The Talisman

Richard,’ he said. ‘I know we are. I don’t care how much crazy bullshit they throw at us. We are going to do this.’
    ‘Our troubles are going to have troubles with us,’ said Richard, quoting – surely unconsciously – from Dr Seuss. He paused. ‘I don’t know if I can make it. That’s the truth. I’m dead on my feet.’ He gave Jack a look of utterly naked anguish. ‘What’s happening to me, Jack?’
    ‘I don’t know, but I know how to stop it.’ And hoped that that was true.
    ‘Is my father doing this to me?’ Richard asked miserably. He ran his hands experimentally over his puffy face. Then he lifted his shirt out of his trousers and examined the red coalescing rash on his stomach. The bumps, shaped vaguely like the state of Oklahoma, began at his waistline and extended around both sides and up nearly to his neck. ‘It looks like a virus or something. Did my father give it to me?’
    ‘I don’t think he did it on purpose, Richie,’ Jack said. ‘If that means anything.’
    ‘It doesn’t,’ Richard said.
    ‘It’s all going to stop. The Seabrook Island Express is coming to the end of the line.’
    Richard right beside him, Jack stepped forward – and saw the taillights of the Cadillac flash on, then off, before the car slipped forward out of his sight.
    There would be no surprise attack this time, no wonderful slam-bang arrival through a fence with a trainful of guns and ammunition, but even if everybody in Point Venuti knew they were coming, Jack was on his way. He felt suddenly as if he had strapped on armor, as if he held a magic sword. Nobody in Point Venuti had the power to harm him, at least not until he got to the Agincourt Hotel. He was on his way, Rational Richard beside him, and all would be well. And before he had taken three more steps, his muscles singing along with the Talisman, he had a better, more accurate image of himself than of a knight going out to do battle. The image came straight from one of his mother’s movies, delivered by celestial telegram. It was as if he were on a horse, a broad-brimmed hat on his head and a gun tied to his hip, riding in to clean up Deadwood Gulch.
    Last Train to Hangtown , he remembered; Lily Cavanaugh, Clint Walker, and Will Hutchins, 1960. So be it.
    2
    Four or five of the Territories trees struggled out of the hard brown soil beside the first of the abandoned buildings. Maybe they had been there all along, snaking their branches over the road nearly to the white line, maybe not; Jack could not remember seeing them when he first looked down toward the concealed town. It was scarcely more conceivable, though, that he could overlook the trees than he could a pack of wild dogs. He could hear their roots rustling along the surface of the ground as he and Richard approached the warehouse.
    (OUR boy? OUR boy?)
    ‘Let’s get on the other side of the road,’ he said to Richard, and took his lumpy hand to lead him across.
    As soon as they reached the opposite side of the road, one of the Territories trees visibly stretched out, root and branch, for them. If trees had stomachs, they could have heard its stomach growl. The gnarly branch and the smooth snakelike root whipped across the yellow line, then across half the remaining distance to the boys. Jack prodded gasping Richard in the side with his elbow, then grasped his arm and pulled him along.
    (MY MY MY MY BOY! YESSS!!)
    A tearing, ripping sound suddenly filled the air, and for a moment Jack thought that Morgan of Orris was raping a passage through the worlds again, becoming Morgan Sloat . . . Morgan Sloat with a final, not-to-be-refused offer involving a machinegun, a blowtorch, a pair of red-hot pincers . . . but instead of Richard’s furious father, the crown of the Territories tree struck the middle of the road, bounced once in a snapping of branches, then rolled over on its side like a dead animal.
    ‘Oh my God,’ Richard said. ‘It came right out of the ground after us.’
    Which was precisely what Jack had been thinking. ‘Kamikaze tree,’ he said. ‘I think things are going to be a little wild here in Point Venuti.’
    ‘Because of the black hotel?’
    ‘Sure – but also because of the Talisman.’ He looked down the road and saw another clump of the carnivorous trees about ten yards down the hill. ‘The vibes or the atmosphere or whatever the ding-dong you want to call it are all screwed up – because everything’s evil and good, black and white, all mixed