The Talisman

He staggered over into the corner of the room, his hands wrapped around his head.

“Bad place, Jack!” he screamed. “Bad place right here and now! Gotta get outta here! Gotta get outta here RIGHT HERE AND NOW!”

Pounding on the wall.

“Shut the dummy up!”

From the other side, a shrieking, whinnying, horsey laugh. “You gittin some sunlight in you souls now, boys! And from de way dat big fella soun, it sho feel fine!” The giggling, whinnying laugh, too much like a horrified scream, came again.

“Bad, Jack! Wolf! Jason! Bad! Bad, bad—”

Doors were opening all up and down the hall. Jack could hear the rumble of many feet dressed in blocky Sunlight Home shoes.

He got down from the top bunk, forcing himself to move. He felt cross-grained to reality—not awake, not really asleep, either. Moving across the mean little room to Wolf was like moving through Karo syrup instead of air.

He felt so tired now . . . so very tired.

“Wolf,” he said. “Wolf, stop it.”

“Can’t, Jacky!” Wolf sobbed. His arms were still wrapped around his head, as if to keep it from exploding.

“You got to, Wolf. We have to go out in the hall now.”

“Can’t, Jacky,” Wolf sobbed, “it’s a bad place, bad smells. . . .”

From the hallway, someone—Jack thought it was Heck Bast—yelled, “Out for confession!”

“Out for confession!” someone else yelled, and they all took up the chant: Out for confession! Out for confession! It was like some weird football cheer.

“If we’re going to get out of here with our skins on, we’ve got to stay cool.”

“Can’t, Jacky, can’t stay cool, bad. . . .”

Their door was going to open in a minute and Bast or Sonny Singer would be there . . . maybe both. They were not “out for confession,” whatever that was, and while newcomers to the Sunlight Home might be allowed a few screw-ups during their orientation period, Jack thought their chances for escape would be better if they blended in as completely as they could as soon as they could. With Wolf, that wasn’t going to be easy. Christ, I’m sorry I got you into this, big guy, Jack thought. But the situation is what the situation is. And if we can’t ride it, it’s gonna ride us down. So if I’m hard with you, it’s for your own good. He added miserably to himself, I hope.

“Wolf,” he whispered, “do you want Singer to start beating on me again?”

“No, Jack, no. . . .”

“Then you better come out in the hall with me,” Jack said. “You have to remember that what you do is going to have a lot to do with how Singer and that guy Bast treat me. Singer slapped me around because of your stones —”

“Someone might slap him around,” Wolf said. His voice was low and mild, but his eyes suddenly narrowed, flared orange. For a moment Jack saw the gleam of white teeth between Wolf’s lips—not as if Wolf had grinned, but as if his teeth had grown.

“Don’t even think of that,” Jack said grimly. “It’ll only makes things worse.”

Wolf’s arms fell away from his head. “Jack, I don’t know. . . .”

“Will you try?” Jack asked. He threw another urgent glance at the door.

“I’ll try,” Wolf whispered shakily. Tears shone in his eyes.

2

The upstairs corridor should have been bright with late-afternoon light, but it wasn’t. It was as if some sort of filtering device had been fitted over the windows at the end of the corridor so that the boys could see out—out to where the real sunlight was—but that the light itself wasn’t allowed to enter. It seemed to drop dead on the narrow inner sills of those high Victorian windows.

There were forty boys standing in front of twenty doors, ten on each side. Jack and Wolf were by far the last to appear, but their lateness was not noticed. Singer, Bast, and two other boys had found someone to rag and could not be bothered with taking attendance.

Their victim was a narrow-chested, bespectacled kid of maybe fifteen. He was standing at a sorry approximation of attention with his chinos puddled around his black shoes. He wore no underpants.

“Have you stopped it yet?” Singer asked.

“I—”

“Shut up!” One of the other boys with Singer and Bast yelled this last. The four of them wore blue jeans instead of chinos, and clean white turtleneck sweaters. Jack learned soon enough that the fellow who had just shouted was Warwick. The fat fourth was Casey.

“When we want you to talk, we’ll ask you!” Warwick shouted now. “You still whipping your weasel, Morton?”

Morton trembled and said nothing.

“ANSWER HIM!” Casey shrieked. He was a tubby boy who looked a little bit like a malevolent Tweedledum.

“No,” Morton whispered.