The Talisman

which had followed his father’s death. He found that he had pushed Gardener’s knife hand all the way back up. He screamed again. Gardener’s fingerless left hand battered against Jack’s own left arm. Jack was just managing to twist Gardener’s wrist back when he felt that dripping pad of flesh insinuate itself between his chest and his arm. Richard continued to skirmish about Gardener, but Gardener was managing to get his fingerless hand very near the Talisman.
    Gardener tilted his face right up to Jack’s.
    ‘ Hallelujah ,’ he whispered.
    Jack twisted his entire body around, using more strength than he’d known he had. He hauled down on Gardener’s knife hand. The other, fingerless hand flew to the side. Jack squeezed the wrist of the knife hand. Corded tendons wriggled in his grasp. Then the knife dropped, as harmless now as the fingerless cushion of skin which struck repeatedly at Jack’s ribs. Jack rolled his whole body into the off-center Gardener and sent him lurching away.
    He shoved the Talisman toward Gardener. Richard squawked, What are you doing? This was right, right, right. Jack moved in toward Gardener, who was still gleaming at him, though with less assurance, and thrust the Talisman out toward him. Gardener grinned, another bubble of blood bulging fatly in the empty eyesocket, and swung wildly at the Talisman. Then he ducked for the knife. Jack rushed in and touched the Talisman’s grooved warm skin against Gardener’s own skin. Like Reuel, like Sunlight. He jumped back.
    Gardener howled like a lost, wounded animal. Where the Talisman had brushed against him, the skin had blackened, then turned to a slowly sliding fluid, skimming away from the skull. Jack retreated another step. Gardener fell to his knees. All the skin on his head turned waxy. Within half a second, only a gleaming skull protruded through the collar of the ruined shirt.
    That’s you taken care of , Jack thought, and good riddance!
    2
    ‘All right,’ Jack said. He felt full of crazy confidence. ‘Let’s go get him, Richie. Let’s—’
    He looked at Richard and saw that his friend was on the verge of collapsing again. He stood swaying on the sand, his eyes half-lidded and dopey.
    ‘Maybe you better just sit this one out, on second thought,’ Jack said.
    Richard shook his head. ‘Coming, Jack. Seabrook Island. All the way . . . to the end of the line.’
    ‘I’m going to have to kill him,’ Jack said. ‘That is, if I can.’
    Richard shook his head with dogged, stubborn persistence. ‘Not my father. Told you. Father’s dead. If you leave me I’ll crawl. Crawl right through the muck that guy left behind, if I have to.’
    Jack looked toward the rocks. He couldn’t see Morgan, but he didn’t think there was much question that Morgan was there. And if Speedy was still alive, Morgan might at this moment be taking steps to remedy that situation.
    Jack tried to smile but couldn’t make it. ‘Think of the germs you might pick up.’ He hesitated a moment longer, then held the Talisman reluctantly out to Richard. ‘I’ll carry you, but you’ll have to carry this. Don’t drop the ball, Richard. If you drop it—’
    What was it Speedy had said?
    ‘If you drop it, all be lost.’
    ‘I won’t drop it.’
    Jack put the Talisman into Richard’s hands, and again Richard seemed to improve at its touch . . . but not so much. His face was terribly wan. Washed in the Talisman’s bright glow, it looked like the face of a dead child caught in the glare of a police photographer’s flash.
    It’s the hotel. It’s poisoning him.
    But it wasn’t the hotel; not entirely. It was Morgan. Morgan was poisoning him.
    Jack turned around, discovering he was loath to look away from the Talisman even for a moment. He bent his back and curved his hands into stirrups.
    Richard climbed on. He held to the Talisman with one hand and curled the other around Jack’s neck. Jack grabbed Richard’s thighs.
    He is as light as a thistle. He has his own cancer. He’s had it all his life. Morgan Sloat is radioactive with evil and Richard is dying of the fallout.
    He started to jog down toward the rocks behind which Speedy lay, conscious of the light and heat of the Talisman just above him.
    3
    He ran around the left side of the clump of rocks with Richard on his back, still full of that crazy assurance . . . and that it was crazy was brought home to him with rude suddenness. A plumpish leg clad in light brown wool (and just below the