The Talisman

feverish. ‘I’mb going to bray on id all day.’
    Like a man who is finally waking up after a very long sleep, Wolf grunted and looked around. He saw Jack being held, saw the hypodermic needle, and peeled Pedersen’s arm off Jack as if it had been the arm of a child. A surprisingly strong roar came from his throat.
    ‘No! Let him GO!’
    Gardener danced in toward Wolf’s blind side with a fluid grace that reminded Jack of Osmond turning on the carter in that muddy stable-yard. The needle flashed and plunged. Wolf wheeled, bellowing as if he had been stung . . . which, in a way, was just what had happened to him. He swept a hand at the hypo, but Gardener avoided the sweep neatly.
    The boys, who had been looking on in their dazed Sunlight Home way, now began to stampede for the door, looking alarmed. They wanted no part of big, simple Wolf in such a rage.
    ‘Let him GO! Let . . . him . . . let him . . .’
    ‘Wolf!’
    ‘Jack . . . Jacky . . .’
    Wolf looked at him with puzzled eyes that shifted like strange kaleidoscopes from hazel to orange to a muddy red. He held his hairy hands out to Jack, and then Hector Bast stepped up behind him and clubbed him to the floor.
    ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ Jack stared at him with wet, furious eyes. ‘If you killed him, you son of a bitch—’
    ‘Shhh, Mr Jack Parker,’ Gardener whispered in his ear, and Jack felt the needle sting his upper arm. ‘Just be quiet now. We’re going to get a little sunlight in your soul. And maybe then we’ll see how you like pulling a loaded wagon up the spiral road. Can you say hallelujah?’
    That one word followed him down into dark oblivion.
    Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
WOLF IN THE BOX
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    1
    Jack was awake for quite a long time before they knew he was awake, but he became aware of who he was and what had happened and what his situation was now only by degrees – he was, in a way, like a soldier who has survived a fierce and prolonged artillery barrage. His arm throbbed where Gardener had punched the hypodermic into it. His head ached so badly that his very eyeballs seemed to pulse. He was ragingly thirsty.
    He advanced a step up the ladder of awareness when he tried to touch the hurt place on his upper right arm with his left hand. He couldn’t do it. And the reason he couldn’t do it was that his arms were somehow wrapped around himself. He could smell old, mouldy canvas – it was the smell of a Boy Scout tent found in an attic after many dark years. It was only then (although he had been looking at it stupidly through his mostly lidded eyes for the last ten minutes) that he understood what he was wearing. It was a straitjacket.
    Ferd would have figured that out quicker, Jack-O , he thought, and thinking of Ferd had a focussing effect on his mind in spite of the crushing headache. He stirred a little and the bolts of pain in his head and the throb in his arm made him moan. He couldn’t help it.
    Heck Bast: ‘He’s waking up.’
    Sunlight Gardener: ‘No, he’s not. I gave him a shot big enough to paralyze a bull alligator. He’ll be out until nine tonight at the earliest. He’s just dreaming a little. Heck, I want you to go up and hear the boys’ confessions tonight. Tell them there will be no night-chapel; I’ve got a plane to meet, and that’s just the start of what’s probably going to be a very long night. Sonny, you stay and help me do the bookwork.’
    Heck: ‘It sure sounded like he was waking up.’
    Sunlight:‘Go on, Heck. And have Bobby Peabody check on Wolf.’
    Sonny (snickering): ‘He doesn’t like it in there much, does he?’
    Ah, Wolf, they put you back in the Box , Jack mourned. I’m sorry . . . my fault . . . all of this is my fault . . .
    ‘The hellbound rarely care much for the machinery of salvation,’ Jack heard Sunlight Gardener say. ‘When the devils inside them start to die, they go out screaming. Go on now, Heck.’
    ‘Yes sir, Reverend Gardener.’
    Jack heard but did not see Heck as he lumbered out. He did not as yet dare to look up.
    2
    Stuffed into the crudely made, home-welded and home-bolted Box like a victim of premature burial in an iron coffin, Wolf had howled the day away, battering his fists bloody against the sides of the Box, kicking with his feet at the double-bolted, Dutch-oven-type door at the coffin’s foot until the jolts of pain travelling up his legs made his crotch ache. He wasn’t going to get out battering with his fists