But his father had known a different truth, hadn’t he? Yes. He and Morgan Sloat.
“Your father went often, yes. And this other man, Groat—”
“Sloat.”
“Yeah-bob! Him. He went, too. Only your dad, Jacky, he went to see and learn. The other fella, he just went to plunder him out a fortune.”
“Did Morgan Sloat kill my Uncle Tommy?” Jack asked.
“Don’t know nuthin bout that. You just listen to me, Travellin Jack. Because time is short. If you really think this fellow Sloat is gonna turn up here—”
“He sounded awful mad,” Jack said. Just thinking about Uncle Morgan showing up in Arcadia Beach made him feel nervous.
“—then time is shorter than ever. Because maybe he wouldn’t mind so bad if your mother died. And his Twinner is sure hopin that Queen Laura dies.”
“Twinner?”
“There’s people in this world have got Twinners in the Territories,” Speedy said. “Not many, because there’s a lot less people over there—maybe only one for every hundred thousand over here. But Twinners can go back and forth the easiest.”
“This Queen . . . she’s my mother’s . . . her Twinner?”
“Yeah, seems like she is.”
“But my mother never—?”
“No. She never has. No reason.”
“My father had a . . . a Twinner?”
“Yes indeed he did. A fine man.”
Jack wet his lips—what a crazy conversation this was! Twinners and Territories! “When my father died over here, did his Twinner die over there?”
“Yeah. Not zackly the same time, but almost.”
“Speedy?”
“What?”
“Have I got a Twinner? In the Territories?”
And Speedy looked at him so seriously that Jack felt a deep chill go up his back. “Not you, son. There’s only one of you. You special. And this fella Smoot—”
“Sloat,” Jack said, smiling a little.
“—yeah, whatever, he knows it. That be one of the reasons he be coming up here soon. And one of the reasons you got to get movin.”
“I mean,” he finished in a thick voice, “what good is that Daydream place going to do?”
“I think we had enough jaw-chin for now,” Speedy said. “Just believe this here, Travellin Jack: I’d never tell you you ought to go if you couldn’t do her some good.”
“But—”
“Get quiet, Travellin Jack. Can’t talk no more till I show you some of what I mean. Wouldn’t do no good. Come on.”
Speedy put an arm around Jack’s shoulders and led him around the carousel dish. They went out the door together and walked down one of the amusement park’s deserted byways. On their left was the Demon Dodgem Cars building, now boarded and shuttered. On their right was a series of booths: Pitch Til U Win, Famous Pier Pizza & Dough-Boys, the Rimfire Shooting Gallery, also boarded up (faded wild animals pranced across the boards— lions and tigers and bears, o my).
They reached the wide main street, which was called Boardwalk Avenue in vague imitation of Atlantic City— Arcadia Funworld had a pier, but no real boardwalk. The arcade building was now a hundred yards down to their left and the arch marking the entrance to Arcadia Funworld about two hundred yards down to their right. Jack could hear the steady, grinding thunder of the breaking waves, the lonely cries of the gulls.
He looked at Speedy, meaning to ask him what now, what next, could he mean any of it or was it a cruel joke . . . but he said none of those things. Speedy was holding out the green glass bottle.
“That—” Jack began.
“Takes you there,” Speedy said. “Lot of people who visit over there don’t need nothin like this, but you ain’t been there in a while, have you, Jacky?”
“No.” When had he last closed his eyes in this world and opened them in the magic world of the Daydreams, that world with its rich, vital smells and its deep, transparent sky? Last year? No. Further back than that . . . California . . . after his father had died. He would have been about . . .
