The Talisman

40

Speedy on the Beach

1

At the bottom of the hill, Jack flattened out in the grass and crawled, carrying Richard as he had once carried his backpack. When he reached the border of high yellow weeds alongside the edge of the road, he inched forward on his belly and looked out. Directly ahead of him, on the other side of the road, the beach began. Tall weatherbeaten rocks jutted out of the grayish sand; grayish water foamed onto the shore. Jack looked leftward down the street. A short distance past the hotel, on the inland side of the beach road, stood a long crumbling structure like a sliced-off wedding cake. Above it a wooden sign with a great hole in it read 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. A flash of white that was Sunlight Gardener roamed farther up the street, clearly berating several of the black-suited men and flapping his hand toward the hill. He doesn’t know I’m down here already, Jack realized as one of the men began to trudge across the beach road, looking from side to side. Gardener made another abrupt, commanding gesture, and the limousine parked at the foot of Main Street wheeled away from the hotel and began to coast alongside the man in the black suit. He unbuttoned his jacket as soon as he hit the sidewalk of Main Street and took out a pistol from a shoulder holster.

In the limousines the drivers turned their heads and stared up the hill. Jack blessed his luck—five minutes later, and a renegade Wolf with an oversized gun would have ended his quest for that great singing thing in the hotel.

He could see only the top two floors of the hotel, and the madly spinning devices attached to the architectural extravagances on the roof. Because of his worm’s-eye angle, the break-water bisecting the beach on the right side of the hotel seemed to rear up twenty feet or more, marching down the sand and on into the water.

COME NOW COME NOW, called the Talisman in words that were not words, but almost physical expressions of urgency.

The man with the gun was now out of sight, but the drivers still stared after him as he went uphill toward Point Venuti’s lunatics. Sunlight Gardener lifted his bullhorn and roared, “Root him out! I want him rooted out!” He jabbed the bullhorn at another black-suited man, just raising his binoculars to look down the street in Jack’s direction. “You! Pig-brains! Take the other side of the street . . . and root that bad boy out, oh yes, that baddest baddest boy, baddest . . .” His voice trailed away as the second man trotted across the street to the opposite sidewalk, his pistol already lengthening his fist.

It was the best chance he’d ever get, Jack realized—nobody was facing down the length of the beach road. “Hang on tight,” he whispered to Richard, who did not move. “Time to boogie.” He got his feet up under him, and knew that Richard’s back was probably visible above the yellow weeds and tall grass. Bending over, he burst out of the weeds and set his feet on the beach road.

In seconds Jack Sawyer was flat on his stomach in the gritty sand. He pushed himself forward with his feet. One of Richard’s hands tightened on his shoulder. Jack wiggled forward across the sand until he had made it behind the first tall outcropping of rock; then he simply stopped moving and lay with his head on his hands, Richard light as a leaf on his back, breathing hard. The water, no more than twenty feet away, beat against the edge of the beach. Jack could still hear Sunlight Gardener screeching about imbeciles and incompetents, his crazy voice drifting down from uphill on Main Street. The Talisman urged him forward, urged him on, on, on. . . .

Richard fell off his back.

“You okay?”

Richard raised a thin hand and touched his forehead with his fingers, his cheekbone with his thumb. “I guess. You see my father?”

Jack shook his head. “Not yet.”

“But he’s here.”

“I guess. He has to be.” The Kingsland, Jack remembered, seeing in his mind the dingy facade, the broken wooden sign. 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.

“Well, don’t worry about him.” Richard’s voice was paper-thin. “I mean, don’t worry about me worrying about him. I think he’s dead, Jack.”

Jack looked at his friend with a fresh anxiety: could Richard actually be losing his mind? Certainly Richard was feverish. Up on the hill, Sunlight Gardener bawled “SPREAD OUT!” through his bullhorn.

“You think—”

And then Jack heard another voice, one that had first whispered beneath Gardener’s angry command. It was a half-familiar voice, and Jack recognized its timbre and cadence before he had truly identified it. And, oddly, he recognized that the sound of this particular voice made him feel relaxed—almost as if he could stop scheming and fretting now, for everything would be taken care of—before he could name its owner.

“Jack Sawyer,” the voice repeated. “Over here, sonny.”

The voice was Speedy Parker’s.

“I do,” Richard said, and closed his puffy eyes again and looked like a corpse washed up by the tide.

I do think my father is dead, Richard meant, but Jack’s mind was far from the ravings of his friend. “Over here, Jacky,” Speedy called again, and the boy saw that the sound came from the largest group of tall rocks, three joined vertical piles only a few feet from the edge of the water. A dark line, the high-tide mark, cut across the rocks a quarter of the way up.

“Speedy,” Jack whispered.

“Yeah-bob,” came the reply. “Get yourself over here without them zombies seein you, can you? And bring your frien’ along, too.”

Richard still lay face-up on the sand, his hand over his face. “Come on, Richie,” Jack whispered into his ear. “We have to move a little bit down the beach. Speedy’s here.”

“Speedy?” Richard whispered back, so quietly Jack had trouble hearing the word.

“A friend. See the rocks down there?” He lifted Richard’s head on the reedlike neck. “He’s behind them. He’ll help us, Richie. Right now, we could use a little help.”

“I can’t really see,” Richard complained. “And I’m so tired . . .”

“Get on my back again.” He turned around and nearly flattened out on the sand. Richard’s arms came over his shoulders and feebly joined.

Jack peered around the edge of the rock. Down the beach road, Sunlight Gardener stroked his hair into place as he strode toward the front door of the Kingsland Motel. The black hotel reared up awesomely. The Talisman opened its throat and called for Jack Sawyer. Gardener hesitated outside the door of the motel, swept both hands over his hair, shook his head, and turned smartly about and began walking much more rapidly back up the long line of limousines. The bullhorn lifted. “REPORTS EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES!” he screeched. “YOU POINT MEN—TELL ME IF YOU SEE A BUG MOVE! I MEAN IT, YES I DO!”

Gardener was walking away; everybody else watched him. It was time. Jack kicked off away from his shelter of rock and, bending over while he clasped Richard’s skimpy forearms, raced down the beach. His feet kicked up scallops of damp sand. The three joined pillars of rocks, which had seemed so close while he talked to Speedy, now appeared to be half a mile away—the open space between himself and them would not close. It was as if the rocks receded while he ran. Jack expected to hear the crack of a shot. Would he feel the bullet first, or would he hear the report before the bullet knocked him down? At last the three rocks grew larger and larger in his vision, and then he was there, falling onto his chest and skidding behind their protection.

“Speedy!” he said, almost laughing in spite of everything. But the sight of Speedy, who was sitting down beside a colorful little blanket and leaning against the middle pillar of rock, killed the laughter in his throat—killed at least half of his hope, too.

2

For Speedy Parker looked worse than Richard. Much worse. His cracked, leaking face gave Jack a weary nod, and the boy thought that Speedy was confirming his hopelessness. Speedy wore only a pair of old brown shorts, and all of his skin seemed horribly diseased, as if with leprosy.

“Settle down now, ole Travellin Jack,” Speedy whispered in a hoarse, crackling voice. “There’s lots you got to hear, so open your ears up good.”

“How are you?” Jack asked. “I mean . . . Jesus, Speedy . . . is there anything I can do for you?”

He gently placed Richard down on the sand.

“Open your ears, like I said. Don’t you go worryin bout Speedy. I ain’t too com’fable, the way you see me now, but I can be com’fable again, if you does the right thing. Your little friend’s dad put this hurtin on me—on his own boy, too, looks like. Old Bloat don’t want his child in that hotel, no sir. But you got to take him there, son. There ain’t but one way about it. You got to do it.”

Speedy seemed to be fading in and out as he talked to Jack, who wanted to scream or wail more than he had at any time since the death of Wolf. His eyes smarted, and he knew he wanted to cry. “I know, Speedy,” he said. “I figured that out.”

“You a good boy,” the old man said. He cocked his head back and regarded Jack carefully. “You the one, all right. The road laid its mark on you, I see. You the one. You gonna do it.”

“How’s my mom, Speedy?” Jack asked. “Please tell me. She’s still alive, isn’t she?”

“You can call her soon’s you can, find out she’s okay,” Speedy answered. “But first you got to get it, Jack. Because if you don’t get it, she be dead. And so be Laura, the Queen. She be dead, too.” Speedy hitched himself up, wincing, to straighten his back. “Let me tell you. Most everybody at the court gave up on her—gave her up for dead already.” His face expressed his disgust. “They all afraid of Morgan. Because they know Morgan’ll take they skin off they backs if they don’t swear allegiance to him now. While Laura still got a few breaths in her. But out in the far Territories, two-legged snakes like Osmond and his gang been goin around, tellin folks she already dead. And if she dies, Travellin Jack, if she dies . . .” He levelled his ruined face at the boy. “Then we got black horror in both worlds. Black horror. And you can call your momma. But first you has to get it. You has to. It’s all that’s left, now.”

Jack did not have to ask him what he meant.

“I’m glad you understand, son.” Speedy closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone.

A second later his eyes slowly opened again. “Destinies. That’s what all this is about. More destinies, more lives, than you know. You ever hear the name Rushton? I suspect you might have, all this time gone by.”

Jack nodded.

“All those destinies be the reason your momma brought you all the way to the Alhambra Hotel, Travellin Jack. I was just sittin and waitin, knowin you’d show up. The Talisman pulled you here, boy. Jason. That’s a name you heard, too, I spect.”

“It’s me,” Jack said.

“Then get the Talisman. I brought this l’il thing along, he’p you out some.” He wearily picked up the blanket, which, Jack saw, was of rubber and therefore not a blanket after all.

Jack took the bundle of rubber from Speedy’s charred-looking hand. “How can I get into the hotel, though?” he asked. “I can’t get over the fence, and I can’t swim in with Richard.”

“Blow it up.” Speedy’s eyes had closed again.

Jack unfolded the object. It was an inflatable raft in the shape of a legless horse.

“Recognize her?” Speedy’s voice, ruined as it was, bore a nostalgic lightness. “You and me picked her up, sometime back. I explained about the names.”

Jack suddenly remembered coming to Speedy, that day that seemed filled with slashes of black and white, and finding him sitting inside a round shed, repairing the merry-go-round horses. You be takin liberties with the Lady, but I guess she ain’t gonna mind if you’re helpin me get her back where she belongs. Now that, too, had a larger meaning. Another piece of the world locked into place for Jack. “Silver Lady,” he said.

Speedy winked at him, and again Jack had the eerie sense that everything in his life had conspired to get him to precisely this point. “Your friend here all right?” It was—almost—a deflection.

“I think so.” Jack looked uneasily at Richard who had rolled on his side and was breathing shallowly, his eyes shut.

“Then long’s you think so, blow up ole Silver Lady here. You gotta bring that boy in with you no matter what. He’s a part of it, too.”

Speedy’s skin seemed to be getting worse as they sat on the beach—it had a sickly ash-gray tinge. Before Jack put the air nozzle to his mouth he asked, “Can’t I do anything for you, Speedy?”

“Sure. Go to the Point Venuti drugstore and fetch me a bottle of Lydia Pinkham’s ointment.” Speedy shook his head. “You know how to he’p Speedy Parker, boy. Get the Talisman. That’s all the he’p I need.”

Jack blew into the nozzle.

3

A very short time later he was pushing in the stopper located beside the tail of a raft shaped like a four-foot-long rubber horse with an abnormally broad back.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to get Richard on this thing,” he said, not complaining but merely thinking out loud.

“He be able to follow orders, ole Travellin Jack. Just sit behind him, kind of he’p hold him on. That’s all he needs.”

And in fact Richard had pulled himself into the lee of the standing rocks and was breathing smoothly and regularly through his open mouth. He might have been either asleep or awake, Jack could not tell which.

“All right,” Jack said. “Is there a pier or something out behind that place?”

“Better than a pier, Jacky. Once you gets out beyond the break-water, you’ll see big pilins—they built part of the hotel right out over the water. You’ll see a ladder down in them pilins. Get Richard there up the ladder and you be on the big deck out back. Big windows right there—the kind of windows that be doors, you know? Open up one of them window-doors and you be in the dinin room.” He managed to smile. “Once you in the dinin room, I reckon you’ll be able to sniff out the Talisman. And don’t be afraid of her, sonny. She’s been waitin for you—she’ll come to your hand like a good hound.”

“What’s to stop all these guys from coming in after me?”

“Shoo, they can’t go in the black hotel.” Disgust with Jack’s stupidity was printed in every line on Speedy’s face.

“I know, I mean in the water. Why wouldn’t they come after me with a boat or something?”

Now Speedy managed a painful but genuine smile. “I think you gonna see why, Travellin Jack. Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water, hee hee. Don’t worry bout that now—just remember what I told you and get to gettin, hear?”

“I’m already there,” Jack said, and edged toward the rocks to peer around at the beach road and the hotel. He had managed to get across the road and to Speedy’s cover without being seen: surely he could drag Richard the few feet down to the water and get him on the raft. With any luck at all, he should be able to make it unseen all the way to the pilings—Gardener and the men with binoculars were concentrating on the town and the hillside.

Jack peeked around the side of one of the tall columns. The limousines still stood before the hotel. Jack put his head out an inch or two farther to look across the street. A man in a black suit was just stepping through the door of the wreck of the Kingsland Motel—he was trying, Jack saw, to keep from looking at the black hotel.

A whistle began to shrill, as high and insistent as a woman’s scream.

“Move!” Speedy whispered hoarsely.

Jack jerked his head up and saw at the top of the grassy rise behind the crumbling houses a black-suited man blasting away at the whistle and pointing straight downhill at him. The man’s dark hair swayed around his shoulders—hair, black suit, and sunglasses, he looked like the Angel of Death.

“FOUND HIM! FOUND HIM!” Gardener bawled. “SHOOT HIM! A THOUSAND DOLLARS TO THE BROTHER WHO BRINGS ME HIS BALLS!”

Jack recoiled back into the safety of the rocks. A half-second later a bullet spanged off the front of the middle pillar just before the sound of the shot reached them. So now I know, Jack thought as he grabbed Richard’s arm and pulled him toward the raft. First you get knocked down, then you hear the gun go off.

“You gotta go now,” Speedy said in a breathless rush of words. “In thirty seconds, there’s gonna be a lot more shootin. Stay behind the breakwater as long’s you can and then cut over. Get her, Jack.”

Jack gave Speedy a frantic, driven look as a second bullet smacked into the sand before their little redoubt. Then he pushed Richard down in the front of the raft and saw with some satisfaction that Richard had enough presence of mind to grasp and hang on to the separate rubbery tufts of the mane. Speedy lifted his right hand in a gesture both wave and blessing. On his knees Jack gave the raft a shove which sent it almost to the edge of the water. He heard another trilling blast of the whistle. Then he scrambled to his feet. He was still running when the raft hit the water, and was wet to the waist when he pulled himself into it.

Jack paddled steadily out to the break-water. When he reached the end, he turned into unprotected open water and began paddling.

4

After that, Jack concentrated on his paddling, firmly putting out of his mind any considerations of what he would do if Morgan’s men had killed Speedy. He had to get under the pilings, and that was that. A bullet hit the water, causing a tiny eruption of droplets about six feet to his left. He heard another ricochet off the breakwater with a ping. Jack paddled forward with his whole strength.

Some time, he knew not how long, went by. At last he rolled off the side of the raft and swam to the back, so that he could push it even faster by scissoring his legs. An almost imperceptible current swept him nearer his goal. At last the pilings began, high crusty columns of wood as thick around as telephone poles. Jack raised his chin out of the water and saw the immensity of the hotel lifting itself above the wide black deck, leaning out over him. He glanced back and to his right, but Speedy had not moved. Or had he? Speedy’s arms looked different. Maybe—

There was a flurry of movement on the long grassy descent behind the row of falling-down houses. Jack looked up and saw four of the men in black suits racing down toward the beach. A wave slapped the raft, almost taking it from his grasp. Richard moaned. Two of the men pointed toward him. Their mouths moved.

Another high wave rocked the raft and threatened to push both raft and Jack Sawyer back toward the beach.

Wave, Jack thought, what wave?

He looked up over the front of the raft as soon as it dipped again into a trough. The broad gray back of something surely too large to be a mere fish was sinking beneath the surface. A shark? Jack was uneasily conscious of his two legs fluttering out behind him in the water. He ducked his head under, afraid he’d see a long cigar-shaped stomach with teeth sweeping toward him.

He did not see that shape, not exactly, but what he saw astounded him.

The water, which appeared now to be very deep, was as full as an aquarium, though one containing no fish of normal size or description. In this aquarium only monsters swam. Beneath Jack’s legs moved a zoo of outsize, sometimes horrendously ugly animals. They must have been beneath him and the raft ever since the water had grown deep enough to accommodate them, for the water was crowded everywhere. The thing that had frightened the renegade Wolfs glided by ten feet down, long as a southbound freight train. It moved upward as he watched. A film over its eyes blinked. Long whiskers trailed back from its cavernous mouth—it had a mouth like an elevator door, Jack thought. The creature glided past him, pushing Jack closer to the hotel with the weight of the water it displaced, and raised its dripping snout above the surface. Its furry profile resembled Neanderthal Man’s.

Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water, Speedy had told him, and laughed.

Whatever force had sealed the Talisman in the black hotel had set these creatures in the waters off Point Venuti to make sure that the wrong people kept away; and Speedy had known it. The great bodies of the creatures in the water delicately nudged the raft nearer and nearer the pilings, but the waves they made kept Jack from getting all but the most fragmentary view of what was happening on shore.

He rode up a crest and saw Sunlight Gardener, his hair flowing out behind him, standing beside the black fence levelling a long heavy hunting rifle at his head. The raft sank into the trough; the shell sizzled past far overhead with the noise of a hummingbird’s passing; the report came. When Gardener shot next, a fishlike thing ten feet long with a great sail of a dorsal fin rose straight up out of the water and stopped the bullet. In one motion, the creature rolled back down and sliced into the water again. Jack saw a great ragged hole in its side. The next time he rode up a crest, Gardener was trotting off across the beach, clearly on his way to the Kingsland Motel. The giant fish continued to wash him diagonally forward toward the pilings.

5

A ladder, Speedy had said, and as soon as Jack was under the wide deck he peered through the gloom to try to find it. The thick pilings, encrusted with algae and barnacles and dripping with seaweed, stood in four rows. If the ladder had been installed at the time the deck was built it might easily be useless now—at the least a wooden ladder would be hard to see, overgrown with weed and barnacles. The big shaggy pilings were now much thicker than they had been originally. Jack got his forearms over the back of the raft and used the thick rubbery tail to lever himself back inside. Then, shivering, he unbuttoned his sodden shirt—the same white button-down, at least one size too small, Richard had given him on the other side of the Blasted Lands—and dropped it squashily in the bottom of the raft. His shoes had fallen off in the water, and he peeled off the wet socks and tossed them on top of the shirt. Richard sat in the bow of the raft, slouching forward over his knees, his eyes shut and his mouth closed.

“We’re looking for a ladder,” Jack said.

Richard acknowledged this with a barely perceptible movement of his head.

“Do you think you could get up a ladder, Richie?”

“Maybe,” Richard whispered.

“Well, it’s around here somewhere. Probably attached to one of these pilings.”

Jack paddled with both hands, bringing the raft between two of the pilings in the first row. The Talisman’s call was continuous now, and seemed nearly strong enough to pick him up out of the raft and deposit him on the deck. They were drifting between the first and second rows of pilings, already under the heavy black line of the deck above; here as well as outside, little red flares ignited in the air, twisted, winked out. Jack counted: four rows of pilings, five pilings in each row. Twenty places where the ladder might be. With the darkness beneath the deck and the endless refinements of corridors suggested by the pilings, being here was like taking a tour of the Catacombs.

“They didn’t shoot us,” Richard said without affect. In the same tone of voice he might have said, “The store is out of bread.”

“We had some help.” He looked at Richard, slumped over his knees. Richard would never be able to get up a ladder unless he were somehow galvanized.

“We’re coming up to a piling,” Jack said. “Lean forward and shove us off, will you?”

“What?”

“Keep us from bumping into the piling,” Jack repeated. “Come on, Richard. I need your help.”

It seemed to work. Richard cracked open his left eye and put his right hand on the edge of the raft. As they drifted nearer to the thick piling he held out his left hand to deflect them. Then something on the pillar made a smacking sound, as of lips pulled wetly apart.

Richard grunted and retracted his hand.

“What was it?” Jack said, and Richard did not have to answer—now both boys saw the sluglike creatures clinging to the pilings. Their eyes had been closed, too, and their mouths. Agitated, they began to shift positions on their pillars, clattering their teeth. Jack put his hands in the water and swung the bow of the raft around the piling.

“Oh God,” Richard said. Those lipless tiny mouths held a quantity of teeth. “God, I can’t take—”

“You have to take it, Richard,” Jack said. “Didn’t you hear Speedy back there on the beach? He might even be dead now, Richard, and if he is, he died so he could be certain that I knew you had to go in the hotel.”

Richard had closed his eyes again.

“And I don’t care how many slugs we have to kill to get up the ladder, you are going up the ladder, Richard. That’s all. That’s it.”

“Shit on you,” Richard said. “You don’t have to talk to me like that. I’m sick of you being so high and mighty. I know I’m going up the ladder, wherever it is. I probably have a fever of a hundred and five, but I know I’m going up that ladder. I just don’t know if I can take it. So to hell with you.” Richard had uttered this entire speech with his eyes shut. He effortfully forced both eyes open again. “Nuts.”

“I need you,” Jack said.

“Nuts. I’ll get up the ladder, you asshole.”

“In that case, I’d better find it,” Jack said, pushed the raft forward toward the next row of pilings, and saw it.

6

The ladder hung straight down between the two inner rows of pilings, ending some four feet above the surface of the water. A dim rectangle at the top of the ladder indicated that a trapdoor opened onto the deck. In the darkness it was only the ghost of a ladder, half-visible.

“We’re in business, Richie,” Jack said. He guided the raft carefully past the next piling, making sure not to scrape against it. The hundreds of sluglike creatures clinging to the piling bared their teeth. In seconds the horse’s head at the front of the raft was gliding beneath the bottom of the ladder, and then Jack could reach up to grab the bottom rung. “Okay,” he said. First he tied one sleeve of his sodden shirt around the rung, the other around the stiff rubbery tail next to him. At least the raft would still be there—if they ever got out of the hotel. Jack’s mouth abruptly dried. The Talisman sang out, calling to him. He stood up carefully in the raft and hung on to the ladder. “You first,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy, but I’ll help you.”

“Don’t need your help,” Richard said. Standing up, he nearly pitched forward and threw both of them out of the raft.

“Easy now.”

“Don’t easy me.” Richard extended both arms and steadied himself. His mouth was pinched. He looked afraid to breathe. He stepped forward.

“Good.”

“Asshole.” Richard moved his left foot forward, raised his right arm, brought his right foot forward. Now he could find the bottom of the ladder with his hands, as he fiercely squinted through his right eye. “See?”

“Okay,” Jack said, holding both hands palm-out before him, fingers extended, indicating that he would not insult Richard with the offer of physical aid.

Richard pulled on the ladder with his hands, and his feet slid irresistibly forward, pushing the raft with them. In a second he was suspended half over the water—only Jack’s shirt kept the raft from zooming out from under Richard’s feet.

“Help!”

“Pull your feet back.”

Richard did so, and stood upright again, breathing hard.

“Let me give you a hand, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jack crawled along the raft until he was immediately before Richard. He stood up with great care. Richard gripped the bottom rung with both hands, trembling. Jack put his hands on Richard’s skinny hips. “I’m going to help lift you. Try not to kick out with your feet—just pull yourself up high enough to get your knee on the rung. First put your hands up on the next one.” Richard cracked open an eye and did so.

“You ready?”

“Go.”

The raft slid forward, but Jack yanked Richard upright so high that he could easily place his right knee on the bottom rung. Then Jack grabbed the sides of the ladder and used the strength in his arms and legs to stabilize the raft. Richard was grunting, trying to get his other knee on the rung; in a second he had done it. In another two seconds, Richard Sloat stood upright on the ladder.

“I can’t go any farther,” he said. “I think I’m going to fall off. I feel so sick, Jack.”

“Just go up one more, please. Please. Then I can help you.”

Richard wearily moved his hands up a rung. Jack, looking toward the deck, saw that the ladder must be thirty feet long. “Now move your feet. Please, Richard.”

Richard slowly placed one foot, then the next, on the second rung.

Jack placed his hands on the outsides of Richard’s feet and pulled himself up. The raft swung out in a looping half-circle, but he raised his knees and got both legs securely on the lowest rung. Held by Jack’s outstretched shirt, the raft swung back around like a dog on a leash.

A third of the way up the ladder, Jack had to put one arm around Richard’s waist to keep him from falling into the black water.

At last the rectangular square of the trapdoor floated in the black wood directly above Jack’s head. He clamped Richard to himself—his unconscious head fell against Jack’s chest—by reaching around both Richard and ladder with his left hand, and tried the trapdoor with his right. Suppose it had been nailed shut? But it swung up immediately and banged flat against the top of the deck. Jack got his left arm firmly under Richard’s armpits and hauled him up out of the blackness and through the hole in the deck.