Five days, or one long, dreaming twilight? 'Run Through the Jungle.' Zoot Sims's tenor saxophone saying Here's a story for you, do you like this story? Richard was his brother, his brother.
Time returned to him about when the Talisman came back to life, during the magical sunset of the fifth day. Oatley, Jack thought on the sixth day. I could have shown Richard the Oat-ley tunnel, and whatever's left of the Tap, I could have shown Wolf which way to go . . . but he did not want to see Oatley again, there was no satisfaction or pleasure in that. And he was conscious now of how close they had come, of how far they had travelled while he drifted through time like a whistle. Wolf had brought them to the great broad artery of I-95, now that they were in Connecticut, and Arcadia Beach lay only a few states away, up the indented New England coast. From now on Jack counted the miles, and the minutes, too.
2
At quarter past five on the evening of December 21st, some three months after Jack Sawyer had set his face - and his hopes - on the west, a black El Dorado Cadillac swung into the crushed-gravel driveway of the Alhambra Inn and Gardens in the town of Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire. In the west, the sunset was a mellow valediction of reds and oranges fading to yellow . . . and blue . . . and royal purple. In the gardens themselves, na**d branches clattered together in a bitter winter wind. Amid them, until a day not quite a week ago, had been a tree which caught and ate small animals - chipmunks, birds, the desk clerk's starveling, slat-sided cat. This small tree had died very suddenly. The other growing things in the garden, though skeletal now, still bided with dormant life.
The El Dorado's steel-belted radials popped and cracked over the gravel. From inside, muffled behind the polarized glass, came the sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival. 'The people who know my magic,' John Fogerty sang, 'have filled the land with smoke.'
The Cadillac stopped in front of the wide double doors. There was only darkness beyond them. The double headlights went out and the long car stood in shadow, tailpipe idling white exhaust, orange parking lights gleaming.
Here at the end of day; here at sunset with color fanning up from the western sky in glory.
Here:
Right here and now.
3
The back of the Caddy was lit with faint, uncertain light. The Talisman flickered . . . but its glow was weak, little more than the glow of a dying firefly.
Richard turned slowly toward Jack. His face was wan and frightened. He was clutching Carl Sagan with both hands, wringing the paperback the way a washerwoman might wring a sheet.
Richard's Talisman, Jack thought, and smiled. 'Jack, do you want - '
'No,' Jack said. 'Wait until I call.'
He opened the rear right door, started to get out of the car, then looked back at Richard. Richard sat small and shrunken in his seat, wringing his paperback in his hand. He looked miserable.
Not thinking, Jack came back in for a moment and kissed Richard's cheek. Richard put his arms around Jack's neck for a moment, and hugged fiercely. Then he let Jack go. Neither of them said anything.
4
Jack started for the stairs leading up to the lobby-level . . . and then turned right and walked for a moment to the edge of the driveway instead. There was an iron railing here. Below it, cracked and tiered rock fell to the beach. Farther to his right, standing against the darkling sky, was the Arcadia Funworld roller coaster.
Jack lifted his face to the east. The wind that was harrying through the formal gardens lifted his hair away from his forehead and blew it back.
He lifted the globe in his hands, as if as an offering to the ocean.
5
On December 21st, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood near the place where the water and the land came together, hands cradling an object of some worth, looking out at the night-steady Atlantic. He had turned thirteen years old that day, although he did not know it, and he was extraordinarily beautiful. His brown hair was long - probably too long - but the sea-breeze swept it back from a fine, clear brow. He stood there thinking about his mother, and about the rooms in this place which they had shared. Was she going to turn on a light up there? He rather suspected she was.
Jack turned, eyes flashing wildly in the Talisman's light.
6
Lily felt along the wall with one trembling, skeletal hand, groping for the light-switch. She found it and turned it on. Anyone who had seen her in that moment might well have turned away. In the last week or so, the cancer had begun to sprint inside her, as if sensing that something might be on the way which would spoil all its fun. Lily Cavanaugh now weighed seventy-eight pounds. Her skin was sallow, stretched over her skull like parchment. The brown circles under her eyes had turned a dead and final black; the eyes themselves stared from their sockets with fevered, exhausted intelligence. Her bosom was gone. The flesh on her arms was gone. On her bu**ocks and the backs of her thighs, bedsores had begun to flower.