Talisman 01 - The Talisman

by Stephen King Peter Straub

  “Yes,” Stephen gulped.

  “Of course,” Osmond said, and his thin face was split by a hideous white grin. “Where is All-Hands’ Village, if not on the Outpost Road? Can a village fly? Huh? Can a village somehow fly from one road to another, Stephen? Can it? Can it?”

  “No, Osmond, of course not.”

  “No. And so there are barrels all over the Outpost Road, is that correct? Is it correct for me to assume that there are barrels and an overturned ale-wagon blocking the Outpost Road while the best ale in the Territories soaks into the ground for the earthworms to carouse on? Is that correct?”

  “Yes . . . yes. But—”

  “Morgan is coming by the Outpost Road!” Osmond screamed. “Morgan is coming and you know how he drives his horses! If his diligence comes around a bend and upon that mess, his driver may not have time to stop! He could be overturned! He could be killed!”

  “Dear-God,” Stephen said, all as one word. His pallid face went two shades whiter.

  Osmond nodded slowly. “I think, if Morgan’s diligence were to overturn, we would all do better to pray for his death than for his recovery.”

  “But—but—”

  Osmond turned from him and almost ran back to where the Captain of the Outer Guards stood with his “son.” Behind Osmond, the hapless carter still writhed in the mud, bubbling My Lords.

  Osmond’s eyes touched Jack and then swept over him as if he weren’t there. “Captain Farren,” he said. “Have you followed the events of the last five minutes?”

  “Yes, Osmond.”

  “Have you followed them closely? Have you gleaned them? Have you gleaned them most closely?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Do you think so? What an excellent Captain you are, Captain! We will talk more, I think, about how such an excellent Captain could produce such a frog’s testicle of a son.”

  His eyes touched Jack’s face briefly, coldly.

  “But there’s no time for that now, is there? No. I suggest that you summon a dozen of your brawniest men and that you double-time them—no, triple-time them—out to the Outpost Road. You’ll be able to follow your nose, to the site of the accident, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Osmond.”

  Osmond glanced quickly at the sky. “Morgan is expected at six of the clock—perhaps a little sooner. It is now—two. I would say two. Would you say two, Captain?”

  “Yes, Osmond.”

  “And what would you say, you little turd? Thirteen? Twenty-three? Eighty-one of the clock?”

  Jack gaped. Osmond grimaced contemptuously, and Jack felt the clear tide of his hate rise again.

  You hurt me, and if I get the chance—!

  Osmond looked back at the Captain. “Until five of the clock, I suggest that you be at pains to save whatever barrels may still be whole. After five, I suggest you simply clear the road as rapidly as you can. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Osmond.”

  “Then get out of here.”

  Captain Farren brought a fist to his forehead and bowed. Gaping stupidly, still hating Osmond so fiercely that his brains seemed to pulse, Jack did the same. Osmond had whirled away from them before the salute was even fairly begun. He was striding back toward the carter, popping his whip, making it cough out those Daisy air rifle sounds.

  The carter heard Osmond’s approach and began to scream.

  “Come on,” the Captain said, pulling Jack’s arm for the last time. “You don’t want to see this.”

  “No,” Jack managed. “God, no.”

  But as Captain Farren pushed the right-hand gate open and they finally left the pavillion, Jack heard it—and he heard it in his dreams that night: one whistling carbine-crack after another, each followed by a scream from the doomed carter. And Osmond was making a sound. The man was panting, out of breath, and so it was hard to tell exactly what that sound was, without turning around to look at his face—something Jack did not want to do.

  He was pretty sure he knew, though.

  He thought Osmond was laughing.

  5

  They were in the public area of the pavillion grounds now. The strollers glanced at Captain Farren from the corners of their eyes . . . and gave him a wide berth. The Captain strode swiftly, his face tight and dark with thought. Jack had to trot in order to catch up.

  “We were lucky,” the Captain said suddenly. “Damned lucky. I think he meant to kill you.”

  Jack gaped at him, his mouth dry and hot.

  “He’s mad, you know. Mad as the man who chased the cake.”

  Jack had no idea what that might mean, but he agreed that Osmond was mad.

  “What—”

  “Wait,” the Captain said. They had come back around to the small tent where the Captain had taken Jack after seeing the shark’s tooth. “Stand right here and wait for me. Speak to no one.”

  The Captain entered the tent. Jack stood watching and waiting. A juggler passed him, glancing at Jack but never losing his rhythm as he tossed half a dozen balls in a complex and airy pattern. A straggle of dirty children followed him as the children followed the Piper out of Hamelin. A young woman with a dirty baby at one huge breast told him she could teach him something to do with his little man besides let piss out of it, if he had a coin or two. Jack looked uncomfortably away, his face hot.

  The girl cawed laughter. “Oooooo, this pretty young man’s SHY! Come over here, pretty! Come—”

  “Get out, slut, or you’ll finish the day in the underkitchens.”

  It was the Captain. He had come out of the tent with another man. This second fellow was old and fat, but he shared one characteristic with Farren—he looked like a real soldier rather than one from Gilbert and Sullivan. He was trying to fasten the front of his uniform over his bulging gut while holding a curly, French horn–like instrument at the same time.

  The girl with the dirty baby scurried away with never another look at Jack. The Captain took the fat man’s horn so he could finish buttoning, and passed another word with him. The fat man nodded, finished with his shirt, took his horn back, and then strode off, blowing it. It was not like the sound Jack had heard on his first flip into the Territories; that had been many horns, and their sound had been somehow showy: the sound of heralds. This was like a factory whistle, announcing work to be done.

  The Captain returned to Jack.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Outpost Road,” Captain Farren said, and then he cast a wondering, half-fearful eye down on Jack Sawyer. “What my father’s father called Western Road. It goes west through smaller and smaller villages until it reaches the Outposts. Beyond the Outposts it goes into nowhere . . . or hell. If you’re going west, you’ll need God with you, boy. But I’ve heard it said He Himself never ventures beyond the Outposts. Come on.”

  Questions crowded Jack’s mind—a million of them—but the Captain set a killer pace and he didn’t have the spare breath to ask them. They breasted the rise south of the great pavillion and passed the spot where he had first flipped back out of the Territories. The rustic fun-fair was now close—Jack could hear a barker cajoling patrons to try their luck on Wonder the Devil-Donkey; to stay on two minutes was to win a prize, the barker cried. His voice came on the sea-breeze with perfect clarity, as did the mouthwatering smell of hot food—roast corn as well as meat this time. Jack’s stomach rumbled. Now safely away from Osmond the Great and Terrible, he was ravenous.

  Before they quite reached the fair, they turned right on a road much wider than the one which led toward the great pavillion. Outpost Road, Jack thought, and then, with a little chill of fear and anticipation in his belly, he corrected himself: No . . . Western Road. The way to the Talisman.

  Then he was hurrying after Captain Farren again.

  6

  Osmond had been right; they could have followed their noses, if necessary. They were still a mile outside the village with that odd name when the first sour tang of spilled ale came to
them on the breeze.

  Eastward-bearing traffic on the road was heavy. Most of it was wagons drawn by lathered teams of horses (none with two heads, however). The wagons were, Jack supposed, the Diamond Reos and Peterbilts of this world. Some were piled high with bags and bales and sacks, some with raw meat, some with clacking cages of chickens. On the outskirts of All-Hands’ Village, an open wagon filled with women swept by them at an alarming pace. The women were laughing and shrieking. One got to her feet, raised her skirt all the way to her hairy crotch, and did a tipsy bump and grind. She would have tumbled over the side of the wagon and into the ditch—probably breaking her neck—if one of her colleagues hadn’t grabbed her by the back of the skirt and pulled her rudely back down.

  Jack blushed again: he saw the girl’s white breast, its nipple in the dirty baby’s working mouth. Oooooo, this pretty young man’s SHY!

  “God!” Farren muttered, walking faster than ever. “They were all drunk! Drunk on spilled Kingsland! Whores and driver both! He’s apt to wreck them on the road or drive them right off the sea-cliffs—no great loss. Diseased sluts!”

  “At least,” Jack panted, “the road must be fairly clear, if all this traffic can get through. Mustn’t it?”

  They were in All-Hands’ Village now. The wide Western Road had been oiled here to lay the dust. Wagons came and went, groups of people crossed the street, and everyone seemed to be talking too loudly. Jack saw two men arguing outside what might have been a restaurant. Abruptly, one of them threw a punch. A moment later, both men were rolling on the ground. Those whores aren’t the only ones drunk on Kingsland, Jack thought. I think everyone in this town’s had a share.

  “All of the big wagons that passed us came from here,” Captain Farren said. “Some of the smaller ones may be getting through, but Morgan’s diligence isn’t small, boy.”

  “Morgan—”

  “Never mind Morgan now.”

  The smell of the ale grew steadily sharper as they passed through the center of the village and out the other side. Jack’s legs ached as he struggled to keep up with the Captain. He guessed they had now come perhaps three miles. How far is that in my world? he thought, and that thought made him think of Speedy’s magic juice. He groped frantically in his jerkin, convinced it was no longer there—but it was, held securely within whatever Territories undergarment had replaced his Jockey shorts.

  Once they were on the western side of the village, the wagon-traffic decreased, but the pedestrian traffic headed east increased dramatically. Most of the pedestrians were weaving, staggering, laughing. They all reeked of ale. In some cases, their clothes were dripping, as if they had lain full-length in it and drunk of it like dogs. Jack supposed they had. He saw a laughing man leading a laughing boy of perhaps eight by the hand. The man bore a nightmarish resemblance to the hateful desk clerk at the Alhambra, and Jack understood with perfect clarity that this man was that man’s Twinner. Both he and the boy he led by the hand were drunk, and as Jack turned to look after them, the little boy began to vomit. His father—or so Jack supposed him to be—jerked him hard by the arm as the boy attempted to flounder his way into the brushy ditch, where he could be sick in relative privacy. The kid reeled back to his father like a cur-dog on a short leash, spraying puke on an elderly man who had collapsed by the side of the road and was snoring there.

  Captain Farren’s face grew blacker and blacker. “God pound them all,” he said.

  Even those furthest into their cups gave the scarred Captain a wide and prudent berth. While in the guard-post outside the pavillion, he had belted a short, businesslike leather scabbard around his waist. Jack assumed (not unreasonably) that it contained a short, businesslike sword. When any of the sots came too close, the Captain touched the sword and the sot detoured quickly away.

  Ten minutes later—as Jack was becoming sure he could no longer keep up—they arrived at the site of the accident. The driver had been coming out of the turn on the inside when the wagon had tilted and gone over. As a result, the kegs had sprayed all the way across the road. Many of them were smashed, and the road was a quagmire for twenty feet. One horse lay dead beneath the wagon, only its hindquarters visible. Another lay in the ditch, a shattered chunk of barrel-stave protruding from its ear. Jack didn’t think that could have happened by accident. He supposed the horse had been badly hurt and someone had put it out of its misery by the closest means at hand. The other horses were nowhere to be seen.

  Between the horse under the wagon and the one in the ditch lay the carter’s son, spreadeagled on the road. Half of his face stared up at the bright blue Territories sky with an expression of stupid amazement. Where the other half had been was now only red pulp and splinters of white bone like flecks of plaster.

  Jack saw that his pockets had been turned out.

  Wandering around the scene of the accident were perhaps a dozen people. They walked slowly, often bending over to scoop ale two-handed from a hoofprint or to dip a handkerchief or a torn-off piece of singlet into another puddle. Most of them were staggering. Voices were raised in laughter and in quarrelsome shouts. After a good deal of pestering, Jack’s mother had allowed him to go with Richard to see a midnight double feature of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead at one of Westwood’s dozen or so movie theaters. The shuffling, drunken people here reminded him of the zombies in those two films.

  Captain Farren drew his sword. It was as short and businesslike as Jack had imagined, the very antithesis of a sword in a romance. It was little more than a long butcher’s knife, pitted and nicked and scarred, the handle wrapped in old leather that had been sweated dark. The blade itself was dark . . . except for the cutting edge. That looked bright and keen and very sharp.

  “Make away, then!” Farren bawled. “Make away from the Queen’s ale, God-pounders! Make away and keep your guts where they belong!”

  Growls of displeasure met this, but they moved away from Captain Farren—all except one hulk of a man with tufts of hair growing at wildly random points from his otherwise bald skull. Jack guessed his weight at close to three hundred pounds, his height at just shy of seven feet.

  “D’you like the idea of taking on all of us, sojer?” this hulk asked, and waved one grimy hand at the knot of villagers who had stepped away from the swamp of ale and the litter of barrels at Farren’s order.

  “Sure,” Captain Farren said, and grinned at the big man. “I like it fine, just as long as you’re first, you great drunken clot of shit.” Farren’s grin widened, and the big man faltered away from its dangerous power. “Come for me, if you like. Carving you will be the first good thing that’s happened to me all day.”

  Muttering, the drunken giant slouched away.

  “Now, all of you!” Farren shouted. “Make away! There’s a dozen of my men just setting out from the Queen’s pavillion! They’ll not be happy with this duty and I don’t blame them and I can’t be responsible for them! I think you’ve just got time to get back to the village and hide in your cellars before they arrive there! It would be prudent to do so! Make away!”

  They were already streaming back toward the village of All-Hands’, the big man who had challenged the Captain in their van. Farren grunted and then turned back to the scene of the accident. He removed his jacket and covered the face of the carter’s son with it.

  “I wonder which of them robbed the lad’s pockets as he lay dead or dying in the roadstead,” Farren said meditatively. “If I knew, I’d have them hung on a cross by nightfall.”

  Jack made no answer.

  The Captain stood looking down at the dead boy for a long time, one hand rubbing at the smooth, ridged flesh of the scar on his face. When he looked up at Jack, it was as if he had just come to.

  “You’ve got to leave now, boy. Right away. Before Osmond decides he’d like to investigate my idiot son further.”

  “How bad is it going to be with you?” Jack asked.

  The Captain smiled a little. “If you’re gone, I’ll have no trouble. I
can say that I sent you back to your mother, or that I was overcome with rage and hit you with a chunk of wood and killed you. Osmond would believe either. He’s distracted. They all are. They’re waiting for her to die. It will be soon. Unless . . .”

  He didn’t finish.

  “Go,” Farren said. “Don’t tarry. And when you hear Morgan’s diligence coming, get off the road and get deep into the woods. Deep. Or he’ll smell you like a cat smells a rat. He knows instantly if something is out of order. His order. He’s a devil.”

  “Will I hear it coming? His diligence?” Jack asked timidly. He looked at the road beyond the litter of barrels. It rose steadily upward, toward the edge of a piney forest. It would be dark in there, he thought . . . and Morgan would be coming the other way. Fear and loneliness combined in the sharpest, most disheartening wave of unhappiness he had ever known. Speedy, I can’t do this! Don’t you know that? I’m just a kid!

  “Morgan’s diligence is drawn by six pairs of horses and a thirteenth to lead,” Farren said. “At the full gallop, that damned hearse sounds like thunder rolling along the earth. You’ll hear it, all right. Plenty of time to burrow down. Just make sure you do.”

  Jack whispered something.

  “What?” Farren asked sharply.

  “I said I don’t want to go,” Jack said, only a little louder. Tears were close and he knew that once they began to fall he was going to lose it, just blow his cool entirely and ask Captain Farren to get him out of it, protect him, something—

  “I think it’s too late for your wants to enter into the question,” Captain Farren said. “I don’t know your tale, boy, and I don’t want to. I don’t even want to know your name.”

  Jack stood looking at him, shoulders slumped, eyes burning, his lips trembling.

  “Get your shoulders up!” Farren shouted at him with sudden fury. “Who are you going to save? Where are you going? Not ten feet, looking like that! You’re too young to be a man, but you can at least pretend, can’t you? You look like a kicked dog!”

  Stung, Jack straightened his shoulders and blinked his tears back. His eyes fell on the remains of the carter’s son and he thought: At least I’m not like that, not yet. He’s right. Being sorry for myself is a luxury I can’t afford. It was true. All the same, he could not help hating the scarred Captain a little for reaching inside him and pushing the right buttons so easily.