by Stephen King
The Kingsland Motel, Richard said, was just down the road from the old hotel his father always seemed interested in. Richard could see the hotel from his window, and he didn't like it. It was a huge, rambling place with turrets and gables and gambrels and cupolas and towers; brass weathervanes in strange shapes twirled from all of the latter. They twirled even when there was no wind, Richard said--he could clearly remember standing at the window of his room and watching them go around and around and around, strange brass creations shaped like crescent moons and scarab beetles and Chinese ideograms, winking in the sun while the ocean foamed and roared below.
Ah yes, doc, it all comes back to me now, Jack thought.
"It was deserted?" Jack asked.
"Yes. For sale."
"What was its name?"
"The Agincourt." Richard paused, then added another child's color--the one most small children are apt to leave in the box. "It was black. It was made of wood, but the wood looked like stone. Old black stone. And that's what my father and his friends called it. The Black Hotel."
11
It was partly--but not entirely--to divert Richard that Jack asked, "Did your father buy that hotel? Like he did Camp Readiness?"
Richard thought about it awhile and then nodded. "Yes," he said. "I think he did. After a while. There was a For Sale sign on the gates in front of the place when he first started taking me there, but one time when we went there it was just gone."
"But you never stayed there?"
"God, no!" Richard shuddered. "The only way he could have gotten me in there would have been with a towing chain . . . even then I might not have gone."
"Never even went in?"
"No. Never did, never will."
Ah, Richie-boy, didn't anyone ever teach you to never say never?
"That goes for your father as well? He never even went in?"
"Not to my knowledge," Richard said in his best professorial voice. His forefinger went to the bridge of his nose, as if to push up the glasses that weren't there. "I'd be willing to bet he never went in. He was as scared of it as I was. But with me, that's all I felt . . . just scared. For my father, there was something more. He was . . ."
"Was what?"
Reluctantly, Richard said, "He was obsessed with the place, I think."
Richard paused, eyes vague, thinking back. "He'd go and stand in front of it every day we were in Point Venuti. And I don't mean just for a couple of minutes, or something like that--he'd stand in front of it for, like, three hours. Sometimes more. He was alone most of those times. But not always. He had . . . strange friends."
"Wolfs?"
"I guess so," Richard said, almost angrily. "Yeah, I guess some of them could have been Wolfs, or whatever you call them. They looked uncomfortable in their clothes--they were always scratching themselves, usually in those places where nice people aren't supposed to scratch. Others looked like the substitute coach. Kind of hard and mean. Some of those guys I used to see out at Camp Readiness, too. I'll tell you one thing, Jack--those guys were even more scared of that place than my father was. They just about cringed when they got near it."
"Sunlight Gardener? Was he ever there?"
"Uh-huh," Richard said. "But in Point Venuti he looked more like the man we saw over there. . . ."
"Like Osmond."
"Yes. But those people didn't come very often. Mostly it was just my father, by himself. Sometimes he'd get the restaurant at our motel to pack him some sandwiches, and he'd sit on a sidewalk bench and eat his lunch looking at the hotel. I stood at the window in the lobby of the Kingsland and looked at my father looking at the hotel. I never liked his face at those times. He looked afraid, but he also looked like . . . like he was gloating."
"Gloating," Jack mused.
"Sometimes he asked me if I wanted to come with him, and I always said no. He'd nod and I remember once he said, 'There'll be time. You'll understand everything, Rich . . . in time.' I remember thinking that if it was about that black hotel, I didn't want to understand.
"Once," Richard said, "when he was drunk, he said there was something inside that place. He said it had been there for a long time. We were lying in our beds, I remember. The wind was high that night. I could hear the waves hitting the beach, and the squeaky sound of those weathervanes turning on top of the Agincourt's towers. It was a scary sound. I thought about that place, all those rooms, all of them empty--"
"Except for the ghosts," Jack muttered. He thought he heard footsteps and looked quickly behind them. Nothing; no one. The roadbed was deserted for as far as he could see.
"That's right; except for the ghosts," Richard agreed. "So I said, 'Is it valuable, Daddy?'
" 'It's the most valuable thing there is,' he said.
" 'Then some junkie will probably break in and steal it,' I said. It wasn't--how can I say this?--it wasn't a subject I wanted to pursue, but I didn't want him to go to sleep, either. Not with that wind blowing outside, and the sound of those vanes squeaking in the night.
"He laughed, and I heard a clink as he poured himself a little more bourbon from the bottle on the floor.
" 'Nobody is going to steal it, Rich,' he said. 'And any junkie who went into the Agincourt would see things he never saw before.' He drank his drink, and I could tell he was getting sleepy. 'Only one person in the whole world could ever touch that thing, and he'll never even get close to it, Rich. I can guarantee that. One thing that interests me is that it's the same over there as over here. It doesn't change--at least, as far as I can tell, it doesn't change. I'd like to have it, but I'm not even going to try, at least not now, and maybe not ever. I could do things with it--you bet!--but on the whole, I think I like the thing best right where it is.'
"I was getting sleepy myself by then, but I asked him what it was that he kept talking about."
"What did he say?" Jack asked, dry-mouthed.
"He called it--" Richard hesitated, frowning in thought. "He called it 'the axle of all possible worlds.' Then he laughed. Then he called it something else. Something you wouldn't like."
"What was that?"
"It'll make you mad."
"Come on, Richard, spill it."
"He called it . . . well . . . he called it 'Phil Sawyer's folly.' "
It was not anger he felt but a burst of hot, dizzying excitement. That was it, all right; that was the Talisman. The axle of all possible worlds. How many worlds? God alone knew. The American Territories; the Territories themselves; the hypothetical Territories' Territories; and on and on, like the stripes coming ceaselessly up and out of a turning barber pole. A universe of worlds, a dimensional macrocosm of worlds--and in all of them one thing that was always the same; one unifying force that was undeniably good, even if it now happened to be imprisoned in an evil place; the Talisman, axle of all possible worlds. And was it also Phil Sawyer's folly? Probably so. Phil's folly . . . Jack's folly . . . Morgan Sloat's . . . Gardener's . . . and the hope, of course, of two Queens.
"It's more than Twinners," he said in a low voice.
Richard had been plodding along, watching the rotted ties disappear beneath his feet. Now he looked nervously up at Jack.
"It's more than Twinners, because there are more than two worlds. There are triplets . . . quadruplets . . . who knows? Morgan Sloat here; Morgan of Orris over there; maybe Morgan, Duke of Azreel, somewhere else. But he never went inside the hotel!"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Richard said in a resigned voice. But I'm sure you'll go right on, anyway, that resigned tone said, progressing from nonsense to outright insanity. All aboard for Seabrook Island!
"He can't go inside. That is, Morgan of California can't--and do you know why? Because Morgan of Orris can't. And Morgan of Orris can't because Morgan of California can't. If one of them can't go into his version of the black hotel, then none of them can. Do you see?"
"No."
Jack, feverish with discovery, didn't hear what Richard said at all.
"Two Morgans, or
dozens. It doesn't matter. Two Lilys, or dozens--dozens of Queens in dozens of worlds, Richard, think of that! How does that mess your mind? Dozens of black hotels--only in some worlds it might be a black amusement park . . . or a black trailer court . . . or I don't know what. But Richard--"
He stopped, turned Richard by the shoulders, and stared at him, his eyes blazing. Richard tried to draw away from him for a moment, and then stopped, entranced by the fiery beauty on Jack's face. Suddenly, briefly, Richard believed that all things might be possible. Suddenly, briefly, he felt healed.
"What?" he whispered.
"Some things are not excluded. Some people are not excluded. They are . . . well . . . single-natured. That's the only way I can think of to say it. They are like it--the Talisman. Single-natured. Me. I'm single-natured. I had a Twinner, but he died. Not just in the Territories world, but in all worlds but this one. I know that--I feel that. My dad knew it, too. I think that's why he called me Travelling Jack. When I'm here, I'm not there. When I'm there, I'm not here. And Richard, neither are you!"
Richard stared at him, speechless.
"You don't remember; you were mostly in Freakout City while I was talking to Anders. But he said Morgan of Orris had a boy-child. Rushton. Do you know what he was?"
"Yes," Richard whispered. He was still unable to pull his eyes away from Jack's. "He was my Twinner."
"That's right. The little boy died, Anders said. The Talisman is single-natured. We're single-natured. Your father isn't. I've seen Morgan of Orris in that other world, and he's like your father, but he's not your father. He couldn't go into the black hotel, Richard. He can't now. But he knew you were single-natured, just as he knows I am. He'd like me dead. He needs you on his side.
"Because then, if he decided he did want the Talisman, he could always send you in to get it, couldn't he?"
Richard began to tremble.
"Never mind," Jack said grimly. "He won't have to worry about it. We're going to bring it out, but he's not going to have it."
"Jack, I don't think I can go into that place," Richard said, but he spoke in a low, strengthless whisper, and Jack, who was already walking on, didn't hear him.
Richard trotted to catch up.
12
Conversation lapsed. Noon came and went. The woods had become very silent, and twice Jack had seen trees with strange, gnarly trunks and tangled roots growing quite close to the tracks. He did not much like the looks of these trees. They looked familiar.
Richard, staring at the ties as they disappeared beneath his feet, at last stumbled and fell over, hitting his head. After that, Jack piggybacked him again.
"There, Jack!" Richard called, after what seemed an eternity.
Up ahead, the tracks disappeared into an old car-barn. The doors hung open on a shadowy darkness that looked dull and moth-eaten. Beyond the car-barn (which might once have been as pleasant as Richard had said, but which only looked spooky to Jack now) was a highway--101, Jack guessed.
Beyond that, the ocean--he could hear the pounding waves.
"I guess we're here," he said in a dry voice.
"Almost," Richard said. "Point Venuti's a mile or so down the road. God, I wish we didn't have to go there, Jack . . . Jack? Where are you going?"
But Jack didn't look around. He stepped off the tracks, detoured around one of those strange-looking trees (this one not even shrub-high), and headed for the road. High grasses and weeds brushed his road-battered jeans. Something inside the trolley-barn--Morgan Sloat's private train-station of yore--moved with a nasty slithering bump, but Jack didn't even look toward it.
He reached the road, crossed it, and walked to the edge.
13
Near the middle of December in the year 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and the land came together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Pacific. He was twelve years old and extraordinarily beautiful for his age. His brown hair was long--probably too long--but the sea-breeze swept it back from a fine, clear brow. He stood thinking of his mother, who was dying, and of friends, both absent and present, and worlds within worlds, turning in their courses.
I've come the distance, he thought, and shivered. Coast to coast with Travelling Jack Sawyer. His eyes abruptly filled with tears. He breathed deeply of the salt. Here he was--and the Talisman was close by.
"Jack!"
Jack didn't look at him at first; his gaze was held by the Pacific, by the sunlight gleaming gold on top of the waves. He was here; he had made it. He--
"Jack!" Richard struck his shoulder, bringing him out of his daze.
"Huh?"
"Look!" Richard was gaping, pointing at something down the road, in the direction in which Point Venuti presumably lay. "Look there!"
Jack looked. He understood Richard's surprise, but he felt none himself--or no more than he had felt when Richard had told him the name of the motel where he and his father had stayed in Point Venuti. No, not much surprise, but--
But it was damned good to see his mother again.
Her face was twenty feet high, and it was a younger face than Jack could remember. It was Lily as she had looked at the height of her career. Her hair, a glorious be-bop shade of brassy blond, was pulled back in a Tuesday Weld ponytail. Her insouciant go-to-hell grin was, however, all her own. No one else in films had ever smiled that way--she had invented it, and she still held the patent. She was looking back over one bare shoulder. At Jack . . . at Richard . . . at the blue Pacific.
It was his mother . . . but when he blinked, the face changed the slightest bit. The line of chin and jaw grew rounder, the cheekbones less pronounced, the hair darker, the eyes an even deeper blue. Now it was the face of Laura DeLoessian, mother of Jason. Jack blinked again, and it was his mother again--his mother at twenty-eight, grinning her cheerful fuckya-if-you-can't-take-a-joke defiance at the world.
It was a billboard. Across the top of it ran this legend:
THIRD ANNUAL KILLER B FILM FESTIVAL
POINT VENUTI, CALIFORNIA
BITKER THEATER
DECEMBER 10TH-DECEMBER 20TH
THIS YEAR FEATURING LILY CAVANAUGH
"QUEEN OF THE B'S"
"Jack, it's your mother," Richard said. His voice was hoarse with awe. "Is it just a coincidence? It can't be, can it?"
Jack shook his head. No, not a coincidence.
The word his eyes kept fixing on, of course, was QUEEN.
"Come on," he said to Richard. "I think we're almost there."
The two of them walked side by side down the road toward Point Venuti.
38
The End of the Road
1
Jack inspected Richard's drooping posture and glistening face carefully as they walked along. Richard now looked as though he were dragging himself along on will power alone. A few more wet-looking pimples had blossomed on his face.
"Are you okay, Richie?"
"No. I don't feel too good. But I can still walk, Jack. You don't have to carry me." He bent his head and plodded glumly on. Jack saw that his friend, who had so many memories of that peculiar little railway and that peculiar little station, was suffering far more than he from the reality that now existed--rusty, broken ties, weeds, poison ivy . . . and at the end, a ram-shackle building from which all the bright, remembered paint had faded, a building where something slithered uneasily in the dark.
I feel like my leg is caught in some stupid trap, Richard had said, and Jack thought he could understand that well enough . . . but not with the depth of Richard's understanding. That was more understanding than he was sure he could bear. A slice of Richard's childhood had been burned out of him, turned inside-out. The railway and the dead station with its staring glassless windows must have seemed like dreadful parodies of themselves to Richard--yet more bits of the past destroyed in the wake of everything he was learning or admitting about his father. Richard's entire life, as much as Jack's, had begun to fold into the pattern of the Territories, and Richard
had been given much less preparation for this transformation.
2
As for what he had told Richard about the Talisman, Jack would have sworn it was the truth--the Talisman knew they were coming. He had begun feeling it just about when he had seen the billboard shining out with his mother's picture; now the feeling was urgent and powerful. It was as if a great animal had awakened some miles away, and its purring made the earth resonate . . . or as if every single bulb inside a hundred-story building just over the horizon had just gone on, making a blaze of light strong enough to conceal the stars . . . or as if someone had switched on the biggest magnet in the world, which was tugging at Jack's belt buckle, at the change in his pockets and the fillings in his teeth, and would not be satisfied until it had pulled him into its heart. That great animal purring, that sudden and drastic illumination, that magnetic yearning--all these echoed in Jack's chest. Something out there, something in the direction of Point Venuti, wanted Jack Sawyer, and what Jack Sawyer chiefly knew of the object calling him so viscerally was that it was big. Big. No small thing could own such power. It was elephant-sized, city-sized.
And Jack wondered about his capacity to handle something so monumental. The Talisman had been imprisoned in a magical and sinister old hotel; presumably it had been put there not only to keep it from evil hands but at least in part because it was hard for anybody to handle it, whatever his intentions. Maybe, Jack wondered, Jason had been the only being capable of handling it--capable of dealing with it without doing harm either to himself or to the Talisman itself. Feeling the strength and urgency of its call to him, Jack could only hope that he would not weaken before the Talisman.
" 'You'll understand, Rich,' " Richard surprised him by saying. His voice was dull and low. "My father said that. He said I'd understand. 'You'll understand, Rich.' "
"Yeah," Jack said, looking worriedly at his friend. "How are you feeling, Richard?"
In addition to the sores surrounding his mouth, Richard now had a collection of angry-looking raised red dots or bumps across his pimply forehead and his temples. It was as though a swarm of insects had managed to burrow just under the surface of his protesting skin. For a moment Jack had a flash of Richard Sloat on the morning he had climbed in his window at Nelson House, Thayer School; Richard Sloat with his glasses riding firmly on the bridge of his nose and his sweater tucked neatly into his pants. Would that maddeningly correct, unbudgeable boy ever return?