The Talisman by Stephen King

Then he smelled blood again, and looked sideways, toward

the door. The skinned hindquarters of a rabbit had been thrust through the gap. They lay sprawled on the rough boards, leaking blood, glistening. Smudges of dirt and a long ragged

scrape showed that they had been forced into the shed. Wolf was trying to feed him.

“Oh, Jeez,” Jack groaned. The rabbit’s stripped legs were

disconcertingly human. Jack’s stomach folded into itself. But instead of vomiting, he laughed, startled by an absurd comparison. Wolf was like the family pet who each morning pre-

sents his owners with a dead bird, an eviscerated mouse.

With two fingers Jack delicately picked up the horrible of-

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fering and deposited it under the bench. He still felt like laughing, but his eyes were wet. Wolf had survived the first night of his transformation, and so had Jack.

The next morning brought an absolutely anonymous, almost

ovoid knuckle of meat around a startingly white bone splin-

tered at both ends.

12

On the morning of the fourth day Jack heard someone sliding down into the gully. A startled bird squawked, then noisily lifted itself off the roof of the shed. Heavy footsteps advanced toward the door. Jack raised himself onto his elbows and

blinked into the darkness.

A large body thudded against the door and stayed there. A

pair of split and stained penny loafers was visible through the gap.

“Wolf?” Jack asked softly. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Give me the key, Jack.”

Jack slipped his hand into his pocket, brought out the key, and pushed it directly between the penny loafers. A large

brown hand dropped into view and picked up the key.

“Bring any water?” Jack asked. Despite what he had been

able to extract from Wolf ’s gruesome presents, he had come close to serious dehydration—his lips were puffy and cracked, and his tongue felt swollen, baked. The key slid into the lock, and Jack heard it click open.

Then the lock came away from the door.

“A little,” Wolf said. “Close your eyes, Jacky. You have

night-eyes now.”

Jack clasped his hands over his eyes as the door opened,

but the light which boomed and thundered into the shed still managed to trickle through his fingers and stab his eyes. He hissed with the pain. “Better soon,” Wolf said, very close to him. Wolf ’s arms circled and lifted him. “Eyes closed,” Wolf warned, and stepped backward out of the shed.

Even as Jack said, “Water,” and felt the rusty lip of an old cup meet his own lips, he knew why Wolf had not lingered in the shed. The air outside seemed unbelievably fresh and

sweet—it might have been imported directly from the Territo-

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ries. He sucked in a double tablespoon of water that tasted like the best meal on earth and wound down through him like a sparkling little river, reviving everything it touched. He felt as though he were being irrigated.

Wolf removed the cup from his lips long before Jack con-

sidered he was through with it. “If I give you more you’ll just sick it up,” Wolf said. “Open your eyes, Jack—but only a little bit.”

Jack followed directions. A million particles of light

stormed into his eyes. He cried out.

Wolf sat down, cradling Jack in his arms. “Sip,” he said,

and put the cup once more to Jack’s lips. “Eyes open, little more.”

Now the sunlight hurt much less. Jack peered out through

the screen of his eyelashes at a flaring dazzle while another miraculous trickle of water slipped down his throat.

“Ah,” Jack said. “What makes water so delicious?”

“The western wind,” Wolf promptly replied.

Jack opened his eyes wider. The swarm and dazzle re-

solved into the weathered brown of the shed and the mixed

green and lighter brown of the gully. His head rested against Wolf ’s shoulder. The bulge of Wolf ’s stomach pressed into his backbone.

“Are you okay, Wolf?” he asked. “Did you get enough to

eat?”

“Wolfs always get enough to eat,” Wolf said simply. He

patted the boy’s thigh.

“Thanks for bringing me those pieces of meat.”

“I promised. You were the herd. Remember?”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” Jack said. “Can I have some more

of that water?” He slid off Wolf ’s huge lap and sat on the ground, where he could face him.

Wolf handed him the cup. The John Lennon glasses were

back; Wolf ’s beard was now little more than a scurf covering his cheeks; his black hair, though still long and greasy, fell well short of his shoulders. Wolf ’s face was friendly and

peaceful, almost tired-looking. Over the bib overalls he wore a gray sweatshirt, about two sizes too small, with INDIANA

UNIVERSITY ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT stencilled on the front.

He looked more like an ordinary human being than at any

other time since he and Jack had met. He did not look as if he

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could have made it through the simplest college course, but he could have been a great high-school football player.

Jack sipped again—Wolf ’s hand hovered above the rusty

tin cup, ready to snatch it away if Jack gulped. “You’re really okay?”

“Right here and now,” Wolf said. He rubbed his other hand

over his belly, so distended that it stretched the fabric at the bottom of the sweatshirt as taut as a hand would a rubber

glove. “Just tired. Little sleep, Jack. Right here and now.”

“Where’d you get the sweatshirt?”

“It was hanging on a line,” Wolf said. “Cold here, Jacky.”

“You didn’t hurt any people, did you?”

“No people. Wolf! Drink that water slow, now.” His eyes

disconcertingly shaded into happy Halloween orange for a

second, and Jack saw that Wolf could never really be said to resemble an ordinary human being. Then Wolf opened his

wide mouth and yawned. “Little sleep.” He hitched himself

into a more comfortable position on the slope and put down

his head. He was almost immediately asleep.

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THREE

A COLLISION OF

WORLDS

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Taken by the Law

1

By two o’clock that afternoon they were a hundred miles

west, and Jack Sawyer felt as if he too had been running with the moon—it had gone that easily. In spite of his extreme

hunger, Jack sipped slowly at the water in the rusty can and waited for Wolf to awaken. Finally Wolf stirred, said, “Ready now, Jack,” hitched the boy up onto his back, and trotted into Daleville.

While Wolf sat outside on the curb and tried to look incon-

spicuous, Jack entered the Daleville Burger King. He made

himself go first to the men’s room and strip to the waist. Even in the bathroom, the maddening smell of grilling meat caused the saliva to spill into his mouth. He washed his hands, arms, chest, face. Then he stuck his head under the tap and washed his hair with liquid soap. Crumpled paper towels fell, one after the other, to the floor.

At last he was ready to go to the counter. The uniformed

girl there stared at him while he gave his order—his wet hair, he thought. While she waited for the order to come through, the girl stepped back and leaned against the service hatch, still unabashedly looking at him.

He was biting into the first Whopper as he turned away to-

ward the glass doors. Juice ran down his chin. He was so hungry he could scarcely bother to chew. Three enormous bites

took most of the big sandwich. He had just worked his mouth far enough around the remainder to take a fourth when he saw through the doors that Wolf had attracted a crowd of children.

The meat congealed in his mouth, and his stomach slammed

shut.

Jack hurried outside, still trying to swallow his mouthful

of ground chuck, limp bread, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and

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sauce. The kids stood in the street on three sides of Wolf, staring at him every bit as frankly as the waitress had stared at Jack. Wolf had hunched down on the curb as far as he was

able, bowing his back and pulling in his neck like a turtle. His ears seemed flattened against his head. The wad of food stuck in Jack’s throat like a golfball, and when he swallowed convulsively, it dropped down another notch.

Wolf glanced at him out of the side of his eye, and visibly relaxed. A tall blue-jeaned man in his twenties opened the

door of a battered red pick-up five or six feet away down the curb, leaned against the cab, and watched, smiling. “Have a burger, Wolf,” Jack said as carelessly as he could. He handed Wolf the box, which Wolf sniffed. Then Wolf lifted his head and took a huge bite out of the box. He began methodically to chew. The children, astounded and fascinated, stepped nearer.