The Talisman

then to know. Had Morgan been in Los Angeles, or New Hampshire?
    Hello, Mr Sloat. I hope I’m not disturbing you, but the local police have brought me a boy – two boys, actually, but it’s only the intelligent one I’m concerned with. I seem to know him. Or perhaps it’s my . . . ah, my other self who knows him. He gives his name as Jack Parker, but . . . what? Describe him? All right . . .
    And the balloon had gone up.
    Please don’t chatter at me, Sonny. Mr Sloat arrives in Muncie at ten-fifteen . . .
    Time had almost run out.
    I told you to get your ass home, Jack . . . too late now.
    All boys are bad. It’s axiomatic.
    Jack raised his head a tiny bit and looked across the room. Gardener and Sonny Singer sat together on the far side of the desk in Gardener’s basement office. Sonny was punching the keys of an adding machine as Gardener gave him set after set of figures, each figure following the name of an Outside Staffer, each name neatly set in alphabetical order. In front of Sunlight Gardener was a ledger, a long steel file-box, and an untidy stack of envelopes. As Gardener held one of these envelopes up to read the amount scribbled on the front, Jack was able to see the back. There was a drawing of two happy children, each carrying a Bible, skipping down the road toward a church, hand-in-hand. Written below them was I’LL BE A SUNBEAM FOR JESUS.
    ‘Temkin. A hundred and six dollars even.’ The envelope went into the steel file-box with the others that had been recorded.
    ‘I think he’s been skimming again,’ Sonny said.
    ‘God sees the truth but waits,’ Gardener said mildly. ‘Victor’s all right. Now shut up and let’s get this done before six.’
    Sonny punched the keys.
    The picture of Jesus walking on the water had been swung outward, revealing a safe behind it. The safe was open.
    Jack saw that there were other things of interest on Sunlight Gardener’s desk: two envelopes, one marked JACK PARKER and the other PHILIP JACK WOLFE . And his good old pack.
    The third thing was Sunlight Gardener’s bunch of keys.
    From the keys, Jack’s eyes moved to the locked door on the left-hand side of the room – Gardener’s private exit to the outside, he knew. If only there was a way –
    ‘Yellin. Sixty-two dollars and nineteen cents.’
    Gardener sighed, put the last envelope into the long steel tray, and closed his ledger. ‘Apparently Heck was right. I believe our dear friend Mr Jack Parker has awakened.’ He got up, came around the desk, and walked toward Jack. His mad, hazy eyes glittered. He reached into his pocket and came out with the lighter. Jack felt a panic rise inside him at the sight of it. ‘Only your name isn’t really Parker at all, is it, my dear boy? Your real name is Sawyer, isn’t it? Oh yes. Sawyer. And someone with a great interest in you is going to arrive very, very soon. And we’ll have all sorts of interesting things to tell him, won’t we?’
    Sunlight Gardener tittered and flicked back the Zippo’s hood, revealing the blackened wheel, the smoke-darkened wick.
    ‘Confession is so good for the soul,’ he whispered, and struck a light.
    4
    Thud.
    ‘What was that?’ Rudolph asked, looking up from his bank of double-ovens. Supper – fifteen large turkey pies – was coming along nicely.
    ‘What was what?’ George Irwinson asked.
    At the sink, where he was peeling potatoes, Donny Keegan uttered his loud yuck-yuck of a laugh.
    ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Irwinson said.
    Donny laughed again.
    Rudolph looked at him, irritated. ‘You gonna peel those goddam potatoes down to nothing, you idiot?’
    ‘Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!’
    Thud!
    ‘There, you heard it that time, didn’t you?’
    Irwinson only shook his head.
    Rudolph was suddenly afraid. Those sounds were coming from the Box – which, of course, he was supposed to believe was a hay-drying shed. Some fat chance. That big boy was in the Box – the one they were saying had been caught in sodomy that morning with his friend, the one who had tried to bribe their way out only the day before. They said the big boy had shown a mean streak before Bast whopped him one . . . and some of them were also saying that the big boy hadn’t just broken Bast’s hand; they were saying he had squeezed it to a pulp. That was a lie, of course, had to be, but –
    THUD!
    This time Irwinson looked around. And suddenly Rudolph decided he needed to go to the bathroom. And that maybe he would go all the way up to the third