The Talisman

He looked for a moment up at the black Territories sky with its strange and unfamiliar sprawl of stars, shuddered, and looked away. “I have a fever. It’s the flu. There’s been a lot of flu around. This is a delirium. You’re guest- starring in my delirium, Jack.”

“Well, I’ll send somebody around to the Delirium Actors’ Guild with my AFTRA card when I get a chance,” Jack said. “In the meantime, why don’t you just stay here, Richard? If none of this is happening, then you have nothing to worry about.”

He started away again, thinking that it would take only a few more of these Alice-at-the-tea-party conversations with Richard to convince him that he was crazy, as well.

He was halfway up the hill when Richard joined him.

“I would have come back for you,” Jack said.

“I know,” Richard said. “I just thought that I might as well come along. As long as all of this is a dream, anyway.”

“Well, keep your mouth shut if there’s anyone up there,” Jack said. “I think there is—I think I saw someone looking out that front window at me.”

“What are you going to do?” Richard asked.

Jack smiled. “Play it by ear, Richie-boy,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been doing ever since I left New Hampshire. Playing it by ear.”

3

They reached the porch. Richard clutched Jack’s shoulder with panicky strength. Jack turned toward him wearily; Richard’s patented Kansas City Clutch was something else that was getting old in a big hurry.

“What?” Jack asked.

“This is a dream, all right,” Richard said, “and I can prove it.”

“How?”

“We’re not talking English anymore, Jack! We’re talking some language, and we’re speaking it perfectly, but it’s not English!”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Weird, isn’t it?”

He started up the steps again, leaving Richard standing below him, gape-mouthed.

4

After a moment or two, Richard recovered and scrambled up the steps after Jack. The boards were warped and loose and splintery. Stalks of that richly bearded grain-grass grew up through some of them. Off in the deep darkness, both boys could hear the sleepy hum of insects—it was not the reedy scratch of crickets but a sweeter sound—so much was sweeter over here, Jack thought.

The outside lamp was now behind them; their shadows ran ahead of them across the porch and then made right-angles to climb the door. There was an old, faded sign on that door. For a moment it seemed to Jack to be written in strange Cyrillic letters, as indecipherable as Russian. Then they came clear, and the word was no surprise. DEPOT.

Jack raised his hand to knock, then shook his head a little. No. He would not knock. This was not a private dwelling; the sign said DEPOT, and that was a word he associated with public buildings—places to wait for Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains, loading zones for the Friendly Skies.

He pushed the door open. Friendly lamplight and a decidedly unfriendly voice came out onto the porch together.

“Get away, ye devil!” the cracked voice screeched. “Get away, I’m going in the morning! I swear! The train’s in the shed! Go away! I swore I’d go and I will go, s’now YE go . . . go and leave me some peace!”

Jack frowned. Richard gaped. The room was clean but very old. The boards were so warped that the walls seemed almost to ripple. A picture of a stagecoach which looked almost as big as a whaling ship hung on one wall. An ancient counter, its flat surface almost as ripply as the walls, ran across the middle of the room, splitting it in two. Behind it, on the far wall, was a slate board with STAGE ARRIVES written above one column and STAGE LEAVES written above the other. Looking at the ancient board, Jack guessed it had been a good long time since any information had been written there; he thought that if someone tried to write on it with even a piece of soft chalk, the slate would crack in pieces and fall to the weathered floor.

Standing on one side of the counter was the biggest hourglass Jack had ever seen—it was as big as a magnum of champagne and filled with green sand.

“Leave me alone, can’t you? I’ve promised ye I’d go, and I will! Please, Morgan! For yer mercy! I’ve promised, and if ye don’t believe me, look in the shed! The train is ready, I swear the train is ready!”

There was a good deal more gabble and gobble in this same vein. The large, elderly man spouting it was cringing in the far right-hand corner of the room. Jack guessed the oldster’s height at six-three at least—even in his present servile posture, The Depot’s low ceiling was only four inches or so above his head. He might have been seventy; he might have been a fairly well-preserved eighty. A snowy white beard began under his eyes and cascaded down over his breast in a spray of baby fine hair. His shoulders were broad, although now so slumped that they looked as if someone had broken them by forcing him to carry heavy weights over the course of many long years. Deep crow’s-feet radiated out from the corners of his eyes; deep fissures undulated on his forehead. His complexion was waxy-yellow. He was wearing a white kilt shot through with bright scarlet threads, and he was obviously scared almost to death. He was brandishing a stout staff, but with no authority at all.

Jack glanced sharply around at Richard when the old man mentioned the name of Richard’s father, but Richard was currently beyond noticing such fine points.

“I am not who you think I am,” Jack said, advancing toward the old man.

“Get away!” he shrieked. “None of yer guff! I guess the devil can put on a pleasing face! Get away! I’ll do it! She’s ready to go, first thing in the morning! I said I’d do it and I mean to, now get away, can’t ye?”

The knapsack was now a haversack hanging from Jack’s arm. As Jack reached the counter, he rummaged in it,