The Talisman

inside. Inside where IT is. We tried to shoot them, but the creatures . . . the deep-creatures . . . rose up and protected them, just as The Book of Good Farming said they would . . . and if they’re inside . . .” Gardener’s voice was rising. Osmond’s eyes rolled with mingled hate and dismay.

“I understand,” Morgan said comfortingly. His face and voice were calm again, but his fists worked and worked, and blood dribbled down onto the mildewy carpet. “Yessirree-bob, yes-indeedy-doo, rooty-patootie. They’ve gone in, and my son is never going to come out. You’ve lost yours, Gard, and now I’ve lost mine.”

“Sawyer!” Gardener barked. “Jack Sawyer! Jason! That —”

Gardener lapsed into a horrible bout of cursing that went on for nearly five minutes. He cursed Jack in two languages; his voice racketed and perspired with grief and insane rage. Morgan stood there and let him get it all out of his system.

When Gardener paused, panting, and took another swallow from the flask, Morgan said:

“Right! Doubled in brass! Now listen, Gard—are you listening?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Gardener/Osmond’s eyes were bright with bitter attention.

“My son is never going to come out of the black hotel, and I don’t think Sawyer ever will, either. There’s a very good chance that he isn’t Jason enough yet to deal with what’s in there. IT will probably kill him, or drive him mad, or send him a hundred worlds away. But he may come out, Gard. Yes, he may.”

“He’s the baddest baddest bitch’s bastard to ever draw breath,” Gardener whispered. His hand tightened on the flask . . . tightened . . . tightened . . . and now his fingers actually began to make dents in the steel shell.

“You say the old nigger man is down on the beach?”

“Yes.”

“Parker,” Morgan said, and at the same moment Osmond said, “Parkus.”

“Dead?” Morgan asked this without much interest.

“I don’t know. I think so. Shall I send men down to pick him up?”

“No!” Morgan said sharply. “No—but we’re going down near where he is, aren’t we, Gard?”

“We are?”

Morgan began to grin.

“Yes. You . . . me . . . all of us. Because if Jack comes out of the hotel, he’ll go there first. He won’t leave his old nightfighting buddy on the beach, will he?”

Now Gardener also began to grin. “No,” he said. “No.”

For the first time Morgan became aware of dull and throbbing pain in his hands. He opened them and looked thoughtfully at the blood which flowed out of the deep semi-circular wounds in his palms. His grin did not falter. Indeed, it widened.

Gardener was staring at him solemnly. A great sense of power filled Morgan. He reached up to his neck and closed one bloody hand over the key that brought the lightning.

“It profits a man the world,” he whispered. “Can you gimme hallelujah.”

His lips pulled even farther back. He grinned the sick yellow grin of a rogue wolf—a wolf that is old but still sly and tenacious and powerful.

“Come on, Gard,” he said. “Let’s go to the beach.”

41

The Black Hotel

1

Richard Sloat wasn’t dead, but when Jack picked his old friend up in his arms, he was unconscious.

Who’s the herd now? Wolf asked in his head. Be careful, Jacky! Wolf! Be—

COME TO ME! COME NOW! the Talisman sang in its powerful, soundless voice. COME TO ME, BRING THE HERD, AND ALL WILL BE WELL AND ALL WILL BE WELL AND—

“—a’ manner a’ things wi’ be well,” Jack croaked.

He started forward and came within an inch of stepping right back through the trapdoor, like a kid participating in some bizarre double execution by hanging. Swing with a Friend, Jack thought crazily. His heart was hammering in his ears, and for a moment he thought he might vomit straight down into the gray water slapping at the pilings. Then he caught hold of himself and closed the trapdoor with his foot. Now there was only the sound of the weathervanes—cabalistic brass designs spinning restlessly in the sky.

Jack turned toward the Agincourt.

He was on a wide deck like an elevated verandah, he saw. Once, fashionable twenties and thirties folk had sat out here at the cocktail hour under the shade of umbrellas, drinking gin rickeys and sidecars, perhaps reading the latest Edgar Wallace or Ellery Queen novel, perhaps only looking out toward where Los Cavernes Island could be dimly glimpsed—a blue-gray whale’s hump dreaming on the horizon. The men in whites, the women in pastels.

Once, maybe.