The Talisman (35 page)

“I’ll bet he don’t,” the counterman said. “That’ll be two-eighty.”

Jack paid it with an inward wince, realizing he had just laid out a quarter of his cash for their afternoon at the movies.

Wolf was grinning at the counterman through a mouthful of popcorn. Jack recognized it as Wolf’s A #1 Friendly Smile, but he somehow doubted that the counterman was seeing it that way. There were all those teeth in that smile . . . hundreds of them, it seemed.

And Wolf was flaring his nostrils again.

Screw it, let them call the cops, if that’s what they want to do,
he thought with a weariness that was more adult than child.
It can’t slow us down much more than we’re slowed down already. He can’t ride in the new cars because he can’t stand the smell of the catalytic convertors and he can’t ride in old cars because they smell like exhaust and sweat and oil and beer and he probably can’t ride in any cars because he’s so goddam claustrophobic. Tell the truth, Jack-O, even if it’s only to yourself. You’re going along telling yourself he’s going to get over it pretty soon, but it’s probably not going to happen. So what are we going to do? Walk across Indiana, I guess. Correction,
Wolf
is going to walk across Indiana. Me, I’m going to cross Indiana riding horseyback. But first I’m going to take Wolf into this damn movie theater and sleep either until both pictures are over or until the cops arrive. And that is the end of my tale, sir.

“Well, enjoy the show,” the counterman said.

“You bet,” Jack replied. He started away and then realized Wolf wasn’t with him. Wolf was staring at something over the counterman’s head with vacant, almost superstitious wonder. Jack looked up and saw a mobile advertising the re-issue of Steven Spielberg’s
Close Encounters
floating around on drafts of convection.

“Come on, Wolf,” he said.

8

Wolf knew it wasn’t going to work as soon as they went through the door.

The room was small, dim, and dank. The smells in here were terrible. A poet, smelling what Wolf was smelling at that moment, might have called it the stink of sour dreams. Wolf was no poet. He only knew that the smell of the popcorn-urine predominated, and that he felt suddenly like throwing up.

Then the lights began to dim even further, turning the room into a cave.

“Jack,” he moaned, clutching at Jack’s arm. “Jack, we oughtta get out of here, okay?”

“You’ll like it, Wolf,” Jack muttered, aware of Wolf’s distress but not of its depth. Wolf was, after all, always distressed to some degree. In this world, the word
distress
defined him. “Try it.”

“Okay,” Wolf said, and Jack heard the agreement but not the thin waver that meant Wolf was holding on to the last thread of his control with both hands. They sat down with Wolf on the aisle, his knees accordioned up uncomfortably, the tub of popcorn (which he no longer wanted) clutched to his chest.

In front of them a match flared briefly yellow. Jack smelled the dry tang of pot, so familiar in the movies that it could be dismissed as soon as identified. Wolf smelled a forest-fire.

“Jack—!”

“Shhh, picture’s starting.”

And I’m dozing off.

Jack would never know of Wolf’s heroism in the next few minutes; Wolf did not really know of it himself. He only knew that he had to try to stick this nightmare out for Jack’s sake.
It must be all right,
he thought,
look, Wolf, Jack’s going right to sleep, right to sleep right here and now. And you know Jack wouldn’t take you to a Hurt-Place, so just stick it out . . . just wait . . . Wolf! . . . it’ll be all right . . .

But Wolf was a cyclic creature, and his cycle was approaching its monthly climax. His instincts had become exquisitely refined, almost undeniable. His rational mind told him that he would be all right in here, that Jack wouldn’t have brought him otherwise. But that was like a man with an itchy nose telling himself not to sneeze in church because it was impolite.

He sat there smelling forest-fire in a dark, stinking cave, twitching each time a shadow passed down the aisle, waiting numbly for something to fall on him from the shadows overhead. And then a magic window opened at the front of the cave and he sat there in the acrid stink of his own terror-sweat, eyes wide, face a mask of horror, as cars crashed and overturned, as buildings burned, as one man chased another.

“Previews,” Jack mumbled. “Told you you’d like it. . . .”

There were Voices. One said
nosmoking
. One said
don’t litter
. One said
groupratesavailable
. One said
Bargain Matinee-priceseveryweekdayuntilfourp.m.

“Wolf, we got screwed,” Jack mumbled. He started to say something else, but it turned into a snore.

A final voice said
andnowourfeaturepresentation
and that was when Wolf lost control. Bakshi’s
The Lord of the Rings
was in Dolby sound, and the projectionist had orders to really crank it in the afternoons, because that’s when the heads drifted in, and the heads really liked loud Dolby.

There was a screeching, discordant crash of brass. The magic window opened again and now Wolf could
see
the fire—shifting oranges and reds.

He howled and leaped to his feet, pulling with him a Jack who was more asleep than awake.

“Jack!”
he screamed.
“Get out! Got to get out! Wolf! See the fire! Wolf! Wolf!
”

“Down in front!” someone shouted.

“Shut up, hoser!” someone else yelled.

The door at the back of Cinema 6 opened. “What’s going on in here?”

“Wolf, shut up!” Jack hissed. “For God’s sake—”

“OWWWWWW-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Wolf howled.

A woman got a good look at Wolf as the white light from the lobby fell on him. She screamed and began dragging her little boy out by one arm. Literally
dragging
him; the kid had fallen to his knees and was skidding up the popcorn-littered carpet of the center aisle. One of his sneakers had come off.

“OWWWWWWWW-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH-HHOOOOOOHHHHOOOOOO!”

The pothead three rows down had turned around and was looking at them with bleary interest. He held a smouldering joint in one hand; a spare was cocked behind his ear. “Far . . . 
out
,” he pronounced. “Fucking werewolves of London strike again, right?”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Okay, we’ll get out. No problem. Just . . . just don’t do that anymore, okay? Okay?”

He started leading Wolf out. The weariness had fallen over him again.

The light of the lobby hit his eyes sharply, needling them. The woman who had dragged the little boy out of the theater was backed into a corner with her arms around the kid. When she saw Jack lead the still-howling Wolf through the double doors of Cinema 6, she swept the kid up and made a break for it.

The counterman, the ticket-girl, the projectionist, and a tall man in a sportcoat that looked as if it belonged on the back of a racetrack tout were clustered together in a tight little group. Jack supposed the guy in the checkered sportcoat and white shoes was the manager.

The doors of the other cinemas in the hive had opened partway. Faces peered out of the darkness to see what all the hooraw was. To Jack, they all looked like badgers peering out of their holes.

“Get out!” the man in the checkered sportcoat said. “Get out, I’ve called the police already, they’ll be here in five minutes.”

Bullshit you did,
Jack thought, feeling a ray of hope.
You didn’t have time. And if we blow right away, maybe—just maybe—you won’t bother
.

“We’re going,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . my big brother’s an epileptic and he just had a seizure. We . . . we forgot his medicine.”

At the word
epileptic
, the ticket-girl and the counterman recoiled. It was as if Jack had said
leper
.

“Come on, Wolf.”

He saw the manager’s eyes drop, saw his lip curl with distaste. Jack followed the glance and saw the wide dark stain on the front of Wolf’s Oshkosh biballs. He had wet himself.

Wolf also saw. Much in Jack’s world was foreign to him, but he apparently knew well enough what that look of contempt meant. He burst into loud, braying, heartbroken sobs.

“Jack, I’m sorry, Wolf is so SORRY!”

“Get him out of here,” the manager said contemptuously, and turned away.

Jack put an arm around Wolf and got him started toward the door. “Come on, Wolf,” he said. He spoke quietly, and with an honest tenderness. He had never felt quite so keenly for Wolf as he did now. “Come on, it was my fault, not yours. Let’s go.”

“Sorry.” Wolf wept brokenly. “I’m no good, God pound me, just no good.”

“You’re plenty good,” Jack said. “Come on.”

He pushed open the door and they went out into the thin, late-October warmth.

The woman with the child was easily twenty yards away, but when she saw Jack and Wolf, she retreated backward toward her car, holding her kid in front of her like a cornered gangster with a hostage.

“Don’t let him come near me!” she screamed. “Don’t let that monster come near my baby! Do you hear?
Don’t let him come near me!
”

Jack thought he should say something to calm her down, but he couldn’t think what it might be. He was too tired.

He and Wolf started away, heading across the parking lot at an angle. Halfway back to the road, Jack staggered. The world went briefly gray.

He was vaguely aware of Wolf sweeping him up in his arms and carrying him that way, like a baby. Vaguely aware that Wolf was crying.

“Jack, I’m so sorry, please don’t hate Wolf, I can be a good old Wolf, you wait, you’ll see . . .”

“I don’t hate you,” Jack said. “I know you’re . . . you’re a good old—”

But before he could finish, he had fallen asleep. When he woke up it was evening and Muncie was behind them. Wolf had gotten off the main roads and on to a web of farm roads and dirt tracks. Totally unconfused by the lack of signs and the multitude of choices, he had continued west with all the unerring instinct of a migrating bird.

They slept that night in an empty house north of Cammack, and Jack thought in the morning that his fever had gone down a little.

It was midmorning—midmorning of October 28th—when Jack realized that the hair was back on Wolf’s palms.

19

Jack in the Box

1

They camped that night in the ruins of a burned-out house with a wide field on one side and a copse of woods on another. There was a farmhouse on the far side of the field, but Jack thought that he and Wolf would be safe enough if they were quiet and stayed in most of the time. After the sun went down, Wolf went off into the woods. He was moving slowly, his face close to the ground. Before Jack lost sight of him, he thought that Wolf looked like a nearsighted man hunting for his dropped spectacles. Jack became quite nervous (visions of Wolf caught in a steel-jawed trap had begun to come to him, Wolf caught and grimly not howling as he gnawed at his own leg . . .) before Wolf returned, walking almost upright this time, and carrying plants in both hands, the roots dangling out of his fists.

“What have you got there, Wolf?” Jack asked.

“Medicine,” Wolf said morosely. “But it’s not very good, Jack.
Wolf! Nothing’s
much good in your world!”

“Medicine? What do you mean?”

But Wolf would say no more. He produced two wooden matches from the bib pocket of his overalls and started a smokeless fire and asked Jack if he could find a can. Jack found a beer can in the ditch. Wolf smelled it and wrinkled his nose.

“More bad smells. Need water, Jack. Clean water. I’ll go, if you’re too tired.”

“Wolf, I want to know what you’re up to.”

“I’ll go,” Wolf said. “There’s a farm right across that field.
Wolf!
There’ll be water there. You rest.”

Jack had a vision of some farmer’s wife looking out the kitchen window as she did the supper dishes and seeing Wolf skulking around in the dooryard with a beer can in one hairy paw and a bunch of roots and herbs in the other.

“
I’ll
go,” he said.

The farm was not five hundred feet away from where they had camped; the warm yellow lights were clearly visible across the field. Jack went, filled the beer can at a shed faucet without incident, and started back. Halfway across the field he realized he could see his shadow, and looked up at the sky.

The moon, now almost full, rode the eastern horizon.

Troubled, Jack went back to Wolf and gave him the can of water. Wolf sniffed, winced again, but said nothing. He put the can over the fire and began to sift crumbled bits of the things he had picked in through the pop-top hole. Five minutes or so later, a terrible smell—a reek, not to put too fine a point on it—began to rise on the steam. Jack winced. He had no doubt at all that Wolf would want him to drink that stuff, and Jack also had no doubt it would kill him. Slowly and horribly, probably.

He closed his eyes and began snoring loudly and theatrically. If Wolf thought he was sleeping, he wouldn’t wake him up. No one woke up sick people, did they? And Jack
was
sick; his fever had come back at dark, raging through him, punishing him with chills even while he oozed sweat from every pore.

Looking through his lashes, he saw Wolf set the can aside to cool. Wolf sat back and looked skyward, his hairy hands locked around his knees, his face dreamy and somehow beautiful.

He’s looking at the moon,
Jack thought, and felt a thread of fear.

We don’t go near the herd when we change. Good Jason, no! We’d eat them!

Wolf, tell me something: am I the herd now?

Jack shivered.

Five minutes later—Jack almost
had
gone to sleep by then—Wolf leaned over the can, sniffed, nodded, picked it up, and came over to where Jack was leaning against a fallen, fire-blackened beam with an extra shirt behind his neck to pad the angle. Jack closed his eyes tightly and resumed snoring.

“Come on, Jack,” Wolf said jovially. “I know you’re awake. You can’t fool Wolf.”

Jack opened his eyes and looked at Wolf with bleary resentment. “How did you know?”

“People have a sleep-smell and a wake-smell,” Wolf said. “Even Strangers must know that, don’t they?”

“I guess we don’t,” Jack said.

“Anyway, you have to drink this. It’s medicine. Drink it up, Jack, right here and now.”

“I don’t want it,” Jack said. The smell coming from the can was swampy and rancid.

“Jack,” Wolf said, “you’ve got a sick-smell, too.”

Jack looked at him, saying nothing.

“Yes,” Wolf said. “And it keeps getting worse. It’s not really bad, not yet, but—
Wolf!
—it’s going to
get
bad if you don’t take some medicine.”

“Wolf, I’ll bet you’re great at sniffing out herbs and things back in the Territories, but this is the Country of Bad Smells, remember? You’ve probably got ragweed in there, and poison oak, and bitter vetch, and—”

“They’re good things,” Wolf said. “Just not very strong, God pound them.” Wolf looked wistful. “Not everything smells bad here, Jack. There are good smells, too. But the good smells are like the medicine plants. Weak. I think they were stronger, once.”

Wolf was looking dreamily up at the moon again, and Jack felt a recurrence of his earlier unease.

“I’ll bet this was a good place once,” Wolf said. “Clean and full of power . . .”

“Wolf?” Jack asked in a low voice. “Wolf, the hair’s come back on your palms.”

Wolf started and looked at Jack. For a moment—it might have been his feverish imagination, and even if not, it was only for a moment—Wolf looked at Jack with a flat, greedy hunger. Then he seemed to shake himself, as if out of a bad dream.

“Yes,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about that, and I don’t want you to talk about that. It doesn’t matter, not yet.
Wolf!
Just drink your medicine, Jack, that’s all
you
have to do.”

Wolf was obviously not going to take no for an answer; if Jack didn’t drink the medicine, then Wolf might feel duty-bound to simply pull open his jaws and pour it down his throat.

“Remember, if this kills me, you’ll be alone,” Jack said grimly, taking the can. It was still warm.

A look of terrible distress spread over Wolf’s face. He pushed the round glasses up on his nose. “Don’t want to hurt you, Jack—Wolf never wants to hurt Jack.” The expression was so large and so full of misery that it would have been ludicrous had it not been so obviously genuine.

Jack gave in and drank the contents of the can. There was no way he could stand against that expression of hurt dismay. The taste was as awful as he had imagined it would be . . . 
and for a moment didn’t the world waver? Didn’t it waver as if he were about to flip back into the Territories?

“Wolf!”
he yelled.
“Wolf, grab my hand!”

Wolf did, looking both concerned and excited. “Jack? Jacky? What is it?”

The taste of the medicine began to leave his mouth. At the same time, a warm glow—the sort of glow he got from a small sip of brandy on the few occasions his mother had allowed him to have one—began to spread in his stomach. And the world grew solid around him again. That brief wavering might also have been imagination . . . but Jack didn’t think so.

We almost went. For a moment there it was very close. Maybe I can do it without the magic juice . . . maybe I can!

“Jack? What is it?”

“I feel better,” he said, and managed a smile. “I feel better, that’s all.” He discovered that he did, too.

“You smell better, too,” Wolf said cheerfully.
“Wolf! Wolf!”

2

He continued to improve the next day, but he was weak. Wolf carried him “horseyback” and they made slow progress west. Around dusk they started looking for a place to lie up for the night. Jack spotted a woodshed in a dirty little gully. It was surrounded by trash and bald tires. Wolf agreed without saying much. He had been quiet and morose all day long.

Jack fell asleep almost at once and woke up around eleven needing to urinate. He looked beside him and saw that Wolf’s place was empty. Jack thought he had probably gone in search of more herbs in order to administer the equivalent of a booster shot. Jack wrinkled his nose, but if Wolf wanted him to drink more of the stuff, he would. It surely had made him feel one hell of a lot better.

He went around to the side of the shed, a straight slim boy wearing Jockey shorts, unlaced sneakers, and an open shirt. He peed for what seemed like a very long time indeed, looking up at the sky as he did so. It was one of those misleading nights which sometimes comes to the midwest in October and early November, not so long before winter comes down with a cruel, iron snap. It was almost tropically warm, and the mild breeze was like a caress.

Overhead floated the moon, white and round and lovely. It cast a clear and yet eerily misleading glow over everything, seeming to simultaneously enhance and obscure. Jack stared at it, aware that he was almost hypnotized, not really caring.

We don’t go
near
the herd when we change. Good Jason, no!

Am I the herd now, Wolf?

There was a face on the moon. Jack saw with no surprise that it was Wolf’s face . . . except it was not wide and open and a little surprised, a face of goodness and simplicity. This face was narrow, ah yes, and dark; it was dark with hair, but the hair didn’t matter. It was dark with intent.

We don’t go
near
them, we’d eat them, eat them, we’d eat them, Jack, when we change we’d—

The face in the moon, a chiaroscuro carved in bone, was the face of a snarling beast, its head cocked in that final moment before the lunge, the mouth open and filled with teeth.

We’d eat we’d kill we’d kill, kill, KILL KILL

A finger touched Jack’s shoulder and ran slowly down to his waist.

Jack had only been standing there with his penis in his hand, the foreskin pinched lightly between thumb and forefinger, looking at the moon. Now a fresh, hard jet of urine spurted out of him.

“I scared you,” Wolf said from behind him. “I’m sorry, Jack. God pound me.”

But for a moment Jack didn’t think Wolf was sorry.

For a moment it sounded as if Wolf were grinning.

And Jack was suddenly sure he was going to be eaten up.

House of bricks?
he thought incoherently.
I don’t even have a house of straw that I can run to
.

Now
the fear came, dry terror in his veins hotter than any fever.

Who’s afraid of the big bad Wolf the big bad Wolf the big bad—

“Jack?”

I am, I am, oh God I am afraid of the big bad Wolf—

He turned around slowly.

Wolf’s face, which had been lightly scruffed with stubble when the two of them crossed to the shed and lay down, was now heavily bearded from a point so high on his cheekbones that the hair almost seemed to begin at his temples. His eyes glared a bright red-orange.

“Wolf, are you all right?” Jack asked in a husky, breathy whisper. It was as loud as he could talk.

“Yes,” Wolf said. “I’ve been running with the moon. It’s beautiful. I ran . . . and ran . . . and ran. But I’m all right, Jack.” Wolf smiled to show how all right he was, and revealed a mouthful of giant, rending teeth. Jack recoiled in numb horror. It was like looking into the mouth of that
Alien
thing in the movies.

Wolf saw his expression, and dismay crossed his roughened, thickening features. But under the dismay—and not far under, either—was something else. Something that capered and grinned and showed its teeth. Something that would chase prey until blood flew from the prey’s nose in its terror, until it moaned and begged. Something that would laugh as it tore the screaming prey open.

It would laugh even if
he
were the prey.

Especially
if he were the prey.

“Jack, I’m sorry,” he said. “The time . . . it’s coming. We’ll have to do something. We’ll . . . tomorrow. We’ll have to . . . have to . . .” He looked up and that hypnotized expression spread over his face as he looked into the sky.

He raised his head and howled.

And Jack thought he heard—very faintly—the Wolf in the moon howl back.

Horror stole through him, quietly and completely. Jack slept no more that night.

3

The next day Wolf was better. A little better, anyway, but he was almost sick with tension. As he was trying to tell Jack what to do—as well as he could, anyway—a jet plane passed high overhead. Wolf jumped to his feet, rushed out, and howled at it, shaking his fists at the sky. His hairy feet were bare again. They had swelled and split the cheap penny loafers wide open.

He tried to tell Jack what to do, but he had little to go on except old tales and rumors. He knew what the change was in his own world, but he sensed it might be much worse—more powerful and more dangerous—in the land of the Strangers. And he felt that now. He felt that power sweeping through him, and tonight when the moon rose he felt sure it would sweep him away.

Over and over again he reiterated that he didn’t want to hurt Jack, that he would rather kill himself than hurt Jack.

4

Daleville was the closest small town. Jack got there shortly after the courthouse clock struck noon, and went into the True Value hardware store. One hand was stuffed into his pants pocket, touching his depleted roll of bills.

“Help you, son?”

“Yes sir,” Jack said. “I want to buy a padlock.”

“Well, step over here and let’s us have a look. We’ve got Yales, and Mosslers, and Lok-Tites, and you name it. What kind of padlock you want?”

“A big one,” Jack said, looking at the clerk with his shadowed, somehow disquieting eyes. His face was gaunt but still persuasive in its odd beauty.

“A big one,” the clerk mused. “And what would you be wanting it for, might I ask?”

“My dog,” Jack said steadily. A Story. Always they wanted a Story. He had gotten this one ready on the way in from the shed where they had spent the last two nights. “I need it for my dog. I have to lock him up. He bites.”

5

The padlock he picked out cost ten dollars, leaving Jack with about ten dollars to his name. It hurt him to spend that much, and he almost went for a cheaper item . . . and then he had a memory of how Wolf had looked the night before, howling at the moon with orange fire spilling from his eyes.