The Talisman by Stephen King

perspective, the road did not reappear again until it began to mount the rise opposite, going uphill and south toward San

Francisco. He saw only the stairlike descent of the warehouse roofs, the fenced-in parking lots, and, way off to the right, the wintry gray of the water. No people moved on any portion of the road visible to him; nobody appeared in the row of little windows at the back of the nearest factory. Dust swirled

through the empty parking lots. Point Venuti looked deserted, but Jack knew that it was not. Morgan Sloat and his cohorts—

those who had survived the surprise arrival of the Territories choo-choo, anyway—would be waiting for the arrival of Travelling Jack and Rational Richard. The Talisman boomed out

to Jack, urging him forward, and he said, “Well, this is it, kiddo,” and stepped forward.

Two new facets of Point Venuti immediately came into

view. The first was the appearance of approximately nine

inches of the rear of a Cadillac limousine—Jack saw the

glossy black paint, the shiny bumper, part of the right taillight. Jack wished fervently that the renegade Wolf behind the wheel had been one of the Camp Readiness casualties. Then

he looked out toward the ocean again. Gray water lathered toward the shore. A slow movement up above the factory and

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warehouse roofs took his attention in the middle of his next step. COME HERE, the Talisman called in that urgent, magnetic manner. Point Venuti seemed somehow to contract like a hand into a fist. Up above the roofs, and only now visible, a dark but colorless weathervane shaped like the head of a wolf spun erratically back and forth, obeying no wind.

When Jack saw the lawless weathervane tracking left-

right, then right–left, and continuing around in a complete circle, he knew that he had just had his first sight of the black hotel—at least a portion of it. From the roofs of the warehouses, from the road ahead, from all of the unseen town, rose an unmistakable feeling of enmity as palpable as a slap in the face. The Territories were bleeding through into Point Venuti, Jack realized; here, reality had been sanded thin. The wolf ’s head whirled meaninglessly in mid-air, and the Talisman continued to pull at Jack. COME HERE COME HERE COME

NOW COME NOW NOW . . . Jack realized that along with

its incredible and increasing pull, the Talisman was singing to him. Wordlessly, tunelessly, but singing, a curving rise and fall of whale’s melody that would be inaudible to anyone else.

The Talisman knew he had just seen the hotel’s weather-

vane.

Point Venuti might be the most depraved and dangerous

place in all North and South America, Jack thought, suddenly bolder by half, but it could not keep him from going into the Agincourt Hotel. He turned to Richard, feeling now as if he had been doing nothing but resting and exercising for a

month, and tried not to let his dismay at his friend’s condition show in his face. Richard could not stop him, either—if he

had to, he’d shove Richard right through the walls of the

damned hotel. He saw tormented Richard drag his fingernails through his hair and down the hivelike rash on his temples

and cheeks.

“We’re going to do this, Richard,” he said. “I know we are.

I don’t care how much crazy bullshit they throw at us. We are going to do this.”

“Our troubles are going to have troubles with us,” said

Richard, quoting—surely unconsciously—from Dr. Seuss. He

paused. “I don’t know if I can make it. That’s the truth. I’m dead on my feet.” He gave Jack a look of utterly naked anguish. “What’s happening to me, Jack?”

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“I don’t know, but I know how to stop it.” And hoped that

that was true.

“Is my father doing this to me?” Richard asked miserably.

He ran his hands experimentally over his puffy face. Then he lifted his shirt out of his trousers and examined the red coalescing rash on his stomach. The bumps, shaped vaguely like the state of Oklahoma, began at his waistline and extended

around both sides and up nearly to his neck. “It looks like a virus or something. Did my father give it to me?”

“I don’t think he did it on purpose, Richie,” Jack said. “If that means anything.”

“It doesn’t,” Richard said.

“It’s all going to stop. The Seabrook Island Express is

coming to the end of the line.”

Richard right beside him, Jack stepped forward—and saw

the taillights of the Cadillac flash on, then off, before the car slipped forward out of his sight.

There would be no surprise attack this time, no wonderful

slam-bang arrival through a fence with a trainful of guns and ammunition, but even if everybody in Point Venuti knew they were coming, Jack was on his way. He felt suddenly as if he had strapped on armor, as if he held a magic sword. Nobody

in Point Venuti had the power to harm him, at least not until he got to the Agincourt Hotel. He was on his way, Rational

Richard beside him, and all would be well. And before he had taken three more steps, his muscles singing along with the

Talisman, he had a better, more accurate image of himself

than of a knight going out to do battle. The image came

straight from one of his mother’s movies, delivered by celestial telegram. It was as if he were on a horse, a broad-

brimmed hat on his head and a gun tied to his hip, riding in to clean up Deadwood Gulch.

Last Train to Hangtown, he remembered: Lily Cavanaugh, Clint Walker, and Will Hutchins, 1960. So be it.

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Four or five of the Territories trees struggled out of the hard brown soil beside the first of the abandoned buildings. Maybe they had been there all along, snaking their branches over the road nearly to the white line, maybe not; Jack could not re-

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member seeing them when he first looked down toward the

concealed town. It was scarcely more conceivable, though,

that he could overlook the trees than he could a pack of wild dogs. He could hear their roots rustling along the surface of the ground as he and Richard approached the warehouse.

(OUR boy? OUR boy?)

“Let’s get on the other side of the road,” he said to Richard, and took his lumpy hand to lead him across.

As soon as they reached the opposite side of the road, one

of the Territories trees visibly stretched out, root and branch, for them. If trees had stomachs, they could have heard its

stomach growl. The gnarly branch and the smooth snakelike

root whipped across the yellow line, then across half the remaining distance to the boys. Jack prodded gasping Richard

in the side with his elbow, then grasped his arm and pulled him along.

(MY MY MY MY BOY! YESSS!!)

A tearing, ripping sound suddenly filled the air, and for a moment Jack thought that Morgan of Orris was raping a passage through the worlds again, becoming Morgan Sloat . . .

Morgan Sloat with a final, not-to-be-refused offer involving a machine-gun, a blowtorch, a pair of red-hot pincers . . . but instead of Richard’s furious father, the crown of the Territories tree struck the middle of the road, bounced once in a snapping of branches, then rolled over on its side like a dead animal.

“Oh my God,” Richard said. “It came right out of the

ground after us.”

Which was precisely what Jack had been thinking.

“Kamikaze tree,” he said. “I think things are going to be a little wild here in Point Venuti.”

“Because of the black hotel?”

“Sure—but also because of the Talisman.” He looked

down the road and saw another clump of the carnivorous trees about ten yards down the hill. “The vibes or the atmosphere or whatever the ding-dong you want to call it are all screwed up—because everything’s evil and good, black and white, all mixed up.”

Jack was keeping his eye on the clump of trees they now

slowly approached as he talked, and saw the nearest tree

twitch its crown toward them, as if it had heard his voice.

Maybe this whole town is a big Oatley, Jack was thinking,

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and maybe he would come through after all—but if there was

a tunnel up ahead, the last thing Jack Sawyer was going to do was enter it. He really did not want to meet the Point Venuti version of Elroy.

“I’m afraid,” Richard said behind him. “Jack, what if more

of those trees can jump out of the ground like that?”

“You know,” Jack said, “I’ve noticed that even when trees

are mobile, they can’t actually get very far. Even a turkey like you ought to be able to outrun a tree.”