The Talisman

was like . . . like . . .
    (like semen)
    . . . well, he didn’t know exactly what it had been like. Except that it had quickly become warm, gained cognizance, and he had just had time to realize it was he , Orris, and then everything had turned topsy-turvy like a secret door on its gimbal – a bookcase on one side, a Chippendale dresser on the other, both fitting the ambience of the room perfectly – and it had been Orris sitting behind the wheel of a 1952 bullet-nosed Ford, Orris wearing the brown double-breasted suit and the John Penske tie, Orris who was reaching down toward his crotch, not in pain but in slightly disgusted curiosity – Orris who had, of course, never worn undershorts.
    There had been a moment, he remembered, when the Ford had nearly driven up onto the sidewalk, and then Morgan Sloat – now very much the undermind – had taken over that part of the operation and Orris had been free to go along his way, goggling at everything, nearly half-mad with delight. And what remained of Morgan Sloat had also been delighted; he had been delighted the way a man is delighted when he shows a friend around his new home for the first time and finds that his friend likes it as much as he likes it himself.
    Orris had cruised into a Fat Boy Drive-in, and after some fumbling with Morgan’s unfamiliar paper money, he had ordered a hamburger and french fries and a chocolate thickshake, the words coming easily out of his mouth – welling up from that undermind as water wells up from a spring. Orris’s first bite of the hamburger had been tentative . . . and then he had gobbled the rest with the speed of Wolf gobbling his first Whopper. He had crammed the fries into his mouth with one hand while dialling the radio with the other, picking up an enticing babble of bop and Perry Como and some big band and early rhythm and blues. He had sucked down the shake and then had ordered more of everything.
    Halfway through the second burger he – Sloat as well as Orris – began to feel sick. Suddenly the fried onions had seemed too strong, too cloying; suddenly the smell of car exhaust was everywhere. His arms had suddenly begun to itch madly. He pulled off the coat of the double-breasted suit (the second thickshake, this one mocha, fell unheeded to one side, dribbling ice cream across the Ford’s seat) and looked at his arms. Ugly red blotches with red centers were growing there, and spreading. His stomach lurched, he leaned out the window, and even as he puked into the tray that was fixed there, he had felt Orris fleeing from him, going back into his own world . . .
    ‘Can I help you, sir?’
    ‘Hmmmm?’ Startled out of his reverie, Sloat looked around. A tall blond boy, obviously an upperclassman, was standing there. He was dressed prep – an impeccable blue flannel blazer worn over an open-collared shirt and a pair of faded Levi’s.
    He brushed hair out of his eyes which had that same dazed, dreaming look. ‘I’m Etheridge, sir. I just wondered if I could help you. You looked . . . lost.’
    Sloat smiled. He thought of saying – but did not – No, that’s how you look, my friend . Everything was all right. The Sawyer brat was still on the loose, but Sloat knew where he was going and that meant that Jacky was on a chain. It was invisible, but it was still a chain.
    ‘Lost in the past, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Old times. I’m not a stranger here, Mr Etheridge, if that’s what you’re worried about. My son’s a student. Richard Sloat.’
    Etheridge’s eyes grew even dreamier for a moment – puzzled, lost. Then they cleared. ‘Sure. Richard!’ he exclaimed.
    ‘I’ll be going up to see the headmaster in a bit. I just wanted to have a poke around first.’
    ‘Well, I guess that’s fine.’ Etheridge looked at his watch. ‘I have table-duty this morning, so if you’re sure you’re okay . . .’
    ‘I’m sure.’
    Etheridge gave him a nod, a rather vague smile, and started off.
    Sloat watched him go, and then he surveyed the ground between Nelson House and here. Noted the broken window again. A straight shot. It was fair – more than fair – to assume that, somewhere between Nelson House and this octagonal brick building, the two boys had Migrated into the Territories. If he liked, he could follow them. Just step inside – there was no lock on the door – and disappear. Reappear wherever Orris’s body happened to be at this moment. It would be somewhere close; perhaps even, in fact, in