The Talisman by Stephen King

needed. Then he saw that the numerous windows were barred,

and the sprawling building immediately seemed penal, rather than childish.

Most of the boys in the fields had put down their tools to

watch the progress of the police car.

Franky Williams pulled up into the wide, rounded end of

the drive. As soon as he had cut off his engine, a tall figure stepped through the front door and stood regarding them from the top of the steps, his hands knitted together before him.

Beneath a full head of longish wavy white hair, the man’s face seemed unrealistically youthful—as if these chipped, vitally masculine features had been created or at least assisted by plastic surgery. It was the face of a man who could sell anything, anywhere, to anybody. His clothes were as white as his

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hair: white suit, white shoes, white shirt, and a trailing white silk scarf around his neck. As Jack and Wolf got out of the back seat, the man in white pulled a pair of dark green sunglasses from his suitpocket, put them on, and appeared to examine the two boys for a moment before smiling—long

creases split his cheeks. Then he removed the sunglasses and put them back in his pocket.

“Well,” he said. “Well, well, well. Where would we all be

without you, Officer Williams?”

“Afternoon, Reverend Gardener,” the policeman said.

“Is it the usual sort of thing, or were these two bold fellows actually engaged in criminal activity?”

“Vagrants,” said the cop. Hands on hips, he squinted up at

Gardener as if all that whiteness hurt his eyes. “Refused to give Fairchild their right names. This one, the big one,” he said, pointing a thumb at Wolf, “he wouldn’t talk at all. I had to nail him in the head just to get him in the car.”

Gardener shook his head tragically. “Why don’t you bring

them up here so they can introduce themselves, and then we’ll take care of the various formalities. Is there any reason why the two of them should look so, ah, shall we say, ‘befuddled’?”

“Just that I cracked that big one behind the ears.”

“Ummmmm.” Gardener stepped backward, steepling his

fingers before his chest.

As Williams prodded the boys up the steps to the long

porch, Gardener cocked his head and regarded his new ar-

rivals. Jack and Wolf reached the top of the steps and moved tentatively onto the surface of the porch. Franky Williams

wiped his forehead and huffed himself up beside them. Gar-

dener was smiling mistily, but his eyes switched back and

forth between the boys. The second after something hard,

cold, and familiar jumped out of his eyes at Jack, the Rev-

erend again twitched the sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. The smile remained misty and delicate, but even

wrapped as he was in a sense of false security, Jack felt frozen by that glance—because he had seen it before.

Reverend Gardener pulled the sunglasses below the bridge

of his nose and peered playfully over the tops of the frames.

“Names? Names? Might we have some names from you two

gentlemen?”

“I’m Jack,” the boy said, and then stopped—he did not

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want to say one more word until he had to. Reality seemed to fold and buckle about Jack for a moment: he felt that he had been jerked back into the Territories, but that now the Territories were evil and threatening, and that foul smoke, jumping flames, the screams of tortured bodies filled the air.

A powerful hand closed over his elbow and held him up-

right. Instead of the foulness and smoke, Jack smelled some heavy sweet cologne, applied too liberally. A pair of melancholy gray eyes were looking directly into his.

“And have you been a bad boy, Jack? Have you been a very

bad boy?”

“No, we were just hitching, and—”

“I think you’re a trifle stoned,” said the Reverend Gar-

dener. “We’ll have to see that you get some special attention, won’t we?” The hand released his elbow; Gardener stepped

neatly away, and pushed the sunglasses up over his eyes again.

“You do possess a last name, I imagine.”

“Parker,” Jack said.

“Yesss.” Gardener whipped the glasses off his head, exe-

cuted a dancing little half-turn, and was scrutinizing Wolf. He had given no indication whether he believed Jack or not.

“My,” he said. “You’re a healthy specimen, aren’t you?

Positively strapping. We’ll certainly be able to find a use for a big strong boy like you around here, praise the Lord. And

might I ask you to emulate Mr. Jack Parker here, and give me your name?”

Jack looked uneasily at Wolf. His head was bowed, and he

was breathing heavily. A glistening line of slobber went from the corner of his mouth to his chin. A black smudge, half-dirt, half-grease, covered the front of the stolen Athletic Department sweatshirt. Wolf shook his head, but the gesture seemed to have no content—he might have been shaking away a fly.

“Name, son? Name? Name? Are you called Bill? Paul?

Art? Sammy? No—something exceedingly foursquare, I’m

sure. George, perhaps?”

“Wolf,” said Wolf.

“Ah, that is nice.” Gardener beamed at both of them. “Mr.

Parker and Mr. Wolf. Perhaps you’ll escort them inside, Officer Williams? And aren’t we happy that Mr. Bast is in resi-

dence already? For the presence of Mr. Hector Bast—one of

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our stewards, by the way—means that we shall probably be

able to outfit Mr. Wolf.” He peered at the two boys over the frames of his sunglasses. “One of our beliefs here at the

Scripture Home is that the soldiers of the Lord march best

when they march in uniform. And Heck Bast is nearly as

large as your friend Wolf, young Jack Parker. So from the

points of view of both clothing and discipline you shall be very well served indeed. A comfort, yes?”

“Jack,” Wolf said in a low voice.

“Yes.”

“My head hurts, Jack. Hurts bad.”

“Your little head pains you, Mr. Wolf?” Reverend Sunlight

Gardener half-danced toward Wolf and gently patted his arm.

Wolf snatched his arm away, his face working into an exag-

gerated reflex of disgust. The cologne, Jack knew—that heavy cloying odor would have been like ammonia in Wolf ’s sensitive nostrils.

“Never mind, son,” said Gardener, seemingly unaffected

by Wolf ’s withdrawal from him. “Mr. Bast or Mr. Singer, our other steward, will see to that inside. Frank, I thought I told you to get them into the Home.”

Officer Williams reacted as if he had been jabbed in the

back with a pin. His face grew more feverish, and he jerked his peculiar body across the porch to the front door.

Sunlight Gardener twinkled at Jack again, and the boy saw

that all his dandified animation was only a kind of sterile self-amusement: the man in white was cold and crazy within. A

heavy gold chain rattled out of Gardener’s sleeve and came to rest against the base of his thumb. Jack heard the whistle of a whip cutting through the air, and this time he recognized Gardener’s dark gray eyes.

Gardener was Osmond’s Twinner.

“Inside, young fellows,” Gardener said, half-bowing and

indicating the open door.

2

“By the way, Mr. Parker,” Gardener said, once they had gone in, “is it possible that we’ve met before? There must be some reason you look so familiar to me, mustn’t there?”

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“I don’t know,” Jack said, looking carefully around the odd interior of the Scripture Home.

Long couches covered with a dark blue fabric sat against

the wall on the forest-green carpet; two massive leather-

topped desks had been placed against the opposite wall. At

one of the desks a pimply teenager glanced at them dully, then returned to the video screen before him, where a TV preacher was inveighing against rock and roll. The teenage boy seated at the adjoining desk straightened up and fixed Jack with an aggressive stare. He was slim and black-haired and his narrow face looked clever and bad-tempered. To the pocket of

his white turtleneck sweater was pinned a rectangular name-

plate of the sort worn by soldiers: SINGER.

“But I do think we have met each other somewhere, don’t

you, my lad? I assure you, we must have—I don’t forget, I am literally incapable of forgetting, the face of a boy I have encountered. Have you ever been in trouble before this, Jack?”

Jack said, “I never saw you before.”

Across the room, a massive boy had lifted himself off one

of the blue couches and was now standing at attention. He too wore a white turtleneck sweater and a military nameplate. His hands wandered nervously from his sides to his belt, into the pockets of his blue jeans, back to his sides. He was at least six-three and seemed to weigh nearly three hundred pounds.