The Talisman

that the black hotel, though still very large, was nothing like mountainous.
    COME I NEED YOU NOW, sang out the Talisman. YOU ARE RIGHT IT IS NOT AS GREAT AS IT WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE.
     
    At the top of the last hill he stopped and looked down. There they were, all right, all of them. And there was the black hotel, all of it . Main Street descended to the beach, which was white sand interrupted by big outcroppings of rocks like jagged discolored teeth. The Agincourt reared up a short distance off to his left, flanked on the ocean side by a massive stone breakwater running far out into the water. Before it, stretching out in a line, a dozen long black limousines, some dusty, others as polished as mirrors, sat, their motors running. Streamers of white exhaust, low-flying clouds whiter than the air, drifted out from many of the cars. Men in FBI-agent black suits patrolled along the fence, holding their hands up to their eyes. When Jack saw two red flashes of light stab out before one of the men’s faces, he reflexively dodged sideways around the side of one of the little houses, moving before he was actually conscious that the men carried binoculars.
    For a second or two, he must have looked like a beacon, standing upright at the brow of a hill. Knowing that a momentary carelessness had nearly led to his capture, Jack breathed hard for a moment and rested his shoulder against the peeling gray shingles of the house. Jack hitched Richard up to a more comfortable position on his back.
    Anyhow, now he knew that he would somehow have to approach the black hotel from its sea side, which meant getting across the beach unseen.
    When he straightened up again, he peeked around the side of the house and looked downhill. Morgan Sloat’s reduced army sat in its limousines or, random as ants, milled before the high black fence. For a crazy moment Jack recalled with total precision his first sight of the Queen’s summer palace. Then, too, he had stood above a scene crowded with people moving back and forth with apparent randomness. What was it like there, now? On that day – which seemed to have taken place in pre-history, so far must he look back – the crowds before the pavillion, the entire scene, had in spite of all an undeniable aura of peace, of order. That would be gone now, Jack knew. Now Osmond would rule the scene before the great tentlike structure, and those people brave enough to enter the pavillion would scurry in, heads averted. And what of the Queen? Jack wondered. He could not help remembering that shockingly familiar face cradled in the whiteness of bed linen.
    And then Jack’s heart nearly froze, and the vision of the pavillion and the sick Queen dropped into a slot in Jack’s memory. Sunlight Gardener strolled into Jack’s line of vision, a bullhorn in his hand. Wind from the sea blew a thick strand of white hair across his sunglasses. For a second Jack was sure that he could smell his odor of sweet cologne and jungle rot. Jack forgot to breathe for perhaps five seconds, and just stood beside the cracked and peeling shingle wall, staring down as a madman yelled orders to black-suited men, pirouetted, pointed at something hidden from Jack, and made an expressive moue of disapproval.
    He remembered to breathe.
    ‘Well, we’ve got an interesting situation here, Richard,’ Jack said. ‘We got a hotel that can double its size whenever it wants to, I guess, and down there we also have the world’s craziest man.’
    Richard, who Jack had thought was asleep, surprised him by mumbling something audible only as guffuf .
    ‘What?’
    ‘Go for it,’ Richard whispered weakly. ‘Move it, chum.’
    Jack actually laughed. A second later, he was carefully moving downhill past the backs of houses, going through tall horsetail grass toward the beach.

CHAPTER FORTY
SPEEDY ON THE BEACH
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    1
    At the bottom of the hill, Jack flattened out in the grass and crawled, carrying Richard as he had once carried his backpack. When he reached the border of high yellow weeds alongside the edge of the road, he inched forward on his belly and looked out. Directly ahead of him, on the other side of the road, the beach began. Tall weatherbeaten rocks jutted out of the grayish sand; grayish water foamed onto the shore. Jack looked leftward down the street. A short distance past the hotel, on the inland side of the beach road, stood a long crumbling structure like a sliced-off wedding cake. Above it a wooden sign with a great hole in