The Talisman

anybody to handle it, whatever his intentions. Maybe, Jack wondered, Jason had been the only being capable of handling it – capable of dealing with it without doing harm either to himself or to the Talisman itself. Feeling the strength and urgency of its call to him, Jack could only hope that he would not weaken before the Talisman.
    ‘“You’ll understand, Rich,”’ Richard surprised him by saying. His voice was dull and low. ‘My father said that. He said I’d understand. “ You’ll understand, Rich .”’
    ‘Yeah,’ Jack said, looking worriedly at his friend. ‘How are you feeling, Richard?’
    In addition to the sores surrounding his mouth, Richard now had a collection of angry-looking raised red dots or bumps across his pimply forehead and his temples. It was as though a swarm of insects had managed to burrow just under the surface of his protesting skin. For a moment Jack had a flash of Richard Sloat on the morning he had climbed in his window at Nelson House, Thayer School; Richard Sloat with his glasses riding firmly on the bridge of his nose and his sweater tucked neatly into his pants. Would that maddeningly correct, unbudgeable boy ever return?
    ‘I can still walk,’ Richard said. ‘But is this what he meant? Is this the understanding I was supposed to get, or have, or whatever the hell . . .?’
    ‘You’ve got something new on your face,’ Jack said. ‘You want to rest for a while?’
    ‘Naw,’ Richard said, still speaking from the bottom of a muddy barrel. ‘And I can feel that rash. It itches. I think I got it all over my back, too.’
    ‘Let me see,’ Jack said. Richard stopped in the middle of the road, obedient as a dog. He closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth. The red spots blazed on his forehead and temples. Jack stepped behind him, raised his jacket, and lifted the back of his stained and dirty blue button-down shirt. The spots were smaller here, not as raised or as angry-looking; they spread from Richard’s thin shoulderblades to the small of his back, no larger than ticks.
    Richard let out a big dispirited unconscious sigh.
    ‘You got em there, but it’s not so bad,’ Jack said.
    ‘Thanks,’ Richard said. He inhaled, lifted his head. Overhead the gray sky seemed heavy enough to come crashing to earth. The ocean seethed against the rocks, far down the rough slope. ‘It’s only a couple of miles, really,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll make it.’
    ‘I’ll piggyback you when you need it,’ Jack said, unwittingly exposing his conviction that before long Richard would need to be carried again.
    Richard shook his head and made an inefficient stab at shoving his shirt back in his trousers. ‘Sometimes I think I . . . sometimes I think I can’t—’
    ‘We’re going to go into that hotel, Richard,’ Jack said, putting his arm through Richard’s and half-forcing him to step forward. ‘You and me. Together. I don’t have the faintest idea of what happens once we get in there, but you and I are going in. No matter who tries to stop us. Just remember that.’
    Richard gave him a look half-fearful, half-grateful. Now Jack could see the irregular outlines of future bumps crowding beneath the surface of Richard’s cheeks. Again he was conscious of a powerful force pulling at him, forcing him along as he had forced Richard.
    ‘You mean my father,’ Richard said. He blinked, and Jack thought he was trying not to cry – exhaustion had magnified Richard’s emotions.
    ‘I mean everything,’ Jack said, not quite truthfully. ‘Let’s get going, old pal.’
    ‘But what am I supposed to understand? I don’t get —’ Richard looked around, blinking his unprotected eyes. Most of the world, Jack remembered, was a blur to Richard.
    ‘You understand a lot more already, Richie,’ Jack pointed out.
    And then for a moment a disconcertingly bitter smile twisted Richard’s mouth. He had been made to understand a great deal more than he had ever wished to know, and his friend found himself momentarily wishing that he had run away from Thayer School in the middle of the night by himself. But the moment in which he might have preserved Richard’s innocence was far behind him, if it had ever really existed – Richard was a necessary part of Jack’s mission. He felt strong hands fold around his heart; Jason’s hands, the Talisman’s hands.
    ‘We’re on our way,’ he said, and Richard settled back into the rhythm of his strides.
    ‘We’re going to see my dad