The Talisman

air.

No time to gawp at this wonder. Richard was dying.

Jack reached him, fell on his knees beside him, and stripped back the tablecloth as if it were a sheet.

“Finally made it, chum,” he whispered, trying not to see the bugs crawling out of Richard’s flesh. He raised the Talisman, considered, and then placed it on Richard’s forehead. Richard shrieked miserably and tried to writhe away. Jack placed an arm on Richard’s scrawny chest and held him—it wasn’t hard to do. There was a stench as the bugs beneath the Talisman fried away.

Now what? There’s more, but what?

He looked across the room and his eye happened to fix upon the green croaker marble that he had left with Richard—the marble that was a magic mirror in that other world. As he looked, it rolled six feet of its own volition, and then stopped. It rolled, yes. It rolled because it was a marble, and it was a marble’s job to roll. Marbles were round. Marbles were round and so was the Talisman.

Light broke in his reeling mind.

Holding Richard, Jack slowly rolled the Talisman down the length of his body. After he reached Richard’s chest, Richard stopped struggling. Jack thought he had probably fainted, but a quick glance showed him this wasn’t so. Richard was staring at him with dawning wonder . . .

 . . . and the pimples on his face were gone! The hard red bumps were fading!

“Richard!” he yelled, laughing like a crazy loon. “Hey, Richard, look at this! Bwana make juju!”

He rolled the Talisman slowly down over Richard’s belly, using his palm. The Talisman glowed brightly, singing a clear, wordless harmonic of health and healing. Down over Richard’s crotch. Jack moved Richard’s thin legs together and rolled it down the groove between them to Richard’s ankles. The Talisman glowed bright blue . . . deep red . . . yellow . . . the green of June meadow-grass.

Then it was white again.

“Jack,” Richard whispered. “Is that what we came for?”

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful,” Richard said. He hesitated. “May I hold it?”

Jack felt a sudden twist of Scrooge-miserliness. He snatched the Talisman close to himself for a moment. No! You might break it! Besides, it’s mine! I crossed the country for it! I fought the knights for it! You can’t have it! Mine! Mine! Mi—

In his hands the Talisman suddenly radiated a terrible chill, and for a moment—a moment more frightening to Jack than all the earthquakes in all the worlds that ever had been or ever would be—it turned a Gothic black. Its white light was extinguished. In its rich, thundery, thanatropic interior he saw the black hotel. On turrets and gambrels and gables, on the roofs of cupolas which bulged like warts stuffed with thick malignancies, the cabalistic symbols turned—wolf and crow and twisted genital star.

Would you be the new Agincourt, then? the Talisman whispered. Even a boy can be a hotel . . . if he would be.

His mother’s voice, clear in his head: If you don’t want to share it, Jack-O, if you can’t bring yourself to risk it for your friend, then you might as well stay where you are. If you can’t bring yourself to share the prize—risk the prize—don’t even bother to come home. Kids hear that shit all their lives, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, it’s never quite the same, is it? If you can’t share it, let me die, chum, because I don’t want to live at that price.

The weight of the Talisman suddenly seemed immense, the weight of dead bodies. Yet somehow Jack lifted it, and put it in Richard’s hands. His hands were white and skeletal . . . but Richard held it easily, and Jack realized that sensation of weight had been only his own imagination, his own twisted and sickly wanting. As the Talisman flashed into glorious white light again, Jack felt his own interior darkness pass from him. It occurred to him dimly that you could only express your ownership of a thing in terms of how freely you could give it up . . . and then that thought passed.

Richard smiled, and the smile made his face beautiful. Jack had seen Richard smile many times, but there was a peace in this smile he had never seen before; it was a peace which passed his understanding. In the Talisman’s white, healing light, he saw that Richard’s face, although still ravaged and haggard and sickly, was healing. He hugged the Talisman against his chest as if it were a baby, and smiled at Jack with shining eyes.

“If this is the Seabrook Island Express,” he said, “I may just buy a season ticket. If we ever get out of this.”

“You feel better?”

Richard’s smile shone like the Talisman’s light. “Worlds better,” he said. “Now help me up, Jack.”

Jack moved to take his shoulder. Richard held out the Talisman.

“Better take this first,” he said. “I’m still weak, and it wants to go back with you. I feel that.”

Jack took it and helped Richard up. Richard put an arm around Jack’s neck.

“You ready . . . chum?”

“Yeah,” Richard said. “Ready. But I somehow think the seagoing route’s out, Jack. I think I heard the deck out there collapse during the Big Rumble.”

“We’re going out the front door,” Jack said. “Even if God put down a gangway over the ocean from the windows back there to the beach, I’d still go out the front door. We ain’t ditching this place, Richie. We’re going out like paying guests. I feel like I’ve paid plenty. What do you think?”

Richard held out one thin hand, palm-up. Healing red blemishes still glared on it.

“I think we ought to go for it,” he said. “Gimme some skin, Jacky.”