The sky blackened. Both the Talisman and Morgan Sloat’s
face shone in the sudden dark, Sloat’s face because the Talisman shed its light upon it. Jack realized that his face, too, must be picked out by the Talisman’s fierce illumination. And as soon as he brandished the glowing Talisman toward Sloat, trying God knew what—to get him to drop the key, to anger
him, to rub his nose in the fact that he was powerless—Jack was made to understand that he had not yet reached the end of Morgan Sloat’s capabilities. Fat snowflakes spun down out of the dark sky. Sloat disappeared behind the thickening curtain of snow; Jack heard his wet laughter.
4
She struggled out of her invalid’s bed and crossed to the window. She looked out at the dead December beach, which was
lit by a single streetlight on the boardwalk. Suddenly a gull
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alighted on the sill outside the window. A string of gristle hung from one side of its beak, and in that moment she
thought of Sloat. The gull looked like Sloat.
Lily first recoiled, and then came back. She felt a wholly
ridiculous anger. A gull couldn’t look like Sloat, and a gull couldn’t invade her territory . . . it wasn’t right. She tapped the cold glass. The bird fluffed its wings briefly but did not fly. And she heard a thought come from its cold mind, heard it as clearly as a radio wave:
Jack’s dying, Lily . . . Jack’s dyyyyyinn . . .
It bent its head forward. Tapped on the glass as deliber-
ately as Poe’s raven.
Dyyyyyyinnnn . . .
“NO!” she shrieked at it. “FUCK OFF, SLOAT!” She did not simply tap this time but slammed her fist forward, driving it through the glass. The gull fluttered backward, squawking, almost falling. Frigid air funnelled in through the hole in the window.
Blood was dripping from Lily’s hand—no; no, not just
dripping. It was running. She had cut herself quite badly in two places. She picked shards of glass out of the pad on the side of her palm and then wiped her hand against the bodice of her nightdress.
“DIDN’T EXPECT THAT, DID YOU, FUCKHEAD?” she
screamed at the bird, which was circling restlessly over the gardens. She burst into tears. “Now leave him alone! Leave him alone! LEAVE MY SON ALONE!”
She was covered all over in blood. Cold air blew in the
pane she had shattered. And outside she saw the first flakes of snow come swirling down from the sky and into the white
glow of that streetlight.
5
“Look out, Jacky.”
Soft. On the left.
Jack pivoted that way, holding the Talisman up like a
searchlight. It sent out a beam of light filled with falling snow.
Nothing else. Darkness . . . snow . . . the sound of the
ocean.
“Wrong side, Jacky.”
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He spun to the right, feet slipping in the icing of snow.
Closer. He had been closer.
Jack held up the Talisman. “Come and get it, Bloat!”
“You haven’t got a chance, Jack. I can take you anytime I
want to.”
Behind him . . . and closer still. But when he raised the
blazing Talisman, there was no Sloat to be seen. Snow roared into his face. He inhaled it and began to cough on the cold.
Sloat tittered from directly in front of him.
Jack recoiled and almost tripped over Speedy.
“Hoo-hoo, Jacky!”
A hand came out of the darkness on his left and tore at
Jack’s ear. He turned in that direction, heart pumping wildly, eyes bulging. He slipped and went to one knee.
Richard uttered a thick, snoring moan somewhere close by.
Overhead, a cannonade of thunder went off in the darkness
Sloat had somehow brought down.
“Throw it at me!” Sloat taunted. He danced forward out of
that stormy, exposures-all-jammed-up-together dark. He was
snapping the fingers of his right hand and wagging the tin key at Jack with the left. The gestures had a jerky, eccentric syn-copation. To Jack, Sloat looked crazily like some old-time
Latin bandleader—Xavier Cugat, perhaps. “Throw it at me,
why don’t you? Shooting gallery, Jack! Clay pigeon! Big old Uncle Morgan! What do you say, Jack? Have a go? Throw the
ball and win a Kewpie doll!”
And Jack discovered he had pulled the Talisman back to
his right shoulder, apparently intending to do just that. He’s spooking you, trying to panic you, trying to get you to cough it up, to—
Sloat faded back into the murk. Snow flew in dust-devils.
Jack wheeled nervously around but could see Sloat
nowhere. Maybe he’s taken off. Maybe—
“Wassa matta, Jacky?”
No, he was still here. Somewhere. On the left.
“I laughed when your dear old daddy died, Jacky. I
laughed in his face. When his motor finally quit I felt—”
The voice warbled. Faded for a moment. Came back. On
the right. Jack whirled that way, not understanding what was going on, his nerves increasingly frayed.
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“—my heart flew like a bird on the wing. It flew like this, Jacky-boy.”
A rock came out of the dark—aimed not at Jack but at the
glass ball. He dodged. Got a murky glimpse of Sloat. Gone
again.
A pause . . . then Sloat was back, and playing a new
record.
“Fucked your mother, Jacky,” the voice teased from behind
him. A fat hot hand snatched at the seat of his pants.
Jack whirled around, this time almost stumbling over
Richard. Tears—hot, painful, outraged—began to squeeze out
of his eyes. He hated them, but here they were, and nothing in the world would deny them. The wind screamed like a dragon
in a wind-tunnel. The magic’s in you, Speedy had said, but where was the magic now? Where oh where oh where?
“You shut up about my mom!”
“Fucked her a lot,” Sloat added with smug cheeriness.
On the right again. A fat, dancing shape in the dark.
“Fucked her by invitation, Jacky!”
Behind him! Close!
Jack spun. Held up the Talisman. It flashed a white slice of light. Sloat danced back out of it, but not before Jack had seen a grimace of pain and anger. That light had touched Sloat, had hurt him.
Never mind what he’s saying—it’s all lies and you know it is. But how can he do that? He’s like Edgar Bergen. No . . .
he’s like Indians in the dark, closing in on the wagon train.
How can he do it?
“Singed my whiskers a little that time, Jacky,” Sloat said, and chuckled fruitily. He sounded a bit out of breath, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Jack was panting like a dog on a hot summer day, his eyes frantic as he searched the stormy
blackness for Sloat. “But I’ll not hold it against you, Jacky Now, let’s see. What were we talking about? Oh yes. Your
mother . . .”
A little warble . . . a little fade . . . and then a stone came whistling out of the darkness on the right and struck Jack’s temple. He whirled, but Sloat was gone again, skipping nimbly back into the snow.
“She’d wrap those long legs around me until I howled for
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mercy!” Sloat declared from behind Jack and to the right
“OWWWWOOOOOO!”
Don’t let him get you don’t let him psych you out don’t—
But he couldn’t help it. It was his mother this dirty man was talking about; his mother.
“You stop it! You shut up!”
Sloat was in front of him now—so close Jack should have
been able to see him clearly in spite of the swirling snow, but there was only a glimmer, like a face seen underwater at night Another stone zoomed out of the dark and struck Jack in the back of the head. He staggered forward and nearly tripped
over Richard again—a Richard who was rapidly disappearing
under a mantle of snow.
He saw stars . . . and understood what was happening.
Sloat’s flipping! Flipping . . . moving . . . flipping back!
Jack turned in an unsteady circle, like a man beset with a
hundred enemies instead of just one. Lightning-fire licked out of the dark in a narrow greenish-blue ray. He reached toward it with the Talisman, hoping to deflect it back at Sloat. Too late. It winked out.
Then how come I don’t see him over there? Over there in the Territories?
The answer came to him in a dazzling flash . . . and as if in response, the Talisman flashed a gorgeous fan of white
light—it cut the snowy light like the headlamp of a locomo-
tive.
I don’t see him over there, don’t respond to him over there, because I’m NOT over there! Jason’s gone . . . and I’m single-natured! Sloat’s flipping onto a beach where there’s no one but Morgan of Orris and a dead or dying man named