The Talisman

music Jack finally recognized as a record by Blue Oyster Cult. He began by telling Richard about the Daydreams. From the Daydreams he went to Speedy Parker. He described the voice speaking to him from the whirling funnel in the sand. And then he told Richard of how he had taken Speedy’s ‘magic juice’ and first flipped into the Territories.
    ‘But I think it was just cheap wine, wino wine,’ Jack said. ‘Later, after it was all gone, I found out that I didn’t need it to flip. I could just do it by myself.’
    ‘Okay,’ Richard said noncommittally.
    He tried to truly represent the Territories to Richard: the cart-track, the sight of the summer palace, the timelessness and specificity of it. Captain Farren; the dying Queen, which brought him to Twinners; Osmond. The scene at All-Hands’ Village; the Outpost Road which was the Western Road. He showed Richard his little collection of sacred objects, the guitar-pick and marble and coin. Richard merely turned these over in his fingers and gave them back without comment. Then Jack relived his wretched time in Oatley. Richard listened to Jack’s tales of Oatley silent but wide-eyed.
    Jack carefully omitted Morgan Sloat and Morgan of Orris from his account of the scene at the Lewisburg rest area on I-70 in western Ohio.
    Then Jack had to describe Wolf as he had first seen him, that beaming giant in Oshkosh B’ Gosh bib overalls, and he felt his tears building again behind his eyes. He did actually startle Richard by weeping while he told about trying to get Wolf into cars, and confessed his impatience with his companion, fighting not to weep again, and was fine for a long time – he managed to get through the story of Wolf’s first Change without tears or a constricted throat. Then he struck trouble again. His rage kept him talking freely until he got to Ferd Janklow, and then his eyes grew hot again.
    Richard said nothing for a long time. Then he stood up and fetched a clean handkerchief from a bureau drawer. Jack noisily, wetly blew his nose.
    ‘That’s what happened,’ Jack said. ‘Most of it, anyhow.’
    ‘What have you been reading? What movies have you been seeing?’
    ‘Fuck you,’ Jack said. He stood up and walked across the room to get his pack, but Richard reached out and put his hand around Jack’s wrist. ‘I don’t think you made it all up. I don’t think you made any of it up.’
    ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘No. I don’t know what I do think, actually, but I’m sure you’re not telling me deliberate lies.’ He dropped his hand. ‘I believe you were in the Sunlight Home, I believe that, all right. And I believe that you had a friend named Wolf, who died there. I’m sorry, but I cannot take the Territories seriously, and I cannot accept that your friend was a werewolf.’
    ‘So you think I’m nuts,’ Jack said.
    ‘I think you’re in trouble. But I’m not going to call my father, and I’m not going to make you leave now. You’ll have to sleep in the bed here tonight. If we hear Mr Haywood coming around to do bed checks, you’ll be able to hide under the bed.’
    Richard had taken on a faintly executive air, and he put his hands on his hips and glanced critically around his room. ‘You have to get some rest. I’m sure that’s part of the problem. They worked you half to death in that horrible place, and your mind got twisted, and now you need to rest.’
    ‘I do,’ Jack admitted.
    Richard rolled his eyes upward. ‘I have to go to intramural basketball pretty soon, but you can hide in here, and I’ll bring some more food back from the dining room later on. The important thing is, you need rest and you need to get back home.’
    Jack said, ‘New Hampshire isn’t home.’

CHAPTER THIRTY
THAYER GETS WEIRD
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    1
    Through the window Jack could see boys in coats, hunched against the cold, crossing to and fro between the library and the rest of the school. Etheridge, the senior who had spoken to Jack that morning, bustled by, his scarf flying out behind him.
    Richard took a tweed sport jacket from the narrow closet beside the bed. ‘Nothing is going to make me think that you should do anything but go back to New Hampshire. I have to go to basketball now, because if I don’t Coach Frazer’ll make me do ten punishment laps as soon as he comes back. Some other coach is taking our practice today, and Frazer said he’d run us into the ground if we cut out. Do you want to borrow some clean clothes? I at least have a shirt