He glanced to the north momentarily, in the direction he had been travelling, drawn by that sound - it filled him with a sense of unfocussed urgency. It was, he thought (when there was time to think), like being hungry for a specific something that you haven't had in a long time - ice cream, potato chips, maybe a taco. You don't know until you see it - and until you do, there is only a need without a name, making you restless, making you nervous.
He saw pennons and the peak of what might have been a great tent - a pavillion - against the sky.
That's where the Alhambra is, he thought, and then the gull shrieked at him. He turned toward it and was alarmed to see it was now less than six feet away. Its beak opened again, showing that dirty pink lining, making him think of yesterday, the gull that had dropped the clam on the rock and then fixed him with a horrid stare exactly like this one. The gull was grinning at him - he was sure of it. As it hopped closer, Jack could smell a low and noisome stink hanging about it - dead fish and rotted seaweed.
The gull hissed at him and flurried its wings again.
'Get out of here,' Jack said loudly. His heart was pumping quick blood and his mouth had gone dry, but he did not want to be scared off by a seagull, even a big one. 'Get out!'
The gull opened its beak again . . . and then, in a terrible, open-throated series of pulses, it spoke - or seemed to.
'Other's iyyyin Ack . . . other's iyyyyyyyyyyin - '
Mother's dying, Jack . . .
The gull took another clumsy hop toward him, scaly feet clutching at the grassy tangles, beak opening and closing, black eyes fixed on Jack's. Hardly aware of what he was doing, Jack raised the green bottle and drank.
Again that horrible taste made him wince his eyes shut - and when he opened them he was looking stupidly at a yellow sign which showed the black silhouettes of two running kids, a little boy and a little girl. SLOW CHILDREN, this sign read. A seagull - this one of perfectly normal size - flew up from it with a squawk, no doubt startled by Jack's sudden appearance.
He looked around, and was walloped by disorientation. His stomach, full of blackberries and Speedy's pustulant 'magic juice,' rolled over, groaning. The muscles in his legs began to flutter unpleasantly, and all at once he sat down on the curb at the base of the sign with a bang that travelled up his spine and made his teeth click together.
He suddenly leaned over between his splayed knees and opened his mouth wide, sure he was just going to yark up the whole works. Instead he hiccuped twice, half-gagged, and then felt his stomach slowly relax.
It was the berries, he thought. If it hadn't been for the berries, I would have puked for sure.
He looked up and felt the unreality wash over him again. He had walked no more than sixty paces down the cart-track in the Territories world. He was sure of that. Say his stride was two feet - no, say two and a half feet, just to be on the safe side. That meant he had come a paltry hundred and fifty feet. But - He looked behind him and saw the arch, with its big red letters: ARCADIA FUNWORLD. Although his vision was 20/20, the sign was now so far away he could barely read it. To his right was the rambling, many-winged Alhambra Inn, with the formal gardens before it and the ocean beyond it.
In the Territories world he had come a hundred and fifty feet.
Over here he had somehow come half a mile.
'Jesus Christ,' Jack Sawyer whispered, and covered his eyes with his hands.
5
'Jack! Jack, boy! Travellin Jack!'
Speedy's voice rose over the washing-machine roar of an old flathead-six engine. Jack looked up - his head felt impossibly heavy, his limbs leaden with weariness - and saw a very old International Harvester truck rolling slowly toward him. Homemade stake sides had been added to the back of the truck, and they rocked back and forth like loose teeth as the truck moved up the street toward him. The body was painted a hideous turquoise. Speedy was behind the wheel.
He pulled up at the curb, gunned the engine (Whup! Whup! Whup-whup-whup!), and then killed it (Hahhhhhhhhhh . . .). He climbed down quickly.
'You all right, Jack?'
Jack held the bottle out for Speedy to take. 'Your magic juice really sucks, Speedy,' he said wanly.
Speedy looked hurt . . . then he smiled. 'Whoever tole you medicine supposed to taste good, Travellin Jack?'
'Nobody, I guess,' Jack said. He felt some of his strength coming back - slowly - as that thick feeling of disorientation ebbed.
'You believe now, Jack?'
Jack nodded.
'No,' Speedy said. 'That don't git it. Say it out loud.'
'The Territories,' Jack said. 'They're there. Real. I saw a bird - ' He stopped and shuddered.
'What kind of a bird?' Speedy asked sharply.
'Seagull. Biggest damn seagull - ' Jack shook his head. 'You wouldn't believe it.' He thought and then said, 'No, I guess you would. Nobody else, maybe, but you would.'
'Did it talk? Lots of birds over there do. Talk foolishness, mostly. And there's some that talks a kind of sense . . . but it's a evil kind of sense, and mostly it's lies.'