The Talisman

about that?
    ‘Jack, you came home,’ she said at last, and rubbed her eyes as if to make sure it was no mirage.
    ‘Sure,’ he said. He tried to smile. It was a pretty good smile in spite of the tears that were pouring down his face. ‘Sure, you bet.’
    ‘I feel . . . a lot better, Jack-O.’
    ‘Yeah?’ He smiled, rubbed his wet eyes with the heels of his palms. ‘That’s good, Mom.’
    Her eyes were radiant.
    ‘Hug me, Jacky.’
    In a room on the fourth floor of a deserted resort hotel on the minuscule New Hampshire seacoast, a thirteen-year-old boy named Jack Sawyer leaned forward, closed his eyes, and hugged his mother tightly, smiling. His ordinary life of school and friends and games and music, a life where there were schools to go to and crisp sheets to slide between at night, the ordinary life of a thirteen-year-old boy (if the life of such a creature can ever, in its color and riot, be considered ordinary) had been returned to him, he realized. The Talisman had done that for him, too. When he remembered to turn and look for it, the Talisman was gone.

EPILOGUE
----

    In a billowing white bedroom filled with anxious women,
    Laura DeLoessian, Queen of the Territories, opened her eyes.

CONCLUSION
----

    So endeth this chronicle. It being strictly the history of a boy , it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man . When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop – that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.
    Most of the characters who perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worthwhile to take up the story again and see what . . . they turned out to be; therefore, it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present.
    – Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer

STEPHEN KING
----

    Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947. He won a scholarship award to the University of Maine and later taught English, while his wife, Tabitha, got her degree. It was the publication of his first novel Carrie and its subsequent adaptation that set him on his way to over twenty years of world-wide bestsellerdom and his acclaimed position as the master of horror and suspense. Carrie was followed by a string of bestsellers which have included The Shining , The Stand , It , Misery , Bag of Bones , Hearts in Atlantis and Dreamcatcher. Stephen King lives in Bangor, Maine, his home state and the place where he feels he really belongs.

PETER STRAUB
----

    Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1943, and was educated at the University of Wisconsin, Columbia University and University College, Dublin. His bestselling books include Ghost Story, Shadowland, Floating Dragon (winner of the 1983 British Fantasy Award), Koko (winner of the 1989 World Fantasy Award), Mystery, Houses Without Doors , and The Throat . Peter Straub spent ten years in Britain and Ireland, and now lives in New York.
    In their bestseller The Talisman Stephen King and Peter Straub have combined their unique talents to create an unforgettable epic of fantasy, adventure and resounding triumph. The result of their second collaboration is Black House .

Also by Stephen King
Novels
    Carrie
    ’Salem’s Lot
    The Shining
    The Stand
    The Dead Zone
    Firestarter
    Cujo
    Cycle of the Werewolf
    Christine
    Pet Sematary
    It
    Skeleton Crew
    The Eyes of the Dragon
    Misery
    The Tommyknockers
    The Dark Half
    Needful Things
    Gerald’s Game
    Dolores Claiborne
    Insomnia
    Rose Madder
    Desperation
    Bag of Bones
    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
    Hearts in Atlantis
    Dreamcatcher
    Everything’s Eventual
    From a Buick 8
    Cell
    Lisey’s Story
    The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
    The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
    The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
    The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
    The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
    The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
    The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
    Collections
    Night Shift
    Different Seasons
    Four Past Midnight
    Nightmares and Dreamscapes
    Non-fiction
    Danse Macabre
    On Writing (A Memoir of the Craft)
    By Stephen King as Richard Bachman
    Thinner
    The Bachman Books
    The Regulators
    Blaze

Also by Peter Straub:
    Novels
    Marriages
    Under Venus
    Julia
    If You Could See Me Now
    Ghost Story
    Shadowland
    Floating Dragon
    Koko
    Mystery
    Mrs God
    The Throat
    The Hellfire Club
    Mr X
    Black House (with Stephen King)
    Lost Boy Lost Girl
    The Night