The Talisman

Jack had seen the hideous white face in the window of the diligence change.
    This Morgan would smell him, too. If given the time.
    Footfalls around the corner, approaching.
    Face numb and twisted with fear, Jack fumbled off his pack and then dropped it, knowing he was too late, too slow, that Morgan would come around the corner and seize him by the neck, smiling. Hi, Jacky! Allee-allee-in-free! Game’s over now, isn’t it, you little prick?
    A tall man in a houndstooth-check jacket passed the corner of the rest-room, gave Jack a disinterested glance, and went to the drinking fountain.
    Going back. He was going back. There was no guilt, at least not now; only that terrible trapped fear mingling with feelings of relief and pleasure. Jack fumbled his pack open. Here was Speedy’s bottle, with less than an inch of the purple liquid now left
    ( no boy needs dat poison to travel with but I do Speedy I do! )
    sloshing around in the bottom. No matter. He was going back. His heart leaped at the thought. A big Saturday-night grin dawned on his face, denying both the gray day and the fear in his heart. Going back, oh yeah, dig it .
    More footsteps approaching, and this was Uncle Morgan, no doubt about that heavy yet somehow mincing step. But the fear was gone. Uncle Morgan had smelled something, but when he turned the corner he would see nothing but empty Dorito bags and crimped beercans.
    Jack pulled in breath – pulled in the greasy stink of diesel fumes and car exhausts and cold autumn air. Tipped the bottle up to his lips. Took one of the two swallows left. And even with his eyes shut he squinted as –

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WOLF
----
    1
    – the strong sunlight struck his closed lids.
    Through the gagging-sweet odor of the magic juice he could smell something else . . . the warm smell of animals. He could hear them, too, moving all about him.
    Frightened, Jack opened his eyes but at first could see nothing – the difference in the light was so sudden and abrupt that it was as if someone had suddenly turned on a cluster of two-hundred-watt bulbs in a black room.
    A warm, hide-covered flank brushed by him, not in a threatening way (or so Jack hoped), but most definitely in an I’m-in-a-hurry-to-be-gone-thank-you-very-much way. Jack, who had been getting up, thumped back to the ground again.
    ‘ Hey! Hey! Get away from im! Right here and right now! ’ A loud, healthy whack followed by a disgruntled animal sound somewhere between a moo and a baa. ‘ God’s nails! Got no sense! Get away from im fore I bite your God-pounding eyes out! ’
    Now his eyes had adjusted enough to the brightness of this almost flawless Territories autumn day to make out a young giant standing in the middle of a herd of milling animals, whacking their sides and slightly humped backs with what appeared to be great gusto and very little real force. Jack sat up, automatically finding Speedy’s bottle with its one precious swallow left and putting it away. He never took his eyes from the young man who stood with his back to him.
    Tall he was – six-five at least, Jack guessed – and with shoulders so broad that his across still looked slightly out of proportion to his high. Long, greasy black hair shagged down his back to the shoulderblades. Muscles bulged and rippled as he moved amid the animals, which looked like pygmy cows. He was driving them away from Jack and toward the Western Road.
    He was a striking figure, even when seen from behind, but what amazed Jack was his dress. Everyone he had seen in the Territories (including himself) had been wearing tunics, jerkins, or rough breeches.
    This fellow appeared to be wearing Oshkosh bib overalls.
    Then he turned around and Jack felt a horrible shocked dismay well up in his throat. He shot to his feet.
    It was the Elroy-thing.
    The herdsman was the Elroy-thing.
    2
    Except it wasn’t.
    Jack perhaps would not have lingered to see that, and everything that happened thereafter – the movie theater, the shed, and the hell of the Sunlight Home – would not have happened (or would, at the very least, have happened in some completely different way), but in the extremity of his terror he froze completely after getting up. He was no more able to run than a deer is when it is frozen in a hunter’s jacklight.
    As the figure in the bib overalls approached, he thought: Elroy wasn’t that tall or that broad. And his eyes were yellow – The eyes of this creature were a bright, impossible shade of orange.