The talisman by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [Stephen King]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9780345444882
Published: 2001-07-31T07:00:00+00:00

5

Wolf was still screaming in the Box when Jack and the other boys were marched down to morning-chapel. Sunlight Gardener’s eyes seemed to dwell ironically on Jack’s pale, strained face. Perhaps now, Mr. Parker?

Wolf, it’s my mother, my mother—

Wolf was still screaming when Jack and the other boys scheduled for field-work were split into two groups and marched out to the trucks. As he passed near the Box, Jack had to suppress an urge to jam his hands over his ears. Those growls, those gibbering sobs.

All at once Sonny Singer was at his shoulder.

“Reverend Gardener’s in his office waiting to take your confession right this minute, snotface,” he said. “Told me to tell you he’ll let the dummy out of the Box the minute you tell him what he wants to know.” Sonny’s voice was silky, his face dangerous.

Wolf, screaming and howling to be let out, pounding the home-riveted iron sides of the Box with a fury of blows.

Ah, Wolf, she’s my MOTHER—

“I can’t tell him what he wants to know,” Jack said. He turned suddenly toward Sonny, turning the force of whatever had come into him in the Territories upon Sonny. Sonny took two giant steps backward, his face dismayed and sickly scared. He tripped over his own feet and stumbled into the side of one of the idling trucks. If it hadn’t been there, he would have fallen down.

“All right,” Sonny said . . . the words came out in a breathy rush that was close to a whine. “All right, all right, forget it.” His thin face grew arrogant again. “Reverend Gardener told me if you said no that I should tell you that your friend’s screaming for you. Do you get it?”

“I know who he’s screaming for.”

“Get in the truck!” Pedersen said grimly, barely looking at them as he passed by . . . but when he passed Sonny, Pedersen grimaced as though he had smelled something rotten.

Jack could hear Wolf screaming even after the trucks got rolling, though the mufflers on both were little more than scallops of iron lace and the engines blatted stridently. Nor did Wolf’s screams fade. He had made some sort of connection with Wolf’s mind now, and he could hear Wolf screaming even after the work parties had reached Far Field. The understanding that these screams were only in his mind did nothing at all to improve matters.

Around lunchtime, Wolf fell silent, and Jack knew, suddenly and with no doubt at all, that Gardener had ordered him taken out of the Box before his screams and howls attracted the wrong sort of attention. After what had happened to Ferd, he wouldn’t want any attention at all focused on the Sunlight Home.

When the work parties returned that late afternoon, the door of the Box was standing open and the Box was empty. Upstairs in the room they shared, Wolf was lying on the lower bunk. He smiled wanly as Jack came in.

“How’s your head, Jack? Bruise looks a little better. Wolf!”

“Wolf, are you all right?”

“Screamed, didn’t I? Couldn’t help it.

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