The Talisman

The digits on the clock had changed.

“Five minutes now,” Jack said.

“Sonny,” Warwick said with a catch in his voice. “Let’s get him out of that thing.”

“No!” Sonny’s cry was wounded, furious . . . ultimately frightened.

“You know what the Rev’rend said,” Warwick said rapidly. “Before. When the TV people came. Nobody can see the strait-jackets. They wouldn’t understand. They—”

Click! The intercom.

“Sonny! Andy!” Casey sounded panicky. “They’re closer! The sirens! Christ! What are we supposed to do?”

“Let him out now!” Warwick’s face was pallid, except for two red spots high on his cheekbones.

“Reverend Gardener also said—”

“I don’t give a fuck what he also said!” Warwick’s voice dropped, and now he voiced the child’s deepest fear: “We’re gonna get caught, Sonny! We’re gonna get caught!”

And Jack thought that now he could hear sirens, or perhaps it was only his imagination.

Sonny’s eyes rolled toward Jack with horrible, trapped indecision. He half-raised the gun and for one moment Jack believed Sonny was really going to shoot him.

But it was six minutes now, and still no honk from the Godhead, announcing that the deus ex machina was now boarding for Muncie.

“You let him loose,” Sonny said sulkily to Andy Warwick. “I don’t even want to touch him. He’s a sinner. And he’s a queer.”

Sonny retreated to the desk as Andy Warwick’s fingers fumbled with the strait-jacket’s lacings.

“You better not say anything,” he panted. “You better not say anything or I’ll kill you myself.”

Right arm free.

Left arm free.

They collapsed bonelessly into his lap. Pins and needles coming back.

Warwick hauled the hateful restraint off him, a horror of dun-colored canvas and rawhide lacings. Warwick looked at it in his hands and grimaced. He darted across the room and began to stuff it into Sunlight Gardener’s safe.

“Pull up your pants,” Sonny said. “You think I want to look at your works?”

Jack fumbled up his shorts, got the waistband of his pants, dropped them, and managed to pull them up.

Click! The intercom.

“Sonny! Andy!” Casey’s voice, panicked. “I hear something!”

“Are they turning in?” Sonny almost screamed. Warwick redoubled his efforts to stuff the strait-jacket into the safe. “Are they turning in the front—”

“No! In the chapel! I can’t see nothing but I can hear something in the—”

There was an explosion of shattering glass as Wolf leaped from the darkness of the chapel and into the studio.

18

Casey’s screams as he pushed back from the control board in his wheel-footed chair were hideously amplified.

Inside the studio there was a brief storm of glass. Wolf landed four-footed on the slanted control board and half-climbed, half-slid down it, his eyes throwing a red glare. His long claws turned dials and flicked switches at random. The big reel-to-reel Sony tape recorder started to turn.

“—COMMUNISTS!” the voice of Sunlight Gardener bellowed. He was cranked to maximum volume, drowning out Casey’s shrieks and Warwick’s screams to shoot it, Sonny, shoot it, shoot it! But the voice of Gardener was not alone. In the background, like music from hell, came the mingled warble of many sirens as Casey’s mikes picked up a caravan of police cruisers turning into the Sunlight Home’s drive.

“OH, THEY’RE GONNA TELL YOU IT’S ALL RIGHT TO LOOK AT THOSE DIRTY BOOKS! THEY’RE GONNA TELL YOU IT DON’T MATTER THAT IT’S AGAINST THE LAW TO PRAY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS! THEY’RE GONNA TELL YOU IT DON’T EVEN MATTER THAT THERE ARE SIXTEEN U.S. REPRESENTATIVES AND TWO U.S. GOVERNORS WHO ARE AVOWED HOMOSEXUALS! THEY’RE GONNA TELL YOU—”

Casey’s chair rolled back against the glass wall between the studio and Sunlight Gardener’s office. His head turned, and for one moment they could all see his agonized, bulging eyes. Then Wolf leaped from the edge of the control panel. His head struck Casey’s gut . . . and plowed into it. His jaws began to open and close with the speed of a cane-cutting machine. Blood flew up and splattered the window as Casey began to convulse.

“Shoot it, Sonny, shoot the fucking thing!” Warwick whooped.

“Think I’m gonna shoot him instead,” Sonny said, looking around at Jack. He spoke with the air of a man who has finally arrived at a great conclusion. He nodded, began to grin.

“—DAY IS COMING, BOYS! OH YES, A MIGHTY DAY, AND ON THAT DAY THOSE COMMUNIST HUMANIST HELLBOUND ATHEISTS ARE GONNA FIND OUT THAT THE ROCK WILL NOT SHIELD THEM, THE DEAD TREE WILL NOT GIVE THEM SHELTER! THEY’RE GONNA, OH SAY HALLELUJAH, THEY’RE GONNA —”