Talisman 01 - The Talisman

by Stephen King Peter Straub

  “My Lord Jason,” old Anders was saying, bowing so low that his hair settled down on the rippling floorboards. “How good ye are, O High One, how good to yer lowliest servant, how good to those who do not deserve yer blessed presence. . . .” He crawled forward, and Jack saw with horror that he was about to begin that moony foot-kissing all over again.

  “Pretty far advanced, too, I’d say,” Richard offered.

  “Get up, please, Anders,” Jack said, stepping back. “Get up, come on, that’s enough.” The old man continued to crawl forward, babbling with his relief at not having to endure the Blasted Lands. “ARISE!” Jack bellowed.

  Anders looked up, his forehead wrinkled. “Yes, my Lord.” He slowly got up.

  “Bring your brain tumor over here, Richard,” Jack said “We’re going to see if we can figure out how to drive this damn train.”

  2

  Anders had moved over behind the long, rippling counter, and was rooting in a drawer. “I believe it works on devils, my Lord,” he said. “Strange devils, all hurtled down together. They do not appear to live, yet they do. Aye.” He fetched out of the drawer the longest, fattest candle that Jack had ever seen. From a box atop the counter Anders selected a foot-long, narrow softwood strip, then lowered one of its ends into a glowing lamp. The strip of wood ignited, and Anders used it to light his enormous candle. Then he waved the “match” back and forth until the flame expired in a curl of smoke.

  “Devils?” Jack asked.

  “Strange square things—I believe the devils are contained therein. Sometimes how they spit and spark! I shall show this to ye, Lord Jason.”

  Without another word he swept toward the door, the warm glow of the candle momentarily erasing the wrinkles from his face. Jack followed him outside into the sweetness and amplitude of the deep Territories. He remembered a photograph on the wall of Speedy Parker’s office, a photograph even then filled with an inexplicable power, and realized that he was actually near the site of that photograph. Far off rose a familiar-looking mountain. Down the little knoll the fields of grain rolled away in all directions, waving in smooth, wide patterns. Richard Sloat moved hesitantly beside Jack, rubbing his forehead. The silvery bands of metal, out of key with the rest of the landscape, stretched inexorably west.

  “The shed is in back, my Lord,” Anders said softly, and almost shyly turned away toward the side of The Depot. Jack took another glance at the far-off mountain. Now it looked less like the mountain in Speedy’s photograph—newer—a western, not an eastern, mountain.

  “What’s with that Lord Jason business?” Richard whispered right into his ear. “He thinks he knows you.”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Jack said.

  Richard tugged at his bandanna, then clamped a hand on Jack’s biceps. The old Kansas City Clutch. “What happened to the school, Jack? What happened to the dogs? Where are we?”

  “Just come along,” Jack said. “You’re probably still dreaming.”

  “Yes,” Richard said in the tone of purest relief. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? I’m still asleep. You told me all that crazy stuff about the Territories, and now I’m dreaming about it.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, and set off after Anders. The old man was holding up the enormous candle like a torch and drifting down the rear side of the knoll toward another, slightly larger, octagonal wooden building. The two boys followed him through the tall yellow grass. Light spilled from another of the transparent globes, revealing that this second building was open at opposite ends, as if two matching faces of the octagon had been neatly sliced away. The silvery train tracks ran through these open ends. Anders reached the large shed and turned around to wait for the boys. With the flaring, sputtering, upheld candle, his long beard and odd clothes, Anders resembled a creature from legend or faery, a sorcerer or wizard.

  “It sits here, as it has since it came, and may the demons drive it hence.” Anders scowled at the boys, and all his wrinkles deepened. “Invention of hell. A foul thing, d’ye ken.” He looked over his shoulder when the boys were before him. Jack saw that Anders did not even like being in the shed with the train. “Half its cargo is aboard, and it, too, stinks of hell.”

  Jack stepped into the open end of the shed, forcing Anders to follow him. Richard stumbled after, rubbing his eyes. The little train sat pointing west on the tracks—an odd-looking engine, a boxcar, a flatcar covered with a straining tarp. From this last car came the smell Anders so disliked. It was a wrong smell, not of the Territories, both metallic and greasy.

  Richard immediately went to one of the interior angles of the shed, sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, and closed his eyes.

  “D’ye ken its workings, my Lord?” Anders asked in a low voice.

  Jack shook his head and walked up along the tracks to the head of the train. Yes, there were Anders’s “demons.” They were box batteries, just as Jack had supposed. Sixteen of them, in two rows strung together in a metal container supported by the cab’s first four wheels. The entire front part of the train looked like a more sophisticated version of a deliveryboy’s bicycle-cart—but where the bicycle itself should have been was a little cab which reminded Jack of something else . . . something he could not immediately identify.

  “The demons talk to the upright stick,” Anders said from behind him.

  Jack hoisted himself up into the little cab. The “stick” Anders had mentioned was a gearshift set in a slot with three notches. Then Jack knew what the little cab resembled. The whole train ran on the same principle as a golf cart. Battery-powered, it had only three gears: forward, neutral, and reverse. It was the only sort of train that might possibly work in the Territories, and Morgan Sloat must have had it specially constructed for him.

  “The demons in the boxes spit and spark, and talk to the stick, and the stick moves the train, my Lord.” Anders hovered anxiously beside the cab, his face contorting into an astonishing display of wrinkles.

  “You were going to leave in the morning?” Jack asked the old man.

  “Aye.”

  “But the train is ready now?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  Jack nodded, and jumped down. “What’s the cargo?”

  “Devil-things,” Anders said grimly. “For the bad Wolfs. To take to the black hotel.”

  I’d be a jump ahead of Morgan Sloat if I left now, Jack thought. And looked uneasily over at Richard, who had managed to put himself asleep again. If it weren’t for pig-headed, hypochondriacal Rational Richard, he would never have stumbled onto Sloat’s choo-choo; and Sloat would have been able to use the “devil-things”—weapons of some kind, surely—against him as soon as he got near the black hotel. For the hotel was the end of his quest, he was sure of that now. And all of that seemed to argue that Richard, as helpless and annoying as he now was, was going to be more important to his quest than Jack had ever imagined. The son of Sawyer and the son of Sloat: the son of Prince Philip Sawtelle and the son of Morgan of Orris. For an instant the world wheeled above Jack and he snagged a second’s insight that Richard might just be essential to whatever he was going to have to do in the black hotel. Then Richard snuffled and let his mouth drop open, and the feeling of momentary comprehension slipped away from Jack.

  “Let’s have a look at those devil-things,” he said. He whirled around and marched back down the length of the train, along the way noticing for the first time that the floor of the octagonal shed was in two sections—most of it was one round circular mass, like an enormous dinner plate. Then there was a break in the wood, and what was beyond the perimeter of the circle extended to the walls. Jack had never heard of a roundhouse, but he understood the concept: the circular part of the floor could turn a hundred and eighty degrees. Normally, trains or coaches came in from the east, and returned in the same direction.

  The tarpaulin had been tied down over the cargo with thick brown cord so hairy it looked like steel wool. Jack strained to lift an edge, peered under, saw only blackness. “Help me,�
� he said, turning to Anders.

  The old man stepped forward, frowning, and with one strong, deft motion released a knot. The tarpaulin loosened and sagged. Now when Jack lifted its edge, he saw that half of the flatcar held a row of wooden boxes stencilled MACHINE PARTS. Guns, he thought: Morgan is arming his rebel Wolfs. The other half of the space beneath the tarp was occupied by bulky rectangular packages of a squashy-looking substance wrapped in layers of clear plastic sheeting. Jack had no idea what this substance might be, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Wonder Bread. He dropped the tarpaulin and stepped back, and Anders pulled at the thick rope and knotted it again.

  “We’re going tonight,” Jack said, having just decided this.

  “But my Lord Jason . . . the Blasted Lands . . . at night . . . d’ye ken—”

  “I ken, all right,” Jack said. “I ken that I’ll need all the surprise I can whip up. Morgan and that man the Wolfs call He of the Lashes are going to be looking for me, and if I show up twelve hours before anybody is expecting this train, Richard and I might get away alive.”

  Anders nodded gloomily, and again looked like an oversize dog accommodating itself to unhappy knowledge.

  Jack looked at Richard again—asleep, sitting up with his mouth open. As if he knew what was in Jack’s mind, Anders, too, looked toward sleeping Richard. “Did Morgan of Orris have a son?” Jack asked.

  “He did, my Lord. Morgan’s brief marriage had issue—a boy child named Rushton.”

  “And what became of Rushton? As if I couldn’t guess.”

  “He died,” Anders said simply. “Morgan of Orris was not meant to be a father.”

  Jack shuddered, remembering how his enemy had torn his way through the air and nearly killed Wolf’s entire herd.

  “We’re going,” he said. “Will you please help me get Richard into the cab, Anders?”

  “My Lord . . .” Anders hung his head, then lifted it and gave Jack a look of almost parental concern. “The journey will require at least two days, perhaps three, before ye reach the western shore. Have ye any food? Would ye share my evening meal?”

  Jack shook his head, impatient to begin this last leg of his journey to the Talisman, but then his stomach abruptly growled, reminding him of how long it had been since he had eaten anything but the Ring-Dings and stale Famous Amos cookies in Albert the Blob’s room. “Well,” he said, “I suppose another half hour won’t make any difference. Thank you, Anders. Help me get Richard up on his feet, will you?” And maybe, he thought, he wasn’t so eager to cross the Blasted Lands after all.

  The two of them jerked Richard to his feet. Like the Dormouse, he opened his eyes, smiled, and sagged back to sleep again. “Food,” Jack said. “Real food. You up for that, chum?”

  “I never eat in dreams,” Richard answered with surreal rationality. He yawned, then wiped his eyes. He gradually had found his feet, and no longer leaned against Anders and Jack. “I am pretty hungry, though, to tell you the truth. I’m having a long dream, aren’t I, Jack?” He seemed almost proud of it.

  “Yep,” said Jack.

  “Say, is that the train we’re going to take? It looks like a cartoon.”

  “Yep.”

  “Can you drive that thing, Jack? It’s my dream, I know, but—”

  “It’s about as hard to operate as my old electric train set,” Jack said. “I can drive it, and so can you.”

  “I don’t want to,” Richard said, and that cringing, whining tone came back into his voice again. “I don’t want to get on that train at all. I want to go back to my room.”

  “Come and have some food instead,” Jack said, and found himself leading Richard out of the shed. “Then we’re on our way to California.”

  And so the Territories showed one of its best faces to the boys immediately before they entered the Blasted Lands. Anders gave them thick sweet slices of bread clearly made from the grain growing around The Depot, kebabs of tender sections of meat and plump juicy unfamiliar vegetables, a spicy pink juice that Jack for some reason thought of as papaya though he knew it was not. Richard chewed in a happy trance, the juice running down his chin until Jack wiped it off for him. “California,” he said once. “I should have known.” Assuming that he was alluding to that state’s reputation for craziness, Jack did not question him. He was more concerned about what the two of them were doing to Anders’s presumably limited stock of food, but the old man kept nipping behind the counter, where he or his father before him had installed a small wood-burning stove, and returning with yet more food. Corn muffins, calf’s-foot jelly, things that looked like chicken legs but tasted of . . . what? Frankincense and myrrh? Flowers? The taste fairly exploded over his tongue, and he thought that he, too, might begin to drool.

  The three of them sat around a little table in the warm and mellow room. At the end of the meal Anders almost shyly brought forth a heavy beaker half-filled with red wine. Feeling as if he were following someone else’s script, Jack drank a small glassful.

  3

  Two hours later, beginning to feel drowsy, Jack wondered if that enormous meal had been an equally enormous error. First of all, there had been the departure from Ellis-Breaks and The Depot, which had not gone easily; secondly, there was Richard, who threatened to go seriously crazy; and thirdly, and above all else, there were the Blasted Lands. Which were far crazier than Richard would ever be, and which absolutely demanded concentrated attention.

  After the meal the three of them had returned to the shed, and the trouble had started. Jack knew that he was fearful of whatever might be ahead—and, he now knew, that fear was perfectly justified—and perhaps his trepidation had made him behave less well than he should have. The first difficulty had come when he tried to pay old Anders with the coin Captain Farren had given him. Anders responded as if his beloved Jason had just stabbed him in the back. Sacrilege! Outrage! By offering the coin, Jack had done more than merely insult the old liveryman; he had metaphorically smeared mud on his religion. Supernaturally restored divine beings apparently were not supposed to offer coins to their followers. Anders had been upset enough to smash his hand into the “devil-box,” as he called the metal container for the rank of batteries, and Jack knew that Anders had been mightily tempted to strike another target besides the train. Jack had managed only a semi-truce: Anders did not want his apologies any more than he wanted his money. The old man had finally calmed down once he realized the extent of the boy’s dismay, but he did not really return to his normal behavior until Jack speculated out loud that the Captain Farren coin might have other functions, other roles for him. “Ye’re not Jason entire,” the old man gloomed, “yet the Queen’s coin may aid ye toward yer destiny.” He shook his head heavily. His farewell wave had been distinctly half-hearted.

  But a good portion of that had been due to Richard. What had begun as a sort of childish panic had quickly blossomed into full-blown terror. Richard had refused to get in the cab. Up until that moment he had mooned around the shed, not looking at the train, seemingly in an uncaring daze. Then he had realized that Jack was serious about getting him on that thing, and he had freaked—and, strangely, it had been the idea of ending up in California which had disturbed him most. “NO! NO! CAN’T!” Richard had yelled when Jack urged him toward the train. “I WANT TO GO BACK TO MY ROOM!”

  “They might be following us, Richard,” Jack said wearily. “We have to get going.” He reached out and took Richard’s arm. “This is all a dream, remember?”

  “Oh my Lord, oh my Lord,” Anders had said, moving aimlessly around in the big shed, and Jack understood that for once the liveryman was not addressing him.

  “I HAVE TO GO BACK TO MY ROOM!” Richard squalled. His eyes were clamped shut so tightly that a single painful crease ran from temple to temple.

  Echoes of Wolf again. Jack had tried to pull Richard toward the train, but Richard had stuck fast, like a mule. “I CAN’T GO THERE!” he yelled.

  “Well, you can’t stay here, either,” Jack said. He made an
other futile effort at yanking Richard toward the train, and this time actually budged him a foot or two. “Richard,” he said, “this is ridiculous. Do you want to be here alone? Do you want to be left alone in the Territories?” Richard shook his head. “Then come with me. It’s time. In two days we’ll be in California.”

  “Bad business,” Anders muttered to himself, watching the boys. Richard simply continued to shake his head, offering a single comprehensive negative. “I can’t go there,” he repeated. “I can’t get on that train and I can’t go there.”

  “California?”

  Richard bit his mouth into a lipless seam and closed his eyes again. “Oh hell,” Jack said. “Can you help me, Anders?” The huge old man gave him a dismayed, almost disgusted look, then marched across the room and scooped up Richard in his arms—as if Richard were the size of a puppy. The boy let out a distinctly puppyish squeal. Anders dropped him onto the padded bench in the cab. “Jack!” Richard called, afraid that he somehow was going to wind up in the Blasted Lands all by himself. “I’m here,” Jack said, and was in fact already climbing into the other side of the cab. “Thank you, Anders,” he said to the old liveryman, who nodded gloomily and retreated back into a corner of the shed. “Take care.” Richard had begun to weep, and Anders looked at him without pity.

  Jack pushed the ignition button, and two enormous blue sparks shot out from the “devil-box” just as the engine whirred into life. “Here goes,” Jack said, and eased the lever forward. The train began to glide out of the shed. Richard whimpered and drew up his knees. Saying something like “Nonsense” or “Impossible”—Jack chiefly heard the hiss of the sibilants—he buried his face between his knees. He looked as though he were trying to become a circle. Jack waved to Anders, who waved back, and then they were out of the lighted shed and were covered only by the vast dark sky. Anders’s silhouette appeared in the opening through which they had gone, as if he had decided to run after them. The train was not capable of going more than thirty miles an hour, Jack thought, and at present was doing no better than eight or nine. This seemed excruciatingly slow. West, Jack said to himself, west, west, west. Anders stepped back inside the shed, and his beard lay against his massive chest like a covering of frost. The train lurched forward—another sizzling blue spark snapped upward—and Jack turned around on the padded seat to see what was coming.