The Talisman

Morgan asked this without much interest.
    ‘I don’t know. I think so. Shall I send men down to pick him up?’
    ‘ No! ’ Morgan said sharply. ‘No – but we’re going down near where he is, aren’t we, Gard?’
    ‘We are?’
    Morgan began to grin.
    ‘Yes. You . . . me . . . all of us. Because if Jack comes out of the hotel, he’ll go there first. He won’t leave his old night-fighting buddy on the beach, will he?’
    Now Gardener also began to grin. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
    For the first time Morgan became aware of dull and throbbing pain in his hands. He opened them and looked thoughtfully at the blood which flowed out of the deep semi-circular wounds in his palms. His grin did not falter. Indeed, it widened.
    Gardener was staring at him solemnly. A great sense of power filled Morgan. He reached up to his neck and closed one bloody hand over the key that brought the lightning.
    ‘It profits a man the world ,’ he whispered. ‘Can you gimme hallelujah .’
    His lips pulled even further back. He grinned the sick yellow grin of a rogue wolf – a wolf that is old but still sly and tenacious and powerful.
    ‘Come on, Gard,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the beach.’

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE BLACK HOTEL
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    1
    Richard Sloat wasn’t dead, but when Jack picked his old friend up in his arms, he was unconscious.
    Who’s the herd now? Wolf asked in his head. Be careful, Jacky! Wolf! Be –
    COME TO ME! COME NOW! the Talisman sang in its powerful, soundless voice. COME TO ME, BRING THE HERD, AND ALL WILL BE WELL AND ALL WILL BE WELL AND –
    ‘– a’ manner a’ things wi’ be well,’ Jack croaked.
    He started forward and came within an inch of stepping right back through the trapdoor, like a kid participating in some bizarre double execution by hanging. Swing with a Friend , Jack thought crazily. His heart was hammering in his ears, and for a moment he thought he might vomit straight down into the gray water slapping at the pilings. Then he caught hold of himself and closed the trapdoor with his foot. Now there was only the sound of the weathervanes – cabalistic brass designs spinning restlessly in the sky.
    Jack turned toward the Agincourt.
    He was on a wide deck like an elevated verandah, he saw. Once, fashionable twenties and thirties folk had sat out here at the cocktail hour under the shade of umbrellas, drinking gin rickeys and sidecars, perhaps reading the latest Edgar Wallace or Ellery Queen novel, perhaps only looking out toward where Los Cavernes Island could be dimly glimpsed – a blue-gray whale’s hump dreaming on the horizon. The men in whites, the women in pastels.
    Once, maybe.
    Now the boards were warped and twisted and splintered. Jack didn’t know what color the deck had been painted before, but now it had gone black, like the rest of the hotel – the color of this place was the color he imagined the malignant tumors in his mother’s lungs must be.
    Twenty feet away were Speedy’s ‘window-doors’, through which guests would have passed back and forth in those dim old days. They had been soaped over in wide white strokes so that they looked like blind eyes.
    Written on one was:
    YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GO HOME
    Sound of the waves. Sound of the twirling ironmongery on the angled roofs. Stink of sea-salt and old spilled drinks – drinks spilled long ago by beautiful people who were now wrinkled and dead. Stink of the hotel itself. He looked at the soaped window again and saw with no real surprise that the message had already changed.
    SHE’S ALREADY DEAD JACK SO WHY BOTHER?
    (now who’s the herd?)
    ‘You are, Richie,’ Jack said, ‘but you ain’t alone.’
    Richard made a snoring, protesting sound in Jack’s arms. ‘Come on,’ Jack said, and began to walk. ‘One more mile. Give or take.’
    2
    The soaped-over windows actually seemed to widen as Jack walked toward the Agincourt, as if the black hotel were now regarding him with blind but contemptuous surprise.
    Do you really think, little boy, that you can come in here and really hope to ever come out? Do you think there’s that much Jason in you?
    Red sparks, like those he had seen in the air, flashed and twisted across the soaped glass. For a moment they took form. Jack watched, wondering, as they became tiny fire-imps. They skated down to the brass handles of the doors and converged there. The handles began to glow dully, like a smith’s iron in the forge.
    Go on, little boy. Touch one. Try.
    Once, as a kid of