The Talisman

its voice come through the glass so clearly? What’s wrong with its face?’ His voice sharpened a little and recovered some of its earlier dismay as he asked a final question, one which seemed to be at that moment the most vital question of all, at least to Richard Sloat: ‘ Where did it get Etheridge’s tie, Jack? ’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. We’re back on Seabrook Island for sure, Richie-boy, and I think we’re gonna boogy till you puke.
    ‘Give him to us, Sloat, or we’ll come in and get him!’
    The Etheridge-thing showed its single fang in a ferocious cannibal’s grin.
    ‘Send your passenger out, Sloat, he’s dead! He’s dead and if you don’t send him out soon, you’ll smell him when he starts to stink!’
    ‘Help me move the frigging bureau!’ Jack hissed.
    ‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘Yes, okay. We’ll move the bureau and then I’ll lie down, and maybe later I’ll go over to the infirmary. What do you think, Jack? What do you say? Is that a good plan?’ His face begged Jack to say it was a good plan.
    ‘We’ll see,’ Jack said. ‘First things first. The bureau. They might throw stones.’
    4
    Soon after, Richard began to mutter and moan in the sleep which had overtaken him again. That was bad enough; then tears began to squeeze from the corners of his eyes and that was worse.
    ‘I can’t give him up,’ Richard moaned in the weepy, bewildered voice of a five-year-old. Jack stared at him, his skin cold. ‘I can’t give him up, I want my daddy, please someone tell me where my daddy is, he went into the closet but he’s not in the closet now, I want my daddy, he’ll tell me what to do, please—’
    A rock came crashing through the window. Jack screamed.
    It boomed against the back of the bureau in front of the window. A few splinters of glass flew through the gaps to the left and right of the bureau and shattered into smaller pieces on the floor.
    ‘Give us your passenger, Sloat!’
    ‘Can’t,’ Richard moaned, writhing inside the blanket.
    ‘ Give him to us! ’ another laughing, howling voice from outside screamed. ‘ We’ll take him back to Seabrook Island, Richard! Back to Seabrook Island, where he belongs!’
    Another rock. Jack ducked instinctively, although this rock also bounced off the back of the bureau. Dogs howled and yapped and snarled.
    ‘No Seabrook Island,’ Richard was muttering in his sleep. ‘Where’s my daddy? I want him to come out of that closet! Please, please, no Seabrook Island stuff , PLEASE —’
    Then Jack was on his knees, shaking Richard as hard as he dared, telling him to wake up, it was just a dream, wake up, for Christ’s sake, wake up !
    ‘Pleeze-pleeze-pleeze.’ A hoarse, inhuman chorus of voices rose outside. The voices sounded like a chorus of manimals from Wells’s Island of Dr Moreau .
    ‘ Way-gup, way-gup, way-gup! ’ a second chorus responded.
    Dogs howled.
    A flurry of stones flew, knocking more glass from the window, bonking against the back of the bureau, making it rock.
    ‘DADDY ’ S IN THE CLOSET! ’ Richard screamed. ‘ DADDY, COME OUT, PLEASE COME OUT , I’M AFRAID!’
    ‘Pleeze-pleeze-pleeze!’
    ‘Way-gup, way-gup, way-gup!’
    Richard’s hands waving in the air.
    Stones flying, striking the bureau; soon a rock big enough to either punch straight through the cheap piece of furniture or to simply knock it over on top of them would come through the window, Jack thought.
    Outside, they laughed and bellowed and chanted in their hideous troll-voices. Dogs – packs of them now, it seemed – howled and growled.
    ‘DADEEEEEEEEE — !! ’ Richard screamed in a chilling, rising voice.
    Jack slapped him.
    Richard’s eyes jerked open. He stared up at Jack for a moment with a dreadful lack of recognition, as if the dream he’d been having had burned away his sanity. Then he pulled in a long, shaking breath and let it out in a sigh.
    ‘Nightmare,’ he said. ‘Part of the fever, I guess. Horrible. But I don’t remember exactly what it was!’ he added sharply, as if Jack might ask him this at any moment.
    ‘Richard, I want us to get out of this room,’ Jack said.
    ‘Out of this—?’ Richard looked at Jack as though he must be crazy. ‘I can’t do that, Jack. I’m running a fever of . . . it must be a hundred and three at least, might be a hundred and four or five. I can’t—’
    ‘You’ve got a degree of fever at most, Richard,’ Jack said calmly. ‘Probably not even that—’
    ‘I’m