The Talisman

Morgan’s voice.
    ‘Jack!’
    There was another clap of thunder, this one a huge oaken thud that rolled through the sky like an artillery shell.
    Panting, his soaked hair hanging in his eyes, Jack looked over his shoulder . . . and directly into the rest area on I-70 near Lewisburg, Ohio. He was seeing it as if through ripply, badly made glass . . . but he was seeing it. The edge of the brick toilet was on the left side of that blistered, tortured patch of air. The snout of what looked like a Chevrolet pickup truck was on the right, floating three feet above the field where he and Wolf had been sitting peacefully and talking not five minutes ago. And in the center, looking like an extra in a film about Admiral Byrd’s assault on the South Pole, was Morgan Sloat, his thick red face twisted with murderous rage. Rage, and something else. Triumph? Yes. Jack thought that was what it was.
    He stood at midstream in water that was crotch-deep, cattle passing on either side of him, baa -ing and bleating, staring at that window which had been torn in the very fabric of reality, his eyes wide, his mouth wider.
    He’s found me, oh dear God, he’s found me.
    ‘There you are, you little shithead!’ Morgan bellowed at him. His voice carried, but it had a muffled, dead quality as it came from the reality of that world into the reality of this one. It was like listening to a man shout inside a telephone booth. ‘ Now we’ll see, won’t we? Won’t we? ’
    Morgan started forward, his face swimming and rippling as if made of limp plastic, and Jack had time to see there was something clutched in his hand, something hung around his neck, something small and silvery.
    Jack stood, paralyzed, as Sloat bulled his way through the hole between the two universes. As he came he did his own werewolf number, changing from Morgan Sloat, investor, land speculator, and sometime Hollywood agent, into Morgan of Orris, pretender to the throne of a dying Queen. His flushed, hanging jowls thinned. The color faded out of them. His hair renewed itself, growing forward, first tinting the rondure of his skull, as if some invisible being were coloring Uncle Morgan’s head, then covering it. The hair of Sloat’s Twinner was long, black, flapping, somehow dead-looking. It had been tied at the nape of his neck, Jack saw, but most of it had come loose.
    The parka wavered, disappeared for a moment, then came back as a cloak and hood.
    Morgan Sloat’s suede boots became dark leather knee-boots, their tops turned down, what might have been the hilt of a knife poking out of one.
    And the small silvery thing in his hand had turned to a small rod tipped with crawling blue fire.
    It’s a lightning-rod. Oh Jesus, it’s a –
    ‘Jack!’
    The cry was low, gargling, full of water.
    Jack whirled clumsily around in the stream, barely avoiding another cow-sheep, this one floating on its side, dead in the water. He saw Wolf’s head going down again, both hands waving. Jack fought his way toward those hands, still dodging the cattle as best he could. One of them bunted his hip hard and Jack went over, inhaling water. He got up again quick, coughing and choking, one hand feeling inside his jerkin for the bottle, afraid it might have washed away. It was still there.
    ‘Boy! Turn around and look at me, boy!’
    No time just now, Morgan. Sorry, but I’ve got to see if I can avoid getting drowned by Wolf’s herd before I see if I can avoid getting fried by your doomstick there. I –
    Blue fire arched over Jack’s shoulder, sizzling – it was like a deadly electric rainbow. It struck one of the cow-sheep caught in the reedy muck on the other side of the stream and the unfortunate beast simply exploded, as if it had swallowed dynamite. Blood flew in a needle-spray of droplets. Gobbets of flesh began to rain down around Jack.
    ‘Turn and look at me, boy!’
    He could feel the force of that command, gripping his face with invisible hands, trying to turn it.
    Wolf struggled up again, his hair plastered against his face, his dazed eyes peering through a curtain of it like the eyes of an English sheepdog. He was coughing and staggering, seemingly no longer aware of where he was.
    ‘Wolf!’ Jack screamed, but thunder exploded across the blue sky again, drowning him out.
    Wolf bent over and retched up a great muddy sheet of water. A moment later another of the terrified cow-sheep struck him and bore him under again.
    That’s it , Jack thought despairingly. That’s