The Talisman

time about coughing that memory up?
    No – not the memory . . . the two memories. First me and Richard hearing Mrs Feeny telling her sister that the electricity came out and cooked him, that it melted his glasses all over his nose, that she heard Mr Sloat talking on the phone and he said so . . . and then being behind the couch, not really meaning to snoop or eavesdrop, and hearing my dad say ‘Everything has consequences, and some of those consequences might be on the uncomfortable side.’ And something surely made Jerry Bledsoe uncomfortable, didn’t it? When your glasses end up melted all over your nose, I’d say you’d been through something mildly uncomfortable , yes . . .
    Jack stopped. Stopped dead.
    What are you trying to say?
    You know what I’m trying to say, Jack. Your father was gone that day – he and Morgan both. They were over here. Where, over here? I think they were at the same spot over here where their building is in California, over in the American Territories. And they did something, or one of them did. Maybe something big, maybe no more than tossing a rock . . . or burying an applecore in the dirt. And it somehow . . . it echoed over there. It echoed over there and it killed Jerry Bledsoe.
    Jack shivered. Oh yes, he supposed he knew why it had taken his mind so long to cough up the memory – the toy taxi, the murmur of the men’s voices, Dexter Gordon blowing his horn. It hadn’t wanted to cough it up. Because
    ( who plays those changes daddy )
    it suggested that just by being over here he could be doing something terrible in the other world. Starting World War III? No, probably not. He hadn’t assassinated any kings lately, young or old. But how much had it taken to set up the echo which had fried Jerry Bledsoe? Had Uncle Morgan shot Jerry’s Twinner (if Jerry had had one)? Tried to sell some Territories bigwig on the concept of electricity? Or had it been just some little thing . . . something no more earth-shattering than buying a chunk of meat in a rural market-town? Who played those changes? What played those changes?
    A nice flood, a sweet fire.
    Suddenly Jack’s mouth was as dry as salt.
    He crossed to the little stream by the side of the road, dropped to his knees, and put a hand down to scoop up water. His hand froze suddenly. The smooth-running stream had taken on the colors of the coming sunset . . . but these colors suddenly suffused with red, so that it seemed to be a stream of blood rather than water running beside the road. Then it went black. A moment later it had become transparent and Jack saw –
    A little mewling sound escaped him as he saw Morgan’s diligence roaring along the Western Road, pulled by its foaming baker’s dozen of black-plumed horses. Jack saw with almost swooning terror that the driver sitting up high in the peak-seat, his booted feet on the splashboard and a ceaselessly cracking whip in one hand, was Elroy. But it was not a hand at all that held that whip. It was some sort of hoof. Elroy was driving that nightmare coach, Elroy grinning with a mouth that was filled with dead fangs, Elroy who just couldn’t wait to find Jack Sawyer again and split open Jack Sawyer’s belly and pull out Jack Sawyer’s intestines.
    Jack knelt before the stream, eyes bulging, mouth quivering with dismay and horror. He had seen one final thing in this vision, not a large thing, no, but by implication it was the most frightful thing of all: the eyes of the horses seemed to glow. They seemed to glow because they were full of light – full of the sunset.
    The diligence was travelling west along this same road . . . and it was after him.
    Crawling, not sure he could stand even if he had to, Jack retreated from the stream and lurched clumsily out into the road. He fell flat in the dust, Speedy’s bottle and the mirror the rug salesman had given him digging into his guts. He turned his head sideways so that his right cheek and ear were pressed tightly against the surface of the Western Road.
    He could feel the steady rumble in the hard, dry earth. It was distant . . . but coming closer.
    Elroy up on top . . . and Morgan inside. Morgan Sloat? Morgan of Orris? Didn’t matter. Both were one.
    He broke the hypnotic effect of that rumbling in the earth with an effort and got up again. He took Speedy’s bottle – the same over here in the Territories as in the U.S.A. – out of his jerkin and pulled as much of the moss-plug out of the neck as he could, never minding