prehistory, so far must he look backthe crowds before the pavillion, the entire scene, had in spite of all an undeniable aura of peace, of order. That would be gone now, Jack knew. Now Osmond would rule the scene before the great tentlike structure, and those people brave enough to enter the pavillion would scurry in, heads averted. And what of the Queen? Jack wondered. He could not help remembering that shockingly familiar face cradled in the whiteness of bed linen. And then Jacks heart nearly froze, and the vision of the pavillion and the sick Queen dropped back into a slot in Jacks memory. Sunlight Gardener strolled into Jacks line of vision, a bullhorn in his hand. Wind from the sea blew a thick strand of white hair across his sunglasses. For a second Jack was sure that he could smell his odor of sweet cologne and jungle rot. Jack forgot to breathe for perhaps five seconds, and just stood beside the cracked and peeling shingle wall, staring down as a madman yelled orders to blacksuited men, pirouetted, pointed at something hidden from Jack, and made an expressive move of disapproval. He remembered to breathe. Well, weve got an interesting situation here, Richard, Jack said. We got a hotel that can double its size whenever it wants to, I guess, and down there we also have the worlds craziest man. Richard, who Jack had thought was asleep, surprised him by mumbling something audible only as guffuf. What? Go for it, Richard whispered weakly. Move it, chum. Jack actually laughed. A second later, he was carefully moving downhill past the backs of houses, going through tall horsetail grass toward the beach. 40 Speedy on the Beach 1 At the bottom of the hill, Jack flattened out in the grass and crawled, carrying Richard as he had once carried his backpack. When he reached the border of high yellow weeds alongside the edge of the road, he inched forward on his belly and looked out. Directly ahead of him, on the other side of the road, the beach began. Tall weatherbeaten rocks jutted out of the grayish sand; grayish water foamed onto the shore. Jack looked leftward down the street. A short distance past the hotel, on the inland side of the beach road, stood a long crumbling structure like a slicedoff wedding cake. Above it a wooden sign with a great hole in it read KINGSLAND MOTEL. The Kingsland Motel, Jack remembered, where Morgan Sloat had installed himself and his little boy during his obsessive inspections of the black hotel. A flash of white that was Sunlight Gardener roamed farther up the street, clearly berating several of the blacksuited men and flapping his hand toward the hill. He doesnt know Im down here already, Jack realized as one of the men began to trudge across the beach road, looking from side to side. Gardener made another abrupt, commanding gesture, and the limousine parked at the foot of Main Street wheeled away from the hotel and began to coast alongside the man in the black suit. He unbuttoned his jacket as soon as he hit the sidewalk of Main Street and took out a pistol from a shoulder holster. In the limousines the drivers turned their heads and stared up the hill. Jack blessed his luckfive minutes later, and a renegade Wolf with an oversized gun would have ended his quest for that great singing thing in the hotel. He could see only the top two floors of the hotel, and the madly spinning devices attached to the architectural extravagances on the roof. Because of his wormseye angle, the breakwater bisecting the beach on the right side of the hotel seemed to rear up twenty feet or more, marching down the sand and on into the water. COME NOW COME NOW, called the Talisman in words that were not words, but almost physical expressions of urgency. The man with the gun was now out of sight, but the drivers still stared after him as he went uphill toward Point Venutis lunatics. Sunlight Gardener lifted his bullhorn and roared, Root him out! I want him rooted out! He jabbed the bullhorn at another blacksuited man, just raising his binoculars to look down the street in Jacks direction. You! Pigbrains! Take the other side of the street . . . and root that bad boy out, oh yes, that baddest baddest boy, baddest . . . His voice trailed away as the second man trotted across the street to the opposite sidewalk, his pistol already lengthening his fist. It was the best chance hed ever get, Jack realizednobody was facing down the length of the beach road. Hang on tight, he whispered to Richard, who did not move. Time to boogie. He got his feet up under him, and knew that Richards back was probably visible above the yellow weeds and tall grass. Bending over, he burst out of the weeds and set his feet on the beach road. In seconds Jack Sawyer was flat on his stomach in the gritty sand. He pushed himself forward with his feet. One of Richards hands tightened on his shoulder. Jack wiggled forward across the sand until he had made it behind the first tall outcropping of rock; then he simply stopped moving and lay with his head on his hands, Richard light as a leaf on his back, breathing hard. The water, no more than twenty feet away, beat against the edge of the beach. Jack could still hear Sunlight Gardener screeching about imbeciles and incompetents, his crazy voice drifting down from uphill on Main Street. The Talisman urged him forward, urged him on, on, on. . . . Richard fell off his back. You okay? Richard raised a thin hand and touched his forehead with his fingers, his cheekbone with his thumb. I guess. You see my father? Jack shook his head. Not yet. But hes here. I guess. He has to be. The Kingsland, Jack remembered, seeing in his mind the dingy facade, the broken wooden sign. Morgan Sloat would have holed up in the hotel he had used so often six or seven years ago. Jack immediately felt the furious presence of Morgan Sloat near him, as if knowing where Sloat was had summoned him up. Well, dont worry about him. Richards voice was paperthin. I mean, dont worry about me worrying about him. I think hes dead, Jack. Jack looked at his friend with a fresh anxiety could Richard actually be losing his mind? Certainly Richard was feverish. Up on the hill, Sunlight Gardener bawled SPREAD OUT! through his bullhorn. You think And then Jack heard another voice, one that had first whispered beneath Gardeners angry command. It was a halffamiliar voice, and Jack recognized its timbre and cadence before he had truly identified it. And, oddly, he recognized that the sound of this particular voice made him feel relaxedalmost as if he could stop scheming and fretting now, for everything would be taken care ofbefore he could name its owner. Jack Sawyer, the voice repeated. Over here, sonny. The voice was Speedy Parkers. I do, Richard said, and closed his puffy eyes again and looked like a corpse washed up by the tide. I do think my father is dead, Richard meant, but Jacks mind was far from the ravings of his friend. Over here, Jacky, Speedy called again, and the boy saw that the sound came from the largest group of tall rocks, three joined vertical piles only a few feet from the edge of the water. A dark line, the hightide mark, cut across the rocks a quarter of the way up. Speedy, Jack whispered. Yeahbob, came the reply. Get yourself over here without them zombies seein you, can you? And bring your frien along, too. Richard still lay faceup on the sand, his hand over his face. Come on, Richie, Jack whispered into his ear. We have to move a little bit down the beach. Speedys here. Speedy? Richard whispered back, so quietly Jack had trouble hearing the word. A friend. See the rocks down there? He lifted Richards head on the reedlike neck. Hes behind them. Hell help us, Richie. Right now, we could use a little help. I cant really see, Richard complained. And Im so tired . . . Get on my back again. He turned around and nearly flattened out on the sand. Richards arms came over his shoulders and feebly joined. Jack peered around the edge of the rock. Down the beach road, Sunlight Gardener stroked his hair into place as he strode toward the front door of the Kingsland Motel. The black hotel reared up awesomely. The Talisman opened its throat and called for Jack Sawyer. Gardener hesitated outside the door of the motel, swept both hands over his hair, shook his head, and turned smartly about and began walking much more rapidly back up the long line of limousines. The bullhorn lifted. REPORTS EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES! he screeched. YOU POINT MENTELL ME IF YOU SEE A BUG MOVE! I MEAN IT, YES I DO! Gardener was walking away; everybody else watched him. It was time. Jack kicked off away from his shelter of rock and, bending over while he clasped Richards skimpy forearms, raced down the beach. His feet kicked up scallops of damp sand. The three joined pillars of rocks, which had seemed so close while he talked to Speedy, now appeared to be half a mile awaythe open space between himself and them would not close. It was as if the rocks receded while he ran. Jack expected to hear the crack of a shot. Would he feel the bullet first, or would he hear the report before the bullet knocked him down? At last the three rocks grew larger and larger in his vision, and then he was there, falling onto his chest and skidding behind their protection. Speedy! he said, almost laughing in spite of everything. But the sight of Speedy, who was sitting down beside a colorful little blanket and leaning against the middle pillar of rock, killed the laughter in his throatkilled at least half of his hope, too. 2 For Speedy Parker looked worse than Richard. Much worse.


His cracked, leaking face gave Jack a weary nod, and the boy thought that Speedy was confirming his hopelessness. Speedy wore only a pair of old brown shorts, and all of his skin seemed horribly diseased, as if with leprosy. Settle down now, ole Travellin Jack, Speedy whispered in a hoarse, crackling voice. Theres lots you got to hear, so open your ears up good. How are you? Jack asked. I mean . . . Jesus, Speedy . . . is there anything I can do for you? He gently placed Richard down on the sand. Open your ears, like I said. Dont you go worryin bout Speedy. I aint too comfable, the way you see me now, but I can be comfable again, if you does the right thing. Your little friends dad put this hurtin on meon his own boy, too, looks like. Old Bloat dont want his child in that hotel, no sir. But you got to take him there, son. There aint but one way about it. You got to do it. Speedy seemed to be fading in and out as he talked to Jack, who wanted to scream or wail more than he had at any time since the death of Wolf. His eyes smarted, and he knew he wanted to cry. I know, Speedy, he said. I figured that out. You a good boy, the old man said. He cocked his head back and regarded Jack carefully. You the one, all right. The road laid its mark on you, I see. You the one. You gonna do it. Hows my mom, Speedy? Jack asked. Please tell me. Shes still alive, isnt she? You can call her soons you can, find out shes okay, Speedy answered. But first you got to get it, Jack. Because if you dont get it, she be dead. And so be Laura, the Queen. She be dead, too. Speedy hitched himself up, wincing, to straighten his back. Let me tell you. Most everybody at the court gave up on hergave her up for dead already. His face expressed his disgust. They all afraid of Morgan. Because they know Morganll take they skin off they backs if they dont swear allegiance to him now. While Laura still got a few breaths in her. But out in the far Territories, twolegged snakes like Osmond and his gang been goin around, tellin folks she already dead. And if she dies, Travellin Jack, if she dies . . . He levelled his ruined face at the boy. Then we got black horror in both worlds. Black horror. And you can call your momma. But first you has to get it. You has to. Its all thats left, now. Jack did not have to ask him what he meant. Im glad you understand, son. Speedy closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone. A second later his eyes slowly opened again. Destinies. Thats what all this is about. More destinies, more lives, than you know. You ever hear the name Rushton? I suspect you might have, all this time gone by. Jack nodded. All those destinies be the reason your momma brought you all the way to the Alhambra Hotel, Travellin Jack. I was just sittin and waitin, knowin youd show up. The Talisman pulled you here, boy. Jason. Thats a name you heard, too, I spect. Its me, Jack said. Then get the Talisman. I brought this lil thing along, hep you out some. He wearily picked up the blanket, which, Jack saw, was of rubber and therefore not a blanket after all. Jack took the bundle of rubber from Speedys charredlooking hand. How can I get into the hotel, though? he asked. I cant get over the fence, and I cant swim in with Richard. Blow it up. Speedys eyes had closed again. Jack unfolded the object. It was an inflatable raft in the shape of a legless horse. Recognize her? Speedys voice, ruined as it was, bore a nostalgic lightness. You and me picked her up, sometime back. I explained about the names. Jack suddenly remembered coming to Speedy, that day that seemed filled with slashes of black and white, and finding him sitting inside a round shed, repairing the merrygoround horses. You be takin liberties with the Lady, but I guess she aint gonna mind if youre helpin me get her back where she belongs. Now that, too, had a larger meaning. Another piece of the world locked into place for Jack. Silver Lady, he said. Speedy winked at him, and again Jack had the eerie sense that everything in his life had conspired to get him to precisely this point. Your friend here all right? It wasalmosta deflection. I think so. Jack looked uneasily at Richard who had rolled on his side and was breathing shallowly, his eyes shut. Then longs you think so, blow up ole Silver Lady here. You gotta bring that boy in with you no matter what. Hes a part of it, too. Speedys skin seemed to be getting worse as they sat on the beachit had a sickly ashgray tinge. Before Jack put the air nozzle to his mouth he asked, Cant I do anything for you, Speedy? Sure. Go to the Point Venuti drugstore and fetch me a bottle of Lydia Pinkhams ointment. Speedy shook his head. You know how to hep Speedy Parker, boy. Get the Talisman. Thats all the hep I need. Jack blew into the nozzle. 3 A very short time later he was pushing in the stopper located beside the tail of a raft shaped like a fourfootlong rubber horse with an abnormally broad back. I dont know if Ill be able to get Richard on this thing, he said, not complaining but merely thinking out loud. He be able to follow orders, ole Travellin Jack. Just sit behind him, kind of hep hold him on. Thats all he needs. And in fact Richard had pulled himself into the lee of the standing rocks and was breathing smoothly and regularly through his open mouth. He might have been either asleep or awake, Jack could not tell which. All right, Jack said. Is there a pier or something out behind that place? Better than a pier, Jacky. Once you gets out beyond the breakwater, youll see big pilinsthey built part of the hotel right out over the water. Youll see a ladder down in them pilins. Get Richard there up the ladder and you be on the big deck out back. Big windows right therethe kind of windows that be doors, you know? Open up one of them windowdoors and you be in the dinin room. He managed to smile. Once you in the dinin room, I reckon youll be able to sniff out the Talisman. And dont be afraid of her, sonny. Shes been waitin for youshell come to your hand like a good hound. Whats to stop all these guys from coming in after me? Shoo, they cant go in the black hotel. Disgust with Jacks stupidity was printed in every line on Speedys face. I know, I mean in the water. Why wouldnt they come after me with a boat or something? Now Speedy managed a painful but genuine smile. I think you gonna see why, Travellin Jack. Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water, hee hee. Dont worry bout that nowjust remember what I told you and get to gettin, hear? Im already there, Jack said, and edged toward the rocks to peer around at the beach road and the hotel. He had managed to get across the road and to Speedys cover without being seen surely he could drag Richard the few feet down to the water and get him on the raft. With any luck at all, he should be able to make it unseen all the way to the pilingsGardener and the men with binoculars were concentrating on the town and the hillside. Jack peeked around the side of one of the tall columns. The limousines still stood before the hotel. Jack put his head out an inch or two farther to look across the street. A man in a black suit was just stepping through the door of the wreck of the Kingsland Motelhe was trying, Jack saw, to keep from looking at the black hotel. A whistle began to shrill, as high and insistent as a womans scream. Move! Speedy whispered hoarsely. Jack jerked his head up and saw at the top of the grassy rise behind the crumbling houses a blacksuited man blasting away at the whistle and pointing straight downhill at him. The mans dark hair swayed around his shouldershair, black suit, and sunglasses, he looked like the Angel of Death. FOUND HIM! FOUND HIM! Gardener bawled. SHOOT HIM! A THOUSAND DOLLARS TO THE BROTHER WHO BRINGS ME HIS BALLS! Jack recoiled back into the safety of the rocks. A halfsecond later a bullet spanged off the front of the middle pillar just before the sound of the shot reached them. So now I know, Jack thought as he grabbed Richards arm and pulled him toward the raft. First you get knocked down, then you hear the gun go off. You gotta go now, Speedy said in a breathless rush of words. In thirty seconds, theres gonna be a lot more shootin. Stay behind the breakwater as longs you can and then cut over. Get her, Jack. Jack gave Speedy a frantic, driven look as a second bullet smacked into the sand before their little redoubt. Then he pushed Richard down in the front of the raft and saw with some satisfaction that Richard had enough presence of mind to grasp and hang on to the separate rubbery tufts of the mane. Speedy lifted his right hand in a gesture both wave and blessing. On his knees Jack gave the raft a shove which sent it almost to the edge of the water. He heard another trilling blast of the whistle. Then he scrambled to his feet. He was still running when the raft hit the water, and was wet to the waist when he pulled himself into it. Jack paddled steadily out to the breakwater. When he reached the end, he turned into unprotected open water and began paddling. 4 After that, Jack concentrated on his paddling, firmly putting out of his mind any considerations of what he would do if Morgans men had killed Speedy. He had to get under the pilings, and that was that. A bullet hit the water, causing a tiny eruption of droplets about six feet to his left. He heard another ricochet off the breakwater with a ping. Jack paddled forward with his whole strength. Some time, he knew not how long, went by. At last he rolled off the side of the raft and swam to the back, so that he could push it even faster by scissoring his legs. An almost imperceptible current swept him nearer his goal. At last the pilings began, high crusty columns of wood as thick around as telephone poles. Jack raised his chin out of the water and saw the immensity of the hotel lifting itself above the wide black deck, leaning out over him. He glanced back and to his right, but Speedy had not moved. Or had he? Speedys arms looked different. Maybe There was a flurry of movement on the long grassy descent behind the row of fallingdown houses. Jack looked up and saw four of the men in black suits racing down toward the beach. A wave slapped the raft, almost taking it from his grasp. Richard moaned. Two of the men pointed toward him. Their mouths moved. Another high wave rocked the raft and threatened to push both raft and Jack Sawyer back toward the beach. Wave, Jack thought, what wave? He looked up over the front of the raft as soon as it dipped again into a trough. The broad gray back of something surely too large to be a mere fish was sinking beneath the surface. A shark? Jack was uneasily conscious of his two legs fluttering out behind him in the water. He ducked his head under, afraid hed see a long cigarshaped stomach with teeth sweeping toward him. He did not see that shape, not exactly, but what he saw astounded him. The water, which appeared now to be very deep, was as full as an aquarium, though one containing no fish of normal size or description. In this aquarium only monsters swam. Beneath Jacks legs moved a zoo of outsize, sometimes horrendously ugly animals. They must have been beneath him and the raft ever since the water had grown deep enough to accommodate them, for the water was crowded everywhere. The thing that had frightened the renegade Wolfs glided by ten feet down, long as a southbound freight train. It moved upward as he watched. A film over its eyes blinked. Long whiskers trailed back from its cavernous mouthit had a mouth like an elevator door, Jack thought. The creature glided past him, pushing Jack closer to the hotel with the weight of the water it displaced, and raised its dripping snout above the surface. Its furry profile resembled Neanderthal Mans. Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water, Speedy had told him, and laughed. Whatever force had sealed the Talisman in the black hotel had set these creatures in the waters off Point Venuti to make sure that the wrong people kept away; and Speedy had known it. The great bodies of the creatures in the water delicately nudged the raft nearer and nearer the pilings, but the waves they made kept Jack from getting all but the most fragmentary view of what was happening on shore. He rode up a crest and saw Sunlight Gardener, his hair flowing out behind him, standing beside the black fence levelling a long heavy hunting rifle at his head. The raft sank into the trough; the shell sizzled past far overhead with the noise of a hummingbirds passing; the report came. When Gardener shot next, a fishlike thing ten feet long with a great sail of a dorsal fin rose straight up out of the water and stopped the bullet. In one motion, the creature rolled back down and sliced into the water again. Jack saw a great ragged hole in its side. The next time he rode up a crest, Gardener was trotting off across the beach, clearly on his way to the Kingsland Motel. The giant fish continued to wash him diagonally forward toward the pilings. 5 A ladder, Speedy had said, and as soon as Jack was under the wide deck he peered through the gloom to try to find it. The thick pilings, encrusted with algae and barnacles and dripping with seaweed, stood in four rows. If the ladder had been installed at the time the deck was built it might easily be useless nowat the least a wooden ladder would be hard to see, overgrown with weed and barnacles. The big shaggy pilings were now much thicker than they had been originally. Jack got his forearms over the back of the raft and used the thick rubbery tail to lever himself back inside. Then, shivering, he unbuttoned his sodden shirtthe same white buttondown, at least one size too small, Richard had given him on the other side of the Blasted Landsand dropped it squashily in the bottom of the raft. His shoes had fallen off in the water, and he peeled off the wet socks and tossed them on top of the shirt. Richard sat in the bow of the raft, slouching forward over his knees, his eyes shut and his mouth closed. Were looking for a ladder, Jack said. Richard acknowledged this with a barely perceptible movement of his head. Do you think you could get up a ladder, Richie? Maybe, Richard whispered. Well, its around here somewhere. Probably attached to one of these pilings. Jack paddled with both hands, bringing the raft between two of the pilings in the first row. The Talismans call was continuous now, and seemed nearly strong enough to pick him up out of the raft and deposit him on the deck. They were drifting between the first and second rows of pilings, already under the heavy black line of the deck above; here as well as outside, little red flares ignited in the air, twisted, winked out. Jack counted four rows of pilings, five pilings in each row. Twenty places where the ladder might be. With the darkness beneath the deck and the endless refinements of corridors suggested by the pilings, being here was like taking a tour of the Catacombs. They didnt shoot us, Richard said without affect. In the same tone of voice he might have said, The store is out of bread. We had some help. He looked at Richard, slumped over his knees. Richard would never be able to get up a ladder unless he were somehow galvanized. Were coming up to a piling, Jack said. Lean forward and shove us off, will you? What? Keep us from bumping into the piling, Jack repeated. Come on, Richard. I need your help. It seemed to work. Richard cracked open his left eye and put his right hand on the edge of the raft. As they drifted nearer to the thick piling he held out his left hand to deflect them. Then something on the pillar made a smacking sound, as of lips pulled wetly apart. Richard grunted and retracted his hand. What was it? Jack said, and Richard did not have to answernow both boys saw the sluglike creatures clinging to the pilings. Their eyes had been closed, too, and their mouths. Agitated, they began to shift positions on their pillars, clattering their teeth. Jack put his hands in the water and swung the bow of the raft around the piling. Oh God, Richard said. Those lipless tiny mouths held a quantity of teeth. God, I cant take You have to take it, Richard, Jack said. Didnt you hear Speedy back there on the beach? He might even be dead now, Richard, and if he is, he died so he could be certain that I knew you had to go in the hotel. Richard had closed his eyes again. And I dont care how many slugs we have to kill to get up the ladder, you are going up the ladder, Richard. Thats all. Thats it. Shit on you, Richard said. You dont have to talk to me like that. Im sick of you being so high and mighty. I know Im going up the ladder, wherever it is. I probably have a fever of a hundred and five, but I know Im going up that ladder. I just dont know if I can take it. So to hell with you. Richard had uttered this entire speech with his eyes shut. He effortfully forced both eyes open again. Nuts. I need you, Jack said. Nuts. Ill get up the ladder, you asshole. In that case, Id better find it, Jack said, pushed the raft forward toward the next row of pilings, and saw it. 6 The ladder hung straight down between the two inner rows of pilings, ending some four feet above the surface of the water. A dim rectangle at the top of the ladder indicated that a trapdoor opened onto the deck. In the darkness it was only the ghost of a ladder, halfvisible. Were in business, Richie, Jack said. He guided the raft carefully past the next piling, making sure not to scrape against it. The hundreds of sluglike creatures clinging to the piling bared their teeth. In seconds the horses head at the front of the raft was gliding beneath the bottom of the ladder, and then Jack could reach up to grab the bottom rung. Okay, he said. First he tied one sleeve of his sodden shirt around the rung, the other around the stiff rubbery tail next to him. At least the raft would still be thereif they ever got out of the hotel. Jacks mouth abruptly dried. The Talisman sang out, calling to him. He stood up carefully in the raft and hung on to the ladder. You first, he said. Its not going to be easy, but Ill help you. Dont need your help, Richard said. Standing up, he nearly pitched forward and threw both of them out of the raft. Easy now. Dont easy me. Richard extended both arms and steadied himself. His mouth was pinched. He looked afraid to breathe. He stepped forward. Good. Asshole. Richard moved his left foot forward, raised his right arm, brought his right foot forward. Now he could find the bottom of the ladder with his hands, as he fiercely squinted through his right eye. See? Okay, Jack said, holding both hands palmout before him, fingers extended, indicating that he would not insult Richard with the offer of physical aid. Richard pulled on the ladder with his hands, and his feet slid irresistibly forward, pushing the raft with them. In a second he was suspended half over the wateronly Jacks shirt kept the raft from zooming out from under Richards feet. Help! Pull your feet back. Richard did so, and stood upright again, breathing hard. Let me give you a hand, okay? Okay. Jack crawled along the raft until he was immediately before Richard. He stood up with great care. Richard gripped the bottom rung with both hands, trembling. Jack put his hands on Richards skinny hips. Im going to help lift you. Try not to kick out with your feetjust pull yourself up high enough to get your knee on the rung. First put your hands up on the next one. Richard cracked open an eye and did so. You ready? Go. The raft slid forward, but Jack yanked Richard upright so high that he could easily place his right knee on the bottom rung. Then Jack grabbed the sides of the ladder and used the strength in his arms and legs to stabilize the raft. Richard was grunting, trying to get his other knee on the rung; in a second he had done it. In another two seconds, Richard Sloat stood upright on the ladder. I cant go any farther, he said. I think Im going to fall off. I feel so sick, Jack. Just go up one more, please. Please. Then I can help you. Richard wearily moved his hands up a rung. Jack, looking toward the deck, saw that the ladder must be thirty feet long. Now move your feet. Please, Richard. Richard slowly placed one foot, then the next, on the second rung. Jack placed his hands on the outsides of Richards feet and pulled himself up. The raft swung out in a looping halfcircle, but he raised his knees and got both legs securely on the lowest rung. Held by Jacks outstretched shirt, the raft swung back around like a dog on a leash. A third of the way up the ladder, Jack had to put one arm around Richards waist to keep him from falling into the black water. At last the rectangular square of the trapdoor floated in the black wood directly above Jacks head. He clamped Richard to himselfhis unconscious head fell against Jacks chestby reaching around both Richard and ladder with his left hand, and tried the trapdoor with his right. Suppose it had been nailed shut? But it swung up immediately and banged flat against the top of the deck. Jack got his left arm firmly under Richards armpits and hauled him up out of the blackness and through the hole in the deck. Interlude Sloat in This World (V) The Kingsland Motel had been empty for nearly six years, and it had the mouldy yellownewspaper smell of buildings that have been deserted for a long time. This smell had disturbed Sloat at first. His maternal grandmother had died at home when Sloat was a boyit had taken her four years, but she had finally made the gradeand the smell of her dying had been like this. He did not want such a smell, or such memories, at a moment which was supposed to be his greatest triumph. Now, however, it didnt matter. Not even the infuriating losses inflicted on him by Jacks early arrival at Camp Readiness mattered. His earlier feelings of dismay and fury had turned into a frenzy of nervous excitement. Head down, lips twitching, eyes bright, he strode back and forth through the room where he and Richard had stayed in the old days. Sometimes he locked his hands behind his back, sometimes he slammed one fist into the other palm, sometimes he stroked his bald pate. Mostly, however, he paced as he had in college, with his hands clenched into tight and somehow anal little fists, the hidden nails digging viciously into his palms. His stomach was by turns sour and giddily light. Things were coming to a head. No; no. Right idea, wrong phrase. Things were coming together. Richard is dead by now. My son is dead. Got to be. He survived the Blasted Landsbarelybut hell never survive the Agincourt. Hes dead. Hold out no false hope for yourself on that score. Jack Sawyer killed him, and Ill gouge the eyes out of his living head for it. But I killed him, too, Morgan whispered, stopping for a moment. Suddenly he thought of his father. Gordon Sloat had been a dour Lutheran minister in OhioMorgan had spent his whole boyhood trying to flee that harsh and frightening man. Finally he had escaped to Yale. He had set his entire mind and spirit on Yale in his sophomore year of high school for one reason above all others, unadmitted by his conscious mind but as deep as bedrock it was a place where his rude, rural father would never dare to come. If his father ever tried to set foot on the Yale campus, something would happen to him. Just what that something might be, the highschoolage Sloat was not sure . . . but it would be roughly akin, he felt, to what had happened to the Wicked Witch when Dorothy threw the bucket of water over her. And this insight seemed to have been true his father never had set foot on the Yale campus. From Morgans first day there, Gordon Sloats power over his son had begun to wanethat alone made all the striving and effort seem worthwhile. But now, as he stood with his fists clenched and his nails digging into his soft palms, his father spoke up What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own son? For a moment that wet yellow smellthe emptymotelsmell, the grandmothersmell, the deathsmellfilled his nostrils, seeming to choke him, and Morgan SloatMorgan of Orris was afraid. What does it profit a man For it says in The Book of Good Farming that a man shall not bring the get of his seed to any place of sacrifice, for what What does it profit That man shall be damned, and damned, and damned a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own son? Stinking plaster. The dry smell of vintage mouseturds turning to powder in the dark spaces behind the walls. Crazies. There were crazies in the streets. What does it profit a man? Dead. One son dead in that world, one son dead in this. What does it profit a man? Your son is dead, Morgan. Must be. Dead in the water, or dead under the pilings and floating around under there, or deadfor sure!topside. Couldnt take it. Couldnt What does it profit And suddenly the answer came to him. It profits a man the world! Morgan shouted in the decaying room. He began to laugh and pace again. It profits a man the world, and by Jason, the world is enough! Laughing, he began to pace faster and faster, and before long, blood had begun to drip out of his clenched fists. A car pulled up out front about ten minutes later. Morgan went to the window and saw Sunlight Gardener come bursting out of the Cadillac. Seconds later he was hammering on the door with both fists, like a tantrumy threeyearold hammering on the floor. Morgan saw that the man had gone utterly crazy, and wondered if this was good or bad. Morgan! Gardener bellowed. Open for me, my Lord! News! I have news! I saw all your news through my binoculars, I think. Hammer on that door awhile longer, Gardener, while I make up my mind on this. Is it good that you should be crazy, or is it bad? Good, Morgan decided. In Indiana, Gardener had turned Sunlight Yellow at the crucial moment and had fled without taking care of Jack once and for all. But now his wild grief had made him trustworthy again. If Morgan needed a kamikaze pilot, Sunlight Gardener would be the first one to the planes. Open for me, my Lord! News! News! N Morgan opened the door. Although he himself was wildly excited, the face he presented to Gardener was almost eerily serene. Easy, he said. Easy, Gard. Youll pop a blood vessel. Theyve gone to the hotel . . . the beach . . . shot at them while they were on the beach . . . stupid assholes missed . . . in the water, I thought . . . well get them in the water . . . then the deepcreatures rose up . . . I had him in my sights . . . I had that bad bad boy RIGHT IN MY SIGHTS . . . and then . . . the creatures . . . they . . . they . . . Slow down, Morgan said soothingly. He closed the door and took a flask out of his inside pocket. He handed it to Gardener, who spun the cap off and took two huge gulps. Morgan waited. His face was benign, serene, but a vein pulsed in the center of his forehead and his hands opened and closed, opened and closed. Gone to the hotel, yes. Morgan had seen the ridiculous raft with its painted horses head and its rubber tail bobbing its way out there. My son, he said to Gardener. Do your men say he was alive or dead when Jack put him in the raft? Gardener shook his headbut his eyes said what he believed. No one knows for sure, my Lord. Some say they saw him move. Some say not. Doesnt matter. If he wasnt dead then, hes dead now. One breath of the air in that place and his lungs will explode. Gardeners cheeks were full of whiskeycolor and his eyes were watering. He didnt give the flask back but stood holding it. That was fine with Sloat. He wanted neither whiskey nor cocaine. He was on what those sixties slobs had called a natural high. Start over, Morgan said, and this time be coherent. The only thing Gardener had to tell that Morgan hadnt gleaned from the mans first broken outburst was the fact of the old niggers presence down on the beach, and he almost could have guessed that. Still, he let Gardener go on. Gardeners voice was soothing, his rage invigorating. As Gardener talked, Morgan ran over his options one final time, dismissing his son from the equation with a brief throb of regret. What does it profit a man? It profits a man the world, and the world is enough . . . or, in this case, worlds. Two to start with, and more when and if they play out. I can rule them all if I likeI can be something like the God of the Universe. The Talisman. The Talisman is The key? No; oh no. Not a key but a door; a locked door standing between him and his destiny. He did not want to open that door but to destroy it, destroy it utterly and completely and eternally, so it could never be shut again, let alone locked. When the Talisman was smashed, all those worlds would be his worlds. Gard! he said, and began to pace jerkily again. Gardener looked at Morgan questioningly. What does it profit a man? Morgan chirruped brightly. My Lord? I dont underst Morgan stopped in front of Gardener, his eyes feverish and sparkling. His face rippled. Became the face of Morgan of Orris. Became the face of Morgan Sloat again. It profits a man the world, Morgan said, putting his hands on Osmonds shoulders. When he took them away a second later, Osmond was Gardener again. It profits a man the world, and the world is enough. My Lord, you dont understand, Gardener said, looking at Morgan as if he might be crazy. I think theyve gone inside. Inside where IT is. We tried to shoot them, but the creatures . . . the deepcreatures . . . rose up and protected them, just as The Book of Good Farming said they would . . . and if theyre inside . . . Gardeners voice was rising. Osmonds eyes rolled with mingled hate and dismay. I understand, Morgan said comfortingly. His face and voice were calm again, but his fists worked and worked, and blood dribbled down onto the mildewy carpet. Yessirreebob, yesindeedydoo, rootypatootie. Theyve gone in, and my son is never going to come out. Youve lost yours, Gard, and now Ive lost mine. Sawyer! Gardener barked. Jack Sawyer! Jason! That Gardener lapsed into a horrible bout of cursing that went on for nearly five minutes. He cursed Jack in two languages; his voice racketed and perspired with grief and insane rage. Morgan stood there and let him get it all out of his system. When Gardener paused, panting, and took another swallow from the flask, Morgan said Right! Doubled in brass! Now listen, Gardare you listening? Yes, my Lord. GardenerOsmonds eyes were bright with bitter attention. My son is never going to come out of the black hotel, and I dont think Sawyer ever will, either. Theres a very good chance that he isnt Jason enough yet to deal with whats in there. IT will probably kill him, or drive him mad, or send him a hundred worlds away. But he may come out, Gard. Yes, he may. Hes the baddest baddest bitchs bastard to ever draw breath, Gardener whispered. His hand tightened on the flask . . . tightened . . . tightened . . . and now his fingers actually began to make dents in the steel shell. You say the old nigger man is down on the beach? Yes. Parker, Morgan said, and at the same moment Osmond said, Parkus. Dead? Morgan asked this without much interest. I dont know. I think so. Shall I send men down to pick him up? No! Morgan said sharply. Nobut were going down near where he is, arent we, Gard? We are? Morgan began to grin. Yes. You . . . me . . . all of us. Because if Jack comes out of the hotel, hell go there first. He wont leave his old nightfighting buddy on the beach, will he? Now Gardener also began to grin. No, he said. No. For the first time Morgan became aware of dull and throbbing pain in his hands. He opened them and looked thoughtfully at the blood which flowed out of the deep semicircular wounds in his palms. His grin did not falter. Indeed, it widened. Gardener was staring at him solemnly. A great sense of power filled Morgan.


He reached up to his neck and closed one bloody hand over the key that brought the lightning. It profits a man the world, he whispered. Can you gimme hallelujah. His lips pulled even farther back. He grinned the sick yellow grin of a rogue wolfa wolf that is old but still sly and tenacious and powerful. Come on, Gard, he said. Lets go to the beach. 41 The Black Hotel 1 Richard Sloat wasnt dead, but when Jack picked his old friend up in his arms, he was unconscious. Whos the herd now? Wolf asked in his head. Be careful, Jacky! Wolf! Be COME TO ME! COME NOW! the Talisman sang in its powerful, soundless voice. COME TO ME, BRING THE HERD, AND ALL WILL BE WELL AND ALL WILL BE WELL AND a manner a things wi be well, Jack croaked. He started forward and came within an inch of stepping right back through the trapdoor, like a kid participating in some bizarre double execution by hanging. Swing with a Friend, Jack thought crazily. His heart was hammering in his ears, and for a moment he thought he might vomit straight down into the gray water slapping at the pilings. Then he caught hold of himself and closed the trapdoor with his foot. Now there was only the sound of the weathervanescabalistic brass designs spinning restlessly in the sky. Jack turned toward the Agincourt. He was on a wide deck like an elevated verandah, he saw. Once, fashionable twenties and thirties folk had sat out here at the cocktail hour under the shade of umbrellas, drinking gin rickeys and sidecars, perhaps reading the latest Edgar Wallace or Ellery Queen novel, perhaps only looking out toward where Los Cavernes Island could be dimly glimpseda bluegray whales hump dreaming on the horizon. The men in whites, the women in pastels. Once, maybe. Now the boards were warped and twisted and splintered. Jack didnt know what color the deck had been painted before, but now it had gone black, like the rest of the hotelthe color of this place was the color he imagined the malignant tumors in his mothers lungs must be. Twenty feet away were Speedys windowdoors, through which guests would have passed back and forth in those dim old days. They had been soaped over in wide white strokes so that they looked like blind eyes. Written on one was YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GO HOME Sound of the waves. Sound of the twirling ironmongery on the angled roofs. Stink of seasalt and old spilled drinksdrinks spilled long ago by beautiful people who were now wrinkled and dead. Stink of the hotel itself. He looked at the soaped window again and saw with no real surprise that the message had already changed. SHES ALREADY DEAD JACK SO WHY BOTHER? (now whos the herd?) You are, Richie, Jack said, but you aint alone. Richard made a snoring, protesting sound in Jacks arms. Come on, Jack said, and began to walk. One more mile. Give or take. 2 The soapedover windows actually seemed to widen as Jack walked toward the Agincourt, as if the black hotel were now regarding him with blind but contemptuous surprise. Do you really think, little boy, that you can come in here and really hope to ever come out? Do you think theres really that much Jason in you? Red sparks, like those he had seen in the air, flashed and twisted across the soaped glass. For a moment they took form. Jack watched, wondering, as they became tiny fireimps. They skated down to the brass handles of the doors and converged there. The handles began to glow dully, like a smiths iron in the forge. Go on, little boy. Touch one. Try. Once, as a kid of six, Jack had put his finger on the cold coil of an electric range and had then turned the control knob onto the HIGH setting. He had simply been curious about how fast the burner would heat up. A second later he had pulled his finger, already blistering, away with a yell of pain. Phil Sawyer had come running, taken a look, and had asked Jack when he had started to feel this weird compulsion to burn himself alive. Jack stood with Richard in his arms, looking at the dully glowing handles. Go on, little boy. Remember how the stove burned? You thought youd have plenty of time to pull your finger offHell, you thought, the thing doesnt even start to get red for almost a minutebut it burned right away, didnt it? Now, how do you think this is going to feel, Jack? More red sparks skated liquidly down the glass to the handles of the French doors. The handles began to take on the delicate rededgedwithwhite look of metal which is no more than six degrees from turning molten and starting to drip. If he touched one of those handles it would sink into his flesh, charring tissue and boiling blood. The agony would be like nothing he had ever felt before. He waited for a moment with Richard in his arms, hoping the Talisman would call him again, or that the Jasonside of him would surface. But it was his mothers voice that rasped in his head. Has something or someone always got to push you, JackO? Come on, big guyyou set this going by yourself; you can keep going if you really want to. Has that other guy got to do everything for you? Okay, Mom, Jack said. He was smiling a little, but his voice was trembling with fright. Heres one for you. I just hope someone remembered to pack the Solarcaine. He reached out and grasped one of the redhot handles. Except it wasnt; the whole thing had been an illusion. The handle was warm, but that was all. As Jack turned it, the red glow died from all the handles. And as he pushed the glass door inward, the Talisman sang out again, bringing gooseflesh out all over his body WELL DONE! JASON! TO ME! COME TO ME! With Richard in his arms, Jack stepped into the dining room of the black hotel. 3 As he crossed the threshold, he felt an inanimate forcesomething like a dead handtry to shove him back out. Jack pushed against it, and a second or two later, that feeling of being repelled ceased. The room was not particularly darkbut the soaped windows gave it a monochrome whiteness Jack did not like. He felt fogged in, blind. Here were yellow smells of decay inside walls where the plaster was slowly turning to a vile soup the smells of empty age and sour darkness. But there was more here, and Jack knew it and feared it. Because this place was not empty. Exactly what manner of things might be here he did not knowbut he knew that Sloat had never dared to come in, and he guessed that no one else would, either. The air was heavy and unpleasant in his lungs, as if filled with a slow poison. He felt the strange levels and canted passageways and secret rooms and dead ends above him pressing down like the walls of a great and complex crypt. There was madness here, and walking death, and gibbering irrationality. Jack might not have had the words to express these things, but he felt them, all the same . . . he knew them for what they were. Just as he knew that all the Talismans in the cosmos could not protect him from those things. He had entered a strange, dancing ritual whose conclusion, he felt, was not at all preordained. He was on his own. Something tickled against the back of his neck. Jack swept his hand at it and skittered to one side. Richard moaned thickly in his arms. It was a large black spider hanging on a thread. Jack looked up and saw its web in one of the stilled overhead fans, tangled in a dirty snarl between the hardwood blades. The spiders body was bloated. Jack could see its eyes. He couldnt remember ever having seen a spiders eyes before. Jack began to edge around the hanging spider toward the tables. The spider turned at the end of its thread, following him. Fushing feef! it suddenly squealed at him. Jack screamed and clutched Richard against him with panicky, galvanic force. His scream echoed across the highceilinged dining room. Somewhere in the shadows beyond, there was a hollow metallic clank, and something laughed. Fushing feef, fushing FEEF! the spider squealed, and then suddenly it scuttled back up into its web below the scrolled tin ceiling. Heart thumping, Jack crossed the dining room and put Richard on one of the tables. The boy moaned again, very faintly. Jack could feel the twisted bumps under Richards clothes. Got to leave you for a little while, buddy, Jack said. From the shadows high above . . . Ill take . . . take good . . . good care of him you fushing . . . fushing feef . . . There was a dark, buzzing little giggle. There was a pile of linen underneath the table where Jack had laid Richard down. The top two or three tablecloths were slimy with mildew, but halfway through the pile he found one that wasnt too bad. He spread it out and covered Richard with it to the neck. He started away. The voice of the spider whispered thinly down from the angle of the fanblades, down from a darkness that stank of decaying flies and silkwrapped wasps. . . . Ill take care of him, you fushing feef . . . Jack looked up, cold, but he couldnt see the spider. He could imagine those cold little eyes, but imagination was all it was. A tormenting, sickening picture came to him that spider scuttling onto Richards face, burrowing its way between Richards slack lips and into Richards mouth, crooning all the while fushing feef, fushing feef, fushing feef . . . He thought of pulling the tablecloth up over Richards mouth as well, and discovered he could not bring himself to turn Richard into something that would look so much like a corpseit was almost like an invitation. He went back to Richard and stood there, indecisive, knowing that his very indecision must make whatever forces there were here very happy indeedanything to keep him away from the Talisman. He reached into his pocket and came out with the large dark green marble. The magic mirror in the other world. Jack had no reason to believe it contained any special power against evil forces, but it came from the Territories . . . and, Blasted Lands aside, the Territories were innately good. And innate goodness, Jack reasoned, must have its own power over evil. He folded the marble into Richards hand. Richards hand closed, then fell slowly open again as soon as Jack removed his own hand. From somewhere overhead, the spider chuffed dirty laughter. Jack bent low over Richard, trying to ignore the smell of diseaseso like the smell of this placeand murmured, Hold it in your hand, Richie. Hold it tight, chum. Dont . . . chum, Richard muttered, but his hand closed weakly on the marble. Thanks, Richieboy, Jack said. He kissed Richards cheek gently and then started across the dining room toward the closed double doors at the far end. Its like the Alhambra, he thought. Dining room giving on the gardens there, dining room giving on a deck over the water here. Double doors in both places, opening on the rest of the hotel. As he crossed the room, he felt that dead hand pushing against him againit was the hotel repelling him, trying to push him back out. Forget it, Jack thought, and kept going. The force seemed to fade almost at once. We have other ways, the double doors whispered as he approached them. Again, Jack heard the dim, hollow clank of metal. Youre worried about Sloat, the double doors whispered; only now it wasnt just themnow the voice Jack was hearing was the voice of the entire hotel. Youre worried about Sloat, and bad Wolfs, and things that look like goats, and basketball coaches who arent really basketball coaches; youre worried about guns and plastic explosive and magic keys. We in here dont worry about any of those things, little one. They are nothing to us. Morgan Sloat is no more than a scurrying ant. He has only twenty years to live, and that is less than the space between breaths to us. We in the Black Hotel care only for the Talismanthe nexus of all possible worlds. Youve come as a burglar to rob us of what is ours, and we tell you once more we have other ways of dealing with fushing feeves like you. And if you persist, youll find out what they areyoull find out for yourself. 4 Jack pushed open first one of the double doors, then the other. The casters squealed unpleasantly as they rolled along their recessed tracks for the first time in years. Beyond the doors was a dark hallway. Thatll go to the lobby, Jack thought. And then, if this place really is the same as the Alhambra, Ill have to go up the main staircase one flight. On the second floor he would find the grand ballroom. And in the grand ballroom, he would find the thing he had come for. Jack took one look back, saw that Richard hadnt moved, and stepped into the hallway. He closed the doors behind him. He began to move slowly along the corridor, his frayed and dirty sneakers whispering over the rotting carpet. A little farther down, Jack could see another set of double doors, with birds painted on them. Closer by were a number of meetingrooms. Here was the Golden State Room, directly opposite the FortyNiner Room. Five paces farther up toward the double doors with the painted birds was the Mendocino Room (hacked into a lower panel of the mahogany door YOUR MOTHER DIED SCREAMING!). Far down the corridorimpossibly far!was watery light. The lobby. Clank. Jack wheeled around fast, and caught a glimmer of movement just beyond one of the peaked doorways in the stone throat of this corridor (?stones?) (?peaked doorways?) Jack blinked uneasily. The corridor was lined with dark mahogany panelling which had now begun to rot in the oceanside damp. No stone. And the doors giving on the Golden State Room and the FortyNiner Room and the Mendocino Room were just doors, sensibly rectangular and with no peaks. Yet for one moment he had seemed to see openings like modified cathedral arches. Filling these openings had been iron dropgatesthe sort that could be raised or lowered by turning a windlass. Dropgates with hungrylooking iron spikes at the bottom. When the gate was lowered to block the entrance, the spikes fitted neatly into holes in the floor. No stone archways, JackO. See for yourself. Just doorways. You saw dropgates like that in the Tower of London, on that tour you went on with Mom and Uncle Tommy, three years ago. Youre just freaking a little, thats all . . . But the feeling in the pit of his stomach was unmistakable. They were there, all right. I flippedfor just a second I was in the Territories. Clank. Jack whirled back the other way, sweat breaking out on his cheeks and forehead, hair beginning to stiffen on the nape of his neck. He saw it againa flash of something metallic in the shadows of one of those rooms. He saw huge stones as black as sin, their rough surfaces splotched with green moss. Nasty, softlooking albino bugs squirmed in and out of the large pores of the decaying mortar between the stones. Empty sconces stood at fifteen or twentyfoot intervals. The torches that the sconces had once held were long since gone. Clank. This time he didnt even blink. The world sideslipped before his eyes, wavering like an object seen through clear running water. The walls were blackish mahogany again instead of stone blocks. The doors were doors and not latticediron dropgates. The two worlds, which had been separated by a membrane as thin as a ladys silk stocking, had now actually begun to overlap. And, Jack realized dimly, his Jasonside had begun to overlap with his Jacksidesome third being which was an amalgamation of both was emerging. I dont know what that combination is, exactly, but I hope its strongbecause there are things behind those doors . . . behind all of them. Jack began to sidle up the hallway again toward the lobby. Clank. This time the worlds didnt change; solid doors remained solid doors and he saw no movement. Right behind there, though. Right behind Now he heard something behind the painted double doorswritten in the sky above the marsh scene were the words HERON BAR. It was the sound of some large rusty machine that had been set in motion. Jack swung toward (Jason swung toward) toward that opening door (that rising dropgate) his hand plunging into (the poke) the pocket (he wore on the belt of his jerkin) of his jeans and closing around the guitarpick Speedy had given him so long ago. (and closing arouind the sharks tooth) He waited to see what would come out of the Heron Bar, and the walls of the hotel whispered dimly We have ways of dealing with fushing feeves like you. You should have left while there was still time . . . . . .because now, little boy, your time is up. 5 Clank . . . THUD! Clank . . . THUD! Clank . . . THUD! The noise was large and clumsy and metallic. There was something relentless and inhuman about it which frightened Jack more badly than a more human sound would have done. It moved and shuffled its way forward with its own slow idiot rhythm Clank . . . THUD! Clank . . . THUD! There was a long pause. Jack waited, pressed against the far wall a few feet to the right of the painted doors, his nerves so tightly wound they seemed to hum. Nothing at all happened for a long time. Jack began to hope the clanker had fallen back through some interdimensional trapdoor and into the world it had come from. He became aware that his back ached from his artificially still and tautly erect posture. He slumped. Then there was a splintering crash, and a huge mailed fist with blunt twoinch spikes sprouting from the knuckles slammed through the peeling blue sky on the door. Jack shrank back against the wall again, gaping. And, helplessly, flipped into the Territories. 6 Standing on the other side of the dropgate was a figure in blackish, rusty armor. Its cylindrical helmet was broken only by a black horizontal eyeslit no more than an inch wide. The helmet was topped by a frowzy red plumewhite bugs squirmed in and out of it. They were the same sort, Jason saw, as those which had come out of the walls first in Albert the Blobs room and then all over Thayer School. The helmet ended in a coif of mail which draped the rusty knights shoulders like a ladys stole. The upper arms and forearms were plated with heavy steel brassards. They were joined at the elbows with cubitieres. These were crusted with layers of ancient filth, and when the knight moved, the cubitieres squealed like the high, demanding voices of unpleasant children. Its armored fists were crazy with spikes. Jason stood against the stone wall, looking at it, unable in fact to look away; his mouth was dry as fever and his eyeballs seemed to be swelling rhythmically in their sockets in time to his heartbeat. In the knights right hand was le martel de fera battlehammer with a rusty thirtypound forgedsteel head, as mute as murder. The dropgate; remember that the dropgate is between you and it But then, although no human hand was near it, the windlass began to turn; the iron chain, each link as long as Jacks forearm, began to wind around the drum, and the gate began to rise. 7 The mailed fist was withdrawn from the door, leaving a splintered hole that changed the mural at once from faded pastoral romantic to surrealist barsinister it now looked as if some apocalyptic hunter, disappointed by his day in the marshes, had put a load of birdshot through the sky itself in a fit of pique. Then the head of the battlehammer exploded through the door in a huge blunt swipe, obliterating one of the two herons struggling to achieve liftoff. Jack raised his hand in front of his face to protect it from splinters. The martel de fer was withdrawn. There was another brief pause, almost long enough for Jack to think about running again. Then the spiked fist tore through again. It twisted first one way and then the other, widening the hole, then withdrew. A second later the hammer slammed through the middle of a reedbed and a large chunk of the righthand door fell to the carpet. Jack could now see the hulking armored figure in the shadows of the Heron Bar. The armor was not the same as that worn by the figure confronting Jason in the black castle; that one wore a helmet which was nearly cylindrical, with a red plume. This one wore a helmet that looked like the polished head of a steel bird. Horns rose from either side, sprouting from the helmet at roughly ear level. Jack saw a breastplate, a kilt of platemail, a hemming of chainmail below that. The hammer was the same in both worlds, and in both worlds the knightTwinners dropped them at the same instant, as if in contemptwho would need a battlehammer to deal with such a puny opponent as this? Run! Jack, run! Thats right, the hotel whispered. Run! Thats what fushing feeves are supposed to do! Run! RUN! But he would not run. He might die, but he would not runbecause that sly, whispering voice was right. Running was exactly what fushing feeves did. But Im no thief, Jack thought grimly. That thing may kill me, but I wont run. Because Im no thief. I wont run! Jack shouted at the blank, polishedsteel birdface. Im no thief! Do you hear me? Ive come for whats mine and IM NO THIEF! A groaning scream came from the breathingholes at the bottom of the birdhelmet. The knight raised its spiked fists and brought them down, one on the sagging left door, one on the sagging right. The pastoral marshworld painted there was destroyed. The hinges snapped . . . and as the doors fell toward him, Jack actually saw the one painted heron who remained go flying away like a bird in a Walt Disney cartoon, its eyes bright and terrified. The suit of armor came toward him like a killer robot, its feet rising and then crashing down. It was more than seven feet tall, and when it came through the door the horns rising from its helmet tore a set of ragged slashes into the upper jamb. They looked like quotation marks. Run! a yammering voice in his mind screamed. Run, you feef, the hotel whispered. No, Jack answered. He stared up at the advancing knight, and his hand wrapped itself tightly around the guitarpick in his pocket. The spikestudded gauntlets came up toward the visor of its birdhelmet. They raised it. Jack gaped. The inside of the helmet was empty. Then those studded hands were reaching for Jack. 8 The spikestudded hands came up and grasped either side of the cylindrical helmet. They lifted it slowly off, disclosing the livid, haggard face of a man who looked at least three hundred years old. One side of this ancients head had been bashed in. Splinters of bone like broken eggshell poked out through the skin, and the wound was caked with some black goop which Jason supposed was decayed brains. It was not breathing, but the redrimmed eyes which regarded Jason were sparkling and hellishly avid. It grinned, and Jason saw the needlesharp teeth with which this horror would rip him to pieces. It clanked unsteadily forward . . . but that wasnt the only sound. He looked to his left, toward the main hall. (lobby) of the castle (hotel) and saw a second knight, this one wearing the shallow, bowlshaped headguard known as the Great Helm. Behind it were a third . . . and a fourth. They came slowly down the corridor, moving suits of ancient armor which now housed vampires of some sort. Then the hands seized him by the shoulders. The blunt spikes on the gloves slid into his shoulders and arms. Warm blood flowed and the livid, wrinkled face drew into a horrid hungry grin. The cubitieres at the elbows screeched and wailed as the dead knight drew the boy toward itself. 9 Jack howled with the painthe short blunttipped spikes on its hands were in him, in him, and he understood once and for all that this was real, and in another moment this thing was going to kill him. He was yanked toward the yawning, empty blackness inside that helmet But was it really empty? Jack caught a blurred, faded impression of a double red glow in the darkness . . . something like eyes. And as the armored hands drew him up and up, he felt freezing cold, as if all the winters that ever were had somehow combined, had somehow become one winter . . . and that river of frigid air was now pouring out of that empty helmet. Its really going to kill me and my mother will die, Richard will die, Sloat will win, going to kill me, going to (tear me apart rip me open with its teeth) freeze me solid JACK! Speedys voice cried. (JASON! Parkuss voice cried.) The pick, boy! Use the pick! Before its too late! FOR JASONS SAKE USE THE PICK BEFORE ITS TOO LATE! Jacks hand closed around it. It was as hot as the coin had been, and the numbing cold was replaced with a sudden sense of brainbusting triumph. He brought it out of his pocket, crying out in pain as his punctured muscles flexed against the spikes driven into him, but not losing that sense of triumphthat lovely sensation of Territories heat, that clear feeling of rainbow. The pick, for it was a pick again, was in his fingers, a strong and heavy triangle of ivory, filigreed and inlaid with strange designsand in that moment Jack (and Jason) saw those designs come together in a facethe face of Laura DeLoessian. (the face of Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer.) 10 In her name, you filthy, aborted thing! they shouted togetherbut it was one shout only the shout of that single nature, JackJason. Get you off the skin of this world! In the name of the Queen and in the name of her son, get you off the skin of this world! Jason brought the guitarpick down into the white, scrawny face of the old vampirething in the suit of armor; at the same instant he sideslipped without blinking into Jack and saw the pick whistle down into a freezing black emptiness. There was another moment as Jason when he saw the vampirethings red eyes bulge outward in disbelief as the tip of the pick plunged into the center of its deeply wrinkled forehead. A moment later the eyes themselves, already filming over, exploded, and a black, steaming inchor ran over his hand and wrist. It was full of tiny biting worms. 11 Jack was flung against the wall. He hit his head. In spite of that and of the deep, throbbing pain in his shoulders and upper arms, he held on to the pick. The suit of armor was rattling like a scarecrow made out of tin cans. Jack had time to see it was swelling somehow, and he threw a hand up to shield his eyes. The suit of armor selfdestructed. It did not spray shrapnel everywhere, but simply fell apartJack thought if he had seen it in a movie instead of as he saw it now, huddled in a lower hallway of this stinking hotel with blood trickling into his armpits, he would have laughed. The polishedsteel helmet, so like the face of a bird, fell onto the floor with a muffled thump. The curved gorget, meant to keep the knights enemy from running a blade or a spearpoint through the knights throat, fell directly inside it with a jingle of tightly meshed rings of mail. The cuirasses fell like curved steel bookends. The greaves split apart. Metal rained down on the mouldy carpet for two seconds, and then there was only a pile of something that looked like scrapheap leftovers. Jack pushed himself up the wall, staring with wide eyes as if he expected the suit of armor to suddenly fly back together. In fact, he really did expect something like that. But when nothing happened he turned left, toward the lobby . . . and saw three more suits of armor moving slowly toward him. One held a cheesy, mouldcaked banner, and on it was a symbol Jack recognized he had seen it fluttering from guidons held by Morgan of Orriss soldiers as they escorted Morgans black diligence down the Outpost Road and toward Queen Lauras pavillion. Morgans signbut these were not Morgans creatures, he understood dimly; they carried his banner as a kind of morbid joke on this frightened interloper who presumed to steal away their only reason for being. No more, Jack whispered hoarsely. The pick trembled between his fingers. Something had happened to it; it had been damaged somehow when he used it to destroy the suit of armor which had come from the Heron Bar. The ivory, formerly the color of fresh cream, had yellowed noticeably. Fine cracks now crisscrossed it. The suits of armor clanked steadily toward him. One slowly drew a long sword which ended in a cruellooking double point. No more, Jack moaned. Oh God please, no more, Im tired, I cant, please, no more, no more Travellin Jack, ole Travellin Jack Speedy, I cant! he screamed. Tears cut through the dirt on his face. The suits of armor approached with all the inevitability of steel auto parts on an assembly line. He heard an Arctic wind whistling inside their cold black spaces. you be here in California to bring her back. Please, Speedy, no more! Reaching for himblackmetal robotfaces, rusty greaves, mail splotched and smeared with moss and mould. Got to do your best, Travellin Jack, Speedy whispered, exhausted, and then he was gone and Jack was left to stand or fall on his own. 42 Jack and the Talisman 1 You made a mistakea ghostly voice in Jack Sawyers head spoke up as he stood outside the Heron Bar and watched these other suits of armor bear down on him. In his mind an eye opened wide and he saw an angry mana man who was really not much more than an overgrown boystriding up a Western street toward the camera, buckling on first one gunbelt and then another, so that they crisscrossed his belly. You made a mistakeyou shoulda killed both of the Ellis brothers! 2 Of all his mothers movies, the one Jack had always liked the best was Last Train to Hangtown, made in 1960 and released in 1961. It had been a Warner Brothers picture, and the major partsas in many of the lowerbudget pictures Warners made during that periodwere filled by actors from the halfdozen Warner Brothers TV series which were in constant production. Jack Kelly from the Maverick show had been in Last Train (the Suave Gambler), and Andrew Duggan from Bourbon Street Beat (the Evil CattleBaron). Clint Walker, who played a character called Cheyenne Bodie on TV, starred as Rafe Ellis (the Retired Sheriff Who Must Strap on His Guns One Last Time). Inger Stevens had been originally slated to play the part of the Dance Hall Girl with Willing Arms and a Heart of Gold, but Miss Stevens had come down with a bad case of bronchitis and Lily Cavanaugh had stepped into the part. It was of a sort she could have done competently in a coma. Once, when his parents thought he was asleep and were talking in the living room downstairs, Jack overheard his mother say something striking as he padded barefoot to the bathroom to get a glass of water . . . it was striking enough, at any rate, so that Jack never forgot it. All the women I played knew how to fuck, but not one of them knew how to fart, she told Phil. Will Hutchins, who starred in another Warner Brothers program (this one was called Sugarfoot), had also been in the film. Last Train to Hangtown was Jacks favorite chiefly because of the character Hutchins played. It was this characterAndy Ellis, by namewho came to his tired, tottering, overtaxed mind now as he watched the suits of armor marching down the dark hallway toward him. Andy Ellis had been the Cowardly Kid Brother Who Gets Mad in the Last Reel. After skulking and cowering through the entire movie, he had gone out to face Duggans evil minions after the Chief Minion (played by sinister, stubbly, walleyed Jack Elam, who played Chief Minions in all sorts of Warner epics, both theatrical and televisional) had shot his brother Rafe in the back. Hutchins had gone striding down the dusty widescreen street, strapping on his brothers gunbelts with clumsy fingers, shouting, Come on! Come on, Im ready for ya! You made a mistake! You shoulda killed both of the Ellis brothers! Will Hutchins had not been one of the greatest actors of all time, but in that moment he had achievedat least in Jacks eyesa moment of clear truth and real brilliance. There was a sense that the kid was going to his death, and knew it, but meant to go on, anyway. And although he was frightened, he was not striding up that street toward the showdown with the slightest reluctance; he went eagerly, sure of what he meant to do, even though he had to fumble again and again with the buckles of the gunbelts. The suits of armor came on, closing the distance, rocking from side to side like toy robots.