The Talisman

by Stephen King

“The Agincourt.” Richard paused, then added another child’s color—the one most small children are apt to leave in the box. “It was black. It was made of wood, but the wood looked like stone. Old black stone. And that’s what my father and his friends called it. The Black Hotel.”

“That’s right; except for the ghosts,” Richard agreed. “So I said, ‘Is it valuable, Daddy?’ “‘It’s the most valuable thing there is,’ he said.

Nobody is going to steal it, Rich,’ he said. ‘And any junkie who went into the Agincourt would see things he never saw before.’

‘Only one person in the whole world could ever touch that thing, and he’ll never even get close to it, Rich. I can

guarantee...

“He called it—” Richard hesitated, frowning in thought. “He called it ‘the axle of all possible worlds.’

“He called it . . . well . . . he called it ‘Phil Sawyer’s folly.’”

That was it, all right; that was the Talisman. The axle of all possible worlds.

How many ...

A universe of worlds, a dimensional macrocosm of worlds—and in all of them one thing that was always the same; one unifying force that was undeniably good,

even if it now happened to be imprisoned in an evil place;

the Talisman, axle of all possible worlds. And was it also Phil Saw...

so. Phil’s folly . . . Jack’s folly . . . Morgan Sloat’s . . . Gardener’s . . . and the hope...

They are . . . well . . . single-natured. That’s the only way I can think of to say it. They are like it—the

the Talisman. Single-natured. Me. I’m single-natured. I had a Twinner, but he died. Not just in the Territories world, but in all worlds but this one. I know that—I feel that.

But he said Morgan of Orris had a boy-child. Rushton. Do you know what he was?” “Yes,” Richard whispered. He was still unable to pull his eyes away from Jack’s. “He was my Twinner.”

The Talisman had been imprisoned in a magical and sinister old hotel; presumably it had been put there not only to keep it from evil hands but at least in part because it

was

hard for anybody to handle it, whatever h...

He felt strong hands fold around his heart: Jason’s hands, the Talisman’s hands.

From down there the Talisman pulled at him as surely as if it were a giant with its hands on his clothes.

If I have to go through a dozen different worlds, I’m going to do it.

The Talisman called and called, as vocal as the giant’s singing harp in “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

Now Point Venuti itself was the Oatley tunnel, and he would have to walk through all of it.

The black hotel owned Point Venuti, the air above it, the ground beneath.

It’s so dark here because all those worlds are crowded together,

jammed up like a triple exposure on film.

His Jason-side, or Jason himself, blazed up within Jack, and saw that the black hotel, though still very large, was nothing like mountainous.

KINGSLAND MOTEL.

The Kingsland Motel, Jack remembered, where Morgan Sloat had installed himself and his little boy during his obsessive inspections of the black hotel.

Morgan Sloat would have holed up in the hotel he had used so often six or seven years ago. Jack immediately felt the furious presence of Morgan Sloat near him, as if knowing where Sloat was had summoned him up.

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own son?

That man shall be damned, and damned, and damned —a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own son?

“It profits a man the world!”

He began to laugh and pace again. “It profits a man the world, and by Jason, the world is enough!”

The Talisman. The Talisman is— The key? No; oh no. Not a key but a door; a locked door standing between him and his destiny.

When the Talisman was smashed, all those worlds would be his worlds.

profits a man the world,” Morgan said, putting his

hands on Osmond’s shoulders. When he took them away a second later, Osmond was Gardener again. “It profits a man the world, and the world is enough.”