The Talisman by Stephen King

sky. On the turnpike, big semis droned by, filling the air with the stink of burned diesel fuel. The woods here were trashed-out, the way the woods bordering any interstate rest area always were. Empty Dorito bags. Squashed Big Mac boxes.

Crimped Pepsi and Budweiser cans with pop-tops that rattled inside if you kicked them. Smashed bottles of Wild Irish Rose and Five O’Clock gin. A pair of shredded nylon panties over

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there, with a mouldering sanitary napkin still glued to the crotch. A rubber poked over a broken branch. Plenty of nifty stuff, all right, hey-hey. And lots of graffiti jotted on the walls of the men’s room, almost all of it the sort a fellow like

Emory W. Light could really relate to: I LIKE TO SUK BIG FAT

COX. BE HERE AT 4 FOR THE BEST BLOJOB YOU EVER HAD. REEM

OUT MY BUTT. And here was a gay poet with large aspirations: LET THE HOLE HUMAN RACE/JERK OFF ON MY SMILING FACE.

I’m homesick for the Territories, Jack thought, and there was no surprise at all in the realization. Here he stood behind two brick outhouses off I-70 somewhere in western Ohio,

shivering in a ragged sweater he had bought in a thrift store for a buck and a half, waiting for that large bald man down there to get back on his horse and ride.

Jack’s POLICY was simplicity itself: don’t antagonize a

man with large bald hands and a large bald voice.

Jack sighed with relief. Now it was starting to work. An

expression that was half-anger, half-disgust, had settled over Emory W. Light’s large bald face. He went back to his car, got in, backed up so fast he almost hit the pick-up truck passing behind him (there was a brief blare of horns and the passenger in the truck shot Emory W. Light the finger), and then left.

Now it was only a matter of standing on the ramp where

the rest-area traffic rejoined the turnpike traffic with his thumb out . . . and, he hoped, catching a ride before it started to rain.

Jack spared another look around. Ugly, wretched. These words came quite naturally to mind as he looked around at the littery desolation here on the rest area’s pimply backside. It occurred to Jack that there was a feeling of death here—not just at this rest area or on the interstate roads but pressed deep into all the country he had travelled. Jack thought that sometimes he could even see it, a desperate shade of hot dark

brown, like the exhaust from the shortstack of a fast-moving Jimmy-Pete.

The new homesickness came back—the wanting to go to

the Territories and see that dark blue sky, the slight curve at the edge of the horizon. . . .

But it plays those Jerry Bledsoe changes.

Don’t know nothin bout dat . . . All I know is you seem to have this idear of “moider” a little broad. . . .

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Walking down to the rest area—now he really did have to

urinate—Jack sneezed three times, quickly. He swallowed

and winced at the hot prickle in his throat. Getting sick, oh yeah. Great. Not even into Indiana yet, fifty degrees, rain in the forecast, no ride, and now I’m—

The thought broke off cleanly. He stared at the parking lot, his mouth falling wide open. For one awful moment he

thought he was going to wet his pants as everything below his breastbone seemed to cramp and squeeze.

Sitting in one of the twenty or so slant parking spaces, its deep green surface now dulled with road-dirt, was Uncle

Morgan’s BMW. No chance of a mistake; no chance at all.

California vanity plates MLS, standing for Morgan Luther

Sloat. It looked as if it had been driven fast and hard.

But if he flew to New Hampshire, how can his car be here?

Jack’s mind yammered. It’s a coincidence, Jack, just a—

Then he saw the man standing with his back to him at the

pay telephone and knew it was no coincidence. He was wear-

ing a bulky Army-style anorak, fur-lined, a garment more

suited to five below than to fifty degrees. Back-to or not, there was no mistaking those broad shoulders and that big, loose, hulking frame.

The man at the phone started to turn around, crooking the

phone between his ear and shoulder.

Jack drew back against the brick side of the men’s toilet.

Did he see me?

No, he answered himself. No, I don’t think so. But—

But Captain Farren had said that Morgan—that other

Morgan—would smell him like a cat smells a rat, and so he had.

From his hiding place in that dangerous forest, Jack had seen the hideous white face in the window of the diligence change.

This Morgan would smell him, too. If given the time.

Footfalls around the corner, approaching.

Face numb and twisted with fear, Jack fumbled off his

pack and then dropped it, knowing he was too late, too slow, that Morgan would come around the corner and seize him by

the neck, smiling. Hi, Jacky! Allee-allee-in-free! Game’s over now, isn’t it, you little prick?

A tall man in a houndstooth-check jacket passed the cor-

ner of the rest-room, gave Jack a disinterested glance, and went to the drinking fountain.

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Going back. He was going back. There was no guilt, at

least not now; only that terrible trapped fear mingling oddly with feelings of relief and pleasure. Jack fumbled his pack open. Here was Speedy’s bottle, with less than an inch of the purple liquid now left

(no boy needs dat poison to travel with but I do Speedy I do!)

sloshing around in the bottom. No matter. He was going

back. His heart leaped at the thought. A big Saturday-night grin dawned on his face, denying both the gray day and the

fear in his heart. Going back, oh yeah, dig it.

More footsteps approaching, and this was Uncle Morgan,

no doubt about that heavy yet somehow mincing step. But the fear was gone. Uncle Morgan had smelled something, but

when he turned the corner he would see nothing but empty

Dorito bags and crimped beercans.

Jack pulled in breath—pulled in the greasy stink of diesel

fumes and car exhausts and cold autumn air. Tipped the bottle up to his lips. Took one of the two swallows left. And even with his eyes shut he squinted as—

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Wolf

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—the strong sunlight struck his closed lids.

Through the gagging-sweet odor of the magic juice he

could smell something else . . . the warm smell of animals.

He could hear them, too, moving all about him.

Frightened, Jack opened his eyes but at first could see

nothing—the difference in the light was so sudden and abrupt that it was as if someone had suddenly turned on a cluster of two-hundred-watt bulbs in a black room.

A warm, hide-covered flank brushed him, not in a threat-

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ening way (or so Jack hoped), but most definitely in an I’m-in-a-hurry-to-be-gone-thank-you-very-much way. Jack, who

had been getting up, thumped back to the ground again.

“Hey! Hey! Get away from im! Right here and right now!”

A loud, healthy whack followed by a disgruntled animal sound somewhere between a moo and a baa. “God’s nails! Got

no sense! Get away from im fore I bite your God-pounding eyes out!”

Now his eyes had adjusted enough to the brightness of this

almost flawless Territories autumn day to make out a young

giant standing in the middle of a herd of milling animals,

whacking their sides and slightly humped backs with what

appeared to be great gusto and very little real force. Jack sat up, automatically finding Speedy’s bottle with its one precious swallow left and putting it away. He never took his eyes from the young man who stood with his back to him.

Tall he was—six-five at least, Jack guessed—and with

shoulders so broad that his across still looked slightly out of proportion to his high. Long, greasy black hair shagged down his back to the shoulder blades. Muscles bulged and rippled as he moved amid the animals, which looked like pygmy

cows. He was driving them away from Jack and toward the

Western Road.

He was a striking figure, even when seen from behind, but

what amazed Jack was his dress. Everyone he had seen in the Territories (including himself) had been wearing tunics,

jerkins, or rough breeches.

This fellow appeared to be wearing Oshkosh bib overalls.

Then he turned around and Jack felt a horrible shocked

dismay well up in his throat. He shot to his feet.

It was the Elroy-thing.

The herdsman was the Elroy-thing.

2

Except it wasn’t.