The Talisman by Stephen King

And suddenly a hand slithers around his wrist.

Daddy? he asks, but when he looks down he sees not a human hand but a scaly green thing covered with writhing suckers, a green thing attached to a long, rubbery arm which stretches off into the darkness and toward a pair of yellow, upslanted eyes that stare at him with flat hunger.

Screeching, he tears free and flings himself blindly into the black . . . and just as his groping fingers find his father’s sport coats and suits again, as he hears the blessed, rational sound of jangling coathangers, that green, sucker-lined hand waltzes dryly across the back of his neck again . . . and is gone.

Page 470

470

THE TALISMAN

He waits, trembling, as pallid as day-old ashes in a cold stove, for three hours outside that damned closet, afraid to go back in, afraid of the green hand and the yellow eyes, more and more sure that his father must be dead. And when his father comes back into the room near the end of the fourth hour, not from the closet but from the door which communicates between the bedroom and the upstairs hall—the door BEHIND

Richard—when that happens, Richard rejects fantasy for

good and all; Richard negates fantasy; Richard refuses to deal with fantasy, or treat with it, or compromise with it. He has, quite simply, Had Enough, Forever. He jumps up, runs to his father, to the beloved Morgan Sloat, and hugs him so tightly that his arms will be sore all that week. Morgan lifts him up, laughs, and asks him why he looks so pale. Richard smiles, and tells him that it was probably something he ate for breakfast, but he feels better now, and he kisses his father’s cheek, and smells the beloved smell of mingled sweat and Raj cologne. And later that day, he takes all of his storybooks—

the Little Golden Books, the pop-up books, the I-Can-Read books, the Dr. Seuss books, the Green Fairy Book for Young Folks, and he puts them in a carton, and he puts the carton down in the basement, and he thinks: “I would not care if an earthquake came now and opened a crack in the floor and swallowed up every one of those books. In fact, it would be a relief. In fact, it would be such a relief that I would probably laugh all day and most of the weekend.” This does not happen, but Richard feels a great relief when the books are shut in double darkness—the darkness of the carton and the darkness of the cellar. He never looks at them again, just as he never goes in his father’s closet with the folding door again, and although he sometimes dreams that there is something under his bed or in his closet, something with flat yellow eyes, he never thinks about that green, sucker-covered hand again until the strange time comes to Thayer School and he bursts into unaccustomed tears in his friend Jack Sawyer’s arms.

He has Had Enough, Forever.

4

Jack had hoped that with the telling of his story and the passing of his tears, Richard would return—more or less—to his

Page 471

A Collision of Worlds

471

normal, sharply rational self. Jack didn’t really care if

Richard bought the whole nine yards or not; if Richard could just reconcile himself to accepting the leading edge of this craziness, he could turn his formidable mind to helping Jack find a way out . . . a way off the Thayer campus, anyway, and out of Richard’s life before Richard went totally bananas.

But it didn’t work that way. When Jack tried to talk to

him—to tell Richard about the time his own father, Phil, had gone into the garage and hadn’t come out—Richard refused

to listen. The old secret of what had happened that day in the closet was out (sort of; Richard still clung stubbornly to the idea that it had been a hallucination), but Richard had still Had Enough, Forever.

The next morning, Jack went downstairs. He got all of his

own things and those things he thought Richard might want—

toothbrush, textbooks, notebooks, a fresh change of clothes.

They would spend that day in Albert the Blob’s room, he de-

cided. They could keep an eye on the quad and the gate from up there. When night fell again, maybe they could get away.

5

Jack hunted through Albert’s desk and found a bottle of baby aspirin. He looked at this for a moment, thinking that these little orange pills said almost as much about the departed Albert’s Loving Mom as the carton of licorice whips on the

closet shelf. Jack shook out half a dozen pills. He gave them to Richard and Richard took them absently. “Come on over

here and lie down,” Jack said.

“No,” Richard answered—his tone was cross and restless

and terribly unhappy. He returned to the window. “I ought to keep a watch. So a full report can be made to . . . to . . . to the trustees. Later.”

Jack touched Richard’s brow lightly. And although it was

cool—almost chilly—he said: “Your fever’s worse, Richard.

Better lie down until that aspirin goes to work.”

“Worse?” Richard looked at him with pathetic gratitude.

“Is it?”

“It is,” Jack said gravely. “Come on and lie down.”

Richard was asleep five minutes after he lay down. Jack sat in Albert the Blob’s easy chair, its seat nearly as sprung as the

Page 472

472

THE TALISMAN

middle of Albert’s mattress. Richard’s pale face glowed waxily in the growing daylight.

6

Somehow the day passed, and around four o’clock, Jack fell

asleep. He awoke to darkness, not knowing how long he had

been out. He only knew there had been no dreams, and for

that he was grateful. Richard was stirring uneasily and Jack guessed he would be up soon. He stood and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in his back. He went to the window, looked out, and stood motionless, eyes wide. His first thought was I don’t want Richard to see this. Not if I can help it.

O God, we’ve got to get out of here, and just as soon as we can, Jack thought, frightened. Even if, for whatever reasons, they’re afraid to come straight at us.

But was he really going to take Richard out of here? They

didn’t think he would do it, he knew that—they were counting on his refusing to expose his friend to any more of this craziness.

Flip, Jack-O. You’ve got to flip over, and you know it. And you’ve got to take Richard with you because this place is going to hell.

I can’t. Flipping into the Territories would blow Richard’s wheels completely.

Doesn’t matter. You have to do it. It’s the best thing, anyway—maybe the only thing—because they won’t be expect-

ing it.

“Jack?” Richard was sitting up. His face had a strange,

naked look without his glasses. “Jack, is it over? Was it a dream?”

Jack sat down on the bed and put an arm around Richard’s

shoulders. “No,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “It’s not over yet, Richard.”

“I think my fever’s worse,” Richard announced, pulling

away from Jack. He drifted over to the window, one of the

bows of his glasses pinched delicately between the thumb

and forefinger of his right hand. He put his spectacles on

and looked out. Shapes with glowing eyes roamed back and

forth. He stood there for a long time, and then he did some-

Page 473

A Collision of Worlds

473

thing so un-Richardlike that Jack could barely credit it. He took his glasses off again and deliberately dropped them.

There was a frigid little crunch as one lens cracked. Then he stepped deliberately back on them, shattering both lenses to powder.

He picked them up, looked at them, and then tossed them

unconcernedly toward Albert the Blob’s wastebasket. He

missed by a wide margin. There was now something softly

stubborn in Richard’s face, too—something that said I don’t want to see any more, so I won’t see any more, and I have taken care of the problem. I have Had Enough, Forever.

“Look at that,” he said in a flat, unsurprised voice. “I broke my glasses. I had another pair, but I broke them in gym two weeks ago. I’m almost blind without them.”

Jack knew this wasn’t true, but he was too flabbergasted to say anything. He could think of absolutely no appropriate response to the radical action Richard had just taken—it had

been too much like a calculated last-ditch stand against madness.

“I think my fever’s worse too,” Richard said. “Have you

got any more of those aspirin, Jack?”

Jack opened the desk drawer and wordlessly handed

Richard the bottle. Richard swallowed six or eight of them, then lay down again.

7

As the night deepened, Richard, who repeatedly promised to

discuss their situation, repeatedly went back on his word. He couldn’t discuss leaving, he said, couldn’t discuss any of this, not now, his fever had come back and it felt much, much