The Talisman

threats no longer seemed to conceal themselves in dark corners, closets with half-open doors, shadowy streets, empty rooms.
    The events of that aimless summer afternoon in 1976 had murdered this temporary peace. After it, Jack slept with his light on for six months; nightmares roiled his sleep.
    The car pulled across the street just a few houses up from the Sawyers’ white three-story Colonial. It had been a green car, and that was all that Jack had known about it except that it was not a Mercedes – Mercedes was the only kind of automobile he knew by sight. The man at the wheel had rolled down his window and smiled at Jack. The boy’s first thought had been that he knew this man – the man had known Phil Sawyer, and wanted just to say hello to his son. Somehow that was conveyed by the man’s smile, which was easy and unforced and familiar. Another man leaned forward in the passenger seat and peered toward Jack through blind-man’s glasses – round and so dark they were nearly black. This second man was wearing a pure white suit. The driver let his smile speak for him a moment longer.
    Then he said, ‘Sonny, do you know how we get to the Beverly Hills Hotel?’ So he was a stranger after all. Jack experienced an odd little flicker of disappointment.
    He pointed straight up the street. The hotel was right up there, close enough so that his father had been able to walk to breakfast meetings in the Loggia.
    ‘Straight ahead?’ the driver asked, still smiling.
    Jack nodded.
    ‘you’re a pretty smart little fellow,’ the man told him, and the other man chuckled. ‘Any idea of how far up it is?’ Jack shook his head. ‘Couple of blocks, maybe?’
    ‘Yeah.’ He had begun to get uncomfortable. The driver was still smiling, but now the smile looked bright and hard and empty. And the passenger’s chuckle had been wheezy and damp, as if he were sucking on something wet.
    ‘Five, maybe? Six? What do you say?’
    ‘About five or six, I guess,’ Jack said, stepping backward.
    ‘Well, I sure do want to thank you, little fellow,’ the driver said. ‘You don’t happen to like candy, do you?’ He extended a closed fist through the window, turned it palm-up, and opened his fingers: a Tootsie Roll. ‘It’s yours. Take it.’
    Jack tentatively stepped forward, hearing in his mind the words of a thousand warnings involving strange men and candy. But this man was still in his car; if he tried anything, Jack could be half a block away before the man got his door open. And to not take it somehow seemed a breach of civility. Jack took another step nearer. He looked at the man’s eyes, which were blue and as bright and hard as his smile. Jack’s instincts told him to lower his hand and walk away. He let his hand drift an inch or two nearer the Tootsie Roll. Then he made a little stabbing peck at it with his fingers.
    The driver’s hand clamped around Jack’s, and the passenger in blind-man’s glasses laughed out loud. Astonished, Jack stared into the eyes of the man gripping his hand and saw them start to change – thought he saw them start to change – from blue to yellow.
    But later they were yellow.
    The man in the other seat pushed his door open and trotted around the back of the car. He was wearing a small gold cross in the lapel of his silk suit coat. Jack pulled frantically away, but the driver smiled brightly, emptily and held him fast. ‘NO!’ Jack yelled. ‘HELP!’
    The man in dark glasses opened the rear door on Jack’s side.
    ‘HELP ME!’ Jack screamed.
    The man holding him began to squeeze him down into a shape that would fit into the open door. Jack bucked, still yelling, but the man effortlessly tightened his hold. Jack struck at his hands, then tried to push the hands off him. With horror, he realized that what he felt beneath his fingers was not skin. He twisted his head and saw that clamped to his side and protruding from the black sleeve was a hard, pinching thing like a claw or a jointed talon. Jack screamed again.
    From up the street came a loud voice:‘Hey, stop messin with that boy! You! Leave that boy alone!’
    Jack gasped with relief, and twisted as hard as he could in the man’s arms. Running toward them from the end of the block was a tall thin black man, still shouting. The man holding him dropped Jack to the sidewalk and took off around the back of the car. The front door of one of the houses behind Jack slammed open – another witness.
    ‘Move, move ,’ said the