The Talisman by Stephen King

No. You will not leave him alone to sleep in that fouled bed.

You will not!

Tiredly, Jack went to Wolf, shook him half-awake, got him

off the wet, stinking mattress, and out of his biballs. They slept curled up together on the floor.

At four in the morning, the door opened and Sonny and

Heck marched in. They yanked Jack up and half-carried him

down to Sunlight Gardener’s basement office.

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Gardener was sitting with his feet up on the corner of his

desk. He was fully dressed in spite of the hour. Behind him was a picture of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee while his disciples gawped in wonder. To his right was a glass window looking into the darkened studio where Casey worked his

idiot-savant wonders. There was a heavy keychain attached to one of Gardener’s belt-loops. The keys, a heavy bunch of

them, lay in the palm of his hand. He played with them while he spoke.

“You haven’t given us a single confession since you got

here, Jack,” Sunlight Gardener said, his tone one of mild re-proof. “Confession is good for the soul. Without confession we cannot be saved. Oh, I don’t mean the idolatrous, heathen-ish confession of the Catholics. I mean confession before

your brothers and your Saviour.”

“I’ll keep it between me and my Saviour, if it’s all the same to you,” Jack said evenly, and in spite of his fear and disorientation, he could not help relishing the expression of fury

which overspread Gardener’s face.

“It’s not all the same to me!” Gardener screamed. Pain exploded in Jack’s kidneys. He fell to his knees.

“Watch what you say to Reverend Gardener, snotface,”

Sonny said. “Some of us around here stand up for him.”

“God bless you for your trust and your love, Sonny,” Gar-

dener said gravely, and turned his attention to Jack again.

“Get up, son.”

Jack managed to get up, holding on to the edge of Sunlight

Gardener’s expensive blondewood desk.

“What’s your real name?”

“Jack Parker.”

He saw Gardener nod imperceptibly, and tried to turn, but

it was a moment too late. Fresh pain exploded in his kidneys.

He screamed and went down again, knocking the fading

bruise on his forehead against the edge of Gardener’s desk.

“Where are you from, you lying, impudent, devil’s spawn

of a boy?”

“Pennsylvania.”

Pain exploded in the meaty upper part of his left thigh. He rolled into a fetal position on the white Karastan carpet, huddled with his knees against his chest.

“Get him up.”

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Sonny and Heck got him up.

Gardener reached into the pocket of his white jacket and

took out a Zippo lighter. He flicked the wheel, produced a big yellow flame, and brought the flame slowly toward Jack’s

face. Nine inches. He could smell the sweet, pungent reek

of lighter fluid. Six inches. Now he could feel heat. Three inches. Another inch—maybe just half that—and discomfort

would turn to pain. Sunlight Gardener’s eyes were hazy-

happy. His lips trembled on the edge of a smile.

“Yeah!” Heck’s breath was hot, and it smelled like mouldy

pepperoni. “Yeah, do it!”

“Where do I know you from?”

“I never met you before!” Jack gasped.

The flame moved closer. Jack’s eyes began to water, and he

could feel his skin beginning to sear. He tried to pull his head back. Sonny Singer pushed it forward.

“Where have I met you?” Gardener rasped. The lighter’s

flame danced deep in his black pupils, each deep spark a

twinner of the other. “Last chance!”

Tell him, for God’s sake tell him!

“If we ever met I don’t remember it,” Jack gasped. “Maybe

California—”

The Zippo clicked closed. Jack sobbed with relief.

“Take him back,” Gardener said.

They yanked Jack toward the door.

“It won’t do you any good, you know,” Sunlight Gardener

said. He had turned around and appeared to be meditating on the picture of Christ walking on water. “I’ll get it out of you.

If not tonight, then tomorrow night. If not tomorrow night, then the night after. Why not make it easy on yourself, Jack?”

Jack said nothing. A moment later he felt his arm twisted

up to his shoulder blades. He moaned.

“Tell him!” Sonny whispered.

And part of Jack wanted to, not because he was hurt but

because— because confession was good for the soul.

He remembered the muddy courtyard, he remembered this

same man in a different envelope of skin asking who he was, he remembered thinking: I’ll tell you anything you want to know if only you’ll stop looking at me with those freaked-out eyes of yours, sure, because I’m only a kid, and that’s what kids do, they tell, they tell everything—

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Then he remembered his mother’s voice, that tough voice,

asking him if he was going to spill his guts to this guy.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he said.

Gardener’s lips parted in a small, dry smile. “Take him

back to his room,” he said.

3

Just another week in the Sunlight Home, can you say amen,

brothers and sisters. Just another long, long week.

Jack lingered in the kitchen after the others had taken in

their breakfast dishes and left. He knew perfectly well that he was risking another beating, more harassment . . . but by this time, that seemed a minor consideration. Only three hours before, Sunlight Gardener had come within an ace of burning

his lips off. He had seen it in the man’s crazy eyes, and felt it in the man’s crazy heart. After something like that, the risk of a beating seemed a very minor consideration indeed.

Rudolph’s cook’s whites were as gray as the lowering No-

vember sky outside. When Jack spoke his name in a near-

whisper, Rudolph turned a bloodshot, cynical gaze on him.

Cheap whiskey was strong on his breath.

“You better get outta here, new fish. They’re keepin an eye on you pretty good.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

Jack glanced nervously toward the antique dishwasher,

which thumped and hissed and gasped its steamy dragon’s

breath at the boys loading it. They seemed not to be looking at Jack and Rudolph, but Jack knew that seemed was really the operant word. Tales would be carried. Oh yes. At the Sunlight Home they took away your dough, and carried tales became a

kind of replacement currency.

“I need to get out of here,” Jack said. “Me and my big

friend. How much would you take to look the other way while we went out that back door?”

“More than you could pay me even if you could get your

hands on what they took from you when they ho’d you in

here, buddy-roo,” Rudolph said. His words were hard but he

looked at Jack with a bleary sort of kindness.

Yes, of course—it was all gone, everything. The guitar-

pick, the silver dollar, the big croaker marble, his six

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dollars . . . all gone. Sealed in an envelope and held somewhere, probably in Gardener’s office downstairs. But—

“Look, I’d give you an IOU.”

Rudolph grinned. “Comin from someone in this den of

thieves and dope-addicts, that’s almost funny,” he said. “Piss on your fuckin IOU, old hoss.”

Jack turned all the new force that was in him upon

Rudolph. There was a way to hide that force, that new

beauty—to a degree, at least—but now he let it all come out, and saw Rudolph step back from it, his face momentarily

confused and amazed.

“My IOU would be good and I think you know it,” Jack

said quietly. “Give me an address and I’ll mail you the cash.

How much? Ferd Janklow said that for two bucks you’d mail a letter for someone. Would ten be enough to look the other

way just long enough for us to take a walk?”

“Not ten, not twenty, not a hundred,” Rudolph said quietly.

He now looked at the boy with a sadness that scared Jack

badly. It was that look as much as anything else—maybe

more—that told him just how badly he and Wolf were caught.

“Yeah, I’ve done it before. Sometimes for five bucks. Some-

times, believe it or not, for free. I would have done it free for Ferdie Janklow. He was a good kid. These fuckers—”

Rudolph raised one water- and detergent-reddened fist and

shook it toward the green-tiled wall. He saw Morton, the accused pud-puller, looking at him, and Rudolph glared horri-

bly at him. Morton looked away in a hurry.

“Then why not? ” Jack asked desperately.

“Because I’m scared, hoss,” Rudolph said.

“What do you mean? The night I came here, when Sonny

started to give you some trouble—”

“Singer!” Rudolph flapped one hand contemptuously. “I