The Talisman

The Captain tells Jack that the Queen’s son died as an infant; there are rumors that one of Orris’s men killed him. Jack remembers that he also almost died as a baby, during an afternoon when Sloat and his father were visiting. He imagines Sloat holding a pillow over his face but isn’t sure if it is a real memory. Jack feels that the Captain is both in awe of him and frightened of him.

As they pass through the kitchen, the Captain orders Jack to cry as he drags him through the room. The chef interrupts them and tries to kick them out. When the chef reaches for Jack, the Captain breaks his wrist and they go outside, where Jack sees a horse with two heads.

A thin, cruel-looking man named Osmond interrupts them and asks to meet the Captain’s son. He holds a whip with many strips. The Captain introduces Jack as Lewis. Osmond calls the Captain Farren. Jack immediately senses that Osmond is mentally unstable as the man dances in the mud and mutters to himself. Farren hits Jack, hoping to distract Osmond. Osmond doesn’t care about the ruse. He begins whipping Jack’s back until two men approach with news from Outpost Road. They tell Osmond they lost a wagon of ale when the wagon overturned. One of the men’s sons was killed under the cart.

Osmond whips one of the men across the face. He screams that Orris is going to use the road; he might crash onto the barrels or the overturned cart. He orders Farren to take his men to clear Outpost Road. As they leave, Jack hears Osmond laugh as he whips the carter.

Farren says Osmond was going to kill Jack, and that he must escape as quickly as possible. He takes Jack towards Outpost Road, and soon they reach All-Hands Village, where everyone is drunk. Jack sees the Twinner of the Alhambra’s clerk with a young boy, and they hurry onward. They reach the crash site and see the dead boy crushed beneath the wagon. Farren chases robbers away who are hoping to scavenge from the wreckage. Farren sends Jack away and warns him to get off the road if he hears the coach he calls “Morgan’s diligence” (126). He gives Jack a coin with the queen’s face on it and says he’ll know when to use it.

Two hours later, Jack hears Morgan’s diligence and leaves the road. He hides in the forest but is quickly unsettled when he feels that the trees are watching him. He decides that he’ll drink from the bottle if he’s still in the woods after dark.

As he watches Morgan’s diligence—a massive black stagecoach—pass, a tree root wraps around his ankle. Other roots begin slithering towards him and one wraps around his throat and squeezes as he tries to drink from the bottle. He manages a swallow and flips back to his world, where he sees that he spilled some of Speedy’s juice. He begins to walk, reaches a farmhouse, and goes into a shed. When he looks at the coin with the Queen’s face, he sees that it is now a 1921 silver dollar. Jack falls asleep while crying.

Six days pass as Jack travels in his own world. He hitchhikes whenever he can. Eventually, a salesman drops him off at the Oatley exit and warns him that Oatley is not a nice place. Jack soon arrives at the mouth of a tunnel, marked by a sign that says MILL ROAD. He must cross through the tunnel to get to Oatley. It is completely dark inside the tunnel and Jack hears noises that might be rats. Suddenly he hears a deep inhalation and begins to panic. He hears what might be a chuckle and a whisper. He believes that he hears paws coming towards him, and something scratches the ground two feet behind him. For a moment, “he had a glimpse of a face hanging in the dark, glowing as if with its own sick and fading interior light” (145). Jack immediately runs out of the tunnel’s exit and heads towards Oatley. The town is small and depressing. He sees four men in a car, playing cards. They threaten him and he keeps moving. He sees a bar with a NOW HIRING sign and enters.

Less than three days later, Jack is hiding in the storeroom at the Oatley Tap, planning to run away at closing. A woman named Lori—who is in a relationship with the owner, a man named Smokey Updike—yells for him to bring a keg out. The bar is at full capacity. Smokey has taken Jack prisoner. The previous night, Smokey hit him when he spilled a keg. In the storeroom, Jack compares Oatley to a predatory pitcher plant. He was at the mouth of the funnel when he arrived, unaware that he was near a predator, and now he is sliding down towards its mouth. He helps Smokey change the keg. He asked Smokey to let him leave for two nights in a row, but each night, Smokey agreed and then ignored what he said.

As he mops, he thinks about the night he came to the Oatley Tap. Smokey offered him a dollar an hour. Jack told Smokey a story about an abusive stepfather and showed him the mark on his neck from the tree root in the Territories. Lori told Jack to run. That night, Jack saw a cowboy in the bar who reminded him of the actor, Randolph Scott.

While cleaning up vomit in the restroom he imagined his mother crying. The man who puked was named Digger Atwell, and he is the Oatley Chief of Police. Lori made a small bed for Jack on the floor. She also hinted that he might have to stay for a while, no matter what his plans were. The next day, his pay was smaller than expected. Smokey charged half of it for the food he ate while working. When Jack tried to leave, Smokey said that he would cause problems with Digger. He said Digger has “a taste for kids on the road” (173) and Jack agreed to stay through the weekend.

Smokey stomps on Jack’s foot when he isn’t moving fast enough. The cowboy confronts and threatens him, and Jack thinks he smells like rotten meat. The phone in the bar keeps ringing, but no one is ever there when Lori or Smokey answer. Jack answers one day and a voice says, “You get your ass back home, Jack” (177). Digger returns to the bar. The cowboy mouths at Jack, “Get your ass back home” (179), the same thing as the voice on the phone said.

When they are alone, Jack asks Lori about the cowboy. She says that he has only been there for a couple of weeks. Smokey gets irritated and says Jack has had his last warning. Jack explodes and says that if Smokey hits him, he will hit him back. Smokey punches Jack in the face and says he will never leave Oatley unless Smokey allows it.

Jack remembers that one day prior, the cowboy—it calls itself Elroy—cornered him in the bathroom. It chased him into the bar, where it started to turn into a creature with claws and yellow eyes. Jack drinks from the bottle of Speedy’s juice.